Chapter Text
Beauregard wakes up to the soft hoot of an owl somewhere among the snow-covered trees above. It's been hard to get a good night's rest for a while now. The four pitiful figures on the forest floor aren't actually sleeping, and they all know it.
Nott is curled up next to Caleb, who Beau can see has his eyes wide open, staring into the darkness beyond (both literally and figuratively).
Keg is snoring (not quite convincingly) tightly against Beau's left side. She has grown quieter, not talking so much and leaving the remaining not so Mighty Nein to their sorrows.
There are only three left.
Every time Beau thinks about that fact, she wants to take some poor unfortunate soul and rip them to pieces, because that fucker took all her friends and he took something from her too and she has so much anger in her heart that she has no idea what to do with.
Beau has her unrighteous fury, Caleb had his bottomless pit of hopelessness, and Nott has her ever faithful alcohol.
What a mess they make.
Despite this, she can't give up on them. Molly might be three feet under (they gave him a shallow grave) and they might have lost their heart (and Yasha and Jester and Fjord) but they are the people who have let Beau in and put up with her snappy temper and made her feel wanted for what might have been the first time.
So for that, she will stay. She has to stay. There's nowhere else she wants to be, even though days away there's a patch of freshly unearthed dirt and in Caleb's bag a pile of jewelry that none of them have a right to.
Beau makes a faint noise in the back of her throat and looks around quickly, hoping no one was disturbed. Her eyes feel hot and itchy, and she rubs at them vigorously with a scowl. Crying doesn't solve anything.
There's a rustle and Beau goes for her staff before she realizes it's Caleb, slowly moving Nott onto the lightly snow dusted forest floor. She stays still with the exception of her yellow eyes cracking open for a split second before squeezing shut, as if she's afraid of the world around her.
Caleb makes his way over to sit next to Beau, back against the tree trunk. If she squints she can see the moon shining off the silver string that he obsessively sets every night.
Caleb glances at her with clouded blue eyes. "It's healthy to cry, you know," he rasps.
Beau scoffs, probably too loud. "Sounds like bullshit."
Caleb doesn't try to defend himself. They both look out at the distant darkened shapes, trees and bushes and other things that run about in the night. They had made a campfire right as the sun was setting, since the air is biting cold at this time of year, but it has faded to pulsing embers that look faintly like blood stained on rocks.
"Did you pray for him?" Caleb asks quietly, staring at the hands Beau knows will always be covered with red. Pray? Beau doesn't pray. Molly can handle himself.
Or could, anyway. Just not well enough.
"I don't pray," Beau says because it's more accurate than "I don't believe in gods". It would depend on what you meant by 'believe'. Sure, Beau knows they're out there somewhere, existing. Does that mean she thinks they will help her when she needs help? No.
She didn't think Caleb put too much faith in higher powers either, but maybe she's wrong.
"I did," Caleb says, not seeming to take offense at Beau's attitude. "I should have known nothing would happen, but I did it anyway."
His frown turns into something a bit more mad, a bit more wild. "Aren't you tired, Beauregard?"
Beau looks up at the dark sky through the trees. Neither of the moons are visible.
"I'm tired of a lot of things, Caleb," she replies. "And I'm angry, and hungry, and fed up with all this shit. But what are we supposed to do? We can't win, we can't be the heroes." She spits the last word out like poison. "We already tried that."
For a moment, they both stare at nothing that seems like something. Then Caleb lets out that broken, hoarse laugh of his. "Ja," he says. "We're pretty shit at being heroes."
He runs a dirty hand through his hair and looks at her with a haunted gaze. "I think you know what we do, Beauregard."
She does. She knew, ever since she'd met these people, that she would go down with them, for them. She won't rescue Yasha, she won't save Fjord and Jester, but she'll die trying to. And in the end it will be worth it - spending her last breath with people she loves.