[Closed] The Light You Used to Bring

[Desiderio Morandi]

an abandoned farmhouse

evening on the 27th of roalis, 2720

W

hatever else he had lost, now, he had not lost his solidity. He had been frightened for a moment that his knees might buckle underneath him, if he tried to stand; but he pushed himself up with nothing less than his usual rigor, and took her weight with reliable, mechanical efficiency.

And he would do – or be – nothing more. He would do his duty, no matter how painful; he would be a solid arm to hold, and a solid voice in her defense at Brunnhold, and then he would give her over, as was his duty. As had always been his duty.

It was his strength that was needed, not that weakness.

He was glad, at least, to have the thick, stiff material of his dress uniform between him and her once again. Slow, careful steps. He was grateful for the even footing of the hardwood floor; he did not think there was anything to snag or bump her ankle.

Pup was her shadow, the whole way to the bed. He heard his claws clacking on the dusty wood, one step at a time along with them. He tried not to be grateful for the comfort; that, too, would be taken away from her. He tried not to entertain any fantasies about the opposite.

He heard the hard impact of Shadow on the bed first, the creak and rattle of mattress and frame. The mattress was likely not very good. He frowned, letting go of her reluctantly as she sat on the edge; he thought that he could imagine the uneven pressure of the springs.

I’m used to going without, he imagined her saying, in her soft, matter-of-fact voice, I’ll be fine.

Her thanks was a soft murmur. He could not seem to accept it, either, and so he grunted sharply again. He heard the sloppy sounds of Shadow licking her.

He had paused, hesitant. His fingertips were at the collar of his jacket again. It seemed highly improper, to take it off in such close proximity to her bed, and with her in it. Under normal circumstances, he would have done nothing of the sort. If anyone walked in on them at that very moment, what might they think? There was an awkward prickling in his cheeks once again.

Her voice came again, and he nearly jumped.

A good family dog, she said. He had been on the verge of wishing her a comfortable sleep, in his usual harsh, taciturn way. Instead, all that came out was a strangled clearing of his throat.

“I do not make promises which I cannot keep.” His voice was quieter than he had expected. He had not, in fact, expected to say that at all.

He had not. He had never, even back then. Pull yourself together, Inspector, he ordered himself again sharply.

It had not been a children’s story, wherein if only he had been a stronger, he might have prevented her going. It had not been his promise to break or to keep. He could not have, should not have, done anything. It had been a fact of life; passivity happened. The children were taken to Brunnhold or Anastou, as befit them. That was the way the world worked.

Wanting to keep his hands busy, he had already begun to unbutton his jacket, stiff and mechanical. He paused at the bottom, listening to Shadow lap at her again with his tongue. “I shall do all that I can,” he added. “If not me, then a colleague, or one of my staff.”

The Beauvilliers’ staff, he nearly said; after the wedding, he would have a household himself, and he would have to think of hiring servants. The Beauvilliers had promised a sizeable property as a gift, and a sizeable property was very good for a dog.

(Like Briarwood Hall, he thought, aching. Only this time – it was his name the Beauvilliers wanted, to strengthen their new wealth with his ancestry. Strange. He had been willing to give up his name for her, once, no matter how important Father had been to him. Only he had prepared himself for that for nothing, in the end. A year in Bastia, and Mother had behaved as if she had never heard the name Steerpike in her life.)

“I shall see that Shadow keeps the name which you have given him,” he said, his voice all the harsher and colder for the burning in his eyes. He took off his jacket matter-of-factly; far from chill, it was almost a relief to be out of the thing. He extended it through the dark to her. “Here is my jacket,” he said sharply. Then: “Please.”

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Roalis 27, 2720 - Evening
An Abandoned Farmhouse

“I do not make promises which I cannot keep.”

Desiderio spoke so quietly that even in the silence of the house, Aurelie found herself straining to hear him. Like he'd not meant to say it at all. Her fist tightened in the remains of sheets worn through by time and nature. Can you not...? Aurelie wondered if he would have had such trouble keeping this one if the request came from someone else.

That clipped, Bastian-accented sentence struck her harder than if he'd just refused. Guilt, that's what the feeling was. She leaned some of her weight on Shadow; the mattress squeaked under her as she shifted. A useless guilt, as guilt so often was. But familiar.

And still he promised to try. Aurelie was grateful; that was all she could ask. All she could really want—that he should try. She hoped Desiderio would take Shadow home with him. The important part was that he was taken care of, but she did hope... Aurelie would never know if he did or not, of course. Desiderio could have lied to her, could have told her he would take Shadow home and then given him away to someone else. He had not, and she was grateful for that too. It was a silly feeling, and she felt it anyway.

"Thank you," she said again, softly. Her throat ached, but her voice was steady enough.

What she really wanted to do was apologize. That, too, was absurd. There was nothing either of them could have done. Any promises she'd made she had every intention of keeping. No amount of good intentions or desire could have changed anything; she was what she was, in the end. Aurelie couldn't imagine Desiderio wanted to hear that from her.

It was the second promise he made that broke her. Said as if to someone he loathed—and likely, that's what she was to him—but... Why? Desiderio was holding out his jacket to her somewhere, she knew, but Aurelie found she couldn't move. If she moved, she was certain she would cry. Shadow would keep the name she had...?

She couldn't leave him holding the jacket out to her forever, threat of tears or not. Aurelie drew a deep breath, smelling more than a little bit of Shadow's unwashed fur, and straightened. She reached out into the darkness carefully, fingertips moving cautiously through the air until they brushed lightly on the jacket. She breathed shallowly through her nose, trying to keep herself quiet. Her fist closed more firmly around it. Thank you, she opened her mouth to say.

"I'm sorry," was what came out of her mouth instead. Miserable and strangled as it was useless to say. She pulled the jacket close, holding onto it giving her something to do with her hands. They had started to tremble. Now, she knew, she was crying. Bells and chimes, why was she doing this? The jacket was stiff and uncomfortable with buttons that pressed into her and braid that refused to bend, but it was warm and large enough she thought it might swallow her up. Please, he'd said at the end.

Desiderio couldn't see her, she reminded herself, but he could hear her. She tried her best to stay quiet, now. Quiet as she was, Shadow wasn't fooled. He whined, and pushed his head against her. Aurelie couldn't think of what she'd done to earn the affection of something so good; she'd deserved precious little of it from anyone else. She was fiercely glad he would have someone to take care of him, and love him as he deserved.

[Desiderio Morandi]

an abandoned farmhouse

evening on the 27th of roalis, 2720

M

ore gratefulness which he did not deserve. This was paltry, and more cruel than it was kind, besides. She had not responded to the latter of his promises, and a part of him wished she would not. It was enough to have spoken it. She had no reason to believe that he would keep it – he bore little resemblance to the boy he had been, and even then, he might well have broken the greatest promise of all – but he knew that he would. That would have to be enough.

He felt the jacket stir, then bunch up somewhere far below his hand.

A part of him was – no, not disappointed. There was plenty of room; there had been little chance of their hands touching. He had wanted nothing of the sort, anyway.

It would only have made everything worse. What would he have done? Hold her hand? He had not done that in a very long time; the man he was now might as well never have done it at all. The hand of an executioner was not a comforting hand to hold.

I’m sorry, she said. He was so dumbstruck that he nearly forgot to let go of the jacket. His fist clenched for a moment; he felt a light, gentle tug, and he let go, uncurling his fingers as if the muscles were locked in place. His throat was constricted. The lump seemed to have swollen; his eyes were burning horribly. He shut them, but they kept on burning, and the moisture on his lashes was cold in the evening breeze.

Sorry for what? For his eyes? For the jacket? For pup? Because of the way he had spoken? Or, for –

Her voice had been as tight and strangled as he felt. He was terrified to move. He felt again as if he were a dam, a spider’s web of hairline cracks stretching across it. She could not see him, he reminded himself, feeling one cold tear-track slip down his cheek. Even if she could have, it was likely too dark to see much of anything by now. Still, he did not know what sound would escape him if he opened his mouth. He could feel a hitch rising in his breath.

He cleared his throat instead. Once, then twice. Sharply and well. His hand fell back to his side; it had frozen in the air like a toy soldier’s, and now his muscles ached.

There was a rustle of stiff wool, and then a long whine. She had Shadow, at least. She would not, eventually.

“No,” he found himself saying, with a sharp jerk of his chin. “You have done nothing which warrants an apology. Least of all to me.” He sounded no less abrupt or cold; rather, as if he were talking to a recruit.

(He had never gotten the hang of it, of befriending them, of putting them at ease. The shy ones were all so frightened of him; even the hard workers, the ones for whom he had written letters of recommendation, always seemed to think they were in trouble with him. It made him an effective hand at discipline, even when that was the last thing that he wanted.)

He flushed, suddenly strangely ashamed. He turned and began to pick his way carefully back through the dark.

He knew she had not been permitted to keep any animals, the last ten years; he had asked once, as a boy, in one of his fits of crying. Someone had explained to him that passive galdori, like children, could not be trusted with the responsibility. With an unexpected bite of bitter anger, he thought to himself – he had never known anyone more suited to it, even as a little girl.

How was this right?

Bracing, he had described it. The night breeze had just enough chill to raise gooseflesh on his bare skin; he felt a familiar prickling in his scars. He wondered to himself if hers ever ached. But then, he had been twenty-one when the chrove had mangled him; so many of those nicks and burns were much older.

He wished there had been a proper blanket; his jacket was warm enough, but damnably stiff, and with all that cold brass. He wondered if it was uncomfortable. “Speak up if you should need anything in the night,” he called, easing into a seat. “I am a light sleeper.”

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Roalis 27, 2720 - Evening
An Abandoned Farmhouse

The silence after her apology spun out into the dark. All she could hear was Shadow and the sound of her own breathing. Aurelie held the jacket close and tensed her shoulders as if waiting for a blow. Maybe she was; she could read nothing of his field, of course. She never could, and she never would be able to. Desiderio cleared his throat, twice.

His answer was of no comfort at all. No? Had she not? Aurelie wanted to find something of relief in that, but if there was any in the words Desiderio spoke, his tone removed it. Every word was sharp and remote. He sounded, Aurelie thought, like many of the matrons in charge of the kitchen staff.

Well, that was all right. She hadn't said it to make herself feel better. She hadn't meant to say it at all. She just couldn't quite shut down the feeling that he only said it to mean that he didn't care. Aurelie sat there with his jacket clutched in her arms and forced herself to allow that he might not have missed her very much at all. That it had only been in her childish heart that any of it had been important.

That was all he said, and nothing more. Then she heard his footsteps move away from her through the darkness and she knew that was all he would say. Aurelie swallowed against a tightness that wouldn't dissipate, drawing a shaking breath in and holding it. She counted, slowly in her head, as she let it out.

"I suppose not," she murmured. She unclenched one of her hands to wipe carefully at her face. What she wanted, deeply and longingly, was a bath. She had never—there wasn't much opportunity really to enjoy them, in Brunnhold. But she wanted it, to plunge herself completely under water hot enough to bring redness to her skin and hold herself there.

And if wishes were horses; her mouth twisted. The night cut in from somewhere—a window, a crack, a hole in the roof? Aurelie shivered. The night hadn't seemed so cold before. At least there was Shadow next to her, warm and soft. She didn't even mind that he smelled like he'd not had a bath in his entire life.

Sleep. That's what she should do. Nothing was new, and nothing would change. At least if she slept, she could stop thinking about it. Aurelie gingerly sat the jacket to one side and took off her shoes. Even with the bed as weather-beaten as it was, putting her shoes on it felt terribly wrong. Somewhere under the riot of squeaking springs and Shadow laying himself out beside her, Aurelie could hear Desiderio speak. He must have—gone back over to the table. That was proper, she thought. Her loneliness was only because she was stupid.

"I... I will. Should I... Thank you." Aurelie turned carefully, feeling her way across the mattress. Her cheek she rested somewhere near Shadow's side. When she pulled the coat up over her shoulders, it was warm enough to be comforting. Aurelie closed her eyes. "Let's go to sleep now Shadow, hmm? What a good boy. Even if you stink." Shadow whined, but stayed by her side.

Aurelie buried her face into the stiff, uncomfortable sleeve of Desiderio's jacket. If he ever missed you, Aurelie Steerpike, you don't matter now. Aurelie thought that, and it felt true; she remembered the way he had touched her face, and she couldn't seem to settle. "...Goodnight, Des."