"Suomi, Feel it in My Heart..."
So, Thanksgiving break. I got into a yelling match with my uncle because he said that children don't absorb racist messages in films and that if you're not mentally deficient you should be able to turn off your sociological cultural context when you go to watch a movie, ha ha. I am not overly fond of my uncle.
On the plus side, I also got my hair cut and it is super cute. My hermit crabs enjoyed living in Mama and Daddy's room where the main heater is, and they are mad at me for bringing them back to school and putting them in my cold dorm room. :( I really need to buy them a heat lamp like I promised.
I am so not ready to start back to classes, so my plan for to-night is to hide in my room and pretend nothing exists.
Also, here is an incredibly depressing Arthurian space!AU fic that I wrote for mhari:
Title: These Happy Endings
Fandom: Arthuriana IN SPACE!
Characters/Pairings: Gadriet/Eluned [Gaheris/Lynette], sundry extras.
Rating: PG-16
Notes: Gadriet suffers from schizophrenia and as a result he self-medicates with animal tranquilisers. Eluned is aware of this fact and has been for a long time.
Also, if you aren't aware of what a botfly is, don't google it. And especially don't google image search it. Really, I'm doing you a favour.
By the time the Bredigan sheriff breaks down the door to the guest room, Anna’s pulse has stilled.
Gadriet is sitting quietly in his chair, with the empty hypodermic in his hand. She’s dead. He knows she’s dead without looking, he can feel it from where he sits, too sedated to move. What was left after he injected her is running through him now, and it’s no good trying to stand, or even think. Even the walls are hushed.
“Cào, what happened?” the sheriff asks, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt.
“Lamerok,” he says--tries to say something else, but his lips feel numb and he isn’t sure what’s going on. The hypo slips between his fingers and rolls away, under the dresser. What he’s thinking of is Eluned, of how he met her, him the newest refugee to New Britain with his veterinarian’s bag and his Temple Bay accent, called to her father’s stud barn to look at a sick bull.
He found her kneeling in a clean, dry stall, looking critically at the swollen testicles of a gigantic bull. “You’re gonna have to geld him,” she said, without looking up.
Gadriet laughed. “Looks like. Seminal vesiculitis?”
“Got to be.”
“So if you already know, why’d Mr. Shea call for me?”
“You think I’m goin’ to go snippin’ off his balls myself, Doc?” She got to her feet, her long hands rubbing the curve of her back. “I got more sense then that.”
“Well, ma’am, as long as I get paid--” He trailed off, because his skin was crawling, because he could tell he liked her. Not a long-lasting-love kind of thing, but he thought she was funny and pretty and that was bad enough. The sing-song mocking voices of the walls in the stall were a different cadence from the ones in the office he was renting, but they still said the same things.
She didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong, so he set down his bag and started to go through the prepped syringes, searching for the anaesthetic. His hypos were all obsessively labelled, everything in its own neat case--order calmed him down, and helped to make something reasonable. He needed something reasonable.
She was funny and pretty and the walls said, Are you looking at a woman, Gadriet? What do you think Anna would say? What do you think she would think? You want her to show up by your bed again? You’re dirty. Just do your job and keep your eyes to yourself. She can find you if you dare anything. She can find you anywhere. He gritted his teeth and laid out his kit, thinking of the surgery ahead, the surgery, and not the smart, sure-voiced woman who was waiting outside the stall.
The sheriff is gone again in a moment, patching a call through to Camallate most likely, to his brothers; Gadriet stops paying attention. Eluned is in the room already, half-carrying him out. He supposes he’s a dead weight, seeing that he’s not doing anything to help her, his body so full of xylazine that he can’t move his fingers--just his eyes, and barely his lips. She drags him into their bedroom and kneels beside him on the floor.
“What did you take? Come on--I know you’re on something. I gotta know what it was, Doc.”
He wants to tell her. He wants to tell her how the walls were shouting, how his epidermis was stripped off and he could see for the first time what it is that crawls around under his skin when he’s trying to sleep, what Anna put there was he was a child, the first time he woke to find her standing over him. He wants to tell her how he opened his eyes and there were sheep botflies travelling along the lines of his muscles, burrowing into the marrow-filled centres of his bones, and he knew why the walls called him filthy, because he was ridden with parasites and he had still dared to touch her.
How he burst into Anna’s room and she was fucking Athyr’s master of stables, and when he begged her to help him she looked up and told Lamerok to throw him out, she was busy.
Eluned is shaking him, he realises.
“Come on, tian-tian,” she says; he realises that her voice is full of tears. “I can’t lose you. Please tell me what you took. Hypo or pills?”
“Hypo,” he whispers. It makes his mouth ache, as if his jaw had been pushed too far apart.
“Okay. Okay. Hypo. Was it the propofil?”
Gadriet tries to remember.
After the surgery was done she invited him into the house for coffee. It was already getting dark, and his labcoat was covered with blood and fluid.
“Here, I’ll find you some of Dad’s clothes to change into,” she said. “You want a bath?”
“You have running water?” he asked, honestly surprised. Most of the families outside Camallate were living subsistence, with pumps outside their houses; bathing was reserved for occasions that really warranted it, like weddings and funerals.
Eluned laughed. “Yeah. We moved here from Manassah, so we were used to showers, and I would have killed him if he didn’t get one put in. The pension check from the shipyard was plenty big enough to cover it.”
“Sure, then.”
“You might as well stay overnight,” she added. “It’s three hours back to Camallate. We’ve got a guest room. Go take your bath, I’ll find the clothes.”
He wasn’t sure he was allowed to argue with her. Everything she said was so firm and certain in tone that it sounded like a fact, impossible to alter. So he bathed, in the first warm water he’d enjoyed since Temple Bay, and then dressed in a pair of Mr. Shea’s jeans and one of his giant sweaters. Gadriet had always been a little underweight, and Shea was obviously built like one of his bulls. He had to pull the belt to the very last notch, but everything was comfortable, and afterwards there was coffee and then supper, then more coffee, and he talked with Eluned for hours.
The muttering in the walls got louder and louder. Gadriet tried to block it out, but it continued, the same things he’d been hearing for years, filthy filthy filthy, with remarks about Eluned for good measure.
When she leaned across the table and kissed him, it was like an explosion going off right next to him. The crawling he was used to feeling just under his skin went crazy, a thousand tiny alarms going off inside him to warn him that he wasn’t allowed to do this, it was only going to go bad, he hadn’t touched a woman before for this exact reason--and the walls started screaming, hysterically, You think you can do this? You think you can touch her? With your hands? You want blood. You keep your hands and your eyes to yourself and don’t imagine anything you can’t have. Don’t get ideas about what you’re allowed to do. You filthy bastard. Do you think she’ll mean anything to you? You’ll kill her. You’ll destroy her. You’re filthy. And he was already a little dizzy from the shot of iso he’d had before.
And all the while Eluned had one of her long hands on his arm, the other cupping his cheek, and she kissed him as though she were used to kissing.
And what happened was he pushed away everything but the way she smelled and tasted and felt, and kissed back until they were standing, pressed against each other, hands under each other’s clothes, and Eluned drew back and laughed at him.
“It’s time for you to get to bed, Doc.”
“Will you come with me?” he asked breathlessly.
She smiled. “Not to-night.”
She shakes him--again, he realises; it’s not the first time. “Doc, please. Tian-tian. What did you take, baby? I can’t get you the right help if I don’t know.”
“--Botfly--”
“Shh, it’s okay. You’re gonna be okay. I promise. Just tell me what it is.” Eluned holds his face in both hands, stroking one thumb across his cheek. She never touches him this gently. Their sex has always been violent, even her I-love-yous are abrupt and usually come with invective. “I know shit’s been bad. I know we just don’t talk about it. But I won’t let it be like that any more. I’ll find a doctor who doesn’t scare you, I’ll beat you up if you don’t take real medicine, no more of that shit in your needles and your bottles and your rutting pills, no more of that.”
She’s crying again. Or still. He doesn’t know which.
It takes effort, so much more effort than he thinks he has in him, but he pushes his hand a little way along the floor so that his fingertips brush her knee, and says, “Xylazine. Took… xylazine.”
Immediately a veil of efficiency settles over Eluned. “Okay,” she says, and then she props him up against the bed so he won’t vomit and choke on it. Then she’s out of the room, and he can hear her running down the stairs to the pharmacy where the holo is, putting a call out to Bredigan’s physician. There’s no hospital here, but the physician can put anybody in stasis to make the trip to the city.
Gadriet closes his eyes, trying to shut out Anna’s face with her dead eyes. In the hall the sheriff and his deputies are going in and out, cordoning off the guest room and getting the house prepped for the medical staff who belong to the justice department. Anna is just a body in there. She can’t hurt him any more.
Which is a lie, and a bad one, too. She won’t let him alone just because he killed her.
A few moments later Eluned is back beside him. She sits on the floor and pulls him into her lap, stroking his hair.
“It’s okay. The doctor’s comin’, and he’s going to put you in stasis and take you to Camallate.” As if Gadriet hadn’t guessed it all already. “I’ll be there too. We’ll put you in the Menw and they’ll detox your system. They’ll ask a lot of questions, unless I tell them that Lamerok got you when he got your mother. I’ll do that, too, I’ll tell them that, but only if you promise me that we’ll do something to fix this. Only if you let me help you for once, instead of puttin’ me off.” Her arm tightens around his chest. “If you don’t promise, I’ll let them figure it out for themselves, and they won’t take it slow like me. They’ll ask why you were full of cow tranqs, and I’ll tell them I know sometimes you take propofil. I’ll let ‘em go crazy.”
Gadriet’s head hurts, and he wishes she’d stop talking, but he doesn’t want her to go away. She’s warm, and he’s always loved her, he’s always loved her more than anything.
Over the next six weeks he was at the stud farm every excuse he could get. For a long time there was no sex. He was too damn scared and she was a tease, and then her sister got taken for collateral on some plains-rustler’s gambit to take over Shea’s business, like Athyr’s government would have stood for that.
Athyr sent Gahereth and Geffreyn to sort it out. Gahereth was a sheriff in Camallate, and Geffreyn rode herd on the sheep and cattle drives, hiring himself out to anyone who needed a hand. They were both good with guns and could seat a horse (only reasonably well in Gahereth’s case).
Gadriet stayed on the farm with Eluned. She never panicked--she wasn’t a panicky kind of person--but her voice took on a quick, tight note that showed she was worried. She touched him more then, and when she kissed him it was rough and angry, biting him and raking her nails down his back. He slept in her bed, fully dressed, and she held onto him, tense even in her sleep.
He didn’t have much helpful to say, but he listened. And he knew, in his heart, that his brothers would make everything all right, because they always did. He was the smallest, the failure of the four--failure even of the five, if you counted his stepbrother Medraut. He had taken the longest to graduate school (because he liked it there, partly, and partly because the walls had made it so hard to study), the longest to leave Temple Bay. He was the only one who didn’t have at least a partial career in law enforcement. But being the smallest and the weakest and quietest meant that he was used to watching his brothers defend him, and he knew how brave and successful they were. So he knew that they would be brave and successful now.
And they were.
In two weeks they tracked the man down and Geffreyn shot him while Gahereth was freeing Lianour.
When Eluned heard that Lianour was marrying Gahereth, she looked over at Gadriet and said, “There’s an idea.”
“Promise me,” she whispers.
Gadriet can’t remember what he’s supposed to promise any more, but he can see the raised path of tears down her sharp cheeks. She’s so beautiful, this woman he never dreamed he’d be able to marry. “Pro--promise,” he says, his tongue thick.
She starts to smile, and he thinks she’ll answer him, and then it’s interrupted by the door downstairs swinging open and the physician shouting, “Lloyd! Got the cooler! I’m comin’ up!”
The physician and Eluned between them lift Gadriet into the stasis cooler, a bulky plastic box big enough to hold a person lying in the foetal position. She leans in after they’ve settled him, and kisses him.
Then she whispers in his ear, “You’re gonna be okay. I won’t let anything else happen to you. I promise.”
Gadriet wants to tell her something, but he can’t remember what. All he can feel is the way his blood feels like lead circulating in his veins and arteries, and then the lid to the cooler closes over him, leaving him in darkness, and the drugged fog of stasis starts to rush him, putting his whole life on hold.
That night he brought her back to his guest quarters at the Hall in Camallate. Her red wedding dress was the best silk her father could afford, with gold embroidery all over the skirt, and she was still wearing on her wrist the red ribbon the priest had used to bind them to each other. The contrast with her black hair, wound up in red silk cords, was so beautiful he thought it would blind him, and he kissed her, pulling her close so he could feel her hips press against his and the steady sound of her heartbeat against his own slow one.
When he finally drew back she grinned at him, looping her arms around his neck, and said, “Time for you to get to bed, Doc.”
Gadriet wanted to tell her something, but he couldn’t remember what. All the words in the world seemed to have washed away from him in the course of the day, between the speeches and the wine and the hundred-thousand dances he had enjoyed for her sake, and the smell of the synth flowers threaded through the cords in her hair, and the noise and the colour and more wine--even with Gahereth and Lianour as the focus of the day, the much brighter half of the double wedding. The only thing he could think of was the fact that for the first time in his life he felt sane and safe.
The walls were silent. His skin was still. He knew it wouldn’t last, but, God, she had done it, even for a day.
“Are you coming with me?” he asked, forcing his brain to conjure words.
“Mmhmm,” she said, pulling him towards the bedroom and unbuttoning his shirt.
The first thing Gadriet knows when they wake him up again is that he’s alive, and he shouldn’t be. The second thing is that Eluned is by his bedside, and he grabs her hand--she has to know, he has to tell her.
“El--I killed Mother. I killed Mother. You need to--”
“What? --You’re awake! Oh, God, I’ve been waitin’ for two weeks, thank God, oh, tian--”
“I killed Mother.”
She stares at him, face full of only confusion, and Gadriet swears.
“That’s not what you told the sheriff.”
“What did I tell the sheriff?” Suddenly the things that live under his skin are crawling more furiously than before.
“You said Lamerok--Athyr’s stablemaster. They executed him yesterday. Gwalchmai wouldn’t listen to anything else.”
“Oh, God. I didn’t mean to.”
“Jesus.”
“Why’d you take my word?” He can feel his voice is rising, but only because of the strain in his vocal cords. “I was high! I was dyin’! Why the hell’d anyone take my word? Now it’s both of them on my hands, not just her. Oh, Christ!”
He doesn’t remember what happens next except that someone puts a punch hypo of some sedative into his jugular and then the room is spinning, and the sleep streaming through his blood drowns out the walls, which are never silent, and never have been since his wedding night.
Murderer, murderer you filthy you murderer filthy filthy bastard you--
On the plus side, I also got my hair cut and it is super cute. My hermit crabs enjoyed living in Mama and Daddy's room where the main heater is, and they are mad at me for bringing them back to school and putting them in my cold dorm room. :( I really need to buy them a heat lamp like I promised.
I am so not ready to start back to classes, so my plan for to-night is to hide in my room and pretend nothing exists.
Also, here is an incredibly depressing Arthurian space!AU fic that I wrote for mhari:
Title: These Happy Endings
Fandom: Arthuriana IN SPACE!
Characters/Pairings: Gadriet/Eluned [Gaheris/Lynette], sundry extras.
Rating: PG-16
Notes: Gadriet suffers from schizophrenia and as a result he self-medicates with animal tranquilisers. Eluned is aware of this fact and has been for a long time.
Also, if you aren't aware of what a botfly is, don't google it. And especially don't google image search it. Really, I'm doing you a favour.
By the time the Bredigan sheriff breaks down the door to the guest room, Anna’s pulse has stilled.
Gadriet is sitting quietly in his chair, with the empty hypodermic in his hand. She’s dead. He knows she’s dead without looking, he can feel it from where he sits, too sedated to move. What was left after he injected her is running through him now, and it’s no good trying to stand, or even think. Even the walls are hushed.
“Cào, what happened?” the sheriff asks, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt.
“Lamerok,” he says--tries to say something else, but his lips feel numb and he isn’t sure what’s going on. The hypo slips between his fingers and rolls away, under the dresser. What he’s thinking of is Eluned, of how he met her, him the newest refugee to New Britain with his veterinarian’s bag and his Temple Bay accent, called to her father’s stud barn to look at a sick bull.
He found her kneeling in a clean, dry stall, looking critically at the swollen testicles of a gigantic bull. “You’re gonna have to geld him,” she said, without looking up.
Gadriet laughed. “Looks like. Seminal vesiculitis?”
“Got to be.”
“So if you already know, why’d Mr. Shea call for me?”
“You think I’m goin’ to go snippin’ off his balls myself, Doc?” She got to her feet, her long hands rubbing the curve of her back. “I got more sense then that.”
“Well, ma’am, as long as I get paid--” He trailed off, because his skin was crawling, because he could tell he liked her. Not a long-lasting-love kind of thing, but he thought she was funny and pretty and that was bad enough. The sing-song mocking voices of the walls in the stall were a different cadence from the ones in the office he was renting, but they still said the same things.
She didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong, so he set down his bag and started to go through the prepped syringes, searching for the anaesthetic. His hypos were all obsessively labelled, everything in its own neat case--order calmed him down, and helped to make something reasonable. He needed something reasonable.
She was funny and pretty and the walls said, Are you looking at a woman, Gadriet? What do you think Anna would say? What do you think she would think? You want her to show up by your bed again? You’re dirty. Just do your job and keep your eyes to yourself. She can find you if you dare anything. She can find you anywhere. He gritted his teeth and laid out his kit, thinking of the surgery ahead, the surgery, and not the smart, sure-voiced woman who was waiting outside the stall.
The sheriff is gone again in a moment, patching a call through to Camallate most likely, to his brothers; Gadriet stops paying attention. Eluned is in the room already, half-carrying him out. He supposes he’s a dead weight, seeing that he’s not doing anything to help her, his body so full of xylazine that he can’t move his fingers--just his eyes, and barely his lips. She drags him into their bedroom and kneels beside him on the floor.
“What did you take? Come on--I know you’re on something. I gotta know what it was, Doc.”
He wants to tell her. He wants to tell her how the walls were shouting, how his epidermis was stripped off and he could see for the first time what it is that crawls around under his skin when he’s trying to sleep, what Anna put there was he was a child, the first time he woke to find her standing over him. He wants to tell her how he opened his eyes and there were sheep botflies travelling along the lines of his muscles, burrowing into the marrow-filled centres of his bones, and he knew why the walls called him filthy, because he was ridden with parasites and he had still dared to touch her.
How he burst into Anna’s room and she was fucking Athyr’s master of stables, and when he begged her to help him she looked up and told Lamerok to throw him out, she was busy.
Eluned is shaking him, he realises.
“Come on, tian-tian,” she says; he realises that her voice is full of tears. “I can’t lose you. Please tell me what you took. Hypo or pills?”
“Hypo,” he whispers. It makes his mouth ache, as if his jaw had been pushed too far apart.
“Okay. Okay. Hypo. Was it the propofil?”
Gadriet tries to remember.
After the surgery was done she invited him into the house for coffee. It was already getting dark, and his labcoat was covered with blood and fluid.
“Here, I’ll find you some of Dad’s clothes to change into,” she said. “You want a bath?”
“You have running water?” he asked, honestly surprised. Most of the families outside Camallate were living subsistence, with pumps outside their houses; bathing was reserved for occasions that really warranted it, like weddings and funerals.
Eluned laughed. “Yeah. We moved here from Manassah, so we were used to showers, and I would have killed him if he didn’t get one put in. The pension check from the shipyard was plenty big enough to cover it.”
“Sure, then.”
“You might as well stay overnight,” she added. “It’s three hours back to Camallate. We’ve got a guest room. Go take your bath, I’ll find the clothes.”
He wasn’t sure he was allowed to argue with her. Everything she said was so firm and certain in tone that it sounded like a fact, impossible to alter. So he bathed, in the first warm water he’d enjoyed since Temple Bay, and then dressed in a pair of Mr. Shea’s jeans and one of his giant sweaters. Gadriet had always been a little underweight, and Shea was obviously built like one of his bulls. He had to pull the belt to the very last notch, but everything was comfortable, and afterwards there was coffee and then supper, then more coffee, and he talked with Eluned for hours.
The muttering in the walls got louder and louder. Gadriet tried to block it out, but it continued, the same things he’d been hearing for years, filthy filthy filthy, with remarks about Eluned for good measure.
When she leaned across the table and kissed him, it was like an explosion going off right next to him. The crawling he was used to feeling just under his skin went crazy, a thousand tiny alarms going off inside him to warn him that he wasn’t allowed to do this, it was only going to go bad, he hadn’t touched a woman before for this exact reason--and the walls started screaming, hysterically, You think you can do this? You think you can touch her? With your hands? You want blood. You keep your hands and your eyes to yourself and don’t imagine anything you can’t have. Don’t get ideas about what you’re allowed to do. You filthy bastard. Do you think she’ll mean anything to you? You’ll kill her. You’ll destroy her. You’re filthy. And he was already a little dizzy from the shot of iso he’d had before.
And all the while Eluned had one of her long hands on his arm, the other cupping his cheek, and she kissed him as though she were used to kissing.
And what happened was he pushed away everything but the way she smelled and tasted and felt, and kissed back until they were standing, pressed against each other, hands under each other’s clothes, and Eluned drew back and laughed at him.
“It’s time for you to get to bed, Doc.”
“Will you come with me?” he asked breathlessly.
She smiled. “Not to-night.”
She shakes him--again, he realises; it’s not the first time. “Doc, please. Tian-tian. What did you take, baby? I can’t get you the right help if I don’t know.”
“--Botfly--”
“Shh, it’s okay. You’re gonna be okay. I promise. Just tell me what it is.” Eluned holds his face in both hands, stroking one thumb across his cheek. She never touches him this gently. Their sex has always been violent, even her I-love-yous are abrupt and usually come with invective. “I know shit’s been bad. I know we just don’t talk about it. But I won’t let it be like that any more. I’ll find a doctor who doesn’t scare you, I’ll beat you up if you don’t take real medicine, no more of that shit in your needles and your bottles and your rutting pills, no more of that.”
She’s crying again. Or still. He doesn’t know which.
It takes effort, so much more effort than he thinks he has in him, but he pushes his hand a little way along the floor so that his fingertips brush her knee, and says, “Xylazine. Took… xylazine.”
Immediately a veil of efficiency settles over Eluned. “Okay,” she says, and then she props him up against the bed so he won’t vomit and choke on it. Then she’s out of the room, and he can hear her running down the stairs to the pharmacy where the holo is, putting a call out to Bredigan’s physician. There’s no hospital here, but the physician can put anybody in stasis to make the trip to the city.
Gadriet closes his eyes, trying to shut out Anna’s face with her dead eyes. In the hall the sheriff and his deputies are going in and out, cordoning off the guest room and getting the house prepped for the medical staff who belong to the justice department. Anna is just a body in there. She can’t hurt him any more.
Which is a lie, and a bad one, too. She won’t let him alone just because he killed her.
A few moments later Eluned is back beside him. She sits on the floor and pulls him into her lap, stroking his hair.
“It’s okay. The doctor’s comin’, and he’s going to put you in stasis and take you to Camallate.” As if Gadriet hadn’t guessed it all already. “I’ll be there too. We’ll put you in the Menw and they’ll detox your system. They’ll ask a lot of questions, unless I tell them that Lamerok got you when he got your mother. I’ll do that, too, I’ll tell them that, but only if you promise me that we’ll do something to fix this. Only if you let me help you for once, instead of puttin’ me off.” Her arm tightens around his chest. “If you don’t promise, I’ll let them figure it out for themselves, and they won’t take it slow like me. They’ll ask why you were full of cow tranqs, and I’ll tell them I know sometimes you take propofil. I’ll let ‘em go crazy.”
Gadriet’s head hurts, and he wishes she’d stop talking, but he doesn’t want her to go away. She’s warm, and he’s always loved her, he’s always loved her more than anything.
Over the next six weeks he was at the stud farm every excuse he could get. For a long time there was no sex. He was too damn scared and she was a tease, and then her sister got taken for collateral on some plains-rustler’s gambit to take over Shea’s business, like Athyr’s government would have stood for that.
Athyr sent Gahereth and Geffreyn to sort it out. Gahereth was a sheriff in Camallate, and Geffreyn rode herd on the sheep and cattle drives, hiring himself out to anyone who needed a hand. They were both good with guns and could seat a horse (only reasonably well in Gahereth’s case).
Gadriet stayed on the farm with Eluned. She never panicked--she wasn’t a panicky kind of person--but her voice took on a quick, tight note that showed she was worried. She touched him more then, and when she kissed him it was rough and angry, biting him and raking her nails down his back. He slept in her bed, fully dressed, and she held onto him, tense even in her sleep.
He didn’t have much helpful to say, but he listened. And he knew, in his heart, that his brothers would make everything all right, because they always did. He was the smallest, the failure of the four--failure even of the five, if you counted his stepbrother Medraut. He had taken the longest to graduate school (because he liked it there, partly, and partly because the walls had made it so hard to study), the longest to leave Temple Bay. He was the only one who didn’t have at least a partial career in law enforcement. But being the smallest and the weakest and quietest meant that he was used to watching his brothers defend him, and he knew how brave and successful they were. So he knew that they would be brave and successful now.
And they were.
In two weeks they tracked the man down and Geffreyn shot him while Gahereth was freeing Lianour.
When Eluned heard that Lianour was marrying Gahereth, she looked over at Gadriet and said, “There’s an idea.”
“Promise me,” she whispers.
Gadriet can’t remember what he’s supposed to promise any more, but he can see the raised path of tears down her sharp cheeks. She’s so beautiful, this woman he never dreamed he’d be able to marry. “Pro--promise,” he says, his tongue thick.
She starts to smile, and he thinks she’ll answer him, and then it’s interrupted by the door downstairs swinging open and the physician shouting, “Lloyd! Got the cooler! I’m comin’ up!”
The physician and Eluned between them lift Gadriet into the stasis cooler, a bulky plastic box big enough to hold a person lying in the foetal position. She leans in after they’ve settled him, and kisses him.
Then she whispers in his ear, “You’re gonna be okay. I won’t let anything else happen to you. I promise.”
Gadriet wants to tell her something, but he can’t remember what. All he can feel is the way his blood feels like lead circulating in his veins and arteries, and then the lid to the cooler closes over him, leaving him in darkness, and the drugged fog of stasis starts to rush him, putting his whole life on hold.
That night he brought her back to his guest quarters at the Hall in Camallate. Her red wedding dress was the best silk her father could afford, with gold embroidery all over the skirt, and she was still wearing on her wrist the red ribbon the priest had used to bind them to each other. The contrast with her black hair, wound up in red silk cords, was so beautiful he thought it would blind him, and he kissed her, pulling her close so he could feel her hips press against his and the steady sound of her heartbeat against his own slow one.
When he finally drew back she grinned at him, looping her arms around his neck, and said, “Time for you to get to bed, Doc.”
Gadriet wanted to tell her something, but he couldn’t remember what. All the words in the world seemed to have washed away from him in the course of the day, between the speeches and the wine and the hundred-thousand dances he had enjoyed for her sake, and the smell of the synth flowers threaded through the cords in her hair, and the noise and the colour and more wine--even with Gahereth and Lianour as the focus of the day, the much brighter half of the double wedding. The only thing he could think of was the fact that for the first time in his life he felt sane and safe.
The walls were silent. His skin was still. He knew it wouldn’t last, but, God, she had done it, even for a day.
“Are you coming with me?” he asked, forcing his brain to conjure words.
“Mmhmm,” she said, pulling him towards the bedroom and unbuttoning his shirt.
The first thing Gadriet knows when they wake him up again is that he’s alive, and he shouldn’t be. The second thing is that Eluned is by his bedside, and he grabs her hand--she has to know, he has to tell her.
“El--I killed Mother. I killed Mother. You need to--”
“What? --You’re awake! Oh, God, I’ve been waitin’ for two weeks, thank God, oh, tian--”
“I killed Mother.”
She stares at him, face full of only confusion, and Gadriet swears.
“That’s not what you told the sheriff.”
“What did I tell the sheriff?” Suddenly the things that live under his skin are crawling more furiously than before.
“You said Lamerok--Athyr’s stablemaster. They executed him yesterday. Gwalchmai wouldn’t listen to anything else.”
“Oh, God. I didn’t mean to.”
“Jesus.”
“Why’d you take my word?” He can feel his voice is rising, but only because of the strain in his vocal cords. “I was high! I was dyin’! Why the hell’d anyone take my word? Now it’s both of them on my hands, not just her. Oh, Christ!”
He doesn’t remember what happens next except that someone puts a punch hypo of some sedative into his jugular and then the room is spinning, and the sleep streaming through his blood drowns out the walls, which are never silent, and never have been since his wedding night.
Murderer, murderer you filthy you murderer filthy filthy bastard you--