#but i DO know that teahaw is the greatest ship name i've ever heard

[itcameuponamidnightqueer]

👀👀👀👀 prompts?? Fjorduceus in 26! please. them boys. let them be in love

(perhaps a little more subtle than you wanted but i haven’t written these two at all, so this was super fun!)

26. “It was you the whole time.”

//

The Clays are a family of makers.

In the subtlest of ways, but it’s still true. Everything is true once you unravel it; that’s what Caduceus has found in his time alone. He was raised slowly, to appreciate everything you have for as long as you have it. Sometimes things come back, but there is something to be learned from the loss if they don’t. He watches his family come and go, always composed and patient. They never know what they’ll encounter or when they’ll be back, but even that is knowledge on its own.

He stays to protect the woods, as is his duty. There are creatures to be tended to here, souls that don’t deserve to be forgotten. He preserves them in their gravestones, in his teas. Every cup he brews is another path—one already walked by the people he’s honoring, and one that he can choose to travel, if he wants.

He doesn’t want, for a long while.

The years pass as they always have, with his family and without. Caduceus learns the most about himself on his loneliest days, when he misses the nearness of loved ones—pranking Calliope, the softness of his mother’s arms, Clarabelle’s bright laughter. The sting fades over time, bubbling slowly to stillness like when you remove a kettle from heat. Perhaps he’s growing in his independence; perhaps he’s tucking them away until he forgets that they’re hidden. Everything will be resolved when it needs to be.

It seems like a sign, when five fractured people stumble into his forest. Caduceus can see their cracks as if they were intentional, as if someone had built into these travelers ways to break them. He smiles as he brews more tea—this is what Caduceus has lived for. He is very good at un-breaking.

Traveling with the Mighty Nein is an easy decision to make, another path to travel. If he didn’t walk it, no one would, and so he joins them on their quest. One of their quests. A few quests, many quests—maybe his quest. There are dormant wheels in his brain, rusted and overgrown with moss, that are slowly remembering how to turn. Some mornings, he has to shake himself free from the tangles and vines.

(The Mighty Nein are traveling as a group, pointing toward a common direction down a road they walk together. Caduceus has his feet in more paths than any of them. One for each member of his family, individually and as a unit; one for his newfound collection of friends; one for himself.

One for the wizard, who is learning that forgiveness doesn’t discriminate. For the goblin, who is learning to pick her vices wisely. For the trickster, who may wear herself thin quicker than she realizes; the fallen angel, whose friends are slowly helping her walk with a lighter step; and the monk, who never shares the weight of the arrows in her back.

One for the warlock of the sea, who must be remade in fire.)

He watches Fjord from the moment they meet, when he pulls the half-orc up from the dungeon floor. Fjord looks like the sort of person who has always been lost, or perhaps offered too many directions to follow without ever landing on one. He is hiding more than his friends realize, but Caduceus isn’t one to spill secrets, certainly not someone else’s. He simply watches, noticing and absorbing as much as he can. Every one of these people have enough secrets to fill a garden, but Fjord bleeds them like pollen. 

It’s a little unsettling and surprising, how much Caduceus comes to care for Fjord. He’ll never admit it unless asked, and even then not directly. Direct answers don’t always yield the proper knowledge; it’s why Caduceus finds comfort every time he communes with the Wildmother. She gives him guidance and leaves it up to him to take the steps. 

Each day, Caduceus’s affection becomes a little more directed, less of a fog and more of a trail. He hopes the Menagerie will have pockets to hide him.

When they unfurl Fjord from his seaweed wraps, Caduceus understands. 

Fjord was branded Stone but that isn’t his name; it doesn’t belong to him. Stones are hard and unyielding—even the smallest can rebuff most of what’s thrown at it. But Fjord is none of those things; he is learning how to melt, how to make himself without a mold. Caduceus is a caretaker, a groundskeeper for a forest yearning for rebirth. He understands cultivation—a planned process, one that must be carefully overseen. There are no accidents when it comes to growth.

He puts the pieces together as they take watch together one night, huddled around a dying fire. Fjord is alert as ever, his eyes scanning the night, never lingering too long in any one area. The color of his skin in the moonlight reminds Caduceus of the Blooming Grove and what it used to be, what he hopes it will one day be again. He feels a pang of affection in his chest.

“I can feel you staring,” Fjord mutters, still looking straight ahead.

“Sorry,” Caduceus drawls. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Seeds.”

“Ah.” Fjord nods. “The usual, then.”

“Not exactly. But I think I—I think I understand, now.”

“Understand?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. It was you the whole time.”

“Of course,” Fjord says, distracted. “Wait. Sorry, what? Me? What about me?”

A laugh rumbles through Caduceus’s body. 

“I get it, now.” He smiles, slow and calm, waiting as it stretches the length of his face. “You’re my garden.”