A House Full of Broken Things
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom: Critical Role (Web Series) Relationships: Fearne Calloway/Ashton Greymoore, Fearne Calloway & Orym, Orym/Will | Orym's Spouse (Critical Role), Orym/Dorian Storm Characters: Fearne Calloway, Orym (Critical Role) Additional Tags: Post-Episode C3e80, Fearne and Orym talk, quiet conversations, Canon Compliant, Spoilers for Previous Episodes, Sweet, Grief/Mourning, Mild Language, He/Him and They/Them Pronouns for Ashton Greymoore Summary: Fearne is having a hard time falling asleep after the trials. Orym shows up for a quiet talk. Post-episode 80.
Read it on AO3 here.
Snippet below the cut.
Fearne lay awake in her bed in Ligament Manor, staring at the ceiling. It was wonderful being home again, seeing Nana and Peepers and Dr Nesbit and Door and Sweet Pea and Bompers and even Birdie and Ollie. She felt safe here, safer than she’d felt in a long time, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that coming back now would only make it harder to leave.
Turning onto her side, her mind kept whirling. Her and Ashton’s new forms, the trust exercises, the truth about her father, before eventually settling on the image of the cracks in Ashton’s skin roiling like lava as their arm fell to shatter against the floor, of his eyes on hers, bright as a flare and just as dangerous, daring her to keep him alive, to get them through this, to not scream for the others, to keep her promise.
“No!” she pulled herself away from the vision, pressed her palms to her eyes, hard, and rubbed at them until the image broke and she was back in her bedroom again, rage smouldering in her belly.
More than fury at Ashton’s recklessness though, Fearne felt a deep, clawing shame. It felt like the ichor that poured from Laudna’s form of dread, black and sticky, impossible to wipe away. She wasn’t familiar with the feeling and she didn’t like it at all. She had told Ashton that she didn’t want the shard. Of course they would take that to mean that they should use it instead otherwise why had he bothered pulling it from the lava in the first place? He had only done that, had to go through that, because she had been too afraid of what the power might make her into, not for a second thinking that it would be worse, far worse, to watch it unmake Ashton instead. And not only had she given them the tools, but she had just stood there, helpless and panicking, throwing out healing spells that did nothing but prolong the torture. Watching her aura of life pulse every few seconds, keeping them on their feet, still feeling the rough pressure of his lips on hers.
Fearne’s heart spiked with a brief pain and she sniffed. She was so stupid sometimes. So naive. She’d never really wanted to be otherwise. Everything since leaving the Feywild had felt like a grand adventure up to this point. Sure, there had been bumps in the road. Bertrund’s death had been sad, and Lord Eshteross. And she’d missed her nana terribly, and finding her parents had been… complicated. They’d lost Laudna and got separated and Fearne had been worried then. At the Malleus Key she’d been worried too, that they were going to fail, that they were going to die. But she’d never really thought that they would. It felt like the games she used to play as a child, when she’d sneak places she wasn’t supposed to go or steal something important to see how long it would take Nana to notice it was gone. Or when her and her animal friends would take turns being the monster that the other would bravely fight off. Those games were always fun, with just enough danger to provide a thrill, but there had never been anything so scary that Nana couldn’t make her feel better, no monster that wandered into the fens that Nana couldn’t chase away.
Having Nana be there when she finally accepted the shard had made her feel braver, but she’d recently learned that not even Nana had the power to protect her from reality, she’d had a huge, bitter dose of that. The danger of what they were doing felt very, very solid. It had been creeping upon her ever since the clock tower.
Fearne liked to flirt. It was fun to watch Chetney turn bright red and awkwardly flirt back, to see Imogen smirk out of the corner of her eye, to hear Orym’s quiet chuckle. But hearing Ashton say that they thought she was hot had knotted something in her stomach, and saying it back hadn’t been fun, or light or flirty. It had been scary and heavy and honest and she’d run away so that she would never know how he would have responded. But it wasn’t just that. Her excursion with the witches and learning they were together, seeing the shadows that lingered in between them; her talk with Orym, his love and his determination to get them through; pulling FCG from the snow to the right way up, laughing until her sides hurt at the sight of them and Ashton ploughing face-first into a snow bank; Chetney trying to make her feel better by taking her to smash windows. Her bonds with these people were irrevocable now. She felt them in her chest, tugging at her heart until it tore.
They hadn’t even made it to the moon yet and things were only going to get worse. They had time now and although that was what she’d wanted, what they all needed, it rankled at her. Now she had more hours to worry, to think, to seethe and cry and question the truth that she had called out in the chasm, that maybe they weren’t ready for this. Maybe they would die for good. Maybe she would have to watch Ashton shatter again, or watch Orym crumple to the ground in a pool of his own blood. Maybe Imogen would be pulled somewhere else by her connection to the moon, maybe Chetney would be overtaken by the beast inside him, maybe Laudna would give in to Delilah, maybe FCG would try to take too much damage for one of them. She felt more powerful now, and Ashton had certainly looked more powerful, but power didn’t fix everything. The trust exercise had been good in theory but she wasn’t sure they’d really succeeded. They’d all been suspicious of each other; Ashton leaving FCG in the deadly vines, Laudna bringing out her hound for insurance, Orym questioning them with random trivia that she at least hadn’t been in a place to remember.
The walls around her almost seemed to be closing in, twisting her thoughts into a tangled mess of anxiety. She hated this. She’d never felt like this before and she hated it. Was this why FCG kept second-guessing themself? Was this why Imogen fought so hard against other people’s thoughts? Was this what Orym felt whenever he stepped in front of a creature at least four times his size? Fear. Real fear. That they would lose. That she would lose. It was the kind of feeling she’d always pushed away, the kind that hadn’t seemed important when there were more fun things to do, but now she couldn’t stop the onslaught.
“Fearne?”
Fearne sniffled and looked up at the soft voice. Orym was peering around the doorframe. She hadn’t heard him knock.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
Orym’s mouth twitched a little. “This is your bedroom.”
“Oh, right.”
Orym came in and shut the door behind him before quietly padding over to where she lay. She shuffled backwards towards the wall and he hopped up, sitting criss-cross-applesauce in front of her.
Read the rest on AO3 here.
