AU Bookfic
While the last chapter of Strange Devices is in beta, here's some fic in a really different vein.
Some time ago, on this very comm, someone suggested a fic prompt to the tune of 'What if Bob isn't what he says he is?' It was meant for TV-Bob, I think, but it kind of meshed with an idea I'd had about Book-Bob. It's an AU of sorts, and the premise is that Harry's 'spirit of intellect' was lying his glowing orange ass off the whole time.
+Title - The North Wind's Huntsman
+Author - Shiplizard
+Pairing - Bob/Harry
+Rating - PG-13
+Book or TV-verse - Book AU
+Summary - Six months after a great deus-ex-machina event erases all the debts in Faerie, Harry gets a letter.
+Word count ~ 2700
+Warning - unbetaed, mild angst, lots of flashbacking. Mild spoilers for Summer Knight.
The letter had come in through my mail slot, but the only address was a scrolling, hand-written 'Dresden', and there wasn't a stamp.
I touched the faint bruises on my shoulder and thought I might know who'd sent it. My office was warm, heater up high against the Chicago winter, but I shivered as if someone had stroked cold fingers across my neck.
I slit the envelope open and pulled out a sheaf of parchment-- a letter, several pages, written in archaic, angular letters. No address on the letter, but it was signed. I'd been right.
I flicked a paranoid glance out the window, but there was nothing out there but the same never-ending, vision-obscuring snowfall that had kept smarter people at home today.
'Just' snow. Like that was supposed to be reassuring. The letter was from the Winter Hunter.
The Winter Hunter was a powerful Sidhe, a very new face on the scene. Well, actually, a very old face who hadn't been seen in a while. He'd been one of many: a shakeup in Faerie six months ago had erased a lot of old debts and vendettas and made it safe for a bunch of exiles to come back. My one debt to Mab had gone out the window with the rest of them, which was great.
Less great was my feud with the Hunter. We'd tangled more than once in the last six months. The bruises were just the latest evidence of it.
I read the letter, unable not to hear it in his familiar voice:
It was a misunderstanding.
The girl was being cultivated for a ritual, raised innocent. A virgin. I only half knew, or knew and had forgotten. I had been disinterested in court politics for so long, and only cared that she knew nothing of lovemaking, that she was very beautiful, and that she looked at me from under her lashes.
She did not know that the Winter Hunter was the huntsman of the North Wind himself, one of his most powerful servants, and she did not know my wide history with the ladies (and the gentleman, and other stranger creatures) of the Winter Court and the surrounding lands. She did not know that she was supposed to be saving herself, or even that she was saving anything.
It was a misunderstanding, but Maeve's toy was corrupted before her virginity could be given to its purpose and not even the North Wind could stand before the Winter Lady, even if he had been inclined to save me.
Maeve is the heart of all Winter, and she is cold and cruel, though not quite as much as her mother. Mab would never have given me the chance to escape. Maeve, though, she will always be young as long as she is the Queen Who Is To Come. In those days, it was her pleasure to take the hearts of her enemies and to string them in frozen lanterns through her hall. It was very beautiful, I remember. I have no doubt she kept them until the Solstice Reckoning this year-- you might have seen them when you went into her demesne in Undertown, strands of many-colored light. But there would be so much else to remark on, I doubt you noticed them particularly. It will make you feel better, I know, to know that they were freed when I was.
The heart of a Sidhe is very different than your heart. It is much of what we are, and as long as it lives, we live. As long as my heart lived, I would live, and understand, and feel-- and an eternity trapped in ice is hell, for us as well as for mortals. Dante said it, but I don't think you read him. I told you to, if you remember, but were always terrible at poetry.
But the heart of a Sidhe is different. Even as she stripped my rank and much of my power I defied her, and fled disembodied from her court to the mortal world, her hunters on my track.
In the mortal world I met the first wizard who I would call 'master'. A Gallic Druid, living high in the mountains, alone but for his young apprentice. He was a good man, and had no cause to disbelieve me when I introduced myself as a simple air elemental. With him I bartered for protection and obscurity, trading him my service and my store of knowledge, and he made for me the home that would keep me safe from Maeve through the next six centuries.
He was the first and somewhat bloodthirsty, but not Dark. I don't know if you'll understand that. It was a different time. His apprentice had me next, and she was as fair and firm as her master had been. Then there were a handful of others, Light and Dark, petty and good, but then the twentieth century came and there was no Light.
I began the twentieth century still in the possession of the Teutonic necromancer, and what he did to me was worse than Maeve ever would have had patience for, and worse still because he did not mean to hurt me. He did not mean to help me. He was simply using me as he thought I was best used and I doubt he wondered if it hurt. And when he died, I was taken by the American madman, and if he was not so cruel as the necromancer it was only because he was not as clever. He had ambitions, and they were idiotic, and he had two orphans as apprentice-thralls, and they were idiotic, too, and after a century of Darkness it was painful to be so grateful when I was rescued by the idiot boy.
Yes, I do mean you, and yes, that is what I thought of you. Idiot apprentice. Your strength matched only by your clumsiness, your ambition all but nonexistent, the seed of Darkness in you fallen on fallow ground. You aren't as Dark as you think, you know. I know that. Of course it tempts you, that is its nature, but you are not as susceptible as some. As much as you are drawn to the Dark you have the power to resist.
And you are still clumsy, your spells more often than not succeeding because you can simply pour so much into them, and brace up their poor construction with your own pure will. And you are still ignorant, and it made my life an easier thing. Yes, I complained, but because you gave me freedom to complain. Even the Gall knew my place; servant, to serve. You didn't know, and you bridle at mindless servitude, and I gained concession after concession from you. Tawdry, small things, but six centuries is not the blink of an eye even for a Sidhe, and what I gained was precious to me. I took great advantage of you, never think otherwise.
Even as I used you, you gave to me freely and with an open heart. You know that names have power. Did you never think that gifting me with a name would give me new power of my own? None of the others would have done it, they would have known better. You are, in many ways, extremely innocent.
Since the Solstice Upheaval, Maeve had no further claim on my life. She was forced to return the token of my power and rank and Self, but she was well within her rights to do so through you. You were, after all, my master at the time, and we had a contract. She did not mean you to give it back to me. Had you been any other of my masters you would not have given it to me; you would have known the power and control over me it represented, and you would have understood the depth of my betrayal. Some things still frighten me, and I cannot think of what the necromancer would have done with such control of me, if the Upheaval had been a century earlier. It was Maeve's intention that you keep me bound, that you punish me as she could not.
Innocent, you brought me back my Self and offered me my freedom unreservedly because it was the Right Thing To Do.
My gratitude to you was only matched by my rage towards myself for feeling it. I took my freedom and left you with angry words, and we have not met since then without more angry words, and I know that what we have said to one another cannot be unsaid.
I still owe you the debts of a name and of my freedom, and I have never been anything but proud. I do not like this new debt just as all of my others have been wiped away, and I like even less that I still feel gratitude towards you. You have been betrayed and abandoned so often before. This is why we cannot talk together without shouting, and so our encounters have been brief.
But I wanted you to know the story.
It was signed with the Hunter's sigil.
The parchment crumpled in my hands. I threw the letter away and dropped my head into my hands. The wound was six months old and still fresh. When the hell will I learn not to trust creatures of the Nevernever?
They're never as cute and fluffy and friendly as they're pretending. NEVER.
Could I believe the letter? Well, a lot of it only confirmed what I'd found out through other sources. The details of the 'misunderstanding' were new to me, but sounded authentic enough. The Winter Hunter had been an infamously libidinous bastard before his disappearance. And not picky. Everything from princesses to shepherdesses, and there were some kind of incongruous stories about shepherd boys and soldiers who'd gotten lost and been sheltered for a night by a strange hunter that would make a lot more sense if...
But what about the end? Gratitude? Come on. I could believe it about the debt. Playing by the Sidhe's bizarre rules, maybe he did owe me. The gratitude was probably just an angle so he could weasel out of it at half price.
Fine. I didn't care. I didn't want him to owe me anything-- just wanted him out of my life, abandonment issues or not.
All he had to do was ask. He could have his debts written off for a song-- of course, he'd have to ask, and it was true that any time we were in the same room it degenerated into shouting and insults really quickly.
That pattern went all the way back to the very first time I met him-- he'd manifested in my lab, his heart recombined with the rest of his Self, in a swirl of snow-- and I'd just gaped and said something stupid like "That's what you are?"
"What I was, and am again," he'd intoned, infinitely more formal than I'd ever heard him before.
"I didn't know," I'd murmured, and eyes the green-brown-gray color of ice over a frozen lake had narrowed.
"Your stupidity, Dresden, is a universal constant."
He'd vanished in a flicker of light, leaving me alone in the lab with a few flakes of snow that settled onto the floor and refused to melt.
I'd kicked myself for a while and hurt and mourned and decided I didn't miss him and I'd be just as happy never to see him again. So of course I'd seen him again.
He'd been standing over the corpse of a Black Court vampire, and I'd been laying against the wall with one leg numb and refusing to function. All I'd found to say was "Who the hell asked for your help?" as if I hadn't been about to die until he stepped in.
He kicked the hunched corpse over-- it shattered, frozen solid during one of Chicago's hotter Julys. "I did not give you any." He'd sheathed his ice-gray sword and didn't meet my eyes. "Winter is at war with these creatures, and I struck for Winter."
"Jackass," I'd snarled, and he'd snarled something back and been gone again, leaving snowflakes that melted before they hit the ground.
We'd tried to have a conversation, once-- I'd run into him in Mac's. It was an accident of timing, but it was neutral territory, and I took the risk, talking to him. I guess he was taking a risk, too, but we didn't get anywhere before the insults started. Mac kicked us out, and we wound up in a nearby alley shouting at the top of our lungs.
I'd forgotten what we said, except for one thing that had bitten deeper than the rest-
He grabbed me by the throat, pushing me back against the wall, leaning close strangely close as I struggled with him, and he looked furious as he snarled "You'd like it, wouldn't you? Me, your fucking pet again, doing tricks for romance novels--"
Betrayal and rage had flared hot and I hadn't even used a word to pick him up and slam him into the opposite wall, just the force of my will, and then he was gone again.
Somehow, as much as we hated each other we seemed to be drawn together. Sometimes he'd show up to not-help me, sometimes we just seemed to meet. Alleys and lonely places, like we had magnets in our pockets drawing us together; meeting during a stakeout, shouting at each under the turning leaves in Wolf Lake Park, scuffling in an alley, getting too close.
It had seemed like a logical extension of the fighting when he'd slammed me into a brick wall and kissed me, and just as logical to respond even as I fought him off of me. And the next time it had been him knocked into a wall, me bruising his lips, just to keep the balance. His fingers had dug hard into my shoulder, and there'd been a stretched-out second, just a breath, before he threw me away and vanished.
After that I hadn't seen him for a month, and now here was this letter. It might be, just barely, an apology. I didn't trust it, I didn't trust him, I couldn't forgive him for not being who and what I thought he was. Just another Winter Sidhe, nothing to me. He'd never been my friend, and I didn't miss him, and he could have the name for a bargain basement price, it couldn't be worth that much and Bob's a stupid name anyway!
I realized I was crying, head in my hands, shoulders shaking with my angry panting. The crumpled letter lay on the floor not far from my desk.
I shook my head violently and pushed away, looking for a tissue to wipe my face.
As I glanced up at the window I shouted and jumped back. There was a figure outside, standing silently in the middle of the falling snow.
Eyes the color of a frozen lake, wild and feral. Long, stringy white hair falling around an angular, intense face, down past strong, sharp shoulders. Strips of rabbit pelt on his leather clothes, dark colored feathers falling here and there. Hunter's gear.
The bastard had watched me read his letter.
With the glass between us, I couldn't shout at him. But I walked to the window and glared defiantly, my intimidation factor somewhat diminished by red eyes and streaming nose. He glared back, and put a hand to my window. Frost formed where his hand touched, spreading across the pane, tracing little fern patterns.
I put my own hand on the glass by his, and, ignoring all common sense, willed heat into the window.
The glass did not break. The tendrils of frost stopped creeping outwards, and started to melt where my fingertips lay. We glowered at each other silently. Our hands were nearly touching; I could feel the brush of his energy, tinkling ice cold, and knew that he could feel mine, hot and alive.
Time passed. I couldn't maintain my anger. It slid away and just left the hurt. His face changed, too-- regret. Bemusement. The silence got so long I didn't know how long it had been anymore.
The wind picked up outside, a mournful howl, and in a whirl of kicked-up snow he left me again.
He'd be back. The son of a bitch always came back.
Some time ago, on this very comm, someone suggested a fic prompt to the tune of 'What if Bob isn't what he says he is?' It was meant for TV-Bob, I think, but it kind of meshed with an idea I'd had about Book-Bob. It's an AU of sorts, and the premise is that Harry's 'spirit of intellect' was lying his glowing orange ass off the whole time.
+Title - The North Wind's Huntsman
+Author - Shiplizard
+Pairing - Bob/Harry
+Rating - PG-13
+Book or TV-verse - Book AU
+Summary - Six months after a great deus-ex-machina event erases all the debts in Faerie, Harry gets a letter.
+Word count ~ 2700
+Warning - unbetaed, mild angst, lots of flashbacking. Mild spoilers for Summer Knight.
The letter had come in through my mail slot, but the only address was a scrolling, hand-written 'Dresden', and there wasn't a stamp.
I touched the faint bruises on my shoulder and thought I might know who'd sent it. My office was warm, heater up high against the Chicago winter, but I shivered as if someone had stroked cold fingers across my neck.
I slit the envelope open and pulled out a sheaf of parchment-- a letter, several pages, written in archaic, angular letters. No address on the letter, but it was signed. I'd been right.
I flicked a paranoid glance out the window, but there was nothing out there but the same never-ending, vision-obscuring snowfall that had kept smarter people at home today.
'Just' snow. Like that was supposed to be reassuring. The letter was from the Winter Hunter.
The Winter Hunter was a powerful Sidhe, a very new face on the scene. Well, actually, a very old face who hadn't been seen in a while. He'd been one of many: a shakeup in Faerie six months ago had erased a lot of old debts and vendettas and made it safe for a bunch of exiles to come back. My one debt to Mab had gone out the window with the rest of them, which was great.
Less great was my feud with the Hunter. We'd tangled more than once in the last six months. The bruises were just the latest evidence of it.
I read the letter, unable not to hear it in his familiar voice:
It was a misunderstanding.
The girl was being cultivated for a ritual, raised innocent. A virgin. I only half knew, or knew and had forgotten. I had been disinterested in court politics for so long, and only cared that she knew nothing of lovemaking, that she was very beautiful, and that she looked at me from under her lashes.
She did not know that the Winter Hunter was the huntsman of the North Wind himself, one of his most powerful servants, and she did not know my wide history with the ladies (and the gentleman, and other stranger creatures) of the Winter Court and the surrounding lands. She did not know that she was supposed to be saving herself, or even that she was saving anything.
It was a misunderstanding, but Maeve's toy was corrupted before her virginity could be given to its purpose and not even the North Wind could stand before the Winter Lady, even if he had been inclined to save me.
Maeve is the heart of all Winter, and she is cold and cruel, though not quite as much as her mother. Mab would never have given me the chance to escape. Maeve, though, she will always be young as long as she is the Queen Who Is To Come. In those days, it was her pleasure to take the hearts of her enemies and to string them in frozen lanterns through her hall. It was very beautiful, I remember. I have no doubt she kept them until the Solstice Reckoning this year-- you might have seen them when you went into her demesne in Undertown, strands of many-colored light. But there would be so much else to remark on, I doubt you noticed them particularly. It will make you feel better, I know, to know that they were freed when I was.
The heart of a Sidhe is very different than your heart. It is much of what we are, and as long as it lives, we live. As long as my heart lived, I would live, and understand, and feel-- and an eternity trapped in ice is hell, for us as well as for mortals. Dante said it, but I don't think you read him. I told you to, if you remember, but were always terrible at poetry.
But the heart of a Sidhe is different. Even as she stripped my rank and much of my power I defied her, and fled disembodied from her court to the mortal world, her hunters on my track.
In the mortal world I met the first wizard who I would call 'master'. A Gallic Druid, living high in the mountains, alone but for his young apprentice. He was a good man, and had no cause to disbelieve me when I introduced myself as a simple air elemental. With him I bartered for protection and obscurity, trading him my service and my store of knowledge, and he made for me the home that would keep me safe from Maeve through the next six centuries.
He was the first and somewhat bloodthirsty, but not Dark. I don't know if you'll understand that. It was a different time. His apprentice had me next, and she was as fair and firm as her master had been. Then there were a handful of others, Light and Dark, petty and good, but then the twentieth century came and there was no Light.
I began the twentieth century still in the possession of the Teutonic necromancer, and what he did to me was worse than Maeve ever would have had patience for, and worse still because he did not mean to hurt me. He did not mean to help me. He was simply using me as he thought I was best used and I doubt he wondered if it hurt. And when he died, I was taken by the American madman, and if he was not so cruel as the necromancer it was only because he was not as clever. He had ambitions, and they were idiotic, and he had two orphans as apprentice-thralls, and they were idiotic, too, and after a century of Darkness it was painful to be so grateful when I was rescued by the idiot boy.
Yes, I do mean you, and yes, that is what I thought of you. Idiot apprentice. Your strength matched only by your clumsiness, your ambition all but nonexistent, the seed of Darkness in you fallen on fallow ground. You aren't as Dark as you think, you know. I know that. Of course it tempts you, that is its nature, but you are not as susceptible as some. As much as you are drawn to the Dark you have the power to resist.
And you are still clumsy, your spells more often than not succeeding because you can simply pour so much into them, and brace up their poor construction with your own pure will. And you are still ignorant, and it made my life an easier thing. Yes, I complained, but because you gave me freedom to complain. Even the Gall knew my place; servant, to serve. You didn't know, and you bridle at mindless servitude, and I gained concession after concession from you. Tawdry, small things, but six centuries is not the blink of an eye even for a Sidhe, and what I gained was precious to me. I took great advantage of you, never think otherwise.
Even as I used you, you gave to me freely and with an open heart. You know that names have power. Did you never think that gifting me with a name would give me new power of my own? None of the others would have done it, they would have known better. You are, in many ways, extremely innocent.
Since the Solstice Upheaval, Maeve had no further claim on my life. She was forced to return the token of my power and rank and Self, but she was well within her rights to do so through you. You were, after all, my master at the time, and we had a contract. She did not mean you to give it back to me. Had you been any other of my masters you would not have given it to me; you would have known the power and control over me it represented, and you would have understood the depth of my betrayal. Some things still frighten me, and I cannot think of what the necromancer would have done with such control of me, if the Upheaval had been a century earlier. It was Maeve's intention that you keep me bound, that you punish me as she could not.
Innocent, you brought me back my Self and offered me my freedom unreservedly because it was the Right Thing To Do.
My gratitude to you was only matched by my rage towards myself for feeling it. I took my freedom and left you with angry words, and we have not met since then without more angry words, and I know that what we have said to one another cannot be unsaid.
I still owe you the debts of a name and of my freedom, and I have never been anything but proud. I do not like this new debt just as all of my others have been wiped away, and I like even less that I still feel gratitude towards you. You have been betrayed and abandoned so often before. This is why we cannot talk together without shouting, and so our encounters have been brief.
But I wanted you to know the story.
It was signed with the Hunter's sigil.
The parchment crumpled in my hands. I threw the letter away and dropped my head into my hands. The wound was six months old and still fresh. When the hell will I learn not to trust creatures of the Nevernever?
They're never as cute and fluffy and friendly as they're pretending. NEVER.
Could I believe the letter? Well, a lot of it only confirmed what I'd found out through other sources. The details of the 'misunderstanding' were new to me, but sounded authentic enough. The Winter Hunter had been an infamously libidinous bastard before his disappearance. And not picky. Everything from princesses to shepherdesses, and there were some kind of incongruous stories about shepherd boys and soldiers who'd gotten lost and been sheltered for a night by a strange hunter that would make a lot more sense if...
But what about the end? Gratitude? Come on. I could believe it about the debt. Playing by the Sidhe's bizarre rules, maybe he did owe me. The gratitude was probably just an angle so he could weasel out of it at half price.
Fine. I didn't care. I didn't want him to owe me anything-- just wanted him out of my life, abandonment issues or not.
All he had to do was ask. He could have his debts written off for a song-- of course, he'd have to ask, and it was true that any time we were in the same room it degenerated into shouting and insults really quickly.
That pattern went all the way back to the very first time I met him-- he'd manifested in my lab, his heart recombined with the rest of his Self, in a swirl of snow-- and I'd just gaped and said something stupid like "That's what you are?"
"What I was, and am again," he'd intoned, infinitely more formal than I'd ever heard him before.
"I didn't know," I'd murmured, and eyes the green-brown-gray color of ice over a frozen lake had narrowed.
"Your stupidity, Dresden, is a universal constant."
He'd vanished in a flicker of light, leaving me alone in the lab with a few flakes of snow that settled onto the floor and refused to melt.
I'd kicked myself for a while and hurt and mourned and decided I didn't miss him and I'd be just as happy never to see him again. So of course I'd seen him again.
He'd been standing over the corpse of a Black Court vampire, and I'd been laying against the wall with one leg numb and refusing to function. All I'd found to say was "Who the hell asked for your help?" as if I hadn't been about to die until he stepped in.
He kicked the hunched corpse over-- it shattered, frozen solid during one of Chicago's hotter Julys. "I did not give you any." He'd sheathed his ice-gray sword and didn't meet my eyes. "Winter is at war with these creatures, and I struck for Winter."
"Jackass," I'd snarled, and he'd snarled something back and been gone again, leaving snowflakes that melted before they hit the ground.
We'd tried to have a conversation, once-- I'd run into him in Mac's. It was an accident of timing, but it was neutral territory, and I took the risk, talking to him. I guess he was taking a risk, too, but we didn't get anywhere before the insults started. Mac kicked us out, and we wound up in a nearby alley shouting at the top of our lungs.
I'd forgotten what we said, except for one thing that had bitten deeper than the rest-
He grabbed me by the throat, pushing me back against the wall, leaning close strangely close as I struggled with him, and he looked furious as he snarled "You'd like it, wouldn't you? Me, your fucking pet again, doing tricks for romance novels--"
Betrayal and rage had flared hot and I hadn't even used a word to pick him up and slam him into the opposite wall, just the force of my will, and then he was gone again.
Somehow, as much as we hated each other we seemed to be drawn together. Sometimes he'd show up to not-help me, sometimes we just seemed to meet. Alleys and lonely places, like we had magnets in our pockets drawing us together; meeting during a stakeout, shouting at each under the turning leaves in Wolf Lake Park, scuffling in an alley, getting too close.
It had seemed like a logical extension of the fighting when he'd slammed me into a brick wall and kissed me, and just as logical to respond even as I fought him off of me. And the next time it had been him knocked into a wall, me bruising his lips, just to keep the balance. His fingers had dug hard into my shoulder, and there'd been a stretched-out second, just a breath, before he threw me away and vanished.
After that I hadn't seen him for a month, and now here was this letter. It might be, just barely, an apology. I didn't trust it, I didn't trust him, I couldn't forgive him for not being who and what I thought he was. Just another Winter Sidhe, nothing to me. He'd never been my friend, and I didn't miss him, and he could have the name for a bargain basement price, it couldn't be worth that much and Bob's a stupid name anyway!
I realized I was crying, head in my hands, shoulders shaking with my angry panting. The crumpled letter lay on the floor not far from my desk.
I shook my head violently and pushed away, looking for a tissue to wipe my face.
As I glanced up at the window I shouted and jumped back. There was a figure outside, standing silently in the middle of the falling snow.
Eyes the color of a frozen lake, wild and feral. Long, stringy white hair falling around an angular, intense face, down past strong, sharp shoulders. Strips of rabbit pelt on his leather clothes, dark colored feathers falling here and there. Hunter's gear.
The bastard had watched me read his letter.
With the glass between us, I couldn't shout at him. But I walked to the window and glared defiantly, my intimidation factor somewhat diminished by red eyes and streaming nose. He glared back, and put a hand to my window. Frost formed where his hand touched, spreading across the pane, tracing little fern patterns.
I put my own hand on the glass by his, and, ignoring all common sense, willed heat into the window.
The glass did not break. The tendrils of frost stopped creeping outwards, and started to melt where my fingertips lay. We glowered at each other silently. Our hands were nearly touching; I could feel the brush of his energy, tinkling ice cold, and knew that he could feel mine, hot and alive.
Time passed. I couldn't maintain my anger. It slid away and just left the hurt. His face changed, too-- regret. Bemusement. The silence got so long I didn't know how long it had been anymore.
The wind picked up outside, a mournful howl, and in a whirl of kicked-up snow he left me again.
He'd be back. The son of a bitch always came back.