[Fic] Suil A Ruin (1/7)
Aug. 10th, 2007 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeTitle: Suil a Ruin
Fandom: The Dresden Files (book)
Characters: Morgan, OC
Word Count: 3,903
Rating: PG
Summary: Morgan is going to take a leave of absence whether he wants to or not.
Siúil, siúil. siúil a rúin (Go, go, go my love)
Siúil go sochair agus siúil go ciúin (Go quietly and peacefully)
Siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom (Go to the door and flee with me)
Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán (And may you go safely my dear)
-- Traditional/Clannad
Morgan, because no one called him by his first name except Captain Luccio and, very occasionally, the Council, was a stiff. He had fewer facial expressions than Keanu Reeves and about as much empathy as the sword he carried. There were many good qualities to him, though. Faithfulness and loyalty, a sense of justice and duty and honor that would have any recruiting poster proud. He believed, quite firmly, in what he believed. He protected the weak with no thought to the cost to himself. And that was exactly the problem Rashid brought me here to address.
"We are fighting a war that may go on for decades more, despite Dresden's somewhat ham-handed if well-intentioned efforts and the Council's tenuous grip on the front lines," he'd pointed out. "And we cannot afford to lose any more of our most experienced soldiers."
I hadn't believed him at first. "Morgan isn't in any danger of being lost," I snorted. "Even if he does insist on charging up and attempting to decapitate the Red King himself. Yes, I heard about that."
"It's not his death in battle that I worry about, it’s the quality of the life he leads."
We had talked at some length, and after some explanation I could see his point. There were advantages to being strong, but there was also such a thing as being so strong you snapped in two instead of bending. It was one of the oldest maxims. Even Hollywood had been picking up on it lately. The Old Man had pulled me out of the hospital, away from the healing of bodies, and asked me to help heal something a great deal more complicated. It seemed like a bad time for it. All the hospitals were under siege, and I had seen more patients in the last three years than I had in any equivalent time in the last thirty. They needed my help.
So does Morgan, he told me. And helping him might help end the war, and a few other things besides, with the end result that I gave in and listened to the rest of what he had to say.
Morgan, whom no one ever called by name, was in danger of snapping. We were all stressed and strained, all of us on the front lines, but he was apparently the worst.
And that was why I was standing in front of an old warehouse, leaning against an old, restored Chevy Plymouth with as few moving parts as possible, and waiting for him. The Corrs was playing on what I fondly referred to as my iPod (it wasn't, of course, but I could damn well pretend) and his mouth thinned when he heard it.
"Not a fan of pop music?"
It wasn't that. He thought he had better things to do. "Let's get this over with," he not-grumbled brusquely, shoving his bag into the open back seat and clambering into the front passenger side. Trenchcoats were not made for cars, and it sort of ruined the gravity of his temper.
"Could you tone down the enthusiasm a little? You'll bounce right out of the car like that."
He not-glared at me, pausing before slamming the door shut. Much more of that and he might as well take the ricepaper-thin veneer off the hostility and admit he didn't like his first impression of me. I was being a wise-ass.
Dresden was a wise-ass. And Dresden's little debacle with the apprentice was what had put this idea into the Old Man's head. I'd heard a lot about Dresden and Morgan's attitude towards the man. Perhaps this was the wrong tack to take.
"Close the door, Morgan. The sooner we're on our way, the sooner we'll get there, and the sooner you can get this over with and go back to worthier subjects, like training young men and women to die bravely."
Possibly that was also the wrong tack to take, but it sobered him up and stopped him from glaring. Instead he brooded, which was only two notches above sulking at me. His shoulders were so tight that I would have sworn they were creaking instead of the leather on which he leaned. I got us out of town before I even risked glancing at him.
We hit the highway going south and I glanced at him. He was still staring straight ahead. I could have sworn he hadn't moved in forty five minutes.
"Hello, I'm Claire, and you?" I said finally. And then, in a deeper, raspier voice that I hoped was at least a little Clint Eastwood. With a side of Patrick Stewart. "My name is Morgan, I am a Warden of the Council." "Oh, yeah, I've heard about you, nice to meet you. Glad to see you're alive." "It is good…" I glanced at him. Not a flicker.
I sighed. "Introductions are…"
"I know who you are."
Filing away for future reference the inadvisability of ordering Morgan to do any damn thing, I sighed and switched back to my normal voice. "I know you know. But introductions are still polite, and it wouldn't kill you to be a little polite."
I hadn't expected it to work. But his shoulders did relax a little, his hands creaking as they unclenched. "I'm sorry. That was rude."
"Just a bit." But I smiled when I said it. "It's all right. I don't like being ordered around either."
I think it surprised him, a little, that I accepted it without a fight. I wondered how long it had been since anyone had just not fought him on anything. Outside of a battle, of course. For that matter, how long had it been since any of them had ever not been in a battle? God, I led a sheltered life.
"Why you?" he asked, several miles later. Blunt, but I guess I hadn't figured he'd be much else. "Why are you here?"
"He thought I could help." At least, I assumed he knew what and who I was talking about. I didn't know, specifically, if the Old Man had told him where to go and who to meet. It was either the Old Man or Luccio, it had to be. Maybe the shaman. Any of them would have recognized the need, and Morgan would have listened to them. The Merlin didn't think about things like this, and no one else had been in town. Process of elimination.
"I don't need your help," he said, calmly and without rancor.
"Not in the fields you're used to," I said, and then my iPod chirped up with the last Sting album I'd loaded into it. "But I swear in the days still left we'll walk in fields of gold."
I couldn't use a regular iPod. I wanted to, I really did, when they first started coming out with Walkmen I wanted one. And I'd tried. But by the time portable music technology went digital I knew better than to try, and so I improvised my own. I used a burned out shell of an iPod for a suggestion and for camouflage, and the headphones were a polite suggestion, and I was good to go. After some spell tinkering. For about five years.
But it held more songs than an iPod, and I could be around a music player long enough to hear it once or twice, long enough to capture the song in my memory and pull it into the box. And that was good enough for me.
Evidently Morgan hadn't heard about that particular party trick, because he stared at it like it might bite him with its tiny chromed box-body. I laughed.
"Not a Sting fan, I guess?"
His look, if he had been relaxed enough to make it, said you're weird more clearly than he could have formulated in words. Except he wouldn't have used those words.
"Should I take it as an insult that you don't even want to spend a week in my company?"
Whatever else he might have been, Morgan was still a gentleman. And I had given him no reason to hate me. Hell, he didn't even know much about me yet. His face slid from sullen to contrite, about as much of a shift of expression as he ever made. It was a start.
"No," he said quietly, after another mile or so. "I didn't mean that."
"I know," I told him just as quietly. "But whether you like it or not, this is going to happen. You were ordered by Luccio, I was ordered by my… asked," I corrected myself. "Asked by my former teacher, and he's usually right about…"
"Your former teacher?"
If he hadn't heard, I was going to wait for a nice long stretch of empty road just so I could see his expression. He looked at me, only somewhat impatient. I finally looked back at him. "Rashid."
He blinked. "The Gatekeeper?"
I wasn't going to get very far with him at all if I looked gleeful every time Morgan was caught off guard, but damned if it didn't feel good. "Yes," I said, keeping my eyes on the road. "He found me trying to defend myself in the middle of a revolution and took me in, taught me the Laws, how to use what I had properly. And when, and why." Exaggeration. At least about the way Rashid had found me, if not an outright lie, but I didn't feel comfortable telling Morgan the whole story. Not with his reputation around Dresden, given what Dresden had done.
Because the Gatekeeper never just taught one thing. He taught you everything around it, who to use it on or with, and when, and how, and why. And he didn't tell you, he asked you until you figured it out for yourself, or he put you in a situation where you would have to figure it out for yourself. He was big on teaching by doing, not big on sharing his opinions until he was sure you had a few of your own. Although some of the Council had ossified in their old age, the Gatekeeper was more fond of teaching you why to think rather than how.
Luccio, as far as I knew, had taught Morgan. And that should have conveyed at least a similar flexibility of attitude, or at least an ability to roll with most of the punches. But somewhere along the line he'd gotten harder than his teacher. I still talked to Luccio sometimes, less often face to face since her experience with the Corpsetaker had left her … a little different. But I still talked to her, remotely, and I liked her.
I wasn't sure about Morgan yet, except that I didn't dislike him. At least he wasn't sure about me, which was the bigger worry. I was at least capable about changing my mind without heavy machinery.
He had more questions. I could tell by the way he kept looking at me as we drove, miles and miles and bloody miles in silence. But he didn't ask any of them, and I wasn't sure why. Maybe he didn't know how to ask what he wanted to ask. Maybe he just thought it was rude.
I thought about stopping for groceries before we hit the mountain, and decided to wait until we got to the general store. It really was a general store too. Wood façade, rock candy, gray haired old lady who could probably stop a semi with her glare, all those good old stereotypical things. Also all those good food-type things, which we would need a lot of before we got to the cabin. There wasn't a grocery store, or a store of any kind, for many miles around. Which was just the way I wanted it.
"Welcome to Xanadu."
He gave me a look that said he wasn't sure if I was kidding. I just smiled back at him.
The cabin wasn't big, but it was very well appointed. We'd set it up with as much insulation and air flow as we could. Workable air flow to keep it cool or warm as we needed. Ice blocks by the vents kept it pretty cool in the summer time, and magic kept the ice cool. In the winter we closed most of the vents and lit the fire on the stove. There were two small bedrooms, a small library, and a pantry more than a kitchen. The only concession we'd made to modernity was indoor plumbing. Be damned if I was going to take a bath outside in the middle of winter.
"Not what you expected?" I asked. He had that look on his face.
Morgan shook his head. "No…" But he didn't elaborate on what he had expected, and I didn't ask. "Do the neighbors ask questions?"
We were surrounded by several acre estates around the lake, as much as you could be surrounded when every house was in the middle of a large expanse of grass. All of the houses practiced conspicuous consumption.
"Not really," I shrugged. "We've been here since the sixties."
"Ah." And was that a smile turning up the corner of his mouth? I wondered what Morgan had done in the sixties. "They think you're a hippie commune."
"Something like that."
We each picked a room, which meant that I went in and set my stuff down on what was usually my bed when I was out here, and Morgan took the other one. The next thing I knew he was rattling around in the pantry, and I went out into the main room to lean against the cold stovepipe and watch him until he realized I was there.
"I didn't know you cooked."
He didn't say anything, just shrugged a little. It didn't seem to be something he wanted to talk much about, so I went over and helped him put groceries away instead. Then I went downstairs and let him arrange the kitchen the way he wanted to, setting the ice blocks and the spell up and locking it into place. We'd be here for a week. I didn't mean to spend the afternoon hours lying on my and panting in a pool of my own sweat.
"Why this place?"
"It's quiet," I shrugged. "It's not all that populated. It's not at a nexus of anything, which is what most people would look for if they wanted to find us. We have a few of these places in different countries. Quiet places we can go to think sometimes."
"We?" his eyebrows shot up at that.
"Rashid, me, Padraig, a few others. No one you'd know except by name, I think." I shrugged. "Rashid created the first place, and then we made others as we needed them." And brought people there who seemed like they needed to be brought.
Morgan got it. He nodded, went back to looking around, and eventually disappeared into the library. I didn't follow him. He couldn't get into much trouble in there, and I wanted to help him, not hover over him every second until irritation forced him away.
Well, I did follow him in after a second. But only to grab one of my favorite novels and go stretch out on the couch in the main room. He was sitting at the desk, a stack of volumes to his elbow and reading what looked like the first of them with curious concentration. Getting a look at the titles would have been too intrusive, and obvious. I kept going.
I hadn't told Rashid which specific sanctuary I was taking Morgan to, but I think he knew which one when I talked about a moratorium on most kinds of magic. The bigger kinds, anyway. There were only two within driving distance of Chicago, if I wanted to get to one of them without opening a door through the veil. So I wasn't terribly surprised when I felt a light touch on my metaphysical shoulder.
"Hello, Old Man."
"Young lady," he said, mock-admonishing. "How is he?"
"Still stiff," I said to the spine of my book, setting it over my chest and closing my eyes. But we just got here a few hours ago. Hopefully I can get him to unbend a little.
Good. There was a moment of silence. He's asleep, you know. On the desk.
If he gets drool on the books I'll kill him.
We both laughed. The image of Field Captain Warden Morgan drooling in his sleep on a pile of books was just too much.
Do you think you can help him? he asked then. And I pushed myself up to sitting and looked over at the half-open library door.
I don't know. He's halfway to breaking already, and if he breaks I doubt even you could put the pieces back together, Old Man. But there's hope. There's
Always hope, I know. He'd taught me that. A little bit of hope, a little bit of goodness in everyone. I believed that, at least until proven otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. A real one, not the standard of proof required in most jury trials. I wondered if Morgan still did.
Probably not. It was why he was here, after all. And Rashid was gone, having established that we were here and I was working on the problem. I pulled my book over my face and joined Morgan in a little afternoon nap. It had been a long drive.
By the time I woke up it was dark outside, and the kitchen was clattering again. Something tasty and smelling of meat and potatoes was on the stove, and I sat up, setting the book on the table next to me. Morgan was stirring something with one hand and sprinkling something else over a loaf of brown bread that I didn't remember buying. Of course, I didn't remember buying bread ingredients either, so he must have slipped that in without my noticing. Which meant he'd been planning on either eating well or making dinner. Which meant…
… I didn't know what that meant.
"Chef Morgan, best kept secret in the Wardens," I said, shaking my head. The wooden spoon clanked against the pot and the one hand I could see started to clench, but then he relaxed. Jumpy Morgan.
"I haven't taken the time for it in years." Because there hadn't been the time to take for it.
"And you're not exactly the kind who goes around cooking for…" His dates? I was in no way going there. "People."
"Mm." He tasted it, decided it wasn't quite right, and put something else in it. I got up and started to set the table, bringing it out from the library and putting away the books.
It was some kind of stew, and pumpernickel bread, and the fruit we'd bought rounded out the meal quite nicely. Neither of us said much of anything but I watched his face as he ate, and it was softened. As though he'd remembered something about himself that he'd almost forgotten.
"You're a good cook," I said, because I couldn't think of a better or more elaborate compliment.
He even smiled a little. "Thank you."
Asking him how long it had been since he'd cooked for anyone seemed like a bad idea, and prying too much. I cleared the dishes when we were done and started to scrub them off in the sink. House tradition.
"Did anyone tell you…" I started to say, before I realized I had no idea what I was going to say. And I didn't think he heard me over the clanking of the stove anyway. Turning down the heat so that we didn't bake to death or work the ice spell into a nervous breakdown. Good man.
He appeared around the corner of the kitchen doorway a moment later. "What did you say?"
I hedged. "Did anyone tell you where we were going, or… anything?" Of course they hadn't, no one had known, but it was conversation. I was making this up as I went along. Which might have been a bad idea, or the best way to do it. No way to know until the week was over.
Morgan shook his head slightly, frowning. He seemed to do that a lot. "I was only told that I was on a week's leave, and that you were going to take me somewhere and I was to stay there until we returned." The dismissive sound of the order might have put the sour look on his face.
I leaned against the counter while the dishes soaked a little and watched him, wondering how to phrase it so I didn't have to deal with stubborn, sulking, and silent Morgan for the rest of the week. So far I hadn't completely alienated him. But I had to build up my credibility and get in under his skin, and he had built up armor over decades for all I knew.
"Something like that…" I said, thinking fast. Thinking back, too. He was older than I was, and older than most of the people I now spent my time around. The world that had first shaped him had long since gone.
I had an idea, now. I turned and went back to scrubbing dishes. "Your Captain and my teacher, along with a few others in the Council…"
"What others?"
I shook my head. "I don't know, they didn't tell me and I didn't think it was my business to ask. They felt that you weren't acting at your top form. That you needed a rest, if only a week of a full night's sleep, good meals, and no strenuous activity."
He frowned. I knew he hadn't thought to what kind of injuries or causes might draw them to that conclusion, beyond the physical. He didn't think like that. I'd drag it out of him later, or explain it to him, or maybe he'd realize it for himself. He wasn't stupid. But he was very, very used to thinking a certain way. That way didn't include psychology, empathy, or emotions having their place on the battlefield.
"So it's a rest cure, then."
I hadn't heard that phrase used in a while. "Yes."
And just like that, he relaxed. Even smiled a little, taking the plate from me and drying it with the cloth. "And you are my nurse. My keeper." But he meant it teasingly. I don't think I'd even heard of Morgan teasing anyone before.
"Something like that," I smiled back at him, but if he had been smiling before it was gone now. We finished the dishes in silence, and then I showed him the porch with its old and silvered teak chairs, bringing out cushions to sit on and blankets in case the evening grew cold. Which it sometimes did, in the mountains.
We didn't have much of a conversation that first night. He asked where I had trained with the Gatekeeper and I asked after his trainees, his men. We extended feelers towards each other and met inquiries with cautious openness. It was the first day we'd seen each other in I couldn't remember how long, and it was certainly the longest time we'd ever spent around each other. Neither of us wanted it to be an unpleasant experience.
I was the one more familiar with the location, so after a little while I stood and announced that I was going to turn in. I'd done all the driving, which was my excuse, and I was sort of tired. My hand brushed over his shoulder as I passed, and he turned his head to not quite look at me. Little points of contact. It was a beginning. And then I was asleep before he came back inside.
Fandom: The Dresden Files (book)
Characters: Morgan, OC
Word Count: 3,903
Rating: PG
Summary: Morgan is going to take a leave of absence whether he wants to or not.
Siúil, siúil. siúil a rúin (Go, go, go my love)
Siúil go sochair agus siúil go ciúin (Go quietly and peacefully)
Siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom (Go to the door and flee with me)
Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán (And may you go safely my dear)
-- Traditional/Clannad
Morgan, because no one called him by his first name except Captain Luccio and, very occasionally, the Council, was a stiff. He had fewer facial expressions than Keanu Reeves and about as much empathy as the sword he carried. There were many good qualities to him, though. Faithfulness and loyalty, a sense of justice and duty and honor that would have any recruiting poster proud. He believed, quite firmly, in what he believed. He protected the weak with no thought to the cost to himself. And that was exactly the problem Rashid brought me here to address.
"We are fighting a war that may go on for decades more, despite Dresden's somewhat ham-handed if well-intentioned efforts and the Council's tenuous grip on the front lines," he'd pointed out. "And we cannot afford to lose any more of our most experienced soldiers."
I hadn't believed him at first. "Morgan isn't in any danger of being lost," I snorted. "Even if he does insist on charging up and attempting to decapitate the Red King himself. Yes, I heard about that."
"It's not his death in battle that I worry about, it’s the quality of the life he leads."
We had talked at some length, and after some explanation I could see his point. There were advantages to being strong, but there was also such a thing as being so strong you snapped in two instead of bending. It was one of the oldest maxims. Even Hollywood had been picking up on it lately. The Old Man had pulled me out of the hospital, away from the healing of bodies, and asked me to help heal something a great deal more complicated. It seemed like a bad time for it. All the hospitals were under siege, and I had seen more patients in the last three years than I had in any equivalent time in the last thirty. They needed my help.
So does Morgan, he told me. And helping him might help end the war, and a few other things besides, with the end result that I gave in and listened to the rest of what he had to say.
Morgan, whom no one ever called by name, was in danger of snapping. We were all stressed and strained, all of us on the front lines, but he was apparently the worst.
And that was why I was standing in front of an old warehouse, leaning against an old, restored Chevy Plymouth with as few moving parts as possible, and waiting for him. The Corrs was playing on what I fondly referred to as my iPod (it wasn't, of course, but I could damn well pretend) and his mouth thinned when he heard it.
"Not a fan of pop music?"
It wasn't that. He thought he had better things to do. "Let's get this over with," he not-grumbled brusquely, shoving his bag into the open back seat and clambering into the front passenger side. Trenchcoats were not made for cars, and it sort of ruined the gravity of his temper.
"Could you tone down the enthusiasm a little? You'll bounce right out of the car like that."
He not-glared at me, pausing before slamming the door shut. Much more of that and he might as well take the ricepaper-thin veneer off the hostility and admit he didn't like his first impression of me. I was being a wise-ass.
Dresden was a wise-ass. And Dresden's little debacle with the apprentice was what had put this idea into the Old Man's head. I'd heard a lot about Dresden and Morgan's attitude towards the man. Perhaps this was the wrong tack to take.
"Close the door, Morgan. The sooner we're on our way, the sooner we'll get there, and the sooner you can get this over with and go back to worthier subjects, like training young men and women to die bravely."
Possibly that was also the wrong tack to take, but it sobered him up and stopped him from glaring. Instead he brooded, which was only two notches above sulking at me. His shoulders were so tight that I would have sworn they were creaking instead of the leather on which he leaned. I got us out of town before I even risked glancing at him.
We hit the highway going south and I glanced at him. He was still staring straight ahead. I could have sworn he hadn't moved in forty five minutes.
"Hello, I'm Claire, and you?" I said finally. And then, in a deeper, raspier voice that I hoped was at least a little Clint Eastwood. With a side of Patrick Stewart. "My name is Morgan, I am a Warden of the Council." "Oh, yeah, I've heard about you, nice to meet you. Glad to see you're alive." "It is good…" I glanced at him. Not a flicker.
I sighed. "Introductions are…"
"I know who you are."
Filing away for future reference the inadvisability of ordering Morgan to do any damn thing, I sighed and switched back to my normal voice. "I know you know. But introductions are still polite, and it wouldn't kill you to be a little polite."
I hadn't expected it to work. But his shoulders did relax a little, his hands creaking as they unclenched. "I'm sorry. That was rude."
"Just a bit." But I smiled when I said it. "It's all right. I don't like being ordered around either."
I think it surprised him, a little, that I accepted it without a fight. I wondered how long it had been since anyone had just not fought him on anything. Outside of a battle, of course. For that matter, how long had it been since any of them had ever not been in a battle? God, I led a sheltered life.
"Why you?" he asked, several miles later. Blunt, but I guess I hadn't figured he'd be much else. "Why are you here?"
"He thought I could help." At least, I assumed he knew what and who I was talking about. I didn't know, specifically, if the Old Man had told him where to go and who to meet. It was either the Old Man or Luccio, it had to be. Maybe the shaman. Any of them would have recognized the need, and Morgan would have listened to them. The Merlin didn't think about things like this, and no one else had been in town. Process of elimination.
"I don't need your help," he said, calmly and without rancor.
"Not in the fields you're used to," I said, and then my iPod chirped up with the last Sting album I'd loaded into it. "But I swear in the days still left we'll walk in fields of gold."
I couldn't use a regular iPod. I wanted to, I really did, when they first started coming out with Walkmen I wanted one. And I'd tried. But by the time portable music technology went digital I knew better than to try, and so I improvised my own. I used a burned out shell of an iPod for a suggestion and for camouflage, and the headphones were a polite suggestion, and I was good to go. After some spell tinkering. For about five years.
But it held more songs than an iPod, and I could be around a music player long enough to hear it once or twice, long enough to capture the song in my memory and pull it into the box. And that was good enough for me.
Evidently Morgan hadn't heard about that particular party trick, because he stared at it like it might bite him with its tiny chromed box-body. I laughed.
"Not a Sting fan, I guess?"
His look, if he had been relaxed enough to make it, said you're weird more clearly than he could have formulated in words. Except he wouldn't have used those words.
"Should I take it as an insult that you don't even want to spend a week in my company?"
Whatever else he might have been, Morgan was still a gentleman. And I had given him no reason to hate me. Hell, he didn't even know much about me yet. His face slid from sullen to contrite, about as much of a shift of expression as he ever made. It was a start.
"No," he said quietly, after another mile or so. "I didn't mean that."
"I know," I told him just as quietly. "But whether you like it or not, this is going to happen. You were ordered by Luccio, I was ordered by my… asked," I corrected myself. "Asked by my former teacher, and he's usually right about…"
"Your former teacher?"
If he hadn't heard, I was going to wait for a nice long stretch of empty road just so I could see his expression. He looked at me, only somewhat impatient. I finally looked back at him. "Rashid."
He blinked. "The Gatekeeper?"
I wasn't going to get very far with him at all if I looked gleeful every time Morgan was caught off guard, but damned if it didn't feel good. "Yes," I said, keeping my eyes on the road. "He found me trying to defend myself in the middle of a revolution and took me in, taught me the Laws, how to use what I had properly. And when, and why." Exaggeration. At least about the way Rashid had found me, if not an outright lie, but I didn't feel comfortable telling Morgan the whole story. Not with his reputation around Dresden, given what Dresden had done.
Because the Gatekeeper never just taught one thing. He taught you everything around it, who to use it on or with, and when, and how, and why. And he didn't tell you, he asked you until you figured it out for yourself, or he put you in a situation where you would have to figure it out for yourself. He was big on teaching by doing, not big on sharing his opinions until he was sure you had a few of your own. Although some of the Council had ossified in their old age, the Gatekeeper was more fond of teaching you why to think rather than how.
Luccio, as far as I knew, had taught Morgan. And that should have conveyed at least a similar flexibility of attitude, or at least an ability to roll with most of the punches. But somewhere along the line he'd gotten harder than his teacher. I still talked to Luccio sometimes, less often face to face since her experience with the Corpsetaker had left her … a little different. But I still talked to her, remotely, and I liked her.
I wasn't sure about Morgan yet, except that I didn't dislike him. At least he wasn't sure about me, which was the bigger worry. I was at least capable about changing my mind without heavy machinery.
He had more questions. I could tell by the way he kept looking at me as we drove, miles and miles and bloody miles in silence. But he didn't ask any of them, and I wasn't sure why. Maybe he didn't know how to ask what he wanted to ask. Maybe he just thought it was rude.
I thought about stopping for groceries before we hit the mountain, and decided to wait until we got to the general store. It really was a general store too. Wood façade, rock candy, gray haired old lady who could probably stop a semi with her glare, all those good old stereotypical things. Also all those good food-type things, which we would need a lot of before we got to the cabin. There wasn't a grocery store, or a store of any kind, for many miles around. Which was just the way I wanted it.
"Welcome to Xanadu."
He gave me a look that said he wasn't sure if I was kidding. I just smiled back at him.
The cabin wasn't big, but it was very well appointed. We'd set it up with as much insulation and air flow as we could. Workable air flow to keep it cool or warm as we needed. Ice blocks by the vents kept it pretty cool in the summer time, and magic kept the ice cool. In the winter we closed most of the vents and lit the fire on the stove. There were two small bedrooms, a small library, and a pantry more than a kitchen. The only concession we'd made to modernity was indoor plumbing. Be damned if I was going to take a bath outside in the middle of winter.
"Not what you expected?" I asked. He had that look on his face.
Morgan shook his head. "No…" But he didn't elaborate on what he had expected, and I didn't ask. "Do the neighbors ask questions?"
We were surrounded by several acre estates around the lake, as much as you could be surrounded when every house was in the middle of a large expanse of grass. All of the houses practiced conspicuous consumption.
"Not really," I shrugged. "We've been here since the sixties."
"Ah." And was that a smile turning up the corner of his mouth? I wondered what Morgan had done in the sixties. "They think you're a hippie commune."
"Something like that."
We each picked a room, which meant that I went in and set my stuff down on what was usually my bed when I was out here, and Morgan took the other one. The next thing I knew he was rattling around in the pantry, and I went out into the main room to lean against the cold stovepipe and watch him until he realized I was there.
"I didn't know you cooked."
He didn't say anything, just shrugged a little. It didn't seem to be something he wanted to talk much about, so I went over and helped him put groceries away instead. Then I went downstairs and let him arrange the kitchen the way he wanted to, setting the ice blocks and the spell up and locking it into place. We'd be here for a week. I didn't mean to spend the afternoon hours lying on my and panting in a pool of my own sweat.
"Why this place?"
"It's quiet," I shrugged. "It's not all that populated. It's not at a nexus of anything, which is what most people would look for if they wanted to find us. We have a few of these places in different countries. Quiet places we can go to think sometimes."
"We?" his eyebrows shot up at that.
"Rashid, me, Padraig, a few others. No one you'd know except by name, I think." I shrugged. "Rashid created the first place, and then we made others as we needed them." And brought people there who seemed like they needed to be brought.
Morgan got it. He nodded, went back to looking around, and eventually disappeared into the library. I didn't follow him. He couldn't get into much trouble in there, and I wanted to help him, not hover over him every second until irritation forced him away.
Well, I did follow him in after a second. But only to grab one of my favorite novels and go stretch out on the couch in the main room. He was sitting at the desk, a stack of volumes to his elbow and reading what looked like the first of them with curious concentration. Getting a look at the titles would have been too intrusive, and obvious. I kept going.
I hadn't told Rashid which specific sanctuary I was taking Morgan to, but I think he knew which one when I talked about a moratorium on most kinds of magic. The bigger kinds, anyway. There were only two within driving distance of Chicago, if I wanted to get to one of them without opening a door through the veil. So I wasn't terribly surprised when I felt a light touch on my metaphysical shoulder.
"Hello, Old Man."
"Young lady," he said, mock-admonishing. "How is he?"
"Still stiff," I said to the spine of my book, setting it over my chest and closing my eyes. But we just got here a few hours ago. Hopefully I can get him to unbend a little.
Good. There was a moment of silence. He's asleep, you know. On the desk.
If he gets drool on the books I'll kill him.
We both laughed. The image of Field Captain Warden Morgan drooling in his sleep on a pile of books was just too much.
Do you think you can help him? he asked then. And I pushed myself up to sitting and looked over at the half-open library door.
I don't know. He's halfway to breaking already, and if he breaks I doubt even you could put the pieces back together, Old Man. But there's hope. There's
Always hope, I know. He'd taught me that. A little bit of hope, a little bit of goodness in everyone. I believed that, at least until proven otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. A real one, not the standard of proof required in most jury trials. I wondered if Morgan still did.
Probably not. It was why he was here, after all. And Rashid was gone, having established that we were here and I was working on the problem. I pulled my book over my face and joined Morgan in a little afternoon nap. It had been a long drive.
By the time I woke up it was dark outside, and the kitchen was clattering again. Something tasty and smelling of meat and potatoes was on the stove, and I sat up, setting the book on the table next to me. Morgan was stirring something with one hand and sprinkling something else over a loaf of brown bread that I didn't remember buying. Of course, I didn't remember buying bread ingredients either, so he must have slipped that in without my noticing. Which meant he'd been planning on either eating well or making dinner. Which meant…
… I didn't know what that meant.
"Chef Morgan, best kept secret in the Wardens," I said, shaking my head. The wooden spoon clanked against the pot and the one hand I could see started to clench, but then he relaxed. Jumpy Morgan.
"I haven't taken the time for it in years." Because there hadn't been the time to take for it.
"And you're not exactly the kind who goes around cooking for…" His dates? I was in no way going there. "People."
"Mm." He tasted it, decided it wasn't quite right, and put something else in it. I got up and started to set the table, bringing it out from the library and putting away the books.
It was some kind of stew, and pumpernickel bread, and the fruit we'd bought rounded out the meal quite nicely. Neither of us said much of anything but I watched his face as he ate, and it was softened. As though he'd remembered something about himself that he'd almost forgotten.
"You're a good cook," I said, because I couldn't think of a better or more elaborate compliment.
He even smiled a little. "Thank you."
Asking him how long it had been since he'd cooked for anyone seemed like a bad idea, and prying too much. I cleared the dishes when we were done and started to scrub them off in the sink. House tradition.
"Did anyone tell you…" I started to say, before I realized I had no idea what I was going to say. And I didn't think he heard me over the clanking of the stove anyway. Turning down the heat so that we didn't bake to death or work the ice spell into a nervous breakdown. Good man.
He appeared around the corner of the kitchen doorway a moment later. "What did you say?"
I hedged. "Did anyone tell you where we were going, or… anything?" Of course they hadn't, no one had known, but it was conversation. I was making this up as I went along. Which might have been a bad idea, or the best way to do it. No way to know until the week was over.
Morgan shook his head slightly, frowning. He seemed to do that a lot. "I was only told that I was on a week's leave, and that you were going to take me somewhere and I was to stay there until we returned." The dismissive sound of the order might have put the sour look on his face.
I leaned against the counter while the dishes soaked a little and watched him, wondering how to phrase it so I didn't have to deal with stubborn, sulking, and silent Morgan for the rest of the week. So far I hadn't completely alienated him. But I had to build up my credibility and get in under his skin, and he had built up armor over decades for all I knew.
"Something like that…" I said, thinking fast. Thinking back, too. He was older than I was, and older than most of the people I now spent my time around. The world that had first shaped him had long since gone.
I had an idea, now. I turned and went back to scrubbing dishes. "Your Captain and my teacher, along with a few others in the Council…"
"What others?"
I shook my head. "I don't know, they didn't tell me and I didn't think it was my business to ask. They felt that you weren't acting at your top form. That you needed a rest, if only a week of a full night's sleep, good meals, and no strenuous activity."
He frowned. I knew he hadn't thought to what kind of injuries or causes might draw them to that conclusion, beyond the physical. He didn't think like that. I'd drag it out of him later, or explain it to him, or maybe he'd realize it for himself. He wasn't stupid. But he was very, very used to thinking a certain way. That way didn't include psychology, empathy, or emotions having their place on the battlefield.
"So it's a rest cure, then."
I hadn't heard that phrase used in a while. "Yes."
And just like that, he relaxed. Even smiled a little, taking the plate from me and drying it with the cloth. "And you are my nurse. My keeper." But he meant it teasingly. I don't think I'd even heard of Morgan teasing anyone before.
"Something like that," I smiled back at him, but if he had been smiling before it was gone now. We finished the dishes in silence, and then I showed him the porch with its old and silvered teak chairs, bringing out cushions to sit on and blankets in case the evening grew cold. Which it sometimes did, in the mountains.
We didn't have much of a conversation that first night. He asked where I had trained with the Gatekeeper and I asked after his trainees, his men. We extended feelers towards each other and met inquiries with cautious openness. It was the first day we'd seen each other in I couldn't remember how long, and it was certainly the longest time we'd ever spent around each other. Neither of us wanted it to be an unpleasant experience.
I was the one more familiar with the location, so after a little while I stood and announced that I was going to turn in. I'd done all the driving, which was my excuse, and I was sort of tired. My hand brushed over his shoulder as I passed, and he turned his head to not quite look at me. Little points of contact. It was a beginning. And then I was asleep before he came back inside.