#sorry the reunion is making me think about the circus man and magic man. and I've always loved the thought of molly reading caleb's cards

[widoglock]

“see you when the end’s near” // widomauk // quick oneshot, takes place the night before the Uk'otoa battle

When Kingsley gets back to his room, Caleb is standing in the middle of it.

“Circus man,” he greets, with that wry little smile that makes Kinglsey’s heart flop around like a fish.

“Magic man,” Kingsley returns. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Caleb wants to talk to you,” Jester informs him. “In private.”

“That so?”

“Yeah, he came looking for you and you were gone so he decided to stay ‘til you came back. I think he’s going to confess his love for you or something.”

“Maybe he just knows I’ve got all the good wine,” Kingsley says, swishing Beau’s bottle.

“I would rather not die with a hangover, danke sehr.” Caleb crosses to the doorway. “Walk with me?”

“Good night you guys!” Jester calls, waving emphatically. “Have great reunion sex!”

“Jess,” Fjord admonishes. Caleb’s face is red as he closes the door behind them.

Waves brush the ship like lace curtains on a windowpane. Kingsley comes up to walk at Caleb’s shoulder.

“She teases,” Caleb says quietly.

Kingsley feigns surprise. “So you mean to tell me this wasn’t all foreplay?”

Caleb flicks his ear.

“Ow! Hey.”

“I had a thought,” Caleb says. “When all this is over—” He nearly trips on a rope. He curses, summons a globule of light, and proceeds. “When all this is over, I would like to arrange a monthly gathering. So that we do not all go too long without seeing each other.”

“So I can’t run off, you mean.”

Caleb frowns. “Do we make you feel like that?”

“Like what?”

They breach the main deck. Moonlight halos Caleb’s hair. “Like you are a dog on a leash.”

Kingsley sighs. “Look. I get it. When you look at my lineage—you know better than anyone what I’m capable of, as a person.”

“We are all capable of horrible things.”

“Right, but Lucian killed you.” The memories are slippery, but Kingsley still dreams of Cognouza—the gross spasm of viscera around his claw, and the awful thump of Caleb’s body against the ground. If he’s lucky, Caleb will blame his shudder on the wind. “I can see why you might be...reluctant, to leave me to my own devices. Doesn’t feel fair, maybe, but. I get it.”

Caleb’s brow furrows. They’ve reached the railing now. He leans against it, crossing his arms. “I will not pretend that I am not…I mean to say, I am worried about you. But not the way you seem to think.”

“Mhm.”

“I have noticed, you know. That you are not all right.”

“And that’s my cue for more wine, I think.” He picks the cork out with his claws. The resulting pop spooks a seagull from the foremast.

As Kingsley drinks Caleb says, “I’ve seen how you fight. I know why you volunteered to be marked by the betrayer god.”

Kingsley laughs. “You don’t know shit about me, Caleb.”

Caleb just looks at him—that quiet, resolved look he reserves for his spellbooks.

Kingsley bears the scrutiny, too tired to pull the curtain back over his broken parts. He leans sideways against the railing and watches the sea bob up and down.

“I would like to,” Caleb says after a while.

“Like to what?”

“Get to know you.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” He puts the wine down.

“In my defense, you have not been easy to get ahold of, these past few months. You could have—”

“I know. Yeah, you’re right. Sorry.”

The sails creak overhead. A gust of wind snatches at Caleb’s scarf. Kingsley grabs the two tails before they can fly away. He tuts his disapproval, and rewinds the scarf around Caleb’s neck. The tassels brush Kingsley’s knuckles as he secures a “loop ‘n through” tie. He sees Caleb swallow.

Kingsley pats the finished knot and steps back.

“Hey,” he says. “Want me to make this even more complicated?”

Caleb tilts his head.

Before he can regain his sanity, Kingsley says, “The feelings carried over.”

“Ja? Which ones?”

“The ones where—oh, fuck off, Caleb. The ones where I really, really like you.”

A pause.

“Come on, don’t look at me like that. You knew. You must’ve known.”

“You’re serious.” Caleb rubs his face. “You never…”

“What, really? Never?”

“Not to me, no.”

“Well. One of them must have loved you, at least. Because when I woke up and I saw you for the first time I felt like I was…”

Kingsley’s courage flees him suddenly, and he sinks back under the weight of his admission. His hands find the twin burrows of his pockets; his eyes snap back to the sea.

On his periphery, Caleb picks up the wine bottle. He studies the label for a while, like he expects to find archaic runes in the margins. He raises the bottle to his lips—and stops.

Glass clinks where the base meets the deck.

“That’s going to fall over,” Kingsley tells him.

He can barely make out the line where the sky meets the sea. The lilt of waves and wood fill his ears.

Fingers brush Kingsley’s jaw.

Kingsley startles. His eyes meet Caleb’s. He thinks he might be shaking.

Caleb kisses him.

A sound leaves Kingsley’s mouth—a wounded, hopeful little thing, sprung from a snare at the very bottom of his chest. Caleb’s fingers come up to cradle his cheek in reassurance. He deepens the kiss—emboldened, surely, by the way Kingsley melts under his touch.

Kingsley’s tail finds purchase around Caleb’s ankle. One kiss has rendered him a desperate wreck—but there will be time for shame later. Right now his hands are a perfect fit around Caleb’s hips, and he can smell the ocean and red wine, and Caleb kisses him so sweetly, so surely—like he’s wanted this for a long time. Like Kingsley could ever deserve such softness.

They break for air. Caleb rests their heads together. He whispers,

“Complicated is okay.”

With some difficulty, Kingsley clears the lump from his throat. “I’m not sure your boyfriend would agree.”

“Essek knows. About you. How I feel about you.”

“And how do you feel about me?”

Caleb grins. He brushes the hair from Kingsley’s forehead and kisses him there.

“When all this ls over,” he repeats, “I would like to arrange a monthly gathering. Monthly at the least, I mean.”

Kingsley winds his tail tighter around Caleb’s leg.

[dent-de-leon]

After looking through the deck I think I like this spread for a widomauk reading--or at least, Caleb's feelings toward Molly.

For the past:

"Traveler, The Card of the Journey: The open road. An unexpected encounter. A stranger."

The rest of the Mighty Nein crashing into Caleb's life, coaxing him from his self-imposed isolation, the despondence of losing years to festering guilt and grief. A man who had walked the world alone for far too long before finally finding solace in Nott--before the two became seven and inevitably nine. Touch-starved, struggling to bring himself to trust and open up, his walls slowly crumbling with every fleeting touch of intimacy. And among this strange new curious family, there is one who is perhaps the most eccentric and striking of them all. A colorful tiefling reading fortunes at the circus, bright and loud and an absolute peacock. Strange, mercurial, sometimes frustrating--but with a certain charm to him. Caleb doesn't quite know how to react at first, when Mollymauk drops some of his performance and we see a distinctly softer side; a fierce protectiveness and sincere concern, even as Caleb tries to push him and the rest of the Nein away. “Caleb. Come on. There’s time for that later, remember? You all right there? You all right?...You did good. Come on. Let’s go get some sunlight...” "Mr. Caleb. There's only so many burdens that we're expected to bear, before we're asking for failure." For all their mirrored pasts, the chosen names and missing memories and days of silence and clawing Emptiness, the threadbare longing for a second chance--it seems they couldn't be more different. Mollymauk revels in adventure, risks, the rush of adrenaline and danger; chases after every joy and pleasure his carefree heart desires. The exuberance and foolishness of a soul so fledgling new, gazing at the whole world in wide-eyed wonder. Mysterious, intriguing, devilishly charming. A walking medley of contradictions, a puzzle that just baffles Caleb and leaves his head spinning. And even when Caleb is wracked by fear, shaken and desperate and looking for an escape--even as he tries to rationalize running away, tells himself there's no reason to stay, he still can't bring himself to abandon this little family and leave them all behind. Though he can't quite figure out why. "Look at this one. He's like a walking rainbow, what is this? Why are you with him? It makes no sense. He's a circus performer, he's not going to help you." Just a curious stranger, a traveler, a person Caleb only met by chance and has "no reason" to stay with. Yet he's drawn to this peacock of vibrant color all the same, this tiefling who clawed his way out of an Empty grave and filled his life with so much joy. A fateful meeting that brings a spark of light to Caleb's life, a star falling far too fast and shining twice as bright. "Shine bright, Circus Man."

For the present:

"Love, The Card of the Orphan: It binds us, it frees us. What else needs be said?"

It isn't until Caleb loses someone else in his life that he realizes just how badly he needs the Nein--how terribly he wants to be with them. He's found a new family, and he'll risk everything to protect them, no matter the price. Caleb is anchored by the Nein, inevitably bound to them, all their lives inexoribly intertwined. When he loses all sense of direction, just looking for a reason to keep moving forward, it's Mollymauk he turns to. "I know that we are supposed to go where Molly is. Otherwise, we would not have seen the things that we've seen. We wouldn't be the Mighty Nein." Love drives Caleb to follow Mollymauk into the fathomless depths of the Astral Sea, to keep reaching for his wayward soul even after death. And when he calls out for Mollymauk and that shard of his soul still aches and tries to reach back, we see love is both what tethers Molly to this world and frees him from Lucien's control.

For the future:

"Dawn, The Card of the Matron: There's always hope. And the darkness leads to light. New beginnings."

"Please don't give up, you can find your own life again--there will be time for that later." Caleb's love is an offer of sanctuary and salvation, to take someone by the hand and give them the reprieve of a second chance. He and Caleb both promised each other they'd have more time--later, someday, there will be time for everything they need to say. And now that's what they have, what Caleb's ritual gave to Mollymauk. More time together. I especially adore Molly's line that darkness leads to light. Not just because it's a reflection of finally being free from Lucien, being given another chance. But it's also very fitting for the grief and anguish the Nein feel after that Natural 1, when it seems as though their friend's soul was truly gone after everything. Caleb was perhaps pushing hardest for Molly's resurrection--believing in the inevitability of it. Leaving a letter in Molly's pocket, digging up the grave with his bare hands because, "This could be a reunion." He fights with everything he has for the Nein, for Mollymauk, for the chance they could all be together again. It says so much, that the only time Essek has ever truly seen Caleb look so crushed, ready to finally give up--it isn't until he believes Mollymauk is lost. That his magic and his ritual and their pleas weren't enough. "Caleb Widogast, have you ever accepted defeat?" "Maybe today. For the first time." That's the moment he stops desperately holding onto hope, for the very first time. When Molly was still lifeless, and all he could do was return a kiss and say goodbye. But then, these are Mollymauk's cards, and we know from both Molly and Lucien that he stacks the deck. The other side of death is, "There's always hope." It's still ultimately Caleb's spell, his very first resurrection ritual, that lights that first spark of life in Mollymauk--guided by the Wildmother's hand. "You open your eyes for the first time...in a long time..." The first rays of dawn after so much loss and darkness, Mollymauk's reborn soul waking amidst blooming flowers and verdant greenery, this little patch of life in the remains of so much death and decay. Embraced by all his loved ones. Perhaps it's as much a resurrection as a reincarnation or Conescution. But I believe what matters most is that he saw Yasha first and still knew in his bones that she was Love. Just as he knows Caleb is his Magician, and he is his Circus Man. A new beginning for the same soul that was so deeply loved.