(2022-04-08) One More Light

Details

Author:	Jessa
Summary:	Ismene goes to seek out A'dal after the events of her most recent travel out into the Zangarmarsh with Ben and Silvestre. When she doesn't return to their rooms, Ben seeks her out (with a little nudge from Ivri).
Rating:	M for Mature 17+

Chain: Bizzy

It’s never truly dark in Shattrath City, and certainly not on Aldor Rise. Maybe it’s due to the Draenei reverence for the Light, but that reverence is not shared by Ivrianna Barlowe. She much prefers the darkness, though if asked she will admit that’s mostly due to an inclination toward laziness.

Not that even the perpetual shimmer of draenic string lights stops her entirely from plying her trade. She passes through the crowd, slight and lean, weaving through the larger forms of those returning home from a late dinner or from some evening’s entertainment. Still more are heading to a distant theater or music venue.

Some of them are lighter by a few possessions. Not money; it wouldn’t do for someone to look forward to a drink at the end of a long day and find themselves without the silver to pay for one. No, her gleanings are a bracelet here, a cloak clasp there, maybe a pouch that doesn’t jingle just to satisfy her own curiosity. Most of the items are deposited neatly behind one of the guards protecting the Inn at Aldor Rise.

Ivri skips lightly up the steps and pauses outside one door in particular, listening. Whatever she hears or doesn’t hear, it doesn’t seem to please her. She twists her lips around and stares at the doorknob as if it presents a confusing puzzle.

Finally, she shrugs a little and knocks on the door neatly if fauncily labled “Hazan”.

The door is yanked open at once, as though she is an impatiently-awaited guest. Ben Hazan blinks owlishly at her, and then peers past her. He looks back at her, baffled. “Ivri. Hey. You — okay? Everythin’ okay?” He steps back to admit her, courteous even in his bemusement.

The faint ghost of some savory smell hangs in the air of the sitting room, and a pair of covered plates sit waiting on Ben’s desk, untouched. On the floor by Mizzy’s armchair, a blanket and pillow — presumably from the bed — have been arranged in a rumpled sort of nest, and the silverbound Tome of Valor lies open on the floor beside these.

It’s a mutual peering-past. Ivri takes in the scene. “Uh huh,” she says in that tone that means that she’s not really paying attention to what she’s saying. Then she looks him over like she’s sizing him for new clothes. “How’re you? Everything… y’know, everything all right? And all?”

Ben smooths the front of his (partially-untucked) shirt self-consciously at her once-over, and then drags a hand through his hair. “I — yeah. Everything’s fine. Just … studyin’, waitin’ on Mizz to get back. You need somethin’?”

“Nope. No.” She shakes her head, just for the third negative if he needs it. “You two have a fight or something?”

Ben focuses and blinks at her. “Me? And Mizzy?” he asks cautiously. “No. We did not — we just come back from the marsh earlier. I come up here to wash up and do some study. She just went down to the — said she was gonna see the naaru. You lookin’ for her? She ain’t come back yet.”

Ivri nods to show she understood the information, then takes one big step back and slightly to the side, away from the hall that leads to the entry. “Your wife’s in the hall with the naaru behind one of the ramps, bawling her eyes out.”

Ben stares at her for a long and slightly stupid moment. “She’s —”

He completes neither sentence nor, possibly, thought, but pushes past her and out into the hallway to head for the exit and the plaza beyond. He doesn’t bother to close the door behind him, nor does he (oops) stop to put shoes on.

Ivri steps into the room, finding Ben’s journal to catch up on what she’s missed. She even rubs her foot on the belly of the tiny white kitten that does its best to murder her boot. But we’ll leave her there, because by the time anyone else comes back, she’ll be gone. Or at least invisible.

In the Hall where A’dal shimmers and chimes, reaching hearts and minds with music that can soothe or rasp against nerves, with words that reassure or condemn, there is no sign of a crying woman. Work goes on as it always does. Officials come and go, Khadgar glowers at everyone, and sometimes someone rides halfway down a ramp on a horse.

Under one of those ramps, where it’s not precisely shadowed but is at least out of immediate eyesight, is a curled up lump of misery with a leather journal at its feet. Ismene has her head hidden in her hands and tucked against her knees. Her back is flat against the ramp, or as flat as nature permits, and she rocks there, back and forth, back and forth.

The busy throng of pilgrims and officials would be forgiven for assuming the barefoot and disheveled young man is one of Lower City’s refugees. A’dal’s Light is available to all, though, and so no one protests or detains him as he jostles past people, as intense and narrowly-focused as a hound on a scent.

When he catches sight at last of the small and wretched figure, he sucks in a sharp breath, then shoulders aside an extremely startled young draenei in the livery of a Sha’tari Skyguard courier in the urgency of his direct-line course toward Ismene.

He drops to his knees on the floor beside her and slides a gentle hand onto her back, between the curve of her spine and the ramp behind it, as if to cushion her against the stone. “Ismene. Mizzy. Hey, hey. What’s all this, kitten? What’s goin’ on?”

There’s a moment, a movement away. She pushes at him, or pushes herself away, turns her head so … so she doesn’t have to look at him? So he won’t have to look at her? With her hands off her face, she can’t keep in the strangled sob, the sound of raw pain that echoes against the stone, the marble. That sound, a discordant counterpoint to the soft song of the naaru, attracts attention. Heads turn, bodies shift.

And Mizzy cries.

“Hey,” says Ben, still soothing but firmer now, like a parent addressing a child teetering on the verge of tantrum. “Mizzy, hey. C’mon. C’mere.” He settles seated on the floor, tucks himself close beside her, shielding her from the curious eyes of the chamber. “I can take you upstairs,” he tells her softly, his head bent close. “Okay? Lemme take you upstairs. You tell me what’s goin’ on, kitten-cat. Okay? There is supper waitin’ up there, I will draw you a bath. Talk to me, Mizmainy. You want to go up?”

She looks at him, sharpened edges of a shattered heart visible in her eyes before she looks past him. She can’t see anything, not from here, but she’s looking toward the center of the room. “What have I done?”

The words seem to take the last of her strength. Now Ismene turns to Ben, or maybe she’s turning away from the naaru she can’t see. “Get me out of here,” she whispers. “I can’t be here.”

Wordlessly, no question asked, Ben shifts. He takes up her journal and presses it into her hands, then slips one arm around her and the other beneath her and gets carefully to his feet, lifting her out from her nook beneath the ramp. Cradling her close, heedless of the eyes on the disheveled young man and distraught young woman, he carries her from the naaru’s chamber and out to the Aldor walkway and lift.

Still without a word, he carries her all the way to their rooms and within, all the way across to her armchair. He steps over his study-nest on the floor to place her in the chair, then steps back to bend and collect from the floor the blanket he'd been using. He tucks this around her in the chair, then crouches before her and takes one of her hands in both of his. He gazes up at her. "Talk to me, Ismene."

When they leave the chamber, she is silent again, her body still flinching around the unheard sobs. On the lift, she trembles in his arms, and if one wishes to call that lessening a good sign it would be understandable. By the time they reach their room, she is just a limp burden in his arms, head resting on his chest.

Perhaps only Ben would see she does not, however, turn to him, does not bury her face against him, does not cling to his shirt. In his arms, she remains alone in misery.

Her hand is cold in his. Her other holds to her journal with a distracted grip. She doesn’t look at him. Not away, precisely, just unfocused and lost. No tears spill, at least. For once, words seem impossible to find. If he waits, if he is patient, she finally says, “I can’t hear him.”

He presses her hand gently between his, massages it, strokes the fine lines of her fingers, as if the limp cold is the source of her misery and not a symptom, as if he can warm it away. “You can’t hear who, Mizmainy?” His tone is still gentle, his gaze nearly black with anxiety.

“A’dal.” She starts to lift her journal, then gives up and it drops back to her lap under the blankets. Too much effort to lift it farther, to get clear. “I was writing. Crying. Then I couldn’t hear him. I can’t…” It doesn’t seem possible for her to get smaller, but she does, shrinking in on herself somehow, as if she shrivels, becomes less. Without curling tight, she seems to give up some essential part of herself. “There’s no more Light.”

Ben’s expression fractures a moment, and then wipes smooth at once: just a concerned and cautious blank. He continues to stroke her hand; perhaps that momentary stilling, that brief clutch of his grip, was a small sensory illusion. “Kitten. A’dal is — of course there is Light, sweetheart. There is Light in you and all through you, I promise. I know it, Mizmainy. Why would — what were you cryin’ about? When it … stopped?”

Now, finally, she meets his gaze. There’s guilt there, condemnation, maybe even a thread of anger. But that fades as she drops her head. Maybe she’s just conserving her strength, because she works her journal out from under the blanket and hands it to him. There is no other answer.

Ben takes the journal from her one-handed, watching her face. It’s difficult to maneuver it open to the most recent page with just one hand, but there’s no way he’s letting go of her with his other hand.

He reads the latest entry slowly, his brows knit, and his progress can be tracked by the slow dawnrise of mingled grim comprehension and horror in it. The silence draws out. Maybe he’s rereading. Maybe he’s just staring at the page.

At length, he closes the book carefully and sets it on the floor by her feet. He lifts her hand and kisses the back of it softly, presses it to his forehead. “Ismene,” he says. “I am — I am so sorry. I would have took that from you. I did not mean for you to take that on yourself. That is not — that was not meant for you, or for the world you see in you. I am sorry.”

Ismene draws in a deep breath and lets it out, a shuddering sigh. She seems relieved, in a way, perhaps because she doesn’t have to relate it all again. “I had to,” she says. “It had to be my decision, my hand. I couldn’t… be a coward.”

There’s probably more, but she seems to have exhausted whatever energy she’s managed to build up while he read.

“You are not a coward, Ismene Hazan. No matter what you had chosen to do. You are not a coward. You are a girl who come through the Dark Portal all by herself, and thrown herself straight into a war on the other side. You are a girl who spent weeks in a ruined fortress bein’ rained on by hell, to tend to wounded men and women. You are a girl who, almost as soon as I known her, set out into Duskwood with me and Sil to put down the kind of things a lot of people would just run screamin’ from, and did not flinch about it. I still remember you standin’ fast to heal us through those packs of worgens, even when they come at you out of nowhere. So to be clear, you are not and have never been a coward.” He studies the back of her hand, runs his thumb back and forth across her knuckles. “That decision that you made — that was brave as hell, too. Not just for … decidin’ it, and takin’ it on yourself, but for … I mean. You had to know it would twist a knife in you to do it. But you did it. You could not harm him without twistin’ a knife in yourself, and you did that, Mizzy. That is — I mean, if I am honest, that is braver than I am, most of the time.”

None of it seems to penetrate, or at least it doesn’t seem to matter. Except that she is looking at him again. “It was wrong,” she says, flat and soft. “I don’t know what else we could have done but that doesn’t make it right. I was wrong, and I used the power of the Light–” There’s a flare of pain in her eyes, and she stops.

“Mizzy,” says Ben, looking up at her. “It was — it was not wrong. It was a call, and it was a hard as hell one, and it is the one someone had to make. And you made it. And the Light — it was not the Light the way you know it. It was not the gentle Light in you, or the way you have used it before. But it wasn’t … not the Light, neither. You have seen how a paladin can use it. To make a judgment, to smite down a person or a thing. It is … not always an easy call. That is … the whole talk I just had with Cole. About when it is right and a paladin’s justice, and when it is just lashin’ out. You did not lash out, Mizz. You did not use the Light in anger. You used it to save lives, just … in a way you have not before. You used it to save me and Sil, because there was no savin’ that other fellow, he would not … be saved.

“It was not his fault. It was what got done to him. And it hurts your heart because you and me both know what it is like to be trapped in a thing that got done to you. But fault or not, he would not be saved, so you saved what could be. The Light is not gonna find fault in you for that, Ismene. You are — if A’dal has gone quiet for you, it is not because A’dal won’t reach you. It is because you feel like — it is because you feel like you have stepped out of the Light, and can’t reach back. Sweetheart.”

She closes her eyes. Is she shutting him out? There’s a moment when it might seem that way, when somehow she finds two more tears to give to the dead slave. Then and finally, she reaches for him, her arms reaching around his neck and she leans into him. She doesn’t speak, she just needs and in that need, she reaches for her Ben.

Ben exhales and reaches back, wrapping her up strongly. “Mizmainy. I am so sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have done it,” she says, voice properly muffled against Ben’s shoulder as it should be when she’s upset. “I shouldn’t have let anyone else do it. I can’t ever–” She sucks in a breath, holds it. “I don’t know what to do, who I am. How do I– I can’t, I can’t Ben, I can’t try t– I can’t ask again.”

Ben strokes her back, which is slightly awkward at this angle, so he rises finally and gathers her up and sits down in the armchair himself, arranging Mizzy on his lap. “Mizmainy. What can you not ask? For the Light? How are you gonna find forgiveness, how are you gonna be forgiven without the Light? Your whole heart is in the Light, kitten. You cannot kill yourself for this thing like that, because that would just take out of the world all the good you still got to do in it. That good world you see in your heart, yeah?” He peers down at her earnestly, pushing her hair back from her face. “And if you shouldn’t’ve done it but nor should anyone else … what happens then? What would’ve happened? Sometimes we only got bad choices in front of us, Mizzy, but we have got to choose one. You pick the better of a bad choice, because that is all you can do. But you did not have to do that yourself, kitten. And what you did — I mean. He was out of choices too, Mizz. The naga took ‘em away long before we got there. You know how long draeneis live? How much more of that was he gonna bear? You — in a way, a hard way, you set him free of it. You give him back to the Light. He got a soul, right? I know you believe in a soul. We could not let him go in his body or his mind, so you let his soul go back into the Light.”

She’s shaking her head even before he finishes. “It wasn’t for me to do it, not like that. I don’t blame you or Sil, that’s… you’re fighters, both of you. It’s what you’re called to do. I’m a healer.” Her whole body twitches, and she looks down. “Was a healer. Maybe we could have captured him and taken him to Telhamat. Every one who wouldn’t stop fighting or run.”

That seems to make her briefly more miserable. “But I didn’t think of it in time.”

Ben studies her, concerned. “You are a healer, Mizzy. You can’t help it. You are a healer right down to your bones, or you would not be so broken up now. You know?” He strokes her back again, in slow circles. “We could have tried to capture him, maybe. But in the state he was, he’d have fought us every step. And we’d have had to get him, fightin’ us all the way, past the rest of ‘em, the nagas and all. We’d have put us in just as much danger, maybe more, and him too. It would — Mizzy, if there was a thing different we could’ve done, I promise you, I’d’ve tried to do it. I promise you, kitten, okay?

“But when there is no good choice and it is goin’ to come out ugly like that one way or another, it ain’t on you to do that ugly thing, neither. None of it was your fault, the way that fellow was hurtin’, and he could not be healed of those hurts. There is one kind of mercy for that, and I will give it and I will give it quick. I do not want to see you grieved like this, because you have got a good healer’s heart.”

“It’s because I have this heart that I am grieved,” she says. Lost in her thoughts, she stays silent. Whatever she’s thinking isn’t leading to new tears or new guilt. She probably doesn’t even notice when her breathing aligns with Ben’s. “They tell us, you know, that some day we may have to give mercy to someone suffering too much to be healed. I just haven’t found anyone like that. Do you suppose it was arrogant of me, to think that I never would? That this is a… some horrible lesson?”

She’s asking her knees, not turning to look at him, though more and more of her weight leans against his chest. A little at a time. With each exhale.

He gathers her in gently as she leans, not pulling her, not forcing. He rests his chin on her head. “It is because you have the heart you do, yeah. If you were not every bit a healer in every part of you, you would not be hurtin’ like this right now, Mizmainy.” He strokes her back and is silent for a time himself, thinking. “I think — I do think it is a horrible lesson, though maybe not how you mean. I do not think you were bein’ arrogant, or that you are bein’ punish. I think — you were bein’ as sweet and hopeful as you are. Which ain’t wrong. We don’t get to better things without someone who can see ‘em for us, who knows what better looks like. Just … sometimes we are gonna stumble on the way there. Sometimes we are gonna get our hope hurt a little, because there is ugliness on the way there. But we got to — we got to keep goin’, right? That is what you and me do. Right? You told me so, not that long ago. Whatever they done to us, we picked ourselves up and kept movin’ forward. You can do that now, Mizmainy. I promise you can. You can feel grieved, you can feel the hurt, and then you will shine your Light again and keep walkin’ toward the better.”

That catches her. She tilts her head back to look up at him and for the first time, something of her heartbreak clears. The faintest hint of a smile, or perhaps it’s just a lessening of the downcurve of her lips, shows itself. “We have to keep going,” she replies. Then the spark fades. “But… perhaps not in the same way. I don’t think I can do it, Ben. I don’t think I can… I feel like… Like I took something pure and good and turned it to an evil purpose. That can’t be acceptable, I can’t let it be acceptable.”

Ben starts to speak, to argue, but then hesitates, considering her face. Instead, he asks gently, “In what way, then, Ismene? If it can’t be the same? What way do you think you can keep goin’?”

“I’m still Lady Hazan,” she says. Then her face falls. “Oh, I suppose we’ll have to move out if I can’t heal.” She looks around the lovely room and sighs, resting her head against Ben’s chest. “I’ll miss this little sitting room. I liked being here with the fire and you working at your desk and Hattie curled up with Mariestraza.”

“You are still Lady Hazan,” he agrees. “You always will be. But — Mizzy. You are still a healer, too. I don’t know if you can’t be. It is too deep in you. You will — this is a hurt you have took, inside you, in your heart. It … can be healed too, yeah? With Light or time or both. It may set a little crooked, you might have a scar. But. Healin’ ain’t a thing you do, it is a thing you are. I know you.”

“Maybe,” she agrees with the air of one who hasn’t the energy to argue. “But not like that. Never again like that.” As if to end the discussion, she closes her eyes and relaxes against him.

She doesn’t snuggle close, though. There is little if any sense she’s deriving comfort from where she is.

Ben lets her curl up and not-snuggle him silently for a time. His hand moves meditatively on her back, and he lifts his chin from her head to kiss her there instead, breathing in the soft scent of her hair.

“Ismene Hazan,” he says at last, low-voiced. “Come back to me, sweetheart. Tell me what I can do. You know I will stitch this whole world back together for you or die tryin’. Tell me what I got to do to make it right. You are my Light, my best girl. Don’t you go away from me like this. Don’t go away from you.”

“Not everything can be fixed, Ben,” she says, opening her eyes but not moving. “Not everything can be healed. Sometimes we just have to move on, and leave it broken behind us.”

“I know that,” he says. “I know it, Ismene. You know I do, I have been sayin’ it. But I will not leave you broken anyplace. I won’t do that. You were meant for the Light and if you turn away from it now, that is a punishment you don’t deserve. It ain’t the first time the Light was used to do a hard mercy, and it will not be the last. You did not poison it, you did not turn nothin’ evil. You did the most and best you could, the most and best that could have been done, and you knifed yourself when you did it. You can’t hurt the Light, Mizzy. No one can. You got hurt. Not it.”

A new fear pulls her away from his chest, enough to see him, to let him see the fear in her. “You… You’ll still love me? If I can’t, though? With… with the Light?”

“Mizzy.” A shock runs through him. “Mizmainy Hazan. I will never not love you. I will love you until all the Light goes out of this world. Which it will never, but if it did you would be my last little spark of it. I will love you until I am dead and probably more than that. I will fucken haunt you,” he tells her, a little severe, a little teasing. His gaze is serious.

She caresses his face with her left hand, the one with the diamond ring that catches and scatters the crystalline light. “I have always loved you,” she replies. “Forgive me for taking so long to get to you.”

Ben catches her hand and kisses it, first the back of it and then, turning it, her palm. He folds her fingers over the warmth of his kiss, grazes her knuckles with his lips again. “I have got you, Ismene. I have always got you, and I always will. We will get you through it, by one path or another, and I will carry you for some of it if I got to. But you and me, we will always be standin’ shoulder-to-shoulder.” His expression flickers. “… as a figure of speech, I guess.”

Ismene surprises herself with a giggle. “You’re too tall,” she says, quietly and with layers of exhaustion beginning to show in the blurring of her words. “I’m the right size. It’s not my fault your shoulders are so high up.”

“You are the right size,” he agrees, softly. “You are exactly the right size for me to pick you up and put you to bed, which I am goin’ to do right now, because you are a tired kitten.”

“I’ll go see Niris tomorrow,” she says, like a promise. “She’ll… help.” That wasn’t what she was going to say, but it will do. To help him pick her up, she wraps an arm over his shoulders. Because helpful.

“That is a real good idea,” he tells her, still softly. “She will help.” He fits an arm beneath her again, his other around her, and rises to his feet. “So will sleepin’. Let’s get you there.”

“Stay with me?” she asks in the tiniest possible voice.

“Always will,” he tells her.