I think Bjorn was right; it?s the waiting that?s the hardest part, because until it happens, it feels like I?m stuck in purgatory, unable to act to move on and yet with all the doors behind me wedged firmly shut.
It was good of him to come over, even if I?m fully aware he had ulterior motives. I?m the wild card, the one they can?t control effectively, and I guess they must have decided between them that I needed talking to in case my involvement put everyone else at risk. It?s been a point of contention between us before, my impatience. They talk and talk as if we have all the time in the world, whilst I feel every second tick past and know we can?t afford the cost, for each one is priceless. Each one could mean a life saved or a life lost, and this one, I will not permit them to take chances with.
I try and make sure we are as prepared as we can be, planning for every eventuality (doing it now will save time on the other side) but it?s difficult because our intel is so lacking. It?s the collective knowledge born of dreams and fading memories, of men and women who were contained so well by those than ruled them that my questions are more often met with shaken heads and apologies than they are with anything I can use. Bjorn sketches faces and annotates with facts he can recall of each; dangerous people these, council members and their lackeys, lords who jostle for favour. He has a wall in the basement where he pins it all up, and I make copies of the details, writing it all out over and over for the others, because I don?t dare to ask if I can get them copied in the city just in case some of the details get lost. This way it?s drilled into my head, anyway. I recall it from memory. I know the faces almost as well as he does by now, I think.
Ivanya and I sit and practice our Vhamerian out behind the manor house several times a week, and we can hold a respectable conversation now. I have a wider vocabulary than he does, but being around Bjorn, Ghita and Hector has given him a favourable accent, and so I?ve taken to demanding that Evander talks to me in his native tongue, and drops the slang from our conversations in common so I can get the hang of the word order they might use in his homeland. He?s patient with me, because he understands now how scared I am.
After Bjorn visited, I was a mess. It wasn?t his fault, and he handled it in a way that didn?t leave me feeling ashamed. I?m grateful for that, and for how as soon as I asked that he take me to Evander, he took me with no questions asked. Kept me talking on the ride over, confiding things I?ve never told anyone, not even Evander or Vadriel. Things I know I should tell them but cannot just now. Not when there are things so much more pressing. I told him about Sedecla, about the necromancy, about Aoife?s involvement in the return of blocked memories. I told him about the English, and the flesh golem at the dam, and all manner of things that happened while I was with Tanziel - things Tanziel was never even privy to at the time, because he didn?t seem to want that part of me.
It was difficult to confess to these things. I keep them so well locked up, and to begin with Bjorn was so quiet that I regretted the first little admission. Regretted it until he came right out and told me how he?d been frightened to speak up in case I felt badgered and denied him again. I didn?t even have time to worry over whether I?d said too much, to worry what he might think of me, because when we reached his property, I didn?t have time for anything beyond getting to Evander.
I can?t remember the things I said to him. Only that I communicated I was terrified, and that he was asking me what I needed him to do, what I needed from him, and that he didn?t treat me as if I was weak for breaking down in front of him, or holding on too tight. I remember that afterwards, he?d broken enough bones I couldn?t even grasp him properly, that the pain was cathartic enough that the panic had subsided, but then his demons came out to play, just for a little while.
Niamh used to play games with him. Invite him to be brutal and then cry monster in the aftermath, only to laugh at him when his guilt took hold. It?s not the first time I?ve demanded that he not compare us, that I am nothing like her, but I didn?t rage at him for it. A year might have come and gone since we first f***ed, but I don?t expect him to find his feet in this messed up relationship we have without any stumbling. Like I?ve said before, he?s damaged goods, but I?m not going to try and shoulder his weight for him like a crutch, because that would be insulting. It?s not support he needs - he?s strong already, stronger by far than anyone else I know, it?s just the right kind of encouragement.
Be yourself and that?s enough for me.
There was a festival on the border Bjorn shared with the Alfar commune the other night. Just an excuse for everyone to feast and drink and be together without it being the serious business of one of these ?moots? as the Alfar call it. They?ve all been working hard out there, trying to get the land ploughed, the crops sown and the first buildings up in preparation for winter.
On the days that I?m not busy at Yvgeny?s (helping him prep another batch of potent anti-shield pristes draughts) or securing supplies I mean to take with me, or just spending as much time with Evander as I can, I?m out there helping the Alfar. I like them. I want to see them do well. I try and find ways to help them adapt to life here that won?t take them too far from their traditions, which will allow them to remain self sufficient, and sometimes it?s a lot of experimentation and hard work, but usually the results are rewarding enough that all the time spent trying to figure it out is worth it.
In their homeland, they were able to summon flame from fuel that didn?t consume it, so there was never any need to hack down trees, no black smoke - they were able to bring very little material with them, and so the twins and I experimented with making charcoal, a process which took far longer than we expected but which yielded more than we?d dare hope for. It means that Faendal has enough fuel to heat up the iron ore in the bloomery furnace I found plans for and helped construct with Ivanya, and as a result, they have metal to work with, without needing to purchase it in the city.
They?ve a need for livestock too, and inadvertently they?ve helped me out there. At the shelter there are always ex battery hens being brought in, or farm stock left to get in a bad way - animals people have thought would make good pets only to realise they didn?t belong ten floors up in apartments with no company for hours a day. As a result, they now have a small brood of hens, and though it took time to get them into decent laying condition over the months (throw in the moults and the stress of the move to add to the delay) they actually started producing eggs. I managed to rehome a small herd of highland cattle to them too, so now their cold stores have milk and cheese. I figured they?d need something to go with all the mead Leif has been making with Vignar and Asger - those beehives really took off, though now that the weather has gotten frosty, they?ve had all they?ll get for the year. The Alfar are ambitious, and I think the Vhamerians made right choice in offering them alliance.
There was no segregation amongst them at the festival - Faendal and Dianthe seem as besotted a couple as I?ve ever seen, Joshua and Kyrie are thick as thieves with Eorlund and even Sven, who was all arrogance and dismissive of the warriors seems to have found his place, sharing knowledge with Ghita. I was actually drunk enough to set aside my worries for a little while, until the whole event came to a standstill when one of these f***ed up anomalies people have been experiencing in the city opened up right there where everyone was dancing, and took Hector.
The whole messy thing didn?t last longer than a handful of minutes - ten, maybe fifteen - but it was enough to leave Bjorn?s people horrified, and for Evander to be traumatised to a state I?ve never seen him in before. Where the Hector we knew had been, another stood in his place, and he was a maimed, broken head-case, telling us that it was Bjorn who would be taken, that everyone died in the future he?d come from but for himself, Evander and me. That the plans we?ve been arranging all go wrong.
As fast as it happened, it was reversed when he stepped back into the opening, and the Hector who belongs with us was returned. But that was enough time for the damage to have been done. Evander was distraught seeing Hector reduced to that, unsure how to deal with it and only getting more anxious as the minutes passed. I can?t blame him. This is a man he?s lived with, been friends with for longer than I?ve been alive, and there he was begging that should the same version of events happen, that we let him die. That the future was so horrific he did not want to live within it.
I didn?t handle things very well. Evander left to find some target for his frustrations, and I followed with no idea of what to do. He commanded that I not get in his way, that I remain behind him, that I not look at him. He meant to do someone harm, take life, drink and f*** me afterwards. He declared these things as if he expected argument from me, and he didn?t want to talk. Didn?t want to discuss his feelings or what had happened. So I didn?t try. One thing I did know, was that trying to get him to expose those vulnerabilities so I could heal them with talking was not on the cards. His strength lies in his ability to cope, and it was failing him. I watched his control disintegrate without doing a thing to prevent it, and he didn?t make it to the city in time to use his fists. He snapped long before then, and put his fists to a tree.
In retrospect, I know that the damage he caused himself could have been healed later, and that I could have let him crush every bone in his hands if it?d helped him. But his panic was spiking, and having been victim of that too frequently of late, I figured it might be kinder if he just wasn?t awake to feel it. That way he wouldn?t have to suffer it, wouldn?t need to be ashamed of me seeing it. So I hit him in the head with a branch, and that was that.
He didn?t pass out, but he wasn?t far off, and he was stunned enough that his thoughts seemed to have slipped from the track they?d been travelling at breakneck speed as if they?d derailed. In some strange, messed up way, it worked. Shock has its benefits I suppose.
I?m not fool enough in any way to think that I fixed him. What it did do, was let him gather the thoughts that?d been terrifying him so he could talk, that it became safe to be touched again, and he let me pick the splinters from his shredded knuckles and from his scalp as we spoke. We know that thanks to Hector telling us of the errors we made in his reality, we won?t be making the same mistakes. That we can adjust our plans accordingly. But I think it finally hit Evander about what Ciramina said. That there would be loss.
Bjorn won?t be taken. I?m sure of this, because he means to stay on his land now where the wards keep it secure. Evander remains the prime target, and it hurts him to know that no matter what he does, he will fail in some respect, because someone will die, and though in Ciramina?s calculations it will be worth it, how does a man like my lover weigh the life of his friends, his clansmen? How can he say that any reward would be worth the losing of even one of them?
He wants me to mark him before he is taken. Give him some scar that he can remember me by, and though I?ve refrained from giving him even a single such mark because I have so readily marked all my other lovers, I will do this for him. I?ll do it because, after more than a year of sharing his life and his bed, I can say I?m falling for him and not be terrified. Love? It?s a big word. But I know that?s where this is headed. That its inevitable. At some point, something will happen and I?ll just know and everyone will probably f***ing know, and he?ll probably know most of all. What started with lust and infatuation and possessiveness has developed in this whole other direction, and I?m glad of it. And I?m glad too, because I?m not alone there.
Sat under that tree, with Evander?s scalp split by my concerned attempts to knock him out, he told me he wants to be the one to say it first. And that he doesn?t want me to worry if I can?t say it back. He doesn?t want it to be like it was with Niamh, where she was the first to say it, and his reply was not what she wanted. I didn?t mind the comparison this time around. I was too busy recalling how I?d said nearly those same words to another man, two years ago. That now Evander was saying them to me, and I sure as Hell wasn?t going to go vanishing before he had chance to say those three fucking words and mean it.
And so that?s why I cannot let him go without doing everything, risking everything to get him back.
- M
