[Fic] Suil A Ruin (2/7)
Aug. 14th, 2007 09:04 am![[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: 5,203
Rating: PG
Summary: Morgan is going to take a leave of absence whether he wants to or not.
"Whispering world; A sigh of sighs
The ebb and flow of the ocean tides
One breath, one word may end or may start
A hope in a place of the lover's heart
Hope has a place in the lover's heart."
-- Enya
I woke at dawn and said my meditation, rolling out of bed and stretching before I listened to see if Morgan was up and about yet. Which, upon reflection, was a silly sort of question. Of course he was up and about, he was probably getting up around the same time I was, and out of a similar reflex.
We came out of our bedrooms at the same time. I hoped I didn't look as bleary as I felt. Getting up at the crack of doom I might have been used to, but I wasn't a combat veteran or a soldier, ready within a minute of waking up. And despite that, I didn't want to embarrass myself. Silly impulse.
"Morning," I waved, maybe a little too cheerfully.
"Good morning."
He went for the pitcher of water in the icebox, I went for the shower. I didn't stay awake and dirty longer than I could help it. By the time I got out he was making what looked like pancakes. No, crepes. I revised my estimation of him upwards several notches. And wondered why he was doing this.
"You don't have to do that, you know."
Morgan glanced up at me with something like an arch look, except I would have sworn he'd almost rolled his eyes at me. "I know."
For all I knew, it was relaxing to him. He didn't seem to be doing it out of a sense of obligation, just the thought of that made me uncomfortable. But that didn't seem to be the case. I pushed that thought aside. "All right," I shrugged and grinned at him. "If that's the way you want it. You cook, I'll clean, only I'm going to make you cook the rest of the week, you know."
That didn't seem to bother him either, although he did sling the crepes pretty hard onto what I guessed was my plate. His expression was bland, too bland. We sat down to breakfast together and ate in silence, again. He waited until we were almost done to ask.
"So, what plans did you have for me for this week?"
I looked at him for a second to be sure he was asking what I thought he was asking. "There is no plan, Morgan. That's the purpose of a rest, to get away from plans. Plans and strategies and anything else that smacks of organization, and therefore stress."
His eyebrows shot up.
"We're here to relax. I don't make plans when I relax, I just relax. If I make a plan, I'm going to run into a snag, and snags aren't relaxing."
He snorted. The problem wasn't with his comprehension but with the fact that he didn't know how to do something without strategizing the hell and the fun out of it. Which might have been an exaggeration, but not much of one, I thought. If he had taken a vacation he would have made an itinerary of sights he wanted to see, at least half of which would have had research or intellectual value. Ugh. That sort of thing had its place, and this wasn't it.
"Didn't the Gatekeeper have instructions for you?"
Ah. Well. "He…" I blinked at him. "Hang on. When have you ever known that man to give a straightforward instruction on anything? Instead of a, here's your assignment, figure it out yourself?"
Morgan opened his mouth, undoubtedly to say something pointed and authoritative, but closed it again when he realized that of the two of us I was the better authority on the Gatekeeper. And then I saw him think about it. "Hmm."
"Exactly, hmm. All… well, he told me was that you needed this rest, and that I was to make sure you got it." Barely a lie, that. It wasn't all he'd told me, but it was all the instruction he'd given. "That was the assignment, he left it up to me to figure out how to carry it out. And I intend to carry it out with a complete lack of planning and forethought. Besides," I added, remembering something. "I don't know you well enough to plan anything around you."
He made a sound that was almost a chuckle. "That is true."
I was coming on too strong. Or too aggressive. I had some idea at least of how Morgan responded to aggressive, which was not well. But for a couple of days I was going to be making these wild leaps and gestures, trying to get to know him as I tried to figure out what was wrong and fix it. All in a week. I was going to have words for Rashid when we got back.
I toned it back and smiled a little at him. "Don't… didn't you ever sometimes just take a few days just to relax? To go off some place remote and just to be for a little while?"
He looked away. After a moment he went out to the deck without answering me and leaned over the rail, forearms resting on the wood. I followed him and stopped a few paces behind. It worried me a little, but if he needed to think I didn't want to crowd him.
"There hasn't been any time for that, now, with the war," he said to the treeline, after a few more moments of silence. "I have responsibilities."
"Which you can't fulfill if you're battle-weary and …" Still too aggressive. I backed down as gracefully as I could. "Even you need to take some time out from your responsibilities, delegate them elsewhere, whatever you need to do. Everyone needs some room to breathe."
"Perhaps," he said, but he didn't sound as though he believed it. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't seen what happened when people didn't, seen that it was true for myself. Rashid had seen to that. Not just the what but also the why. Not just the how.
Morgan was a good soldier but he was definitely a soldier. Not a counselor or a priest. Not a healer. Not a philosopher or anything like that. If he wasn't fighting and leading his people, if he wasn't taking care of them in some way that he could understand, and usually that was a physical way, he didn't want to be doing it. I could respect that. I could also become very annoyed with it, very quickly.
But there'd be time enough to argue with him later.
I didn't say anything as I moved up next to him, not leaning on the railing, standing straight and looking into the treeline. There was a hiking trail up the mountain that I thought he might enjoy. Some days the deer came down out of the woods to graze by the creek. I was too busy thinking about the wildlife and the things I'd done when I'd come here for a rest, sorting through them for what things he might like to do, I didn't hear him speak and didn't realize he was asking me a question until his hand came down on my shoulder. And then I jumped.
He was almost smiling, or I was almost quick enough to catch it, but by the time I'd turned around it was all but gone. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"I asked," and there was the definite note of humor in his voice. "If this is the sort of thing you do."
"No…" I drew it out while I thought of what he meant. Being someone's psychologist, probably. Someone's priest or confessor. I shook my head. "No, this was entirely Rashid's idea, the old goat. I'm a healer."
His eyes widened, which puzzled me for a moment until I caught the look of recognition. He knew me from somewhere, and I didn't think it was any of the two places I remembered him from.
"You were at the hospital. In Sicily."
Fire and blood and the smell of five kinds of human waste in the air. For a minute all I could see was black and red and then I was shaking my head, pushing it back. I didn't remember much about that except the screaming and the running, the frantic trying to get everyone out of there in one piece and in a state to continue living for just five more minutes. We'd worry about the next five minutes when we got there.
"Yes." I didn't remember him there, but it wasn't unreasonable to think he might have been there. Evidently his memory was better than mine was, for that day. Night. Whichever it had been. The sky had been black with smoke. There had been a lot of screaming.
And I had barely escaped with my life just then. Rashid had taken me aside and told me to go to Vladivostok, and while I had frozen my fingers off for three days I had lived. Hundreds hadn't. Died in their beds, at their rounds, where they stood. Humans and wizards and wounded and healthy alike. It had been a massacre. I realized after a moment that I was shaking and he was still staring at me. This wasn't supposed to be about that. On the other hand, perhaps it sealed my bona fides as a healer.
"We lost a lot of good men and women that day," he said quietly.
"Yes, we did."
Both of us on the front lines of our own battles, me in the surgery and in triage, him on the field with those shining Wardens' swords. It brought us together, a little more, in that moment. The silence eased down from uncomfortable and between strangers to quiet between comrades at arms.
"And that," I turned and leaned my back against the railing. "Is why we're here."
Morgan cast a quizzical look in my direction, but his attention was on the past and the forest now, the correlation between them obscure and unknown to me. I watched him for a moment, until I was sure he was more on the thinking side of thing than brooding, and then I went back inside.
I think it was because of the lake. Sound carries pretty far over water, and both of us were used to stretching our senses. But I couldn't blame the lake for looking over my shoulder and grinning at him.
"… What?"
"That's an ice cream truck."
"… And?"
"Race you!"
Well, I started running. The point of this whole exercise was to relax, maybe have a little fun, maybe act like a child. The conversation earlier had been neither relaxing nor childlike, but running might pound some of the darker thoughts out of my head, and ice cream from a man driving a truck was just what the doctor ordered. Although they hadn't had ice cream trucks when Morgan had been a child. I wasn't sure they had trucks. Hell, I wasn't sure they'd had ice cream. Good god, that man was old.
I think he started running after me out of habit, because he was used to looking after people younger than himself. Because he wasn't sure what I would do and he was used to being in places where people got into trouble. I'm not sure. But he was running after me, and soon we'd made it halfway around the lake. And I wanted to stop. My legs were starting to burn and breathing was becoming more of an effort than a pleasure.
But, ice cream.
I kept running.
There were lights flickering in front of my eyes when I staggered to a stop in front of the ice cream truck. All the kids were staring. I reached out and put a hand on the truck right underneath the shadow looming above me. Morgan. That sonofabitch.
"Happy?"
I pouted at him. "Winner buys."
"I thought it was customary for the loser to buy."
"Consider it a magnanimous gesture." Every word was coming out between wheezes. It wasn't that I was out of shape, I just wasn't in as good a shape as the fighter. Still, I was giggling more. In between wheezes.
Morgan knelt down next to me and I saw his face creasing with concern. The kids were still staring. "Are you all right?"
"I'll be fine. I'm just a little out of breath." From crouching to sitting, leaning up against the wheel. There was a crowd of kids still waiting their turn, it wasn't going anywhere. "Get me a Robo-pop, would ya? The red white and blue one." Just in case he was before Robo-pops, too. I decided I should start teasing him about that.
He stood and moved out of my line of view again, and eventually the kids decided that ice cream was more fun than the two strange adults who had pelted into their midst. Morgan stood in line and waited his turn patiently, like a giant in the middle of a sea of Keebler elves. The mental image had me laughing again. It's not good to laugh like that when you can't breathe.
Next thing I knew a bottle of water was tapping me on the shoulder. "Drink, first."
"O Captain, my Captain," I rolled my eyes upwards at him, but I drank. He was probably right.
He waited until I was finished and then tugged me easily to my feet, and it was the first time I was impressed by how strong he was. His grip was tighter than steel and his forearm was like rebar. I stumbled right into him, not on purpose, either. We almost dropped the ice cream.
"Are you sure you're all right?"
No. "I'm fine, Morgan. Just not in as good shape as you are." Another sip. My breath was starting to come back, although the pain in my side and legs would take a while to subside. I pulled the wrapper off my robo-pop and started to nibble at it.
"Careful with that," he said, as serious as if I'd been handling some sort of unfamiliar weapon. I looked up at him.
"It's a popsicle, Morgan, not a nuclear weapon. I'll be fine."
He gave me a look that said he wasn't so sure. I looked back at him.
"Where's your ice cream?" And then, before he got a chance to respond, I turned to the nearest kid. "Did you see him get his ice cream?"
The kid, and two others intrigued by the prospect of one adult taking another to task, shook his head. "No, ma'am."
I popped back up fast enough to make myself a little dizzy, and hoped Morgan didn't notice that part. "Well, that's not going to work." My arm through his not only enabled me to steer him towards the truck, it also enabled me to lean against him until the lights stopped flashing. Sneaky, wot? "You need ice cream. We are at an ice cream truck."
Now the man in the truck was looking at least as amused as the kids, if not more so. Morgan was at least a good foot taller than me and looked, with his weathered face and his graying hair, a good twenty years older. He probably was twice that, but then I was older than I looked to, so it all worked out. The image of my tiny self bossing him around like a wayward child amused us all. Even him, I thought.
"Um," said Morgan decisively.
"Does anyone have any recommendations?"
I opened it up to the floor and the floor responded with clamor and sticky pointing. We finally settled on a drumstick, and I think Morgan was almost laughing by the time we paid for it and started walking back around the lake. It would probably take us a good hour or so to get home, at this rate. And my legs would hate me in the morning.
And it was still all worth it just for the smile on his face, small as it was, and the sight of Warden Morgan surrounded by a cluster of babbling, happy children.
"And was that a lesson too?"
I didn't smile. Okay, maybe I smiled, but I didn't grin. Much. "Not really a lesson. More of a reminder."
"Ah." Morgan, of course, was too dignified to talk with his mouth full of drumstick. I finished my Robo-pop before he was done and started drinking my lukewarm water.
"I thought we could use a little reminding about the real world, after…" That was the part I wasn't so sure about, and I just shrugged when he looked at me to finish my sentence. It didn't make him stop looking. "After earlier, and talking about Sicily." And the incident in the Congo, by tangent. Incident. How trivial that sounded.
How big a bucket of cold water had I just thrown on the conversation. This wasn't what I'd had in mind.
"The real world?" Morgan was asking, his voice sinking low in what I guessed was a danger sign.
The hell with that. "Yes, the real world. This is a part of the real world too, the innocent part. Children playing and buying ice cream with their pocket money, quiet walks by a secluded lake. Blue skies and clear waters with no bombs falling or enemies rising from the depths." I stopped looking at him and started staring straight ahead.
He didn't seem to know what to say to that.
"Sometimes I think we forget that the real world can be kind as well as cruel."
I saw him shake his head out of the corner of my eye, and bit my tongue to keep from saying anything. "Some of us don't have the luxury of living in a world with blue skies and clear waters. Some of us…"
"Morgan, spare me, all right?" Keep a grip on your temper, Claire. Don't let him provoke you into a fight. He doesn't…
And when I caught myself thinking that he didn't know any better I started to wonder why that was. Did he just not believe that the world could be nice like this, that we could have quiet days? Was he always looking for the bad guy, the other shoe to drop, the catastrophe or the trap behind every corner? I kept going back and forth on how bad it was with him. But I didn't like the idea that someone could be so emotionally exhausted that they didn't see the bright sun shining above their heads. That he didn't see a simple pleasure even when it was right there in front of him.
"It's not…" I said, and then took my time following it up with something because I had to use words he would understand. Context. Significance. Language meant something different to everyone, and I wasn't all that used to Morgan's idiom. He was a soldier. Use that.
Something flashed through my mind at that thought, some long-forgotten gallery showing of World War II soldiers returned from the trenches. "The point is that you've been out on the front lines for so long, you've forgotten what you're fighting for. Morgan, this is the real world too. Not just the battlefield, or the strategy table, it's the kids, too. It's the sun shining far too hot on our heads, it's the grass between your toes. Have you ever just taken your shoes off and run around on the grass? When was the last time you did that?"
He was staring at me like I was speaking in another language, and I knew he understood me anyway. The shock was because nothing I described had ever occurred to him, and then there was frowning concern because of… something. I wasn't sure what.
"A long, long time ago," he said finally, whispering to the air in front of us as we walked. "A long time ago."
I wrapped my robo-pop wrapper around the stick and shoved it into the empty water bottle, then took the paper from Morgan's ice cream cone from his fingers and tucked it in there too. No littering.
"You do an important job. I know that…" On impulse, I switched bottle hands and tucked my arm into his. It startled him, but then we were walking arm and arm as though it was the most natural thing in the world. "But I think someone needs to remind you what you're fighting for. Otherwise… you're already exhausted. And how much worse are you going to feel when you can't remember what the world is like outside of the struggle?"
We could see the cabin coming up ahead, but Morgan's eyes were fixed on a point on the ground several feet in front of him. He took his time answering, and when the words came out they were rough and his voice was distant.
"I have to…" he started, although he couldn't seem to describe what it was he had to do. "There is no one else. No one. Not anymore. Luccio, she…"
The Corpsetaker had taken Luccio just after the Captain had done for her, and now the rumors still had her turning over most of her responsibilities to Morgan. I hadn't believed it, considering my more trustworthy sources said differently, but I wondered if Morgan was taking the responsibility on himself rather than having it turned over to him.
"She isn't, physically, she simply isn't as capable as she has been, and the transition…"
"None of us know how that kind of thing affects a body, Morgan. Usually the victim doesn't live past the first twenty four hours, simply because anyone who would do that to another person…" I put my hand on his arm again and we walked together in silence for a little longer.
"Of the other Wardens there are maybe a handful who are as experienced or as capable. The rest are … are children, or are untrustworthy and reckless."
Like Dresden. But I didn't bring it up.
"Then doesn't that make it all the more important that you keep yourself fit for your duties? Properly fit, Morgan, that includes the mind and heart as well as the body."
He didn't seem to have an answer for that.
We took our dinner out on the porch since the heat wasn't entirely unbearable. He'd been quiet ever since we'd got back from the ice cream expedition, but with good reason. We talked as much as necessary to get dinner made and decide that we wanted to have it out on the porch, and then we sat and ate in silence.
We weren't the only ones.
I hadn't realized it before, but it occurred to me as Morgan paused to stare at a deer with his fork halfway to his mouth that he wouldn't have just sat and looked at the wildlife in any of the remarkable places he had been. When he traveled it was always business, never to simply sit and look. I wondered how long it had been since he'd seen the world, whether it was children eating ice cream or deer eating the leaves off the old tomato plants, with such clear simplicity.
"It…" I started to say something, but stopped myself from interrupting the moment. He looked at me anyway, then back down, continued to eat without further interruption and I could have kicked myself.
Instead I cleared the plates and set them to be taken back in and went and stood next to him, watching the dusk creep in. And thinking that I should be setting a bug zapper spell if I wanted to keep the idyllic illusion.
"You were right," Morgan rasped next to me. It was sudden enough to make me almost jump. Not quite, but almost. "The Gatekeeper was right."
Excellent. But right about what? Or which?
"He usually is," I temporized.
Morgan shook his head, leaning forward until his hair was falling mostly out of the ponytail and over his face. "This war has only lasted a few years, and it seems to have been going on for …"
Oh. Right about that. "Centuries." Even for us, wizards who could live for at least a few centuries. We were still human. A few years was still a long time, in the moment.
"Yes. It…" Morgan struggled for words and I kept silent. "So many have died. So many others are lost, disappeared, injured, we don't know where or how badly. So much of what we built has been destroyed, and because of…"
My hand clamped down on his shoulder before I knew what I was going to do. "Don't think about that," I told him. It sounded useless. "Not now. It won't help anything." And it might continue to do some serious damage.
"How?" He looked up at me. I understood, off that look, why people were afraid of him.
"Let it go. This isn't the place for it, this is a place for resting. A sanctuary."
There's a cadence to one form of teaching, I could never remember the name of it. There's a rhythm and cadence that goes with the voice, an up and down, almost singsong way of speaking. It's meant to entrance the student without drowning their will in your words. It also works well to calm down agitated people as long as they're not violent, control small children, generally to draw people into a state of receptive thought. It seemed to be working on Morgan, too.
He looked up at me as I continued. "There is a time for contemplating one's past actions and there is a time to realize that the past is complete and you cannot change it by dwelling. No matter how much you may wish to." I always got a bit archaic when I fell into this rhythm of speaking. "This isn't the time to think about what might have been, or what you could have done differently, and you have made yourself miserable enough with grieving. Some is expected, too much will cripple you. Let it go."
His eyes were a little wide. He was staring, and I didn't want to stop talking for fear of breaking the moment. I realized my fingers were petting his hair. That was new.
"Let it go. It's not doing you any good."
And then he finally looked away, and I could stop petting and talking, and it was something of a relief. I went and leaned against the railing and stared out at the woods, forcing myself to calm down after the tension of that moment. I was going to kill the Old Man when I saw him again. Or at least give him a good, loud talking to.
This was precisely why I hated that kind of work. It was so tenuous, so delicate. One wrong word or the right word at the wrong time could make the difference between grief or rage or relief. It always made me nervous; I much preferred working with the body as opposed to the heart or mind. At least with the body I knew how everything should work. I found myself singing to calm down, a habit I had picked up hauling water buckets as a child and never quite gotten rid of. The songs were different but the habit was still the same.
"Why do you still run when you …" I deliberately fudged the last few words of that. "Life will pass you by when you move this quickly…"
He was staring at me again, but at least it was a more normal sort of staring. The kind you do when someone you know does something odd. I shrugged a little and gave him as sheepish a smile as I could manage before I had to turn away or risk showing him my blush. I think he chuckled. I just tried to restrict myself to a low hum.
At least until I heard the voice coming from behind me, smooth and deep and low and the sort of quality you usually heard being snapped up by recording studios. I didn't dare turn. Clearly Morgan had been possessed by a succubus and looking at him would have me under his spell quicker than you could say what the crap?
Morgan sang. Who knew.
Better than I did, too. His voice wound through the lyrics to Knocking on Heaven's Door, or at least some of the first verse, like he meant to break hearts. Morgan could sing. Except he, too, trailed off into silence and when I finally dared to look over at him because who knew what I'd see it was just him, giving me a sort of inquisitive look as if he wondered why I was hiding. He was singing! It was unheard of. And he wondered why I was hiding.
"I didn't know you sing," I managed not to sound like an idiot when I said it. He laughed, soft, not unkind.
"I didn't know you sing."
"Only when I'm nervous," I shrugged. "Bad habit."
That almost-grin didn't leave his face. "Do you dance, too?"
"Oh god, no. No, I have three left feet and two right ones. No, I don't dance. At all. Ever."
He gave me a look that I could only describe as speculative, but I was too afraid to ask what he was plotting. Instead I babbled something about had he ever done a campfire sing-along, anything to change the subject. I had mentioned I sang when I was nervous, yes? I don't even remember what I picked. Something he hadn't heard of, it had played within the last ten years. All right, that was a bit harsh.
Puff the magic dragon?
He did laugh at that. I wasn't sure why, except for the sheer ridiculousness of it. I realized I hadn't ever heard him just laugh like that, genuine amusement and enthusiasm, relaxation in the moment. Even he looked a little startled, afterwards.
And about then the inspiration struck me, mostly out of habit, partially because I was pretty sure he had at least heard of the Beatles, even if he wasn't a fan. It turned out he was. We wound our way through Good Day Sunshine, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, and a few others. I let him handle While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Too depressing. Afterwards he looked pensive and withdrawn, so I diverted it into traditional songs. Not the after-the-battle kind. Young women's courtship songs. Court all night and sleep all day.
He knew a few of those, too, and some I hadn't heard. We played song tag back and forth until it became a conversation, one that stopped abruptly when I realized I'd launched into Danny Boy. Why were all the most beautiful songs the most depressing?
Night had fallen sometime when we hadn't been looking. My legs ached from all the running I'd been doing. We stared at each other, and then at the deck or the forest or anywhere but at each other, for a little while. Then I murmured something about needing to rest and went inside. I remember I woke up much later to the sound of the door quietly closing, but I don't know what time he finally slept. Not too long after that, I hoped.
Fandom: The Dresden Files (book)
Characters: Morgan, OC
Word Count: 5,203
Rating: PG
Summary: Morgan is going to take a leave of absence whether he wants to or not.
"Whispering world; A sigh of sighs
The ebb and flow of the ocean tides
One breath, one word may end or may start
A hope in a place of the lover's heart
Hope has a place in the lover's heart."
-- Enya
I woke at dawn and said my meditation, rolling out of bed and stretching before I listened to see if Morgan was up and about yet. Which, upon reflection, was a silly sort of question. Of course he was up and about, he was probably getting up around the same time I was, and out of a similar reflex.
We came out of our bedrooms at the same time. I hoped I didn't look as bleary as I felt. Getting up at the crack of doom I might have been used to, but I wasn't a combat veteran or a soldier, ready within a minute of waking up. And despite that, I didn't want to embarrass myself. Silly impulse.
"Morning," I waved, maybe a little too cheerfully.
"Good morning."
He went for the pitcher of water in the icebox, I went for the shower. I didn't stay awake and dirty longer than I could help it. By the time I got out he was making what looked like pancakes. No, crepes. I revised my estimation of him upwards several notches. And wondered why he was doing this.
"You don't have to do that, you know."
Morgan glanced up at me with something like an arch look, except I would have sworn he'd almost rolled his eyes at me. "I know."
For all I knew, it was relaxing to him. He didn't seem to be doing it out of a sense of obligation, just the thought of that made me uncomfortable. But that didn't seem to be the case. I pushed that thought aside. "All right," I shrugged and grinned at him. "If that's the way you want it. You cook, I'll clean, only I'm going to make you cook the rest of the week, you know."
That didn't seem to bother him either, although he did sling the crepes pretty hard onto what I guessed was my plate. His expression was bland, too bland. We sat down to breakfast together and ate in silence, again. He waited until we were almost done to ask.
"So, what plans did you have for me for this week?"
I looked at him for a second to be sure he was asking what I thought he was asking. "There is no plan, Morgan. That's the purpose of a rest, to get away from plans. Plans and strategies and anything else that smacks of organization, and therefore stress."
His eyebrows shot up.
"We're here to relax. I don't make plans when I relax, I just relax. If I make a plan, I'm going to run into a snag, and snags aren't relaxing."
He snorted. The problem wasn't with his comprehension but with the fact that he didn't know how to do something without strategizing the hell and the fun out of it. Which might have been an exaggeration, but not much of one, I thought. If he had taken a vacation he would have made an itinerary of sights he wanted to see, at least half of which would have had research or intellectual value. Ugh. That sort of thing had its place, and this wasn't it.
"Didn't the Gatekeeper have instructions for you?"
Ah. Well. "He…" I blinked at him. "Hang on. When have you ever known that man to give a straightforward instruction on anything? Instead of a, here's your assignment, figure it out yourself?"
Morgan opened his mouth, undoubtedly to say something pointed and authoritative, but closed it again when he realized that of the two of us I was the better authority on the Gatekeeper. And then I saw him think about it. "Hmm."
"Exactly, hmm. All… well, he told me was that you needed this rest, and that I was to make sure you got it." Barely a lie, that. It wasn't all he'd told me, but it was all the instruction he'd given. "That was the assignment, he left it up to me to figure out how to carry it out. And I intend to carry it out with a complete lack of planning and forethought. Besides," I added, remembering something. "I don't know you well enough to plan anything around you."
He made a sound that was almost a chuckle. "That is true."
I was coming on too strong. Or too aggressive. I had some idea at least of how Morgan responded to aggressive, which was not well. But for a couple of days I was going to be making these wild leaps and gestures, trying to get to know him as I tried to figure out what was wrong and fix it. All in a week. I was going to have words for Rashid when we got back.
I toned it back and smiled a little at him. "Don't… didn't you ever sometimes just take a few days just to relax? To go off some place remote and just to be for a little while?"
He looked away. After a moment he went out to the deck without answering me and leaned over the rail, forearms resting on the wood. I followed him and stopped a few paces behind. It worried me a little, but if he needed to think I didn't want to crowd him.
"There hasn't been any time for that, now, with the war," he said to the treeline, after a few more moments of silence. "I have responsibilities."
"Which you can't fulfill if you're battle-weary and …" Still too aggressive. I backed down as gracefully as I could. "Even you need to take some time out from your responsibilities, delegate them elsewhere, whatever you need to do. Everyone needs some room to breathe."
"Perhaps," he said, but he didn't sound as though he believed it. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't seen what happened when people didn't, seen that it was true for myself. Rashid had seen to that. Not just the what but also the why. Not just the how.
Morgan was a good soldier but he was definitely a soldier. Not a counselor or a priest. Not a healer. Not a philosopher or anything like that. If he wasn't fighting and leading his people, if he wasn't taking care of them in some way that he could understand, and usually that was a physical way, he didn't want to be doing it. I could respect that. I could also become very annoyed with it, very quickly.
But there'd be time enough to argue with him later.
I didn't say anything as I moved up next to him, not leaning on the railing, standing straight and looking into the treeline. There was a hiking trail up the mountain that I thought he might enjoy. Some days the deer came down out of the woods to graze by the creek. I was too busy thinking about the wildlife and the things I'd done when I'd come here for a rest, sorting through them for what things he might like to do, I didn't hear him speak and didn't realize he was asking me a question until his hand came down on my shoulder. And then I jumped.
He was almost smiling, or I was almost quick enough to catch it, but by the time I'd turned around it was all but gone. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"I asked," and there was the definite note of humor in his voice. "If this is the sort of thing you do."
"No…" I drew it out while I thought of what he meant. Being someone's psychologist, probably. Someone's priest or confessor. I shook my head. "No, this was entirely Rashid's idea, the old goat. I'm a healer."
His eyes widened, which puzzled me for a moment until I caught the look of recognition. He knew me from somewhere, and I didn't think it was any of the two places I remembered him from.
"You were at the hospital. In Sicily."
Fire and blood and the smell of five kinds of human waste in the air. For a minute all I could see was black and red and then I was shaking my head, pushing it back. I didn't remember much about that except the screaming and the running, the frantic trying to get everyone out of there in one piece and in a state to continue living for just five more minutes. We'd worry about the next five minutes when we got there.
"Yes." I didn't remember him there, but it wasn't unreasonable to think he might have been there. Evidently his memory was better than mine was, for that day. Night. Whichever it had been. The sky had been black with smoke. There had been a lot of screaming.
And I had barely escaped with my life just then. Rashid had taken me aside and told me to go to Vladivostok, and while I had frozen my fingers off for three days I had lived. Hundreds hadn't. Died in their beds, at their rounds, where they stood. Humans and wizards and wounded and healthy alike. It had been a massacre. I realized after a moment that I was shaking and he was still staring at me. This wasn't supposed to be about that. On the other hand, perhaps it sealed my bona fides as a healer.
"We lost a lot of good men and women that day," he said quietly.
"Yes, we did."
Both of us on the front lines of our own battles, me in the surgery and in triage, him on the field with those shining Wardens' swords. It brought us together, a little more, in that moment. The silence eased down from uncomfortable and between strangers to quiet between comrades at arms.
"And that," I turned and leaned my back against the railing. "Is why we're here."
Morgan cast a quizzical look in my direction, but his attention was on the past and the forest now, the correlation between them obscure and unknown to me. I watched him for a moment, until I was sure he was more on the thinking side of thing than brooding, and then I went back inside.
I think it was because of the lake. Sound carries pretty far over water, and both of us were used to stretching our senses. But I couldn't blame the lake for looking over my shoulder and grinning at him.
"… What?"
"That's an ice cream truck."
"… And?"
"Race you!"
Well, I started running. The point of this whole exercise was to relax, maybe have a little fun, maybe act like a child. The conversation earlier had been neither relaxing nor childlike, but running might pound some of the darker thoughts out of my head, and ice cream from a man driving a truck was just what the doctor ordered. Although they hadn't had ice cream trucks when Morgan had been a child. I wasn't sure they had trucks. Hell, I wasn't sure they'd had ice cream. Good god, that man was old.
I think he started running after me out of habit, because he was used to looking after people younger than himself. Because he wasn't sure what I would do and he was used to being in places where people got into trouble. I'm not sure. But he was running after me, and soon we'd made it halfway around the lake. And I wanted to stop. My legs were starting to burn and breathing was becoming more of an effort than a pleasure.
But, ice cream.
I kept running.
There were lights flickering in front of my eyes when I staggered to a stop in front of the ice cream truck. All the kids were staring. I reached out and put a hand on the truck right underneath the shadow looming above me. Morgan. That sonofabitch.
"Happy?"
I pouted at him. "Winner buys."
"I thought it was customary for the loser to buy."
"Consider it a magnanimous gesture." Every word was coming out between wheezes. It wasn't that I was out of shape, I just wasn't in as good a shape as the fighter. Still, I was giggling more. In between wheezes.
Morgan knelt down next to me and I saw his face creasing with concern. The kids were still staring. "Are you all right?"
"I'll be fine. I'm just a little out of breath." From crouching to sitting, leaning up against the wheel. There was a crowd of kids still waiting their turn, it wasn't going anywhere. "Get me a Robo-pop, would ya? The red white and blue one." Just in case he was before Robo-pops, too. I decided I should start teasing him about that.
He stood and moved out of my line of view again, and eventually the kids decided that ice cream was more fun than the two strange adults who had pelted into their midst. Morgan stood in line and waited his turn patiently, like a giant in the middle of a sea of Keebler elves. The mental image had me laughing again. It's not good to laugh like that when you can't breathe.
Next thing I knew a bottle of water was tapping me on the shoulder. "Drink, first."
"O Captain, my Captain," I rolled my eyes upwards at him, but I drank. He was probably right.
He waited until I was finished and then tugged me easily to my feet, and it was the first time I was impressed by how strong he was. His grip was tighter than steel and his forearm was like rebar. I stumbled right into him, not on purpose, either. We almost dropped the ice cream.
"Are you sure you're all right?"
No. "I'm fine, Morgan. Just not in as good shape as you are." Another sip. My breath was starting to come back, although the pain in my side and legs would take a while to subside. I pulled the wrapper off my robo-pop and started to nibble at it.
"Careful with that," he said, as serious as if I'd been handling some sort of unfamiliar weapon. I looked up at him.
"It's a popsicle, Morgan, not a nuclear weapon. I'll be fine."
He gave me a look that said he wasn't so sure. I looked back at him.
"Where's your ice cream?" And then, before he got a chance to respond, I turned to the nearest kid. "Did you see him get his ice cream?"
The kid, and two others intrigued by the prospect of one adult taking another to task, shook his head. "No, ma'am."
I popped back up fast enough to make myself a little dizzy, and hoped Morgan didn't notice that part. "Well, that's not going to work." My arm through his not only enabled me to steer him towards the truck, it also enabled me to lean against him until the lights stopped flashing. Sneaky, wot? "You need ice cream. We are at an ice cream truck."
Now the man in the truck was looking at least as amused as the kids, if not more so. Morgan was at least a good foot taller than me and looked, with his weathered face and his graying hair, a good twenty years older. He probably was twice that, but then I was older than I looked to, so it all worked out. The image of my tiny self bossing him around like a wayward child amused us all. Even him, I thought.
"Um," said Morgan decisively.
"Does anyone have any recommendations?"
I opened it up to the floor and the floor responded with clamor and sticky pointing. We finally settled on a drumstick, and I think Morgan was almost laughing by the time we paid for it and started walking back around the lake. It would probably take us a good hour or so to get home, at this rate. And my legs would hate me in the morning.
And it was still all worth it just for the smile on his face, small as it was, and the sight of Warden Morgan surrounded by a cluster of babbling, happy children.
"And was that a lesson too?"
I didn't smile. Okay, maybe I smiled, but I didn't grin. Much. "Not really a lesson. More of a reminder."
"Ah." Morgan, of course, was too dignified to talk with his mouth full of drumstick. I finished my Robo-pop before he was done and started drinking my lukewarm water.
"I thought we could use a little reminding about the real world, after…" That was the part I wasn't so sure about, and I just shrugged when he looked at me to finish my sentence. It didn't make him stop looking. "After earlier, and talking about Sicily." And the incident in the Congo, by tangent. Incident. How trivial that sounded.
How big a bucket of cold water had I just thrown on the conversation. This wasn't what I'd had in mind.
"The real world?" Morgan was asking, his voice sinking low in what I guessed was a danger sign.
The hell with that. "Yes, the real world. This is a part of the real world too, the innocent part. Children playing and buying ice cream with their pocket money, quiet walks by a secluded lake. Blue skies and clear waters with no bombs falling or enemies rising from the depths." I stopped looking at him and started staring straight ahead.
He didn't seem to know what to say to that.
"Sometimes I think we forget that the real world can be kind as well as cruel."
I saw him shake his head out of the corner of my eye, and bit my tongue to keep from saying anything. "Some of us don't have the luxury of living in a world with blue skies and clear waters. Some of us…"
"Morgan, spare me, all right?" Keep a grip on your temper, Claire. Don't let him provoke you into a fight. He doesn't…
And when I caught myself thinking that he didn't know any better I started to wonder why that was. Did he just not believe that the world could be nice like this, that we could have quiet days? Was he always looking for the bad guy, the other shoe to drop, the catastrophe or the trap behind every corner? I kept going back and forth on how bad it was with him. But I didn't like the idea that someone could be so emotionally exhausted that they didn't see the bright sun shining above their heads. That he didn't see a simple pleasure even when it was right there in front of him.
"It's not…" I said, and then took my time following it up with something because I had to use words he would understand. Context. Significance. Language meant something different to everyone, and I wasn't all that used to Morgan's idiom. He was a soldier. Use that.
Something flashed through my mind at that thought, some long-forgotten gallery showing of World War II soldiers returned from the trenches. "The point is that you've been out on the front lines for so long, you've forgotten what you're fighting for. Morgan, this is the real world too. Not just the battlefield, or the strategy table, it's the kids, too. It's the sun shining far too hot on our heads, it's the grass between your toes. Have you ever just taken your shoes off and run around on the grass? When was the last time you did that?"
He was staring at me like I was speaking in another language, and I knew he understood me anyway. The shock was because nothing I described had ever occurred to him, and then there was frowning concern because of… something. I wasn't sure what.
"A long, long time ago," he said finally, whispering to the air in front of us as we walked. "A long time ago."
I wrapped my robo-pop wrapper around the stick and shoved it into the empty water bottle, then took the paper from Morgan's ice cream cone from his fingers and tucked it in there too. No littering.
"You do an important job. I know that…" On impulse, I switched bottle hands and tucked my arm into his. It startled him, but then we were walking arm and arm as though it was the most natural thing in the world. "But I think someone needs to remind you what you're fighting for. Otherwise… you're already exhausted. And how much worse are you going to feel when you can't remember what the world is like outside of the struggle?"
We could see the cabin coming up ahead, but Morgan's eyes were fixed on a point on the ground several feet in front of him. He took his time answering, and when the words came out they were rough and his voice was distant.
"I have to…" he started, although he couldn't seem to describe what it was he had to do. "There is no one else. No one. Not anymore. Luccio, she…"
The Corpsetaker had taken Luccio just after the Captain had done for her, and now the rumors still had her turning over most of her responsibilities to Morgan. I hadn't believed it, considering my more trustworthy sources said differently, but I wondered if Morgan was taking the responsibility on himself rather than having it turned over to him.
"She isn't, physically, she simply isn't as capable as she has been, and the transition…"
"None of us know how that kind of thing affects a body, Morgan. Usually the victim doesn't live past the first twenty four hours, simply because anyone who would do that to another person…" I put my hand on his arm again and we walked together in silence for a little longer.
"Of the other Wardens there are maybe a handful who are as experienced or as capable. The rest are … are children, or are untrustworthy and reckless."
Like Dresden. But I didn't bring it up.
"Then doesn't that make it all the more important that you keep yourself fit for your duties? Properly fit, Morgan, that includes the mind and heart as well as the body."
He didn't seem to have an answer for that.
We took our dinner out on the porch since the heat wasn't entirely unbearable. He'd been quiet ever since we'd got back from the ice cream expedition, but with good reason. We talked as much as necessary to get dinner made and decide that we wanted to have it out on the porch, and then we sat and ate in silence.
We weren't the only ones.
I hadn't realized it before, but it occurred to me as Morgan paused to stare at a deer with his fork halfway to his mouth that he wouldn't have just sat and looked at the wildlife in any of the remarkable places he had been. When he traveled it was always business, never to simply sit and look. I wondered how long it had been since he'd seen the world, whether it was children eating ice cream or deer eating the leaves off the old tomato plants, with such clear simplicity.
"It…" I started to say something, but stopped myself from interrupting the moment. He looked at me anyway, then back down, continued to eat without further interruption and I could have kicked myself.
Instead I cleared the plates and set them to be taken back in and went and stood next to him, watching the dusk creep in. And thinking that I should be setting a bug zapper spell if I wanted to keep the idyllic illusion.
"You were right," Morgan rasped next to me. It was sudden enough to make me almost jump. Not quite, but almost. "The Gatekeeper was right."
Excellent. But right about what? Or which?
"He usually is," I temporized.
Morgan shook his head, leaning forward until his hair was falling mostly out of the ponytail and over his face. "This war has only lasted a few years, and it seems to have been going on for …"
Oh. Right about that. "Centuries." Even for us, wizards who could live for at least a few centuries. We were still human. A few years was still a long time, in the moment.
"Yes. It…" Morgan struggled for words and I kept silent. "So many have died. So many others are lost, disappeared, injured, we don't know where or how badly. So much of what we built has been destroyed, and because of…"
My hand clamped down on his shoulder before I knew what I was going to do. "Don't think about that," I told him. It sounded useless. "Not now. It won't help anything." And it might continue to do some serious damage.
"How?" He looked up at me. I understood, off that look, why people were afraid of him.
"Let it go. This isn't the place for it, this is a place for resting. A sanctuary."
There's a cadence to one form of teaching, I could never remember the name of it. There's a rhythm and cadence that goes with the voice, an up and down, almost singsong way of speaking. It's meant to entrance the student without drowning their will in your words. It also works well to calm down agitated people as long as they're not violent, control small children, generally to draw people into a state of receptive thought. It seemed to be working on Morgan, too.
He looked up at me as I continued. "There is a time for contemplating one's past actions and there is a time to realize that the past is complete and you cannot change it by dwelling. No matter how much you may wish to." I always got a bit archaic when I fell into this rhythm of speaking. "This isn't the time to think about what might have been, or what you could have done differently, and you have made yourself miserable enough with grieving. Some is expected, too much will cripple you. Let it go."
His eyes were a little wide. He was staring, and I didn't want to stop talking for fear of breaking the moment. I realized my fingers were petting his hair. That was new.
"Let it go. It's not doing you any good."
And then he finally looked away, and I could stop petting and talking, and it was something of a relief. I went and leaned against the railing and stared out at the woods, forcing myself to calm down after the tension of that moment. I was going to kill the Old Man when I saw him again. Or at least give him a good, loud talking to.
This was precisely why I hated that kind of work. It was so tenuous, so delicate. One wrong word or the right word at the wrong time could make the difference between grief or rage or relief. It always made me nervous; I much preferred working with the body as opposed to the heart or mind. At least with the body I knew how everything should work. I found myself singing to calm down, a habit I had picked up hauling water buckets as a child and never quite gotten rid of. The songs were different but the habit was still the same.
"Why do you still run when you …" I deliberately fudged the last few words of that. "Life will pass you by when you move this quickly…"
He was staring at me again, but at least it was a more normal sort of staring. The kind you do when someone you know does something odd. I shrugged a little and gave him as sheepish a smile as I could manage before I had to turn away or risk showing him my blush. I think he chuckled. I just tried to restrict myself to a low hum.
At least until I heard the voice coming from behind me, smooth and deep and low and the sort of quality you usually heard being snapped up by recording studios. I didn't dare turn. Clearly Morgan had been possessed by a succubus and looking at him would have me under his spell quicker than you could say what the crap?
Morgan sang. Who knew.
Better than I did, too. His voice wound through the lyrics to Knocking on Heaven's Door, or at least some of the first verse, like he meant to break hearts. Morgan could sing. Except he, too, trailed off into silence and when I finally dared to look over at him because who knew what I'd see it was just him, giving me a sort of inquisitive look as if he wondered why I was hiding. He was singing! It was unheard of. And he wondered why I was hiding.
"I didn't know you sing," I managed not to sound like an idiot when I said it. He laughed, soft, not unkind.
"I didn't know you sing."
"Only when I'm nervous," I shrugged. "Bad habit."
That almost-grin didn't leave his face. "Do you dance, too?"
"Oh god, no. No, I have three left feet and two right ones. No, I don't dance. At all. Ever."
He gave me a look that I could only describe as speculative, but I was too afraid to ask what he was plotting. Instead I babbled something about had he ever done a campfire sing-along, anything to change the subject. I had mentioned I sang when I was nervous, yes? I don't even remember what I picked. Something he hadn't heard of, it had played within the last ten years. All right, that was a bit harsh.
Puff the magic dragon?
He did laugh at that. I wasn't sure why, except for the sheer ridiculousness of it. I realized I hadn't ever heard him just laugh like that, genuine amusement and enthusiasm, relaxation in the moment. Even he looked a little startled, afterwards.
And about then the inspiration struck me, mostly out of habit, partially because I was pretty sure he had at least heard of the Beatles, even if he wasn't a fan. It turned out he was. We wound our way through Good Day Sunshine, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, and a few others. I let him handle While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Too depressing. Afterwards he looked pensive and withdrawn, so I diverted it into traditional songs. Not the after-the-battle kind. Young women's courtship songs. Court all night and sleep all day.
He knew a few of those, too, and some I hadn't heard. We played song tag back and forth until it became a conversation, one that stopped abruptly when I realized I'd launched into Danny Boy. Why were all the most beautiful songs the most depressing?
Night had fallen sometime when we hadn't been looking. My legs ached from all the running I'd been doing. We stared at each other, and then at the deck or the forest or anywhere but at each other, for a little while. Then I murmured something about needing to rest and went inside. I remember I woke up much later to the sound of the door quietly closing, but I don't know what time he finally slept. Not too long after that, I hoped.