Chapter Text
They don’t have a plan. They have something that sort of, maybe, resembles a plan, but it’s barely even that. Caleb is not confident that they have any sense of succeeding here – they are outnumbered by a group of very powerful slavers, who have clearly not been stopped before. They’ve been doing this for a while – what chance do the fraction of the Mighty Nein have? They pretend they have something – maybe it’s half an idea, and Caleb has no confidence that this will work. Panic burns in him, and he is doing his best to not show that to everyone.
“Mollymauk,” Caleb begins carefully as they ready themselves for an attack, an attack he has no faith in. “What do you think of our chances?”
Molly spins his sword absently in one hand, alight with a radiant glow. There’s an ease to how he moves, a grace to him. He looks focused, calculated, crimson eyes assessing the road around them.
“I don’t like thinking about the odds,” Molly says. “And I prefer to stay optimistic, but I’ll admit, I’m not a fan of being outnumbered. Jester is our healer, Fjord is a powerful magic user, and Yasha is really very strong, so that this group of slavers got a hold of them makes me nervous. And it means that we do not have… well, I’m a fan of your many talents, magic man, but I do think we’re working against our means here.”
And Molly is the optimistic one. Caleb sighs heavily, reaching into his pocket to preoccupy his fingers with counting his spell components. There’s no way to cut through the panic – it burns at the edges of his brain, casting everything in gray. He wants to run, to grab Nott and sprint as far from this as possible. And it is tempting, even as he stands with Molly, who is warm and vibrant despite it all – were he not aware of Molly’s feelings for him, and had he not already bared his own soul – well. Maybe he would have. He feels guilty; it wars with his inherent need to stay alive.
“This is a bad idea,” Caleb tells Molly simply, plainly. He is simply stating a fact - he doubts Molly needs Caleb to tell him this.
“It is,” Molly agrees, running his thumb over the blade of his sword and watching blood bead up on his skin. The light on his sword burns brighter. “I’m very bad at running from things, even if I should, and I’m invested in this. Yasha is, and has been, my good luck charm for a good deal of my brief life. Jester is vibrant and wonderful, love and joy. And Fjord has been kind to me in a way many aren’t. So I intend to fight until I can’t.”
Caleb stares. Half of him wants to tell Molly that he’s a fool, that giving up one' s life for another is pointless. The other half, quieter and more subdued, admires the bravery and selflessness.”I can see a future where I fall in love with you, Mollymauk,” is all Caleb can say, though the words come with great effort. Despite his best instinct, he does not take the words back.
“I look forward to that future, magician.”
They have very little time to do anything before their planned ambush. Caleb looks around to find Nott with Keg; neither of them looks any more ready for this than Caleb feels. Beau’s face is a firm mask, but she would be a fool to not be afraid, and Caleb does not get the feeling that Beauregard is stupid. Again, the thought of running crosses Caleb’s mind, pushing through the hazy gray panic. He pushes it away and swallows down the bile that rises in his throat.
In the pause between the planning and the execution of a plan, Caleb reaches for Mollymauk. He lays a palm against the warm lavender skin of Molly’s cheek and draws him down, bringing their lips together in a small, chaste kiss. It’s gentle, barely there – the softest brush of lips against lips. It says as much as Caleb needs it to; he cares , and he’s staying because he cares.
Molly returns the kiss softly, the hand not on his blade curling around the back of Caleb’s neck. Caleb feels the blood from his cut smearing against his skin – it’s strange, the way it makes him feel hot and claimed, something possessive coiling in the pit of his belly. It’s a very brief kiss; it does not last as long as Caleb would like it to. But it’s a nice moment.
“As much as I would love to let you keep distracting me, magic man, we have an ambush to plan,” Molly murmurs against Caleb’s lips, and Caleb sighs softly, slowly pushing his fingers through Molly’s hair. The noise Molly makes is practically a purr. “You’re going to drive me insane, you know. Come on.”
It would be so nice to stay in this moment, and that is not an option now. So Caleb nods and steps away from Molly, away from his warmth, away from the way he feels comfort – and they go back to planning an ambush that Caleb is very sure is not going to work.
He’s almost wrong. Certain things go off exactly as they should, and Caleb is actually pretty proud that he manages to get a Slow spell off on so many people. He sees Molly flash him a wicked smirk and a wink, and that pride wells up within him further. But just as quickly as things go right, they go abruptly wrong. Beau is trying, but she can’t get a stunning strike to land against Lorenzo’s mage friend, and that ends up being a problem. As quickly as Caleb thinks that they might have a chance, he realizes that they don’t.
Caleb watches Molly take most of the brunt of one of Lorenzo’s spells, a blast of icy cold that nearly knocks Molly off of his feet and freezes everything behind him. Molly is still standing, pushing off the frozen cart behind him to keep himself on his feet, but he looks bad – Caleb’s brain goes red. It’s like he’s living in one of his worst nightmares, seeing the way Molly staggers. Nott is hiding, at least, primarily out of view, so Caleb doesn’t worry about her, but Beau and Molly are engaged in closed range with Lorenzo, who it turns out, is a very powerful mage.
Breath comes in short, sharp pants. Caleb feels heavy, like something is sitting on his chest. He can’t inhale, he can’t formulate a thought. He ducks behind whatever cover he can find, but in mind’s eye, he sees Beau engaged hand-to-hand with Lorenzo, and Molly, already bloodied and barely standing, moving in to fight on Lorenzo’s other side.
“We have to run,” Caleb breathes, the words coming out in a ragged exhale. He swallows heavily, pushing a hand through his hair. With one trembling hand, he reaches for spell components, but he has no plan, and nothing comes to mind. “We have to run!” he repeats, louder this time. It comes out as a broken yell.
“Might be a bit late for that, magician,” Molly calls back, and Caleb winces. He sounds bad. His voice, usually so confident and playful, is strained with pain. Caleb can hear it, the tension, the way his voice breaks on the words.
“Molly,” Caleb hears Beau protest, and then Molly’s pained snicker.
“Shut up. Not letting you fight alone, unpleasant though you may be.” Caleb hears Molly’s tone twist into an angry snarl, something harsh and guttural when he speaks again. Infernal. Caleb can’t place the words.
Taking a deep breath, Caleb pushes himself up from where he’s taken cover, and immediately wishes that he hadn’t. It feels like life slows down around him, but in reality, everything happens too quickly to track. He sees Molly slash out across Lorenzo with one sword, and the force of it has Lorenzo snarling and turning his full focus on the tiefling. What happens next happens in a sort of gray haze, when Caleb’s vision narrows down to a pinpoint that is Molly and Lorenzo. And he watches, through a fog that does not feel real, as Molly falls.
Caleb’s breath feels like it’s coming through a tube, short and shallow. There’s something clamped down around his heart, squeezing down tightly, so hard that it aches. He wants to scream. No sound comes, and all he can see is the dark read that spreads through the vibrant blues in Molly’s coat. His knees weaken and give out, and he collapses.
It doesn’t feel real. It can’t be real. It’s just a bad dream, it’s all just a nightmare. Any moment, he is going to wake up and find that this was just a dream formed of the worst of his imagination. Or Molly is going to stand and flash a wicked smirk or a devilish wink, and everything is going to be fine.
But Caleb watches, in slow motion, as all that happens is Molly spitting blood into Lorenzo’s face, full of his cocksure attitude and rage. Lorenzo scoffs, and horror spikes within Caleb as Lorenzo raises his glaive and brings it down. He does not want to see it, but he cannot pull his eyes away, and the image that he sees will be burned into his memory for the rest of his life. The glaive pierces Molly’s heart. Caleb watches, life slowing to a pace of complete nothingness, when the last breath leaves Molly’s lungs and his body goes completely, utterly limp.
Everything else ceases to exist around him. In his mind, Caleb knows that Beau is still fighting. Nott is somewhere. She’s alive. But he’s on his knees, with Molly’s body the only thing he can see. He watches the blood around Molly’s body grow, seeping into the ground. He jerks and attempts to push forward on his knees, but it feels sluggish, like he’s moving through waist-deep water. There’s yelling around him; he cannot place the words. All he is aware of is that Lorenzo’s crew is pulling away, and Molly’s body lays, unmoving, on the ground in front of him.
“Caleb.” Nott’s voice reaches him through a haze and an echo. “Caleb, are you okay?”
“Molly,” Caleb whispers. He pushes himself up and stumbles, tripping over his feet as he moves towards Molly. The ground around the tiefling, the loose-fitting white shirt he wears, are both soaked in blood. Caleb trips, falling once again to his knees when he reaches Molly’s side.
Molly’s eyes remain open. Blood has trickled from the corner of his mouth. His hair lays in loose curls around his face and horns, and Caleb sees red in the ends that hang loose around his neck. His tattoos are beautiful artwork against his skin, but there is no warmth in him. His mouth hangs open slightly, and there is no light in his once vibrant red eyes, open and unblinking and fixed on the sky.
Caleb reaches for him, a trembling hand coming to rest against the wound on Mollymauk’s chest, as though he can coax the blood back into his body, push life back into his heart. “Molly? Mollymauk.” His voice breaks on a sob. His eyes prickle, sharp stings that say he’s on the verge of tears. “Fix this!” he yells, the words tearing from his throat like someone reached into him and wrenched them free without his permission. “Somebody, do something!”
He looks around at them. Beau stands before him, just off to his left, tear tracks staining her cheeks through the dirt and the grime, and she and Molly have never gotten along, but she looks lost and terrified and confused. Keg is several steps away, guilt painted on her features. Nott, trembling and hesitant, skitters closer to where Caleb kneels.
“I don’t think… I don’t think this is something we can fix,” Nott says, voice shaky. “He’s – it’s – Caleb.” She’s very careful as she reaches out and enfolds Caleb in a hug, warm and comforting, that does nothing to stop the way he’s shaking. “I’m so sorry, Caleb.”
Reality settles over Caleb like snowfall, heavy and ice cold. Nott is small but firm as she’s wrapped around him. On his other side, Beau kneels. She reaches out to hug him, but seems to think better of it, instead laying a hand between Caleb’s shoulders.
The comfort feels warm, but ultimately does not break through how cold reality is. Mollymauk is dead. A brief, brief time before, Caleb had kissed Mollymauk and mentioned a future where he could fall in love with this strange, beautiful circus man, ostentatious and beautiful and vibrant. Now there is nothing. There is cold and blank emptiness.
“We have to bury him,” Caleb says shakily, pushing to his feet. Nott clambers onto his back as he moves, arms gripping him around his neck. Her weight is grounding, and it keeps him present in the moment before he can slip away into sorrow and grief. “I’m going to dig him a grave. We can’t – we can’t just leave him here.” He turns, looking in a full circle before he finds a spot he deems good enough. He summons the Cat’s Paw and it begins to dig.
It’s a slow process, and Caleb shivers through it. Nott stays with him for six minutes, thirty-two seconds, just holding onto him, before she eventually clambers down to help Keg dispose of the wreckage they’d left on the road. Caleb feels the loss like a gaping wound in the middle of his chest. His hand trembles as he steadies a quill and a bottle of ink, and scratches a carefully worded letter to Mollymauk on a piece of parchment. He can’t write what he wants, which is that there will always be a future where he loves Mollymauk. He simply tells Molly to come find the Mighty Nein if he can – when he can.
“Here.” Beau’s voice makes him jump. She’s extending a necklace to him, holding it up by the chain. Caleb recognizes it as Molly’s necklace, one that was supposed to help keep him alive and ultimately hadn’t done anything for him.
“I don’t want that.”
“ He’d want you to have it,” Beau snaps shortly, and Caleb frowns, reaching up to wipe the tears off of his cheeks. He hates crying, he hates the way this whole situation has left him feeling lost and empty. He hates that Beau is right. He reaches out to snag the necklace, sliding it on over his head and tucking it away beneath his shirt. “Hey. I’m sorry I was an asshole about you two. I knew that he liked you, we all did. It was there in how he looked at you, and I could see it – and fucking with Molly was just sort of how we were, but I shouldn’t have been rude about it. I was just being a dick.”
“You’re always a dick,” Caleb counters, unwilling to admit that he might appreciate the apology, even if it means nothing now. He imagines that Molly would scoff and tell Beau to fuck off. He almost wants to do the same, but it would not have the same light-hearted playfulness. He also wants to smile, but he can’t.
They bury Molly in a shallow grave, and Caleb feels hollow. Beau speaks – she’s in tears as she gives her eulogy, and it feels performative. Caleb knows it isn’t. For all the squabbles they’d had, Beau and Molly had liked each other at least a little, and she is deeply upset that he’s gone. But it’s easier to be mad at her, because he needs to be mad or he’s going to drown in sorrow.
It was too brief and too unlabled to feel so hollow about it now. But Molly burned bright and brief and beautiful, and Caleb cannot imagine not feeling something so empty – anybody who has met Mollymauk would feel like a star had burnt out of the sky upon his death. It is not the first time Caleb has felt loss; the hole in his chest feels more frayed now, tattered and aching at the edges. There is cold, and only cold, where Molly had once offered warmth.
He hammers a post into the round over Molly’s grave and hangs his elaborate coat from it. Carefully, he runs his fingers over the gentle patterns on the coat, avoiding where blood has seeped into the fabric. It’s a very soft material, and it still smells strongly of spice and flowery perfume. The metallic scent of blood mars the scent somewhat, but Caleb inhales deeply anyway, attempting to commit the smell to memory. He’s going to miss that smell – he’s going to miss an awful lot. For a second, he considers taking the coat with him, and for a solid four seconds, he is very tempted.
But the scent will fade, and the coat is just a coat. Having it will not bring Mollymauk back, and there is no reason for him to take it. So he merely draws fingers over the luxurious fabric, touch feather-light. It is just a coat, but Molymauk had cared for this coat, and there is a chance that he will come back for it. Caleb hopes he comes back for it.
“You made me a promise, circus man,” Caleb says quietly, closing his eyes. He pictures that playful, jovial smile, the angle of Molly’s jaw and the curls of his horns. “You promised me that you would help me see the good in me. I do not see it, and perhaps I never will; if a person like you could see the good in me, though, maybe it is there. I do not know. I do not like myself, but for you… I will try. I will continue to try.”
Looking up and opening his eyes, Caleb watches the colors in the sky change. It has been bleary and gray for the entire time they’ve traveled north of Zadash; it’s been cold and snowy. It’s still cold, the wind biting at Caleb’s face and hands, but for the first time, Caleb sees the sun. As it sets, the crimson color that bleeds into the gray sky looks so perfectly like the familiar gradient of Mollymauk’s warm eyes.
He does not believe in signs. He does not believe in Fate. Maybe Molly did – Caleb sees no reason that he should, but this… watching the gentle flutter of Mollymauk’s coat in the breeze and the stained-glass sunset, he’s never been so sure of a sign in his life. The essence of Mollymauk stays, even if he is gone.
In a few days' time, Caleb, Nott, Beau, and Keg will find their friends being held captive by the Iron Shepherds with a new friend of their own. And there will be a moment, a brief moment when he is bleeding profusely and feeling the life slip from him, that he will consider laying down and allowing himself to die. But he will hear Mollymauk’s voice in his ear, a quiet whisper.
“ It’s not your time, magician. Stay alive for me. ”
And he will. He’ll gather himself and face Lorenzo down, and he will not so much as flinch when he sets the creature ablaze and watches the fire consume him. Where he would normally only see fire and screaming, he sees a devilish smirk, a wink of a crimson eye, and a spurt of blood.
“That was for Mollymauk,” he whispers, voice barely a murmur in the air around him. Fire burns and sparks and eventually dies. Caleb staggers backwards until he can take a seat, covering the slash across his stomach with one hand. Exhaustion seeps into his bones. Nott, Beau, and Caduceus set about freeing the hostages, and Caleb closes his eyes.
In his mind, he hears a playful laugh and feels the familiar warmth of a tail curled around his waist. For a moment, he can smell the spice of incense and a flower-laced perfume and an expensive wine. He feels the gentle affection of Molly’s lips bruising over his forehead, and he hears the murmured, “ Good boy. ”
It aches like a freshly opened wound. There is an empty, carved out space beneath his rib cage, a space that Mollymauk had tucked himself into. He does not know that the pain will fade soon, and even having killed the man that killed Molly, he does not feel better. And they will have to tell Yasha what happened – a conversation that will only cause pain to fester in him like an infection in an open gash.
For now, Caleb is just tired and exhausted and terribly, terribly sad. It will be worse before it is better. Caleb huddles against the wall with one hand curled around the necklace Beau had pulled from Molly’s body.
“Shine bright, circus man,” he whispers, and settles in to let the pain of loss wash over him like a wave.
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