Our Lives are Our Gifts

[bboiseux]

Summary: Ten years later, each member of the Mighty Nein finds their ending. Yasha decides to tell Molly about it.
Reading Time: abt 13 mins
Originally published as bboiseux on 2018.12.04 | AO3 link

“Hello, Molly,” says Yasha, taking a seat in the warm grass next to her knapsack, “It has been a long time.”

Above, the sky was a brilliant blue. Even the clouds seemed to glow with an inner white light as they drifted slowly above. The air was cooler here, just outside the northern reaches of the Empire, but a warm breeze blew in from the south and carried with it the smell of wet grass and newborn dirt. In the summer, when the fields were lush and the travel on the road was constant, Yasha imagined the view from the hill was quite pleasant.

It had been ten years since they had last seen each other and Yasha wore those years with pride. Her hair had grown even longer. Even looped three times through the simple silver rings Beau had given her five years ago her hair hung in thick locks down her back and to the side. Wearing to the side made it easier to access the simple sword strapped to her back. For the times when its immense size and its owner’s matching height were not enough to dissuade potential attackers. Yasha ran her fingers along her face as she considered her next words, tracing the heavy nicks and thick scars that decorated her skin. The familiar map of her life. She smiled, slow and heavy, but a smile nonetheless.

“You have a lot to catch up on. Caduceus—“ She paused, sifting through her memories. “–You never met Caduceus. He–you would have liked him. You would have liked his tea.”

Caduceus breathed in the warm steam and savored the twist and roll of the flavors in his wide nostrils. A sip complemented the feeling, letting the soothing warmth wash through his body. It was cleansing, clearing. Calming.
Perched on top of the house, he could take in the entire graveyard. It stretched into the distance, so much easier to watch over since they had cleared the blight, since they had cut back the invasive vines. The sheltering trees still provided their protection. The shade soothed and comforted the rest of the dead. It was exactly as his family had originally pictured this place of rest after the burdens of life. From here, he could make out the form of his sister moving between distant grave sites doing the tending that was their duty.

His family was smaller now, but still his family. He smiled a wide, placid smile.

Yasha rummaged through the knapsack for a moment, her face wrinkled in intense concentration. Finally, she pulled out a small rough bag of sack cloth with a thin tie around the top. She tugged the mouth of the bag open and poured a pile of multicolored beads and buttons into her hand. She mixed them on her palm, stirring them with a finger.

“Nott said she didn’t need these anymore.” Yasha paused and glanced at the knapsack before pouring them back into the bag. “I’ll put them in your pocket.”

Nott took a small sip of the stew and looked thoughtfully at the boiling concoction. Absentmindedly, she reached up to the drying herbs and felt at the basil leaves. They gave a nice crunch and crumpled between her investigating fingers. She dump the remains into the stew and gave a steady stir. Satisfied, she leaned down and poked at the potatoes in the embers. They were nice and charred and promised to be soft and delicious with some goat butter. It promised to be a lovely little dinner.

Nott wiped her hands on her apron and walked to the open window. Sunset was near and she could hear the children laughing and screaming in the backyard.

Nott yelled, “Hilwyn! Ulster! Dinner’s almost ready!”

She pulled her head in the window and looked over at the table. She had put the flowers Ulster had brought her earlier in her best vase with some fresh water. Their yellow brightened up the room and made a fine centerpiece to the four places she had set: two for the children, one for herself, and one for Yenlos.

She smiled as she heart the little footsteps transfer to the wooden floor of the house and she flung her arms wide to greet the little halfling children and their cries of “Mama!” Their tiny arms wrapped around her, she pulled back her blonde braids and said, “Come, my treasures, give mama kisses for every one of her freckles!”

Yasha settled back, legs splayed awkwardly in the grass, knapsack wide open now. She reached in a pulled out a book.

“Poetry.” She laid it on the ground, bathing it in the red of the setting sun. “Caleb says it is too colorful for his tastes, so he thought of you.”

The sun was setting. Usually, here, in his study, at this time of year, the sun was strong almost until it dipped below the horizon. But the weather was unseasonably rainy in Rexxentrum and the clouds had made the light dim all day. Caleb had sent the dancing lights floating around the room quite early.

He sat in hunched consultation over a heavy tome. It had been uncovered in a buried city in the northlands recently and it was a priority of the Renewed Cerebus Assembly to unlock the purposes of the spells it contained. To determine whether they could be used for the good of the people of the Commonwealth or locked away as a great evil. Caleb was confident he could unlock its secrets … if given enough concentrated time.

Unfortunately, the knocking at the door indicated that now was not the time.

“Ja? Come in,” he said, sending a light over to the doorway.

The mousy head of Penny pushed its way around the door. “Ar-archmage?” Her voice quaked and the dancing light revealed tremors of tears in her eyes.

Caleb stood and escorted her to a chair, taking is place across the desk. “What can I do for you, Miss Trallers?”

Penny sniffed and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. She was young for the Academy, but she was also extremely gifted. But that youth caused her problems.

“I—I accidentally—“ She glanced up at Caleb and started again. “I used a spell on another student.”

Caleb nodded. “What happened?”

Penny broke down into a flood of tears and story. How the other student had teased her and pushed her. How the people she thought were friends didn’t say anything. How she’d felt cornered. How she’d just set off the fire bolt to scare them, to get them away.

“Were you hurt?” asked Caleb.

Penny shook her head, eyes on the floor.

“Was anyone else hurt?”

Another shake.

“Did you do like we discussed? Did you make it right? Did you apologize?”

Penny nodded.

“Then you have done all you can. We take responsibility and move on.”

Yasha pulled a long, intricately woven necklace out of the bag. It was made of fishing line–tightly knitted horsehair–and small gems of blue and purple that glittered as they spun and twirled, suspended in the web.

“Fjord and Jester send their love.”

The sky was on fire, all oranges and reds burning above the sea, the clouds thin and rising like billowing flames. Jester could just make out the small boat moving towards the coast.

“Mama,” she yelled, turning from her canvas, “I’m going down to the docks!”

From inside the house, her mother’s voice floated out lyrically, “Of course, my little sapphire.”

Jester smiled and rinsed out her brushes, laying them out to dry in the breeze coming off the sea. She paused and cocked her head at the canvas, regarding the landscape she was working on with a concerned look.

“Hmmmm. It needs something else.” She bit at her thumb and then snapped her finger. “I know! Dragons! Dragons burning down the town. That would be much more interesting!” She laughed and pointed a finger at the small village she had painted on the hillside. “Tomorrow the dragons are coming for you!” Then she patted down her hands and headed for the docks.

The boat was just pulling up to the dock when Jester arrived and Fjord leapt over the side and onto the planks with a thud, mooring line in hand. He was finishing wrapping the line to the dock when Jester wandered up.

He gave her a quick glance and a small smile and then turned back to his work. “Hey there, darling,” he said, “How goes the bright work?”

“Oh, you know, same old same old, just creating beauty in everything I touch!” She was standing right next to Fjord now and ran a hand down his face. “Speaking of which, did our little one survive the trip? I notice it is particularly quiet.”

Fjord gave an exaggerated grimace and ran a hand through his shaggy hair. “Ah, well, I didn’t want to tell you, but … she fell overboard this morning and I couldn’t find her.”

Jester shook her head sadly. “Oh well, but it will be fun trying for another one.”

“You’ve got a point there, Jess. You’ve got—”

But Fjord was interrupted by a mighty cry of “Surprise!” from the boat.

Jester whirled around with a grin. Melody was balancing on the side of the boat, waving her arms in the air, her deep green hair blowing in the wind and tangling around her horns.

Jester ran over and pulled Melody into a swirling hug. “There’s my little emerald! You had me so worried.”

“It’s okay, mama, I’m okay.” Melody leaned in conspiratorially. “I didn’t really even fall in. Daddy was just fibbing.”

That was when Fjord swept them both into an enormous hug.

Yasha laid the things out in front of her and then reached into the knapsack again. When her hand emerged, they were clasping a multi-colored coat, pieced together from dozens of scraps of fabric.

“Beau’s been picking up bits of scrap for years now. She wanted to get the right combinations.” Yasha turned the coat over in her hands, feeling the fold and movement of the fabric across her skin. It was heavy, but delicate at the same time.

Beau’s feet pounded as she walked, beating out a steady rhythm, staff balanced across her shoulders, arms lazing over the staff. It was amazing the number of people who thought someone carrying their staff like this was helpless. She’d had to put down a lot of people with poor judgment in her travels. She’d had to put more than a few trainees on their asses too.

A cocky grin cracked her stony face with that thought, remembering her confrontation right before she left Zadash.

Aerydil was a … passionate monk. Unfortunately, those passions typically ran in directions not exactly conducive to a monk’s life. Quick to anger, quick to love. She’d had to be pulled out of fights and beds in equal measure.

In other words, she was the perfect student for Beau.

It had been an escalation of her usual trouble. Aerydil had been found sneaking out of another student’s room and, when told to report to the headmaster’s chamber in the morning had proceeded to beat the shit out of the reporting monk. By the time Aerydil had been brought to Beau, she was already black and blue in at least seven different shades. The subduing monks were nursing broken bones. How Beau had grinned … on the inside. On the outside, of course, she had kept her perfect resting bitch face.

“What the fuck are you going to do?” Aerydil had asked, “Beat me up some more? Throw me out?”

“Which would you like?” Beau had snapped her staff on the ground. Aerydil had flinched.

“I guess throw me out then.”

“If that’s what you want,” Beau had said, standing perfectly still, “Here are your options. Try and fight me and, if you hit me, you can choose what happens to you. If you don’t hit me, I decide what happens to you.” Beau waved her hand dismissively. “Or you can walk away like a fucking coward.”

Beau had see the world go red for Aerydil before the word coward was even finished. Unfortunately for Aerydil, she’d also seen the punch coming even before that.

It was a long fight, necessary when one opponent wasn’t even trying to hit. Beau had dodged and weaved, dancing around the room as Aerydil lashed out, powered solely by anger. When Aerydil finally collapsed to the ground, completely sapped of energy, Beau had not even layed a finger on her. Aerydil was quite capable of defeating herself.

Beau had stood over her and said. “Go to bed.”

The grin was still sitting on Beau’s face five minutes later as she replayed the fight in her head. Lessons without fists. Who would have thought?

Yasha carefully placed the objects in the coat. The book in the left pocket. The bag in the right. She wrapped the necklace around her arm and stood up.

“I’ve got a place near the Cyrengreen Forest. A cottage. Very small. Very functional.” She smiled wistfully. “I wish you could visit it. In the fall, I tend the fields and the animals. I make sure everything is as it should be. In the spring, the field around the forest is full of wildflowers. I open my door each morning and there are colors as far as the eye can see. It is quiet. I like it. I did not truly believe the Stormlord would give me peace. And if he did not want it for me, I would have not missed it.”

She took a few steps forward and then paused, looking over the objects. “But I am glad I have it.”

Yasha inhaled a huge breath and then let it out with a sigh. “I want you to have these,” she said, extending her arms, “We all still think about you.”

“It’s true, you asshole.”

Yasha glanced over her shoulder and saw Beau walking off the road and up the small hill. She laid a hand on one of Yasha’s arms. “Hey Babe.”

“I–I am glad you are here.”

Beau nodded and tossed her staff to the ground. “Let me help.” And she unwrapped the necklace off Yasha’s forearm. “You take care of the coat, I’ll take care of this.”

The two of them stood on either side of the grave marker. The rough marker, a stick really, had somehow survived the years intact, but Molly’s coat had long ago been taken or weathered away. This was their replacement. It was a way of saying that the Mighty Nein remembered.

Yasha draped the new coat over the marker and the weight of the small gifts balanced it, letting it spread out to display the full colors in the fading sunlight. Beau stepped up and hung the necklace around the marker, the many gems capturing the fire of the sky, making fireworks gleam across the coat.

Yasha’s face was rigid, but Beau could see the telltale signs of tears pushing at the corners of her eyes, so she wrapped her arms around Yasha’s waist and said, “Come on. He got the update.”

Yasha nodded, clipped, abrupt.

Beau grabbed her staff and the two of them headed back towards the long road home.