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| Details |
| Author: | Luridel |
| Summary: | Mordecai and Ismene catch each other up on what's been going on in their lives. Colson makes a very nice bodyguard. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Shattrath’s center-most chamber serves multiple purposes, now including acting as a transit hub for anyone arriving or leaving the city by portal, and as such it is not unguarded. Multiple draenei vindicators, particularly on the balcony, keep watch over the area.
Colson and Mordecai enter from the northmost archway, holding hands, and step towards the wall, out of the way of the immediate flow of traffic. The two of them have a quiet, hushed conversation, with Mordecai gesturing towards A’dal in the center of the chamber. Colson leans in and kisses Mordecai on the forehead before the two of them separate: Colson moves to a spot near the outside of the chamber with good clear lines of sight to both the portals and Mordecai, while Mordecai walks towards A’dal in the center of the room, smiling.
Mordecai stops on the upper ring of the platform, smoothing down his formal-looking priest robes, and spends a good two minutes just basking in the naaru’s Light and perhaps listening to A’dal’s song before he takes another look around the room.
Behind him, with her back against the wall, tucked into as tiny a ball as possible considering she has a lapdesk with her, Ismene watches Mordecai quietly. She smiles and says nothing, giving him time to listen. Only when he moves and looks around, does she speak. “Mordecai,” she says softly, not wanting to disturb the atmosphere. Or possibly not wanting to incur the wrath of Grumpypants the Mage.
Mordecai catches sight of Ismene and smiles, raising a hand to wave at her. He takes a step towards her, then looks back at Colson and gestures to make sure Colson knows where he's going.
As Mordecai approaches Ismene, Colson circles away along the wall to a position that puts him just within forty yards of the two - far away enough to give them a bit of privacy; close enough to reach Mordecai with a healing spell should he have to.
Mordecai leans back against the wall next to Ismene and then slides down it to sit on the floor with her, smoothing his robes down over his knees. "How are you, Mizzy?" he asks, his voice also quiet.
“Fine,” she says, smiling at him and folding herself over her desk. She doesn’t seem to be alarmed or trying to hide the contents, it’s just a way to make herself tinier. “Was that Colson? Do you have a bodyguard?”
Mordecai nods. "That's Colson," he says with just the sappiest, softest, talking-about-the-love-of-his-life smile ever. He then forgets everything else he was going to say to Ismene for the time being, looking fondly at his husband across the room.
Eyes sparkling with delight, she lets him daydream for a minute before she muffles a laugh. “But why is he following you around?” Leaning forward, she tries to see if she can see him any better. “Does he want to come sit?”
"Hm?" Mordecai blinks vacantly at her for a few seconds as he tries to process the questions. She was definitely saying words at him a second ago there. "Um, he's following me around because my brother tried to have me poisoned recently, and - and he's worried." Mordecai seems perfectly content to be followed around.
She considers his words, still eyeing Colson. “I wonder if I could talk Ben into following me around,” she muses. “I’m sorry about your brother, though. I know Ben had some concerns about your family. Is everything settled then? Except for your brother. Ben said there was…” Edit edit edit. “That Colson had a plan.”
"Not - completely settled, yet, but… getting there." Mordecai looks down at his lap. "There's… at, at some point there's going to be a trial. For Father. For what he… did."
She doesn’t even have to ask. She reaches out and rests a hand over Mordecai’s. “Oh… Colson ki– I mean, your father is… And Colson’s responsible?”
Mordecai doesn't brush off the hand, but he shakes his head emphatically no, immediately. He does not raise his voice in the Naaru room. Good job, Mordecai. "No, no, nothing like that. No, my father's still alive. He hasn't been arrested yet. Colson's trying to find - evidence. Witnesses. For what Father did."
“Oh!” Relieved, Mizzy sits back and takes her hand off him all on her own. “I thought you meant Colson would be on trial for something he did to your father. Well. That’s much better; your father should be on trial. He’s terrible, I’m sorry to say.”
"He is terrible," Mordecai agrees, and does that quick little 'did anybody hear me say that?' glance-around, automatically. "Have… you been all right?"
She nods. “Uh huh! Oh, well, there was a bit there where I… But that’s all settled now.” She gestures toward A’dal. “So I sit here sometimes when Ben’s away working, so I won’t feel so alone. I doubt your brother could get in here, of course. I assume A’dal would say something.”
Her brow puckers. “I suppose. Though maybe Khadgar would just yell at your brother to stop bothering everyone.”
"Ben told me," Mordecai admits. "About… what happened." That's pretty vague, but Ismene probably knows what he's referring to. "He was worried about you. I, um, I told him you probably needed time before you were ready to talk about it. Do you? Want to talk about it at all?"
That makes her smile all over again. “Poor Ben. He doesn’t know what to do when something’s bothering me that he can’t punch.” Look, heart-eyes! “It really was terrible, though,” she says, sighing. “I suppose it still is. There has to be a better solution than just ‘kill slaves that won’t stop hitting you’. I think Ben finds it impractical to capture them and take them to the Draenei for help.”
"There should be," Mordecai agrees, "although I admit I don't have one either. Certainly not a practical one. Something alchemical, maybe, to put them to sleep?" He shrugs. "Rehabilitating someone who's been conditioned like that is never easy, and rarely convenient or practical. And it always feels horrible, having to give up on helping someone."
“I’ve never had to do it before,” Ismene admits. “But then I don’t really have a great deal of experience at anything. You’ve done so much more than me. Niris, too.” She faces A’dal and watches him float and spin. “I told Ben I’ve been passive my entire life. Even coming here to be a priestess. All I did was tell one priest that I wished I could do what he could, that what he did was miraculous to me. And then everything happened from there. I don’t feel like I chose any of it, or decided anything. Now I’m here.
“I’m sure I decided something along the way, but…” She shakes her head. “Not like that. Not to kill someone. Even though they taught us about ‘giving mercy’.” She looks over at Mordecai again, the top of her head resting on her knees. “Did you ever have to do something like that? Is… Should I not ask that? I don’t want to bring up bad memories, and you don’t have to talk about them if you don’t want to.”
"You're always welcome to ask about anything, bad memories or not, and I…" Mordecai's posture has changed a little. He sits with his knees up in front of him, still, but he's stopped trying to make himself seem smaller. "Are you asking if I, personally, ever had to kill a person specifically to end their suffering?" It seems like he's asking for clarification; his voice is gentle.
Ismene nods, not wanting to speak again.
"I have, but not in a situation like you're describing," Mordecai says, quiet and soft. "I have had patients whose wounds resisted my healing; I have had patients who didn't want to be healed at all."
A protest visibly builds, but she stops it before it can escape. Her eyes drift a little as she thinks about it. “Be– Because they didn’t want to go back to fighting?” she asks, unsure.
"I cannot force a patient to accept healing against their will. If they reject the Light, and conventional means will not save them…" Mordecai shrugs. "My unit took a prisoner of war, once, who saw capture as a fate worse than death. She refused to allow me to heal her, knowing what awaited her."
Ismene squirms a little. She is sitting on stone. Maybe that’s all it is. “And you didn’t mind?”
"Of course I minded." Mordecai still sounds very calm. "It was the first time I felt my Light be actively rejected. Her wounds got infected, she came down with a fever, it was…" Mordecai looks down. "And she kept asking. 'Just kill me.' 'Make it stop.' It was terrible, all of it. But it was what she wanted."
Mizzy’s lips curve down and she goes back to staring at A’dal. “Did you kill her?” she asks, in the same voice she’s asked everything else.
"I did," Mordecai says, and he sounds so calm he may as well be talking about something that happened to someone else. "It was the only thing I could do for her. It was - hard. Hard to sleep, after. She never told us her name."
“I would have done it too,” she says softly. “I think. The best you could’ve done, even if it doesn’t always seem good enough.”
Mordecai nods to Ismene. "I would have been able to heal her, if she'd let me. But she wouldn't let me."
He looks up at A'dal. "What do they sound like to you?" Mordecai asks, gesturing to the naaru. "Did they… tell you anything?"
“He’s the only one I’ve ever met. Well, there’s that one,” she gestures toward the littler, darker naaru. Wow, racist much Ismene? “But he never talks to me. Or at least I can’t hear him. A’dal sounds like… I don’t hear words. I just know. I know I’m welcome. I know I’m making him happy by being here.” She tries to think of how to say it better, but she gets distracted by smiling at A’dal.
Mordecai smiles. "I hear a melody, the - do you remember the song Colson sang at our wedding? I hear that song. But… chimes, sort of. And - now it's just a greeting sort of feeling, I suppose, but the first time I came in here, they told me - not like with words, I just felt it, um." Mordecai tips his head back to look up at the second floor balcony and the two other naaru there. "They called me, um," and he pauses, searching for a word to fill in the blank. "They called me a beacon of Light."
She laughs, just a little. “That’s how I described it to Ben. The part about the song. In spring, when I’d manage to escape my house and run through the orchards, this woman would stop singing whatever work song they were all singing, and start singing a song about butterflies flying free. It’s that, but not quite.
“I didn’t describe being called a beacon of Light, of course, because I’ve never been called any such thing. Still, it seems quite accurate. You are very beacon-y.” Ismene doesn’t seem in the least distressed about not being called a beacon of Light. Her dark eyes twinkle merrily as she turns her grin back on Mordecai.
Mordecai's expression brightens a little as Ismene mentions the butterfly song, and he blushes as she calls him beacon-y. "It made me cry," he confesses, even more quietly than he's been talking before. "I don't think I've cried in years."
Mizzy leans in toward him a little, enough to lightly bump his shoulder with hers. “It’s good they were happy tears. They were happy tears, weren’t they?”
"They were." Mordecai bumps her shoulder right back. "I'd almost thought I couldn't cry anymore."
“I cried. After I killed that slave. But I knew I could.” Stay with her, folks, the subject change is coming up and it’s gonna be sudden. “Do you and Colson want children?”
Mordecai rides out the emotional whiplash of those sentences one after another with a slow blink. "I don't," he says once he has properly processed that question. "Colson says he's content with being an uncle. He has a nephew, um, you might have seen - the little boy seated in the front row at the wedding."
“You’d be a good family for some orphan. But Colson will make a good uncle, too. You’re like him; you’re good at everything you want to do. You work with the refugees, don’t you? What do they do with the orphans here? Is there an orphanage?”
"There is an orphanage. I do work with the refugees. Um. I… don't think either of us are good at everything we want to do. I mean, maybe it seems that way? And maybe that's true for some things? But definitely not everything." Mordecai rubs his cheek with one hand.
Mizzy watches the movement, then champions, “Well, you’re good at important things. You’re a healer. And you bake. And you’re good at loving someone, I can see that. You’re also good at… At being comforting. I find you very soothing to be around, and most people make me nervous as anything.”
Mordecai cracks a smile at 'good at loving someone', because that was a category he wasn't even aware was on the table to begin with. "Well. Those things, yes. I suppose I can't argue with that. I, ah. It's sort of what I did, in the army. Comforted people. Helped them deal with grief, stress, fear… I was never entirely sure I was good at it, but your testimony counts for a lot."
She nods once, firmly. Glad that’s settled, then. “I think maybe I’ll look at the orphanage, see if they could use some help. I never really liked this city much. So much wealth and prosperity, compared to all those poor people at the gates. It seems wrong. It is wrong, and I’m very sure I haven’t been doing my best, there.
“That’s why I asked about children, in a way. I thought if you two did, you could adopt an orphan and the child would have a wonderful home, see. I think I’ll tell Ben. We’ll have one and then adopt one and raise them together. If he says yes.” She looks back at the naaru and contemplates her idea.
Mordecai stares at Ismene like she's said something incredibly daring again. Two? Two whole children? Wild. "They - they would probably be grateful for the help. At the orphanage. I've treated quite a few of the children by now. There's a little boy I've seen more than ten times who I'm starting to suspect might be scraping his knees on purpose for the free lollipops."
She slants a smile at him. “See? You’re good at getting children to trust you, too. Even if it does involve rather a lot of sugar.”
"It's an entirely different level of responsibility to be a parent, compared to healing some skinned knees now and then. I never even owned a pet of any kind until Pastry - my horse - and the grooms at the Telredor stable spend more time with her than I do."
Mizzy’s bright burst of laughter is loud enough to attract attention, even as fast as she slaps a hand over her mouth. Once the attention wanders away, upon seeing nothing more than two tiny humans chatting, she whispers to Mordecai, “That’s a wonderful name for a horse.”
Mordecai shrinks down a little behind his knees. Oh no people are looking. He goes very still and tries to look uninteresting until they stop looking, and then whispers back, "It was the first thing I could think of."
She hastily claps a hand back over her mouth to muffle her follow-up giggles. “I named mine Abbey, because she had all these blotches and one looked like the outline of the Northshire Abbey,” she confesses. “And I didn’t mean you’re good at getting children to trust you so you should adopt one. If you don’t want children, I don’t want you to have them either.” Somehow she manages to say that with staunch loyalty.
"Abbey is an excellent horse name. And no, I don't want children," Mordecai confirms, and he looks rather grateful for the support.
“It was just me listing another thing you’re good at,” she explains. “I suppose your f–” Stopping herself, she broods over it a moment then looks back at the center of the chamber where Khadgar is irritably telling someone else not to bother A’dal. “I wasn’t supposed to smile, growing up. Or laugh. Or get angry or sad or anything else. You should see my mother. She’s a marvel of polite interest. When I got to the Abbey, I was so…”
She shakes her head. “I was so. Then I was confused about what I was learning. Defensive spells and how to hurt things. I didn’t want them to know I was confused; they were so good about taking me in. It… Everything was still wrong, just differently wrong. Then I met Ginny, she was the first person in the Company I met, besides Sir Elohad, and she was terrible. Leaving home hadn’t changed anything except that I didn’t have my orchard and I could put my elbows on the table when I ate. Nothing in my life went right until I met Ben.
“And now everything is right. He… he made everything right. When I want to laugh, I laugh. When I want to be sad, I’m sad. When I’m angry, I get to be angry. It’s nice, because he’s always there, whatever I feel. Whatever I say or whatever I show. It’s nice.”
She peeks over at Mordecai again.
"I'm happy the two of you found each other," Mordecai says like he really means it, "and that you've got someone who makes you feel safe to just… be yourself." Automatically, he glances across the room in Colson's direction and smiles before focusing back on Ismene.
Mizzy blinks at him, then takes another stab at it. “Actually, I was hinting that you seem to keep a lot of emotion buried and maybe you don’t have to now. You’re free. You’re Mordecai Aspenwood and he doesn’t have to be who Mordecai Harbrooke was.”
This doesn't seem to be news to Mordecai, but he is always happy to hear it said out loud. "I know," he says, smiling. "I am. Would you like a hug?"
She thinks about it, then nods. “But only if you feel like hugging and you’re not just being nice.”
Mordecai nods. "I wouldn't ask just to be nice," he reassures her. Hugging somebody he doesn't want to just to be nice? Light forbid. Careful not to knock over her lap desk, he leans over and gives his friend a hug.
Well she knocks her lap desk over, so she can turn into the hug and dole one out in return. Hugs are more important than paperwork. “You’re very nice, Mordecai,” she says. “I like that you don’t mind if I talk a lot or anything. I promise someday soon I’ll learn to take you as you are and not as … well, as me.”
"You're a good friend," Mordecai says, patting her back. Spilled papers are a problem for future them. "Do you not feel like you're good at the things you want to do?"
Impulsively, she kisses him on the cheek and sits back. “Never good enough!” she says. “There’s always room for better.”
Mordecai smiles and starts helping her gather up the fallen paperwork, trying not to actually look at anything written on them. It's not his business. "You're already good enough. There is always room for better, yes, but that doesn't mean you're not good enough."
“Ah, but you agree I could be better!” she says, grinning and holding her quill aloft.
"Everyone can be better!" Mordecai grins right back. He looks younger, somehow, and less serious. "And now," he announces, that playfulness not entirely faded, "I am going to go hold my husband's hand. It was lovely talking to you as always."
“Tell him I say hello, and that he makes a very nice bodyguard!” She waves goodbye to Mordecai with her feather quill and settles her lapdesk correctly with a little sigh at the paperwork left to be done.
"I will," Mordecai says, and gets up. He crosses the room towards Colson, walking as quickly as he can without it being considered running, smiling all the while.