Chapter Text
He wakes slowly, body heavy with sleep.
His eyes squint open to a grey sky, partially concealed in the swaying boughs of a large tree, the smooth grey flesh dotted with bright buds of green leaves. The air smells of a spring storm, of hay, of wet black dirt, and a curl of pipe smoke. Dimly he feels a thought form in his oddly-quiet mind, unbidden.
Home.
His eyes snap open as he heaves himself up, the haze of sleep falling away. His eyes widen as he looks around, heart beginning to pound in his thin chest. Golden fields stretch as far as he can see, the tall grass undulating in the strong breeze - the dull roar of the rasping dry blades familiar.
He struggles to his feet, reaching to grasp the tree for balance, the smooth bark cool under his palm. With a shock he realizes that he does not know what time it is - ever since he was a child, he has always known the time, how can he not know the time -
Think, Widogast. It's what you’re good for.
He squeezes his eyes shut, leaning hard against the tree. The wind catches his long hair, tossing it into his face. He wills himself to calm, reaching for a strip of leather in his coat to tie it back. He realizes with another shock that his coat is missing - he looks down to see that he is clad simply, brown trousers and an open necked white shirt, his feet bare. He scrubs a shaking hand over his jaw, his mind beginning to race.
A dream then. We were in...where were we? We were in...Trostenwald? No, Rosohna, we had that meeting with…
He slaps his cheek, hard, the sensation full and stinging. His mind has never been so...scattered, so scrambled. He had been blessed, or cursed, with a mind that surrendered nothing. “Like a steel trap,” his father would say proudly, a massive calloused hand slapping his back.
He had often longed to forget, if it meant a respite from the ever present whirling of his thoughts. The only thing that had given that respite had almost fully taken his mind.
He knew better now. A mind like his could give him misery, but it was better than losing himself. His mind could be just as good as a sword, just as quick, and far more deadly. A mind like his could summon death in one breath and safety in the other. A mind like his could hurt people - but it could also protect them.
Where are they?
He sighs, the sound ragged as he opens his eyes once more, turning his head to look. More fields greet him, but in the distance he can see a small plume of smoke.
There is nothing else here - this must be where the dream wants me.
He takes a deep breath, reaching for the last memory he can recall. A trip to Roshona, a meeting with the Bright Queen. A mission - back to the mines, where they had lost Yasha - Leylas had asked them to return, a reconnaissance mission to gain information against the Crawling King. With the war ended, they had more time to pursue the entity. He remembered the journey - he was able to transport them this time, a journey of two weeks in six seconds. The Queen had offered aid in the form of more casters, but they rejected it. He can no longer remember why.
He felt his mind calm as more memories came, recalling the tight expression on Yasha’s face as the Bright Queen gave them their mission, Beau catching his eye in the chamber as they spoke with Leylas, her own tension masked thinly. After a thirty minute debate in another room, they had agreed to go. He remembered rubbing his arms at the sudden ice that had filled his veins.
They had just made it to the mines, and Jester had made him laugh when she said that maybe Yarnball and the others had made it to the fort and were waiting for them. Jester, her eyes large and playful as she argued that he could save a spell if they just rode the Moorbounders home, the Moorbounders they had killed demons for, after all. Jester rolling her eyes affectionately as Beau reminded her that she had killed the demon, ripped its heart out for good measure. Jester had been unaffected, asserting that, “We’ve all pretty much killed demons at this point, Beau,”
He reaches for more, but everything after he brought them to the fort just...isn’t there. Like his time in the Asylum - reaching for a familiar hand and finding only air. He could feel the same haze that had ruled him pressing on the edge of his mind, almost to the point of domination. He presses his hands to his temple, imagining arcane runes in an attempt to ground himself.
He has been conscious in dreams before, but it has never felt like this.
Just wait it out. Do what the dream says. Move, Widogast.
He wills his feet to walk, shaking legs gathering strength as he leaves the tree. The ground is soft beneath his feet, the wind strong against him as it roars through the grass. It looks a bit like the ocean, he thinks, and his heart aches to think of it - Nicodranas, blue and glittering.
Jester, her strong shoulders studded with diamonds under her thin strapped dress, body like the waves as she moves with him on the salt sprayed ship deck. Trying not to think of before, when the first inkling of his useless affection had bloomed. Jester’s kind eyes on his, her cool hands strong around his own.
“I won’t let you fall asleep in a gutter, Cay-leb.”
They had been working on the deck when Jester told Veth that it was her fault no one got to dance at the party. Veth had protested that they could dance whenever they wanted. Jester scrunching her face, a flash of frustration blinked away in a moment; a glance over his spell book meeting her looking from her sketch. Something possessed him to grab Jester’s hand and spin her across the deck, feeling courageous as he watched the setting sun cast her face in golden half-light. Her mouth opened in surprise as she laughed, her body falling close to his as she caught a loose step.
Orly hoisting himself from below with a blast of music. Yasha watched from a barrel with her strange, knowing eyes, Veth setting her potions down to clap in time, grinning at him with what he realized was pride. Orly playing a waltz against the rhythm of the waves, the abrasive accordion played softly, slowly - a cracked grin across the tortle’s face. Jester, falling against him with a huffed laugh, her eyes sparkling as they met his - an impossible violet against cool blue. The press of her body, strong and steady against his as she kissed him on the cheek, the heat flooding down his neck from the quick press of her cool lips.
Focus, Widogast.
The wind begins to ebb as he makes progress, and he realizes that the smoke is that of a chimney, pale and curling. As he comes closer he can smell a meal in works, and he remembers skinning rabbits with his father, the lean meat roasted slowly with the herbs from his mother's garden. A pot of salted green beans simmering on their small stove, potatoes from the root cellar peeled and chopped into stew.
As he walks the smoke seems to come closer, yet he sees nothing but the glinting grass beyond his flattened path. He wonders if this will be the dream, and he will soon wake to the snuffling snores of Beauregard in the bubble or the soft breath of Veth near him in a shared room. The thought is comforting, tempting.
Soon he will wake in the warm dome, Veth behind his legs, his family around him. Jester, warm and safe, across from him, warm under a thin sheet, Fjord at her back with the blanket he always stole. Yasha and Caduceus,their long limbs falling over each other. Beau turning from her watch towards him with a thoughtful smile, her tiara glinting in her hair against the rising sun.
He hears a crashing sound behind him and spins, stumbling before he rights himself. He scans the fields, his heartbeat in his ears as he wills a Fire Bolt to his raised palm. The warm rush of arcane energy does not come. He begins to shake once more, his hand reaching to scratch at his arms out of anxiety. Dimly he feels the clouds break, the sun warm on his neck. He raises his eyes to the sky - pale blue, as he knew it would be, as it always was. The sun is where it should be if it was 12:26 PM - but his clock, his ever present certainty like a master timepiece in the meat of his brain is not there.
“Gottverdamnt!” He curses, slapping his cheek hard, working the sting out of his jaw as he turns back to the smoke, only to feel the breath leave his body.
A hundred yards ahead is now a house - small, the white stone and dark wood achingly familiar. The window boxes his father had built are blooming with tiny yellow flowers. There is the laundry line in the back, a sheet moving gently in the dying wind. A ginger cat ambles through the yard, and he can hear the soft clucking of chickens from where he knows they are under the creaking coop in the back.
And in the open doorway, the doorway that he had shoved a cart in front of as the house in front of him burned with fire from his hands, stands a woman with a basket of laundry on her hip. Her grey - streaked copper hair blows loosely around her sharp face, and her mouth falls open as her dark green eyes grow wide.
He falls to his knees as his memory returns, clutching his head in pain.
They made it past the cave where they had lost Yasha, and through a bad fight - demon creatures that emerged from the darkness, a good sign that they were on the right track. Beau had gone down, and was barely revived and breathing in Yasha’s arms when Caduceus had heard a rumble. The ground began to quake as they ran, causing stalactites to fall. They were running, the next chamber so close and - it happened so fast. He remembers the sound, how unbearably loud it was, and a quick, indescribable pain. Veth screaming his name, Jester’s Infernal screech and - silence.
Not a dream then. A nightmare.
He turns his eyes back to the woman, to Una, to Mutter, looking through his fingers like a frightened child. He wants to run, to scream, to do anything - how is he even here, where is this place, what is happening - he should be in the hells -
The basket tumbles from her hands as she runs to him, and suddenly she is there. Bright hair fills his vision as she kneels before him, her shaking hands raised. He flinches as her calloused hands gingerly cup the sides of his face. He meets her eyes, her face slack with shock. She looks the same, younger even, the high planes of her face smooth and unlined as her bright eyes search his face, her long fingers - his long fingers - gripping him with vice like strength. Tears roll down her face, the fresh sun sending them into sparkling fractals.
She looks on him with...with wonder, and it is too much, it's so much. A sound tears out of his chest, like a wounded animal, and gasps at the terror and awe that fills his soul in a way his body had never allowed. The weight of the years press upon him - the avarice in Astrid’s eyes, the white hot pain of the crystals, the smell of their flesh in the fire.
He begins to sob as he falls into her, breathing in the scent of his mother as he presses his head into her shoulder. She wraps her arms around him, carding a hand through his loose hair with trembling fingers. She begins to whisper as she rocks him, and the sound of her voices sends a fresh spasm of shame and grief down his spine. He bites his tongue and sruggles to breathe, desperate to hear her.
He weakly grips at her shirt as she speaks what he is thinking, her long dead voice full of pain and affection,
“Bren, mein shatz, why are you here?”