I have a lot of feelings about Caleb and his self worth even before he was captured by Simcoe. Please enjoy Sackett telling Caleb he’s a good man and that loving Ben isnt a bad thing.
Caleb was a practical man. He had hopes and dreams and fantasies just like anyone else, but he’d accepted that that was where they would stay. The reality he lived in would never allow him to have the things he truly wanted so he settled and accepted and moved on.
He shouldn’t have even wanted the things he did. They weren't good or moral, they weren’t what Good Men wanted. They weren’t the kinds of things men like Ben or Washington wanted.
Sometimes he wondered if that’s where his trouble with conventional morality had begun or if it was the natural conclusion of being a menace to society. Because he always had been a menace. Every adult who’d spent more than a few minutes with him when he was a kid had told him so. He didn’t remember caring what they thought then and he certainly didn’t care what they thought now.
Having that loose set of morals came in handy when there was dirty work to be doing. He didn’t have a problem with stealing from those who could spare it even if it broke Washington’s precious rules of war. He didn’t have a problem with roughing up a captured officer just a little. He didn’t see the glory in those rules who had just been made up one day and everyone had agreed to follow them, not when they didn’t make sense.
So Caleb accepted that when dirty work needed doing it fell to him and he didn’t resent it for even a second.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll go. I’m the expendable one with the loose morals.”
Ben laughed a little and rolled his eyes, shaking his head but smiling. Caleb watched him go for just a second before he turned to Sackett who had not laughed. Which wasn’t in itself odd, but usually the man at least cracked a smile at Caleb’s jokes. He was one of the few people in camp who actually appreciated Caleb’s humor.
Instead he was frowning at Caleb.
“What?” Caleb asked with a shrug. Maybe Sackett was worried about the mission. They seemed to be the only things that Sackett cared about. “I can handle it.”
“I am aware.” Sackett turned away and back to the sheets of paper in front of him. “It is your other assessment that I disagree with.”
Caleb tried to remember what else he might have said that Sackett would have a problem with.
“Though I find it interesting that you think you have loose morals when you are one of the few men who I would say has a handle of his own moral code,” Sackett said, having obviously sensed the question in the air.
“Yeah, handle on that they’re barely there,” Caleb said with a laugh.
Sackett frowned. “Just because you don’t see the reasoning in every facet of what is considered standard morality in our society does not mean you lack for your own. I would daresay that you have a more rigid moral compass than most, because you built it to point towards your own values.”
“That doesn’t make them the right ones, jus’ means I’m stubborn,” Caleb said with a shrug.
Sackett nodded at him in conceit but the pinched look on his face made it clear that he wasn’t done arguing yet. “I hardly think that loyalty and empathy are bad traits to strive towards.”
Sackett was watching him, waiting for something to crack and Caleb thought he might just be the thing to break. It was a little too much like when his uncle used to ask him if he’d actually started the trouble he was in or if he’d just accepted the blame for one of the other kids again. Too much like acceptance, too much like being known. It made his chest hurt. He missed his uncle. “Careful, Sackett, you almost sounded like you liked me there for a second.”
With a wink he started towards the door but Sackett’s voice stopped him again.
“You underestimate yourself, Mr. Brewster, and I am not one prone to making that statement,” Sackett said, taking a moment and leaning back in his chair as he watched for Caleb’s reaction. Though it felt more like he was flexing some invisible power over Caleb to force him to listen. Caleb knew Sackett well enough that he barely had to be in the same room as someone else to be able to feel their reactions. The man was practically psychic.
“Oh yeah?” Caleb asked, as he turned around to lean up against a table and picked up the drill he’d used to practice on the bust of Georgie’s. Caleb knew it probably made him look nervous to Sackett even if it was the same tactic Caleb had used on Ben for years to distract from tense conversations he didn’t want to have. He just had to pick something up, fiddle with it for a while, and then Ben would get annoyed and grab it from his hands and whatever they’d been talking about would be forgotten.
“You’re far from expendable. Your intelligence comes from something much more important than Yale. Your skills are beyond most of this camp. And as previously stated your moral code is as sound as anyone’s.” Sackett shrugged one shoulder. “You are, in fact, the type of man other men lie to themselves about being. Which is why it is fascinating, though incorrect, for you to think that you are not to the same standard.”
Caleb’s eyes burned and he looked down at the drill as he continued to flip it just so he didn’t have to look at Sackett anymore. “No man wants to be like me and I’m a mother’s nightmare,” Caleb forced himself to say. It was true. There were days he was relieved that his mother had been gone too long to ever see her son as the man he’d grown to be.
“A mother’s nightmare maybe, but I have seen more than enough to know that you possess one skill and trait that all men pretend to have but few do.”
Caleb didn’t want to hear it anymore. He was tired and it hurt and he kept listening he might trick himself into believing it. “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”
“Men like to pretend that they are above it but love makes fools of us all. You keep your head despite it,” Sackett said with a grin. “That is a trait I would say most men would envy; a trait many men pretend to have.”
Caleb laughed and it was almost genuine that time. He was a bigger fool for love than anyone knew. Though no one knew he was in love to start with which he supposed was the key. “I’m not in love so I would say your assessment is a little off there, Sackett.”
Sackket smirked, cocked his head towards the door that Ben had walked out of not ten minutes before, and said “Aren’t you?”
Caleb forced himself to keep flipping the drill even as his fingers went numb and his blood went cold. “I don’t know what you think you kn-”
“What I know is that you joined this army for the same reason many men did. Love of one’s country, love of freedom, love of another person, they are all love. I see no problem with that.” Sackett took a deep breath and gave a small smile, the one for when he’d said something he thought was particularly clever. “Especially not when, as I said, you seem to keep your head despite it.”
Caleb still couldn’t breath. He trusted Sackett to a certain extent but he’d never trusted anyone he had to look in the face again with his secret. And he’d certainly never let anyone on about why he’d actually joined up.
“Now, you have a lot of work to do before you ride out, I suggest you get back to it,” Sackett said before he turned back to his own papers.
Once Sackett turned away it was a little easier and Caleb pulled himself together and decided to ignore it. As long as he didn’t piss Sackett off he would probably be fine. He’d have to trust that.
