Cat's Cradle
Author: AvinRyd Fandom: Critical Role Rating: T Pairing: Mollymauk Tealeaf & Yasha, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast Word Count: ~1,650 Series: Shards and Spells
"...first time I've been glad Molly wasn't there."
- @caitmayart
--
Saw Cait's fanart (x) and it broke me into little pieces. I put those back together into this.
Read on AO3
On any other night, the soft riffle of worn parchment shuffling would be comforting, meditative work in Mollymauk’s hands. On any other night, there would be a blood-deep satisfaction in the near-inaudible sound of cards placed on threadbare fabric. On any other night, the glow of moonlight would light his spread and sing in his veins and there would be the humming feeling of not only Sehanine’s gentle presence, but a hint of mischievous spark from Jester’s Traveler and, underneath his incense and the floral warmth of the Wildmother, the sharp scent of ozone. Yasha’s Stormlord.
On any other night. But not tonight. Because Yasha is...Yasha is—
Footsteps on the stairs of the Ready Room—ascending, growing louder, stopping on the landing.
“If we’re not discussing how to get her back, I’m not coming downstairs.” Molly says flatly, not looking up from his cards.
“I am not here to fetch you back, Mollymauk.”
Caleb. Soft-spoken, level-headed, absolutely fucking calm Caleb. How can he sound so gods-damned calm? How can all of them be so cold to just walk away and let that door close and—
His mental tirade is interrupted by movement in his periphery. Just off the edge of his tarot cloth, one of Caduces’s wooden bowls slides into view. It’s full of a creamy stew of some sort, dinged iron spoon leaning against the edge, being held by a bandaged hand. It’s followed shortly by a chipped ceramic mug of steaming liquid, borne by a matching other hand. Molly looks up to see Caleb crouched across from him, fancy new coat pooled on the gritty wood floor and not meeting his eyes.
“You need to eat. You’re no good to her wasted away to nothing.”
Molly scoffs. “I’m no good to her stuck here either! Miles and a mountain and a half away, sitting in a fucking military storehouse when I should still be in there, still—”
“Still what, Mollymauk? You wouldn’t still be anything. You would be stabbed through by another gods-verdammt oversized blade and by the time your neat little trick got around to bringing you back, there would be more time wasted than we are using right now.”
Caleb isn’t so soft-spoken, isn’t so calm now. His voice is low, but it’s tense and rough and he’s meeting Molly’s gaze now—deep purple bruising under his eyes and brows furrowed in consternation as he pins Molly with a hard look and it stops his mind short. This Caleb is familiar, for all Molly never actually got to meet him. This is the Caleb that rode up the Glory Run Road, dragging broken friends and compatriots away from a fresh grave to rescue the ones yet living.
Molly swallows the spitting retort that’s fast dying on his devil’s tongue and carefully returns the cards to his deck, inverse of how they’d been placed and rolls up the cloth, sets them both aside and reaches for the bowl.
He eats in silence. Caleb shifts, sits against the bunk that hides Molly’s corner from the rest of the large room and pulls out a loop of silver thread to fiddle with. Moonlight catches in the threads and Molly recognizes the geometric patterns.
“No Molly, if you do it that way—see? You’ve got it tangled now.”
Molly made a face at the snarls of string binding up his wrists and fingers. Yasha only laughed softly and reached to pick apart the knots.
“Where did you even learn this? Practice for building snares in the Xorhassian wastes?”
“Jester taught me while we were at sea. It was a long journey and you run out of things to do on a ship, eventually.”
There was a waft of sea-salt tang rising from the string, nearly masked by the scent of dry parchment and flowers that clung to everything stored in Yasha’s belt-pouch. He wiggled his fingers gleefully once Yasha freed them, then looped the string around once more.
“Alright. Show me again.”
Molly sets the empty bowl aside—when had he finished it? Must have been hungrier than he thought—and scoots over across from Caleb. The wizard has reached a point in the pattern where he can’t move further. Wordless, Molly reaches in and deftly moves the strings, pulls them off Caleb’s hands and into the next pattern, then holds it out.
Their eyes meet in a quick glance, all that Caleb allows, then burn-scarred fingers reach across to pluck at the web spanned between Molly’s hands; gingerly pinching strings together, then looping them around and pulling back. Another familiar pattern. Molly follows along, and so they go, the silence stretching on and growing more comfortable as it does. Comfortable, but it’s not enough to soothe the agitation still simmering in Molly’s blood.
The emotions still boil up in him, horror and fear and anguish that steam out as anger at the situation, anger at his friends, their hesitance, their—
Caleb nudges Molly’s elbow with his own. Their hands are suddenly knotted together—Molly’s hands having spasmed and yanked the careful magic out of true, tangling the thread. Shit. Fuck. Gods damn it all, can't even get a simple children’s game right, let alone anything more useful. He doesn’t move as Caleb slips his own fingers free and starts untangling the thread. Still quiet, movements slow and purposeful and fucking hells below.
“How are you all so calm about this?” He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t.
There is a long moment of silence, Caleb slipping the last knots from the thread and winding it carefully before replying, “Everyone is in shock, Mollymauk. Do not mistake it for apathy.”
“Bullshit. If any of you gave a—” Caleb doesn’t let him finish, talks over him.
“Beauregard hasn’t said a single word since your shouting match three hours and twenty-seven minutes ago. Jester started crying halfway through that argument and hasn’t stopped. Caduceus burned the stew and oversteeped three separate pots of tea. Nott has done nothing but drink since we got back and Fjord has let his accent slip at least four times in that span.”
“And you?” Molly is still stuck on their firebrand wizard and his icy calm all through the ride back to Bazzoxan—stuck and enraged, if he’s honest with himself.
Caleb laughs, dry as dust. “Well.”
He holds out his right hand for inspection and Molly takes in what he hadn’t noticed earlier. The bandages on the outer blade of his hand are scorched brown, black at the edges, and there are red smears in the palm mirrored by the rusty brown caked under burned short nails. Unthinking, he reaches out to cradle it in his own two as Caleb continues,
“Nott told me to find something to do with myself before the proprietor noticed I was burning a hole in their table. So I brought you food.”
The hand in Molly’s grasp is shaking, as if only just being held back from clenching into a fist once more. Molly has to take a moment, has to sit with what Caleb’s just told him. He wants to stay angry, wants it more than anything, because if he’s angry then nothing else can get to him—if he’s angry, the rest of the awful, awful things...
Ah, too late.
Their game of Cat’s Cradle had brought him and Caleb knee-to-knee, so it’s not far to go when Molly slumps forward to knock his head into Caleb’s shoulder. Months and months ago, back when they’d all first met, the Caleb Molly had known would have jerked back on instinct. The Caleb Molly had known wouldn’t have let his hand be held so tenderly either, or played a silly string game with him in grief-stricken silence. This Caleb has done all those things, and more—twisting his hand just enough to clasp around Molly’s forearm in a firm hold.
“I hate this.” Molly says to their laps, forehead pressed into the shoulder seam of Caleb’s fancy new coat. “Is this what it felt like? When I… When I was gone?”
“Nein,” Caleb replies, harsh and certain. Molly jerks upright at the tone.
“How?”
Caleb’s frown deepens. “You were dead, Mollymauk. You were dead and you were gone and we mourned you.” His hand tightens on Molly’s arm. “Yasha is not. She is alive, and we may not be strong enough yet, but we will get her back. I don’t— I’m not sure how we can, but we will, Molly. I swear it.”
Caleb’s free hand has lifted to rub at his face and Molly sees a smear of crimson when it comes away—a cut on his jaw that should have been healed many cleric spells ago. There’s dried blood crusted under the nails of that hand as well. Had he picked open that shaving nick over the course of the night?
There’s a hard lump in Molly’s throat that he tries to swallow past, but can’t. It blocks all his words except the few syllables he needs to send up to the Moonweaver as he reaches out to touch Caleb’s jaw. The silver crescent charm on his horn chimes softly as it spins and hits keratin, and a sparkle of divine blue light dances in the blue of Caleb’s eyes as Molly draws on the absolute last of his strength to seal up the tiny cut. He doesn’t move his hand after—keeps it there to feel the subtle movement of Caleb adjusting his jaw, relaxing clenched teeth.
It’s not far to go when their foreheads press together, made shorter by Caleb leaning in to meet him halfway. Molly lets his hand drop to fall atop Caleb’s wrapped ones in their laps, closes his eyes and tries to just breathe—he feels like he hasn’t properly since that door closed.
It hurts. It’s going to hurt for a good long while yet, he reckons. But it’ll hurt a damn sight less once they’ve got Yasha back.
