Topic: Readiness

Scotty

Date: 2010-03-05 16:37 EST
He knew that Harold hadn't particularly wanted him to go out today, after what had happened yesterday, but they both ended up going to work anyway. For Scotty's part, he walked Harold to work, and then headed to his own job. Along the way, the last traces of the scent from those monsters seemed to be fading, and despite his better judgment, he did return to the scene of the crimes.

He had no idea what those monsters were, but where a body had been in the alley, now there was nothing but a broken husk of a completely ruined phaser, in a pool of black and vile goo.

He followed to where he remembered the others being left as well; he didn't find any bodies, but there was more of the foul goo, and bits and odds and pieces. What looked like a charm here. Someone's laser pistol there. Hell, he even found the broken remains of what looked like someone's camera.

He also found the rusted pendant that Maia had thrown, distracting those monsters.

It was entirely foul lifting it out of that slime, but Scotty used the end of his pike to do it. It might have nothing left in it, but he was a good metal worker, or at least passable, and he could restore its physical shape, even if the energy it had contained would forever be gone.

He didn't smell any new traces of the beasts. Didn't see anything that set his instincts off, either. And really, for having been ambushed yesterday, he was in a surprisingly non-jumpy mood. He fully intended to go to work at GAME, go to the tea shop or the Daily Bread for lunch, go and pick up Jamie's wedding gear, stop off and grab Harold, and head home. He didn't even think to hide away, for fear of more monsters.

He already knew there were more.

And when Scotty went out into Rhy'Din that day, he went out with a little more certainty and a little more alert readiness than he had the day before.

Scotty

Date: 2010-03-06 18:08 EST
There was a certain feeling that had settled over the young Scot: He felt something like patriotism towards Rhy'Din.

It wasn't an entirely new sensation; he had loved Scotland. It was familiar and he understood the culture and customs of Aberdeen. He also understood the flaws and the skeletons in the closet... he should, he was one of them. It was not a perfect love, but he never denied that he was born and raised there.

But there was a difference between a man being born to a land, and a man choosing it.

Rhy'Din, really, had been a welcome escape from that unchanging beach. It was a reality versus an unreality. Aye, it had magic and dragons and things that Scotty really had never fathomed existing -- things of legends, things of fairy-tales. But it was, somehow, more real than the universe before the beach, and it was certainly more real than the non-universe that was the beach.

There was a difference, though, between a place that was an escape, and a place that had become home.

Scotty wasn't so good at figuring out what home was, aside from Harold's arms. That was home. Their room in the Red Dragon was probably a close second.

It sort of surprised him, though, that it took slathering and foul-smelling monsters lurking to make him feel a rush of patriotism towards Rhy'Din.

Not the kind of patriotism that made him want to run off, defend everyone, take up being member of the Watch or anything. But a certain realization that this was his home city, and that he could and would make a life within it.

Even with the monsters.

It had been a beautiful day; the sun was shining, and even with a cold wind coming down from the north, he and Harold went to learn how to shoot from Lowe and Maia. The former who was an incredible marksman, and the latter who was a fine shot herself, though it was clear she preferred a quieter weapon.

Out by the lighthouse, high on the cliffs above the sea, it was after they were done shooting (and Scotty was done cringing at the sound) that he felt that certainty settle in. Standing in grass and the last remnants of melting snow, wet to his knees from it, in the sun and wind, surrounded by the sea, it was then that he felt the realization sink in.

Rhy'Din was his home. And the future would have monsters, and he and Harold would have to be ready for those, but at least in this world, they could fight back against them. There were wonderful things, too.

Like two sailors, some guns, a picnic basket and dinner eaten on the upper deck of a lighthouse. Like a pendant he had fixed at work yesterday, pulled from a dead monster's slime by the end of his pike. Like the Inn, and its people.

Like the sun shining for the coming spring.

Rhy'Din was worth fighting the monsters for.

Harold Lee

Date: 2010-03-06 18:53 EST
This was not Harold.

But it was.

There was a moment late in lesson, the sound of gunfire echoing around his ears, that he realized he'd forgotten to rage against what he was doing.

It was a strange little contradiction. He had always, probably from the moment he'd cleaned the wound on Scotty's head back on Risa, been willing to die or kill for this man; tears and disinfectant cascading to the sand, and he'd known then what he would have done if he could only get his hands on the bastards that had hurt someone so purely decent as Scotty.

Still, he'd always fought the notion of having to learn. It had felt beyond him. Above him, and somehow impossible to grasp, and as though it suddenly legitimized the threat; made it real, and made Harold something different. Instead of reacting to an abstract possibility, he was...

It was almost as if, somewhere in his mind, he felt that making ready invited something to come and steal his fiance away.

Harold, too, flinched at the terrible sound the weapons made; it felt impossibly powerful in his grasp, frighteningly real being fired off beside him. He felt no real satisfaction at seeing the gun fired. Nor did he feel different for having fired it.

This was not Harold. A man holding a gun, ready to kill, preparing to be something... fierce, something as powerful as the instrument in his grasp, something more powerful because he'd be driven by love and honest fight to protect and live rather than simple gun powder and a trigger.

But apparently, it was.

It was the flashes of fight, the man who had stolen a car, the man who had maced a pair of military cops, the one who had taken up a pool cue and swung. The one who'd pulled a phaser on a what looked for all the world like a young girl, save for the menacing smile and the gruesome gift in hand. It was even, somewhere, the boy who had held tightly on to his ant farm.

Closing the gap between those little moments, veiling them over his entire life forward. It was a man deserving of those leathers given to him by his fiance that he still couldn't quite face, for pure and complete inability to see himself as something worthy of that imagery.

It was not Harold. He didn't want this. He didn't want to be a fighter, he didn't want to be expected to take up arms, he didn't want that kind of responsibility.

But it was, and he did.

Somewhere, he'd forgotten to think he was tempting fate in learning. He'd forgotten to reject it all and throw a prize-winning internal tantrum, kicking and crying against the notion of letting it go. Letting go of the strange comfort in simply saying "I'm not a fighter" and dismissing having to try.

It had just left him. One kind of innocence lost, traded for some aspect of truly being a man that he never felt before that he could hold on to. Maybe it had slipped away when Scotty came running to him, pike in hand, panting and desperate to know Harold was all right. Maybe it had gone the way of his barstool, kicked swiftly behind him the night Fleck had come slamming over the bar. Maybe drops of water had worn the stone of his fear away for longer than Harold had even realized, the first drop left in the sand under a pier on Risa.

Somewhen, with no fanfare at all, Harold became someone who would. Could.

It was Harold, and he would.