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funnily enough, one of the first things they do is go to bed.
jester’s still shoving them along all the way into caleb’s dome, cheerful edging on a snarl, and there’s this freshly awful silence while everyone’s waiting for him to draw the circle.
“where are we going?” he says, and no one answers for a moment.
“i need a place, or it won’t work and i will have to start over. where are we going?”
“the xhorhaus,” jester says from besides beau, and turns to beau when she speaks again. “home.”
caleb looks up at her, between the two of them, and sucks in a breath between his teeth. “ja, okay, home it is.”
“beau.” they’re barely out of the lucid bastion, and jester reaches for her coat. “beau.”
“later, jes, okay?”
she’s still shaking.
jester gives her a look. it’s funny, how she’s been waiting to see jester angry, and now all she is is scared. “later.”
she doesn’t let go of beau’s coat the whole walk back.
—
and it probably seems like she’s avoiding jester, still, when they get back, but honest to gods she really does fall asleep in the bath.
the big clawfoot one down the hall from her and jester’s room— there are running faucets here, it’s always such a luxury after time on the road or in inns— she fills it and lets her hair down and even dumps in some of the citrusy-smelling stuff on the counter and sinks down, wincing.
mom would laugh, she thinks. if they did the thing they did with jester’s mom, stayed and listened to her tell stories about how their friend grew up, her mom would laugh and tell everyone that beau always hated baths. that beau hated having her hair fussed with.
but she doesn’t. she never did.
she hated how quiet they were. how her mom would hold up the stained ankles of her trousers and click her tongue and make that face, the one she always made when she knew dad would be mad but had no intention of standing in the way.
mom tugged at her hair, too, not because she didn’t like putting it up, but because dad never gave her enough time to do it in the mornings. she’d wake beau so early, and when she was too sleepy to get ready properly, mom would get angry because she was scared. dad would still be asleep, and still his anger, the fear of it, flowed all the way through mom and into her, suffocating and cold.
the first time she cut it short was to help— if she had less hair, it wouldn’t take so much time, right? but mom had crawled her fingers over her mouth like it was her arm she’d cut off, and not her hair.
(the second time she did it was because a guard had almost grabbed her by it.)
the xhorhaus is one of the only places since that’s had faucets— she watches it drip for a few long moments before tipping her head back against the edge.
she doesn’t need it. the metal basins at the soul were perfectly fine, she could go back to them— or would she not be there, either? would she even remember it? what would she have left?
what would there be left of her?
—
“i don’t know what it’s going to take.”
she comes to blearily. it’s dark out, not that it’s any indicator of the time, but the water’s still mostly warm.
jester’s pulled up one of the low stools to the side of the tub and is looking heavily at the floor, chin propped on her fist.
“what?”
“i don’t know what i have to do, beau.”
she sniffs, and godsdammit, she made jester cry.
“you keep not getting it, you know?”
“jes, i’m sorry, i—”
“you know, sometimes the rest of us do know what we want? that when we say— when i say i want you around, i mean it? that you would actually hurt me more by leaving, even if you think it’s better, or whatever.”
she turns to look at beau, and her face is flushed the same deep purple as when she’d scried on yasha, all those weeks ago. “sometimes you are really stupid, you know that?”
“yeah.”
“i’m really sorry that we made you go home, and i think your parents suck and we never have to visit them again and i think it’s really sweet that you did it anyway for nott, but we’re here, too, this time.” she reaches out, rests her hand on the rim of the tub, and beau takes it immediately. “it was really scary when you shut us out again. it was like before we knew you. it was like you didn’t want to know us anymore.”
“i’m sorry.”
“and you’re wrong, you know. or that witch is, if she told you. we’re not going to split up when this is over— we have this house all together and you can come and live at the chateau with me and momma, and we’d figure something out even if you couldn’t, because we don’t do that anymore, okay? the being along thing. we’d be dead if it wasn’t for you, so many times. we need you.”
jester squeezes her hand, and her eyes drift to beau’s shoulder, the curling green lines.
“i know you like to tell that molly story, about leaving better than you found something, but it’s not the same, okay? we’re not a town waiting for a god, we’re your friends. we can come with you.”
“i just—” she’s on the edge of tears, too, again, dammit. “if i leave when it’s good, i won’t be able to mess it up again.”
jester scowls at this, drops beau’s hand to grip both on the edge of the tub and pull herself forward, almost into beau’s space.
“why don’t you believe people want you around for more than what you do for them, beau?”
“i—”
now she really is crying. stingy, irregular tears merging with the cooling water. she thinks of mom gasping when she’d cut her hair, she thinks of the first days at the soul, before she’d given up on getting out. it’s your dad’s money, they said.
but then. she thinks of dairon, watching her with that half smile. offering a hand after beating her into the ground. the look in her eyes when she told beau she’d made her an expositor.
caleb and nott, clinging to each other under the grey sky and clinging to her, in front of molly’s grave. fjord laughing on the deck when he was teaching her sailing knots. caduceus next to her on watch, leaning on his staff— “you know, miss beau, i think you’re my favorite.” yasha reaching to touch her shoulders in the little room past the cathedral, yasha uncurling in sleep between her and jester in the rexxentrum cottage.
jester. clinging tight to her back on the ship under the wide, grey sky. pushing her knees into the hollows at the back of beau’s when they went to bed. holding her by the face when she healed her. cradling her head in her lap when she’d passed out under orly’s needle.
marching into the den of a witch after beau had offered to give them up. after beau had offered to leave her.
“i don’t know.” she looks at the water again. “i’m scared to think other things.”
jester tips forward further, so her forehead knocks against beau’s.
“just. remember this, next time you think about it, okay? imagine me crying because you are gone, because i would, beau, i would never stop crying and i would die of dehydration and it would be your fault and i would haunt you forever. i want you around all the time, i promise. i always will.”
beau reaches up to wrap one arm loosely around jester’s neck, hovering partway over the tub as she is. if jester minds that she’s dripping water onto her sleep clothes, she doesn’t say.
“okay.”