A Start
Title: A Start
Fandom: The Dresden Files
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Donald Morgan, Harry Dresden
Summary: A Ghost Story AU, where it isn’t Carmichael who waits for Harry at the train station, but someone else. Riffs off the Ghost Story opening at certain points.
Note: Ghost Story AU, just because. And you gotta start from somewhere. And I like Morgan, and wish I'd seen him in action in Ghost Story. Presumes knowledge of everything up to Ghost Story.
-
I died in the water.
I don’t know if I bled to death from the gunshot wound or drowned. For being the ultimate terror of the human experience, once it’s over, the details of your death are unimportant. It isn’t scary anymore. You know that tunnel with the light at the end of it that people report in near-death experiences? Been there, done that.
Granted, I never heard of anyone rushing toward the light and suddenly hearing the howling blare of a train’s horn.
- ‘Ghost Story’, by Jim Butcher
Sensation came back slowly. I was aware of my feet, the rumbling, shaking set of tracks on which I stood. Train tracks. The roar of the train was loud, and still distant enough for me to hear my heart going at a kazillion beats per minute in my ears.
For crying out loud, did I say death wasn’t scary anymore? I take that back. Right now.
I fixed the train with my most belligerent glare and thrust out my jaw appropriately, hands on my hips. “You do not get run over by trains,” I said crossly. Apparently, dying short-circuits that screaming little voice of self-preservation at the back of your head, because I could feel the ground rattling violently as the train thundered towards me.
And then a man bellowed, “What’s wrong with you?” A hand wrapped around my right biceps, and hauled me off the tracks by main force. “There’s a train coming in, Dresden!”
Said train roared by like a living thing, a furious beast that howled and wailed in disappointment as I was taken from its path. The wind of its passage raked at me with sharp, hot fingers, actually pulling my body a couple of inches toward the edge of the platform. I stared after it, massaging my arm, and wondering if you could still get circulation cut off even after you were dead.
After the rapid, pounding beats of my heart had calmed down somewhat, I took stock of my surroundings and levered myself to my feet. I was sprawled on a platform of clean but worn concrete, and suddenly found myself under fluorescent lights, as at many train stations in the Chicago area. I looked around the platform, but though it felt familiar, I couldn’t exactly place it. There were no other commuters. No flyers or other advertisements. Just an empty, clean, featureless building.
Train stations. I grunted. The last time I’d been in a train station, I was fighting off hobs with Michael Carpenter. It seemed - no, it was - a lifetime ago. Michael had been a Knight of the Cross then. Now, he’s retired, but still packs one mean swing with a baseball bat. I still call him the Fist of God, folks, and that’s not without reason.
I looked at the guy who’d hauled me clear of the tracks. We were about of a height, although he packed about seventy pounds more than me. His brown hair was hacked short; the kind that looked as if he’d taken a knife to it instead of getting a decent haircut, and his eyes were a steel-grey that I found familiar though I couldn’t say why. Maybe thirty, I thought, wearing a cheap suit and trousers. In contrast, his shirt was a bright, starched white, and a bundle of charcoal cloth was slung over one of his wide shoulders.
He had eyes like flint, the way they looked at you, as if they’d never miss a trick. He said, “Are you quite finished?”
I thought about it for a bit. I hate being pressed, and get obstinate when put under pressure. Yank my chain, and I’ll dig my heels in. That’s Harry-reflex for you. I wasn’t sure I should be acting reflexively when I didn’t even know what the hell was going on here so I took a deep breath and made myself say, “Yes.”
“Huh,” the man grunted. He added under his breath, “That’s a surprise. Start moving, Dresden. Southbound trains have been running pretty quick lately. You don’t want to hook up with that one.”
Screw common sense, I decided. I’d been running around blind for the past few years - heck, the past few months, and I’d had just about enough of getting led around in the afterlife without knowing what was going on. I planted my feet firmly and said, “No.”
His eyes narrowed and grew hard. “This isn’t kindergarten. Start walking.” He slipped to the side, and tried to casually grip my right arm and twist it in a ‘come-along’ hold. I’d seen Murphy and Rawlins use that before, even Wardens. I caught his wrist before he came in.
“I said ‘no’,” I informed him. I kept staring at him, and around at the empty station. For some reason, the more I looked into the emptiness, the more I felt as if there was something out there, watching me. It was too quiet. Too eerie. I fought back the shivers. Flint-eyes gave me a stony look as he yanked his wrist from my grip. I didn’t fight him.
“You’ve felt it,” he said. “We need to get out of here. I’ll take you to the office.” He checked his watch and gave it an unimpressed stare. “We’re running late.” He pulled off the bundle of cloth and shrugged into it, pulling it on one sleeve at a time.
I startled when I saw what was wrapped inside the dark trench coat.
It was a sword. Specifically, it was a sword of bright silver, a little careworn on the hilt, but I knew the blade would be as sharp as ever. They were spelled through cut through just about anything, including enchantment. The White Council had been pretty big about nothing stopping a Warden from getting to a warlock, and there’s a pretty good reason why practitioners are scared shitless when the Wardens come knocking on their doors.
I looked at eyes that gleamed the same silver-washed grey as his sword and mentally subtracted a few years, added a few pounds, and then sucked in a shocked breath as I realised I knew him.
“Hell’s bells,” I whispered. If it sounded in any way like a squeak, I was short on air. You’ll have to take my word for that. “Morgan?”
“Yes,” Morgan said irritably. Dying hadn’t changed that.
“But you’re…you know. Dead.” I didn’t add that I’d stayed with him until he’d died. That had been only two years ago, when Peabody had been fleeing. Morgan had been pretty badly injured, even then. He’d somehow found the strength to go after Peabody and doubletapped him in the head. I swallowed, thinking of his last words, feeling my fingers curl around air instead of the reassuring wood of my staff. We’d never gotten along, since the day I’d been brought before the White Council for breaking the Laws of Magic. Donald Morgan had been the Warden assigned to me then, tracking every spell I cast, shadowing my footsteps, ready to swing the executioner’s sword any moment.
I don’t know about hard feelings, but it’ll take a lot more than everything that’s happened to make me comfortable with Morgan.
Morgan grunted. For all I knew, he was feeling just as uncomfortable as I was. “Really?” he asked. “I hadn’t noticed.”
And he had a sense of humour, buried in there somewhere. I picked between crowing “I knew it!” and wondering why I was standing around talking to Morgan. This was definitely not my idea of what came after. What happened to my tunnel of white light, or somewhere far hotter than here? Morgan wasn’t on my list of top ten favourite people, but I could easily think of far worse than spending time with him.
Sure, there’s a lot of bad blood between us. But I like to think we’d sort of squared it, right before he died.
A disturbing thought occurred to me. Maybe this was payback time, and someone out there had a wicked sense of humour. Morgan was supposed to bring me in to start balancing all those debts I’d accrued over the years, everything I’d done. If so, they couldn’t have picked a better person.
I made myself think about Susan. About the knife. About what I’d done.
I said, more to shake off the feeling of ever-present eyes on us than anything else, “Your hair’s weird.” It was the first thing that came to mind. I never said it was the smartest thing.
He snorted. “I’d never cared much back then,” he said. “Funny what being dead does for you.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Picking you up,” Morgan said. He shifted his trench coat slightly so he had easy access to the grip of his sword. It didn’t make me feel any more reassured. Most of our relationship had been about Morgan getting ready to cut off my head, so my paranoia about Morgan, a sword, and my neck in easy reach was pretty much justified. Hell, I was already dead. Did that mean he could still kill me? I eyed the sword and decided I didn’t want to find out.
“Uh huh,” I said cautiously. I took one step back. “And I supposed you volunteered to be my welcoming committee?”
Morgan folded his arms across his chest. “God’s beard,” he said irritably, “This isn’t the time for questions.”
“I think it is,” I countered. I took one step forward, stabbing my finger at his chest. He didn’t budge. “Look, Morgan, I just died and instead of merging with the light or whatever it is, I’m here and you’re here. That tends to make a guy twitchy. So tell me what’s going on or I’m just going to stand here all day!” That last bit had come out in an indignant growl.
Morgan’s eyes narrowed, and he stared at me as if he was deciding if I was trying to be difficult. Harry Dresden, annoying Donald Morgan even in death. But Morgan had plenty of experience with me being difficult, and he finally bit out, “Carmichael’s busy handling some rakshasa.”
“No way,” I said, before I could stop myself. “He’s dead.”
Morgan stared at me. And waited for it to sink in.
“Alright,” I added, “I get it. He’s dead. You’re dead. I’m dead. Okay?”
Morgan nodded, satisfied. “You’re catching on,” he said, as if he was trying to teach a particularly stubborn student. It chafed.
“And they sent you in his place. What, am I escaped and dangerous?”
The sour expression reappeared. Add an appearance of twenty more years, and maybe several decades of experience, and there was the Warden who I sometimes still had nightmares about. I very firmly told the memories what they could do with themselves.
The world around us rippled. I can’t describe it better than that. It was as if something had finally focused on us, and the eerie blankness was nothing more than a screen for something else. “Don’t,” Morgan warned quietly, gazing around us. It was the same, cold quiet voice he’d used to warn me everytime he thought I was pushing one of the Laws. “Don’t open your Sight.”
I cautiously looked around us, but couldn’t see anything. Still, I was more than ready to call up my Sight. “That ugly?” I said. I couldn’t help myself. The problem with the Sight is that whatever you see is burned forever into your mind. It doesn’t matter how pretty it is - or how bad. I’d seen a skinwalker once, through the Sight. Morgan had too. The incident had sent me into psychic shock and still had the potential to give me screaming nightmares everytime I thought about it.
Morgan said, “Worse. Down!” He snapped the last command out and half-turned. The sword flashed from his scabbard in a blur of silver steel. I threw myself down so fast that I nearly banged my head against the platform. If anything, I have a healthy sense of self-preservation. And I make it a point never to argue with the guy with a sword. Well, when it’s drawn, anyway.
The air rippled and shimmered where Morgan’s sword cut, and there was a piercing shriek, grinding against my eardrums. I looked around wildly, but without my Sight, I couldn’t tell what it was, whatever had happened, why Morgan could see what it was, or what was going on. Morgan paused, sword still out, and then he slid it back into the scabbard.
I relaxed. Morgan’s expression was dark. “That was the first one,” he murmured. “There’ll be more.” He held out his hand. I took it, and he hauled me up to my feet. “Get moving, Dresden.”
“What was that?” I asked.
Morgan said, “A start.”
Fandom: The Dresden Files
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Donald Morgan, Harry Dresden
Summary: A Ghost Story AU, where it isn’t Carmichael who waits for Harry at the train station, but someone else. Riffs off the Ghost Story opening at certain points.
Note: Ghost Story AU, just because. And you gotta start from somewhere. And I like Morgan, and wish I'd seen him in action in Ghost Story. Presumes knowledge of everything up to Ghost Story.
-
I died in the water.
I don’t know if I bled to death from the gunshot wound or drowned. For being the ultimate terror of the human experience, once it’s over, the details of your death are unimportant. It isn’t scary anymore. You know that tunnel with the light at the end of it that people report in near-death experiences? Been there, done that.
Granted, I never heard of anyone rushing toward the light and suddenly hearing the howling blare of a train’s horn.
- ‘Ghost Story’, by Jim Butcher
Sensation came back slowly. I was aware of my feet, the rumbling, shaking set of tracks on which I stood. Train tracks. The roar of the train was loud, and still distant enough for me to hear my heart going at a kazillion beats per minute in my ears.
For crying out loud, did I say death wasn’t scary anymore? I take that back. Right now.
I fixed the train with my most belligerent glare and thrust out my jaw appropriately, hands on my hips. “You do not get run over by trains,” I said crossly. Apparently, dying short-circuits that screaming little voice of self-preservation at the back of your head, because I could feel the ground rattling violently as the train thundered towards me.
And then a man bellowed, “What’s wrong with you?” A hand wrapped around my right biceps, and hauled me off the tracks by main force. “There’s a train coming in, Dresden!”
Said train roared by like a living thing, a furious beast that howled and wailed in disappointment as I was taken from its path. The wind of its passage raked at me with sharp, hot fingers, actually pulling my body a couple of inches toward the edge of the platform. I stared after it, massaging my arm, and wondering if you could still get circulation cut off even after you were dead.
After the rapid, pounding beats of my heart had calmed down somewhat, I took stock of my surroundings and levered myself to my feet. I was sprawled on a platform of clean but worn concrete, and suddenly found myself under fluorescent lights, as at many train stations in the Chicago area. I looked around the platform, but though it felt familiar, I couldn’t exactly place it. There were no other commuters. No flyers or other advertisements. Just an empty, clean, featureless building.
Train stations. I grunted. The last time I’d been in a train station, I was fighting off hobs with Michael Carpenter. It seemed - no, it was - a lifetime ago. Michael had been a Knight of the Cross then. Now, he’s retired, but still packs one mean swing with a baseball bat. I still call him the Fist of God, folks, and that’s not without reason.
I looked at the guy who’d hauled me clear of the tracks. We were about of a height, although he packed about seventy pounds more than me. His brown hair was hacked short; the kind that looked as if he’d taken a knife to it instead of getting a decent haircut, and his eyes were a steel-grey that I found familiar though I couldn’t say why. Maybe thirty, I thought, wearing a cheap suit and trousers. In contrast, his shirt was a bright, starched white, and a bundle of charcoal cloth was slung over one of his wide shoulders.
He had eyes like flint, the way they looked at you, as if they’d never miss a trick. He said, “Are you quite finished?”
I thought about it for a bit. I hate being pressed, and get obstinate when put under pressure. Yank my chain, and I’ll dig my heels in. That’s Harry-reflex for you. I wasn’t sure I should be acting reflexively when I didn’t even know what the hell was going on here so I took a deep breath and made myself say, “Yes.”
“Huh,” the man grunted. He added under his breath, “That’s a surprise. Start moving, Dresden. Southbound trains have been running pretty quick lately. You don’t want to hook up with that one.”
Screw common sense, I decided. I’d been running around blind for the past few years - heck, the past few months, and I’d had just about enough of getting led around in the afterlife without knowing what was going on. I planted my feet firmly and said, “No.”
His eyes narrowed and grew hard. “This isn’t kindergarten. Start walking.” He slipped to the side, and tried to casually grip my right arm and twist it in a ‘come-along’ hold. I’d seen Murphy and Rawlins use that before, even Wardens. I caught his wrist before he came in.
“I said ‘no’,” I informed him. I kept staring at him, and around at the empty station. For some reason, the more I looked into the emptiness, the more I felt as if there was something out there, watching me. It was too quiet. Too eerie. I fought back the shivers. Flint-eyes gave me a stony look as he yanked his wrist from my grip. I didn’t fight him.
“You’ve felt it,” he said. “We need to get out of here. I’ll take you to the office.” He checked his watch and gave it an unimpressed stare. “We’re running late.” He pulled off the bundle of cloth and shrugged into it, pulling it on one sleeve at a time.
I startled when I saw what was wrapped inside the dark trench coat.
It was a sword. Specifically, it was a sword of bright silver, a little careworn on the hilt, but I knew the blade would be as sharp as ever. They were spelled through cut through just about anything, including enchantment. The White Council had been pretty big about nothing stopping a Warden from getting to a warlock, and there’s a pretty good reason why practitioners are scared shitless when the Wardens come knocking on their doors.
I looked at eyes that gleamed the same silver-washed grey as his sword and mentally subtracted a few years, added a few pounds, and then sucked in a shocked breath as I realised I knew him.
“Hell’s bells,” I whispered. If it sounded in any way like a squeak, I was short on air. You’ll have to take my word for that. “Morgan?”
“Yes,” Morgan said irritably. Dying hadn’t changed that.
“But you’re…you know. Dead.” I didn’t add that I’d stayed with him until he’d died. That had been only two years ago, when Peabody had been fleeing. Morgan had been pretty badly injured, even then. He’d somehow found the strength to go after Peabody and doubletapped him in the head. I swallowed, thinking of his last words, feeling my fingers curl around air instead of the reassuring wood of my staff. We’d never gotten along, since the day I’d been brought before the White Council for breaking the Laws of Magic. Donald Morgan had been the Warden assigned to me then, tracking every spell I cast, shadowing my footsteps, ready to swing the executioner’s sword any moment.
I don’t know about hard feelings, but it’ll take a lot more than everything that’s happened to make me comfortable with Morgan.
Morgan grunted. For all I knew, he was feeling just as uncomfortable as I was. “Really?” he asked. “I hadn’t noticed.”
And he had a sense of humour, buried in there somewhere. I picked between crowing “I knew it!” and wondering why I was standing around talking to Morgan. This was definitely not my idea of what came after. What happened to my tunnel of white light, or somewhere far hotter than here? Morgan wasn’t on my list of top ten favourite people, but I could easily think of far worse than spending time with him.
Sure, there’s a lot of bad blood between us. But I like to think we’d sort of squared it, right before he died.
A disturbing thought occurred to me. Maybe this was payback time, and someone out there had a wicked sense of humour. Morgan was supposed to bring me in to start balancing all those debts I’d accrued over the years, everything I’d done. If so, they couldn’t have picked a better person.
I made myself think about Susan. About the knife. About what I’d done.
I said, more to shake off the feeling of ever-present eyes on us than anything else, “Your hair’s weird.” It was the first thing that came to mind. I never said it was the smartest thing.
He snorted. “I’d never cared much back then,” he said. “Funny what being dead does for you.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Picking you up,” Morgan said. He shifted his trench coat slightly so he had easy access to the grip of his sword. It didn’t make me feel any more reassured. Most of our relationship had been about Morgan getting ready to cut off my head, so my paranoia about Morgan, a sword, and my neck in easy reach was pretty much justified. Hell, I was already dead. Did that mean he could still kill me? I eyed the sword and decided I didn’t want to find out.
“Uh huh,” I said cautiously. I took one step back. “And I supposed you volunteered to be my welcoming committee?”
Morgan folded his arms across his chest. “God’s beard,” he said irritably, “This isn’t the time for questions.”
“I think it is,” I countered. I took one step forward, stabbing my finger at his chest. He didn’t budge. “Look, Morgan, I just died and instead of merging with the light or whatever it is, I’m here and you’re here. That tends to make a guy twitchy. So tell me what’s going on or I’m just going to stand here all day!” That last bit had come out in an indignant growl.
Morgan’s eyes narrowed, and he stared at me as if he was deciding if I was trying to be difficult. Harry Dresden, annoying Donald Morgan even in death. But Morgan had plenty of experience with me being difficult, and he finally bit out, “Carmichael’s busy handling some rakshasa.”
“No way,” I said, before I could stop myself. “He’s dead.”
Morgan stared at me. And waited for it to sink in.
“Alright,” I added, “I get it. He’s dead. You’re dead. I’m dead. Okay?”
Morgan nodded, satisfied. “You’re catching on,” he said, as if he was trying to teach a particularly stubborn student. It chafed.
“And they sent you in his place. What, am I escaped and dangerous?”
The sour expression reappeared. Add an appearance of twenty more years, and maybe several decades of experience, and there was the Warden who I sometimes still had nightmares about. I very firmly told the memories what they could do with themselves.
The world around us rippled. I can’t describe it better than that. It was as if something had finally focused on us, and the eerie blankness was nothing more than a screen for something else. “Don’t,” Morgan warned quietly, gazing around us. It was the same, cold quiet voice he’d used to warn me everytime he thought I was pushing one of the Laws. “Don’t open your Sight.”
I cautiously looked around us, but couldn’t see anything. Still, I was more than ready to call up my Sight. “That ugly?” I said. I couldn’t help myself. The problem with the Sight is that whatever you see is burned forever into your mind. It doesn’t matter how pretty it is - or how bad. I’d seen a skinwalker once, through the Sight. Morgan had too. The incident had sent me into psychic shock and still had the potential to give me screaming nightmares everytime I thought about it.
Morgan said, “Worse. Down!” He snapped the last command out and half-turned. The sword flashed from his scabbard in a blur of silver steel. I threw myself down so fast that I nearly banged my head against the platform. If anything, I have a healthy sense of self-preservation. And I make it a point never to argue with the guy with a sword. Well, when it’s drawn, anyway.
The air rippled and shimmered where Morgan’s sword cut, and there was a piercing shriek, grinding against my eardrums. I looked around wildly, but without my Sight, I couldn’t tell what it was, whatever had happened, why Morgan could see what it was, or what was going on. Morgan paused, sword still out, and then he slid it back into the scabbard.
I relaxed. Morgan’s expression was dark. “That was the first one,” he murmured. “There’ll be more.” He held out his hand. I took it, and he hauled me up to my feet. “Get moving, Dresden.”
“What was that?” I asked.
Morgan said, “A start.”