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| Details |
| Author: | Jessa |
| Summary: | Bizzy at home after the events of last Sunday, right after her revelation to Ben that she did, indeed, die during White Squad's last stand. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Chain: Bizzy
Ben fishes out his key to let them in the house. As soon as the door is open, he takes one of Ismene’s hands again and puts his other hand on the small of her back to usher her across the threshold, as though she is a frail old lady. “There you go,” he soothes. His brows are knit with concern. “There you go. Lemme just — lemme get out of my armor an’ I’ll get you some supper. Or — here, you want to sit? Lie down? Let’s get you to bed.”
“Sit,” she says. “Just… I want to sit.” She watches his concern, then smiles at him. “I’d love a cup of tea?”
She might just be giving him something to do. So that he has something to do, for he is a man of action.
“Tea.” Ben receives this order with the crisp gravity of a military command. “Yes, yeah. Okay. I can do that. Here.” He settles her in one of the enormous draenei armchairs and then turns to stride for the little kitchen space, shedding weapons and the awkwarder bits of armor as he goes. Mission: Tea.
There is a moment’s silent but visible panic when he arrives at the kettle and tries to remember whether he knows how to make tea. (You do, Bennarin.) He takes a deep breath, smooths his rattled nerves, and finds a mug and a tin of tea. “Two sugars?” he asks, as though making tea for your recently-deceased wife is a typical Sunday evening at home.
His mild tone isn’t quite convincing.
She’s too tired to laugh, at least not outright, but she is smiling a lot. Her eyes are full of her helpless love for the big puppy dog she married. “Yes, Ben,” she says politely. “You know I’m fine now, right? Just tired?”
He sets the mug down by the kettle a little too hard, and exhales. "Mizmainy. You died. I fucked up an' you died. An' no one– no one else there to bring you back. I am trainin', I am tryin', but I ain't any use to you yet, an' what if– what if you did not come back? If you could not find your way? I got too… I thought I'd keep you safe, an' I fucked up."
The kettle boils, and Ben picks it up and pours with a slightly-unsteady hand. "Shit. And I ain't– I should be seein' to you, not bitchin' about me. How are you? What're you– you want to tell me about it?"
Shamefaced Puppy bears Mizzy's mug of brewing tea to her chair and stoops to offer it: Mission Accomplished.
“I will always come back to you,” she says softly. Her hands wrap around the heat of the mug, but she does not look away from him. “And I will always look after you. I will always be with you.”
She lifts her hand, warm from the absorbed heat of the tea, and rests it against his cheek. “You died, when I was supposed to keep you alive, remember? I feel like you feel now, when someone dies I’m supposed to protect. Poor Cressidha! I cannot seem to keep that woman alive, and I just know Colson’s going to demand I be replaced as healer.” Sigh. Maybe there’s a suggestion that she wouldn’t be averse to any such demand.
“Mizz,” says Ben, pained. He crouches down. “Cole ain’t gonna ask anything like, an’ if he did, I’d have it the hell out with him. Do not forget that I have got killed when Cole was healin’ me, an’ when Miz Nellie was. Miz Nellie ain’t even brung me back. It was the Captain, with her– electric cable thing that done it. You have kept us on our feet so good, through shit harder’n we ever faced before.” He reaches up to touch her cheek in turn, his gaze earnest. “Cole was impressed, kitten-cat, that you pulled Sir Gavynn back. His sister could not be in better hands. Me an’ Sil have trusted our lifes in your hands for more’n a year now, ain’t we?”
It’s nice to go from looking up at him to looking eye-level (ish) at him. “Does it matter how many times I tell you that you’re an amazing leader, that sometimes the odds area so overwhelming or the enemy so powerful that there’s nothing anyone could have done to keep us all on our feet? Or do you still feel guilty, or feel like someone else would surely have done better?” The cant of her head, the gentleness in her eyes suggest she already knows the answer.
Ben frowns sternly at her. “Now you cannot go turnin’ it around on a fellow, Miss Kitten, that ain’t fair.” Despite his expression, his tone is fond, edged with amusement. “So, okay then, if that is how we are playin’ it: Do I want to quit, or do I want to get better every time?”
She laughs. Well, all right, it’s not quite a laugh. It’s silent and she closes her eyes for a moment as if she doesn’t have the energy to both keep her eyelids in the upright position and laugh. But her smile is as merry as ever, and when she opens her eyes there’s still laughter lurking in them. “You are too good with words, my lord husband,” she chastises him. “Besides, not all of us can be as brave and strong as you. If we were, there’d be no need at all for heroes like yourself.”
“Heroes like me wouldn’t last real fucken long,” he observes, “without heroes like you, Mizmainy Hazan. And don’t tell me you ain’t one, because look what you kept us on our feet through these last weeks. You come a long way from collectin’ pig livers in Westfall, missus.”
“As I recall,” she says dryly, “I made you collect them for me. Still disgusting, I might add.” She sips her tea, finally. “Of course, it’s not that I don’t love what I do, organ-collection aside. I hope you know I love it. I love feeling useful and needed. I just can’t bear to let anyone down. And when I lose Cressidha over and over and over again, I have to blame myself.”
Ben lays a hand on her knee. “There is five of us in there, kitten-cat. It ain’t all on your shoulders. When one of us — or more’n one of us — drop, it is because somethin’ has gone wrong besides just the healin’. It means I have let down too, or our tactics let down, or somethin’ or someone else, or all of it slipped. We are all in it together, an’ Miss Cressidha will tell you the same. You go an’ ask her if she blames you.”
“She wouldn’t say yes any more than you would,” Mizzy says, resting her head back. She frowns a little. “I don’t know why I’m so tired. Maybe it was healing from outside my own body? I was just so desperate, I had to try. But I could feel that I had so little time.” Another sip of tea gives her time to put her words in order. “As if I wasn’t a vessel for the Light then. Nothing was– I was–” She gives up. Words are not. Not words. Only tea.
Ben is silent for a time, studying her, his hand still warm on her knee. “You healed with everything you got, Ismene,” he tells her at length, quietly. “Even out of healin’, even dead, you kept on healin’. That is more than just the Light. That is you. I been tellin’ you. You got more steel than you know, healin’ someone else even when you are dead, crawlin’ your own soul back to pick yourself up–” His voice goes hoarse and he stops and clears his throat.
“You want to tell me what it was like?” he asks softly. “I never– I mean, when I been dead, I ain’t noticed nothin’, I just been– alive again like no time passed. I never saw nothin’ on that side of it.” He hesitates, concern in every line of his face. “But if you just want me to draw you a bath an’ put you to bed instead, I will.”
“You could hold me?” she offers, hopeful. “In your lap? And then I’ll try to tell you.”
He cracks a smile, weirdly almost bashful. “I could,” he agrees, and rises again. “Mind your teacup, there.” He stoops to gather her up carefully, turns and settles in the chair himself, and arranges her in his lap. “How’s that?”
Her sigh is one of purest contentment. Both hands hold her tea, and her head nestles just so against his shoulder. “Perfect,” she murmurs. “I feel so safe with you, like this. I hope we still do this when we’re eighty years old and I have to heal your broken leg bones because I’ll be plump from good cooking and too many babies.”
He tips his head to rest his cheek against her hair. "I think you are underestimatin' the tensile strength of my leg bones. But also, if that is the reason they are breakin', then you will not hear a word of complaint out of me, kitten-cat. I will just sit there happy with my broken leg bones."
“Tensile strength… You and your fancy blacksmithing words.” For a moment, just a moment, she falls asleep. No no, she’s just resting her eyes! The tilting teacup brings her back, before disaster strikes. “What was it like,” she says, probably to remind herself what she agreed to before things got all comfortable. “I was above you all,” she says softly. “Above my body, I suppose. I couldn’t move or speak. And there was whispering. Whispers that echoed all around me. I didn’t know what they were saying but I felt certain that if I listened, if I actually heard what they were saying, they’d take me away.”
She shivers a little and sips her tea. Tea good. Death bad.
Ben blanches a little at her words but he says nothing for a time, only gazes straight ahead and strokes her back soothingly.
“Mizmainy,” he says at last, almost whispering himself. “You promise me you will not hear those whispers. You promise me, if it happens again. Which, Light forbid. But you don’t listen to ‘em.” He wraps her up fiercely, crushingly in his embrace, and never mind the tea.
She does not object to being crushed crushingly. If anything, she curls herself up into an even smaller ball so he can crush more efficiently. Because she is very practical. “I will always come back to you,” she says. Maybe wheezes just a little. “Always. I need you. Your strength to keep me safe, your warmth when I curl up to sleep at night.” She tilts her head back to smile at him. “Even the way you look at me keeps my heart beating from one moment to the next.”
He smooths her hair back from her face. “Well now you should not tell me that,” he chides her gently, smiling, “because I will not be able to stop lookin’ at you, an’ that will get impractical.”
Once again, she lets go of her tea mug to rest a hand on his face. “I’m here, Ben,” she says softly. “I’m safe. I’m healthy. I’m all right. I’m not going anywhere.”
He turns his head slightly into the gentle touch of her hand and a brief shadow is thrown across his expression. Then it’s gone, and he smiles at her, his soulful gaze warm. “Don’t you go coddlin’ me, kitten-cat,” he chides her. “I am okay. Tough, right? Long as you’re okay, I’m okay. Drink up your tea an’ I will draw you a bath.” He kisses her temple.
“That was a hell of a thing we did today,” he tells her. “I mean. Speakin’ of back in pig-liver days. Would you have guessed it? A whole other planet, bird-people doin’ shadow magic in ruined catacombs? Us workin’ for the Alliance an’ the Kirin Tor?” He smiles at her again. “You back home, two years ago. Would you have known it? Savin’ Alliance soldiers an’ refugees an’ orphans on another world.”
Obediently, Mizzy drinks her tea. “No,” she admits. “I’d never even dreamed of leaving the orchards. I thought I’d get married off to some merchant or minor noble my parents found, and… and wait for them to die. So I could start to live my life.”
A troubled silence follows that remark, but it clears as she looks up at Ben. “Instead I found a noble of my own, who saved me from all of that. Do you know I still haven’t heard from them? Since the tea house?”
He furrows his brow. “D’you–” He hesitates. “Should I… write to ‘em? Or have Mr. Fer– my dad write to ‘em? D’you want to write to ‘em?”
“I’ve been writing to them,” she admits. “Weekly letters, just as I’d been doing. Though I suppose with a few more details these days. I’m always sure to mention you so they know I’m not about to abandon my husband because of their silent treatment. And I don’t regret it, I honestly don’t!” She sits up a little, in case he might think she does. “But…”
She chews on her lower lip and ducks her head, guilty. “But maybe we could go by their orchards sometime? I’d really like to.”
Ben blinks. “Go by– ‘course we can. I mean, yeah, of course we can, Miss Kitten. If you think… I mean, you reckon they’ll see us? If we turn up? But I am happy to try it, whenever you like. Can stop by our own place before or after, see how they’re gettin’ on.”
She smiles at him, a bright beam of happiness. “Oh, my father might be unwilling but my mother won’t be. And if he doesn’t want us there, he’ll have to tell us to leave his property right in front of all the others which will serve him right! We can go and take some of the fish, maybe. Oh! And I think I found someone with one of those Alterac Bear dogs, but honestly, we could buy a gryphon for what he wants. Each.”
Ben grimaces. “Okay, well. A two-gryphon dog had better eat two gryphons’ worth of mountain lion a week before I am gonna spend like that. We will hold off for now. I’ll get Tibbs or someone to see to them rifles, and get our fellows up there some trainin’ when we visit, meantime.”
He strokes the small of her back and studies her. “You ready for that bath, kitten-cat?”
“Yes,” she says with a sigh, as if she’d used up the last of her spirit in that final burst of enthusiasm and delight. She even seems to shrink a little, become slightly heavier as she loses the ability to hold herself. “Though I might fall asleep and drown.” She doesn’t even bother trying to rise from his lap.
Ben smiles wryly at her. “Maybe we put you to bed for a bit, first. Drownin’ seems like a little much after the day you already had.” He takes the teacup gently from her hands and leans — a little awkwardly, for her presence on his lap — to set it on the floor by his chair. When he straightens again, he slides his arms carefully beneath her and rises from his seat, cradling her against his chest. “Let’s tuck you in, missus.”
Just that quick, she’s half-asleep, head pillowed on Ben’s chest. As he carries her toward the small bedroom, she manages to murmur a quiet, “Yes, Ben.”
The crystal light in the room dims automatically as they leave, the one in the bedroom brightening. Behind them, unnoticed by either, Ismene’s shadow slithers from the wall and slides along the floor after her.