Dresden Files/Donald Morgan/ #31- Monster
Title: Monster
Fandom: Dresden Files
Characters: Donald Morgan
Prompt: #31- Monster
Word Count: 556 words
Rating: PG
Summary: Blood does not stain the grey cloak of a Warden. Neither does it stain silver steel.
Disclaimer: If I were Jim Butcher, I wouldn’t need to write fanfiction about my characters, would I?
Notes: A bit disturbing but ah well. It is the Dresden Files after all.
When Donald was twenty-four and a full Warden, he thought he knew the face of evil. He was stunned as he watched a young child brought before the White Council for breaking the Laws of Magic, hooded.
He thought he looked into the face of the monster then; the Council that condemned her to death. He watched with dispassion and pained passion as the silver sword carried out the punishment.
When Donald was twenty-six and a full Warden, he thought he had been too naïve, bitterly, as all thoughts go. He was assigned to the boy-wizard, and it was his to carry out the Doom of Damocles. It was too easy to slice with his sword and watch the beheaded figure topple to the ground, dead.
Memory slowed the movement but dead was dead was dead. He remembered the spray of blood, the disappointment in his gut and he didn’t realise he was sweating until wetness stung the burn on his left cheek.
Blood does not stain the grey cloak of a Warden.
Neither does it stain silvered steel.
But it stains hands and minds and memories.
And then he wondered if he was wrong, and if the monster was in the warlocks brought before the Council, to be sentenced. He also wonders if the monster is in himself because he has just killed a minor.
It doesn’t matter if he does it by magic. A death is a death is a death and this was his kill. His responsibility.
When Donald was a hundred-and twelve years old, he knew by then that the moment of doubt spoke true. The monster lurked within those warlocks brought before the Council, all those breakers of the Laws. He had seen them shattered too many times, starting with a little boy with the Doom of Damocles hanging over him.
Donald doesn’t trust Dresden, not at all. He skirts the law too close for Donald’s liking and the past tells Donald this will soon grow to larger and larger infractions. He doesn’t at all trust Dresden because he’s seen monsters lurking in too many charming shells.
And he knows better now.
When Donald is a hundred-and-fifty, he learns that maybe he’s wrong. Because Dresden helps him more than he can expect to be helped, and his apprentice, Molly Carpenter isn’t much different. For a moment, he sees the echo of a frightened, hooded girl in her and smells the splash of blood and then he remembers that a monster lurks within whatever innocent goodness she still pretends to.
When Donald is a hundred-and-fifty, he dies, knowing that the monster hides behind an innocent face. But an innocent face is any face, and one of them is Peabody.
He dies thinking that maybe Dresden never had the monster. Or maybe the monster hid itself too well in Dresden but he gets the feeling that now it’s dead.
And before he dies, he finds himself thinking, then, that maybe he was right before.
That he is the monster for killing and killing and his absolute hate of Dresden because maybe Dresden’s really good. And maybe the monster is in all of them.
And most of all, it lurks within Donald Morgan.
Hatred, anger, sociopathy- the monster dwells in various forms.
And he realises he has seen it in his despair and bitterness.