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| Details |
| Author: | inkie |
| Summary: | Ben and Ismene return home after White Squad's Sunday adventure. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Chain: Bizzy
Immediately follows the White Squad outing on Sunday.
Ben tags after Ismene, following a few moments later from the naaru’s chamber and jogging across the Terrace of Light to catch up with her at the top of the ramp to the Lower City. He touches her elbow lightly but drops his hand away at once, doesn’t hold on.
“Hey,” he says, falling in beside her. “Mizmainy, hey. What’s up? You okay?”
She looks up and smiles at him, because Ben. "Oh, I'm fine I suppose. A little down. Tired." Her smile fades. "I'm tired a lot lately. Does it seem that I'm more tired lately?"
Now he does take her arm, gently. He studies her expression, his own intent and faintly shadowed with concern. “You do,” he concedes. “Some. I mean, you are half run off your feet between the orphans an’ the infirmary an’ the Company. You know it ain’t all got to be on you, yeah? Maybe we go home this week, visit baby Dane an’ them, go up to Hillsbrad a couple of days? Or maybe we take off some days an’ go out to Nagrand, just us two.”
“I hardly think keeping the Company bank, going out twice a week, and sewing clothes for the orphans is that draining on someone my age,” she says, lifting her skirts a bit above the mud. “I’d say perhaps I’m coming down with something but diseases never survive long around priestesses. Or priests, of course.”
She pauses and looks back at the way they’ve just come. “Honestly, even the idea of going back to Ironforge feels exhausting and it’s just stepping through a portal. Maybe I should have another healer take a look at me. Mordecai or, if we do go back, Niris or Estel. Maybe there’s something I’m overlooking.”
She looks up at him to see what he thinks of the notion.
Ben is staring at her, his gaze cautiously clouded. “You don’t think– ?” he asks, and glances uncertainly at her abdomen. “I mean … you’d know that, yeah?”
Sputter. Brain sputter. “I d– I can’t po– We d– Every day I– Well I–” Sputter.
“I don’t… know how I’d know, I suppose. I mean, well, of course, once a month but… Well how else would one know?”
Ben rakes his free hand through his hair. “Tired is one. Havin’ … moods. Feelin’ like–” He glances around and then lowers his voice. “Feelin’ sore in … places.” He drops his gaze briefly to her breasts. You know. Those places. “Maybe feelin’ off certain foods or smells. Though that usually ain’t come straightaway.” He lifts his eyes to hers again, searchingly.
Well, he’s improved her mood, at least. She smiles at him, a bit impish. “I’m not sure how sore I am in … places but if you want to go home and run some tests, I wouldn’t be averse.” With a soft chuckle, she sets her hand over his on her arm and tries to walk off. “I suppose if I am, we’ll know soon enough. There’s little point in worrying about it, though I suppose the tea might not be healthy to drink. I’ll write Nir– Oh, no I shouldn’t do that, she’ll have five kinds of fit. I’ll write Estel, she’ll know.”
“Okay,” he says. He allows himself to be walked. “S’ a good idea to check with her anyhow, like you said, I guess. About– whatever it is. If it ain’t … that, and it ain’t overwork, and it can’t be sickness, then I dunno.” He’s still plainly uneasy. “You’ll take a couple’ve days off, yeah? To be sure. Get some rest after all of– this, today. Shit, Mizzy, I would for sure not have had you drinkin’ that fucken … eyeball whatever-it-was if I known you was feelin’ so off to begin with. Whatever’s goin’ on, I don’t expect it’s improved with blubber an’ eyeballs.”
Another chuckle. She doesn’t usually chuckle, she either laughs or giggles but this takes less energy. “The debate had to be settled and I thought if it was going to cause someone to see spirits, better someone that already sees them a little. And if it were poisonous, Sir Gavynn could have fixed me.
“To be fair, it was rather unlike me, wasn’t it? Maybe that’s part of whatever’s going on.” She thinks about that, as if objectively curious rather than personally affected.
“It was not much like you, no. I admit I was pretty surprised.” He manages to tear his gaze from her face at last, looking up to sweep their surroundings. “I don’t see ghosts no more, though. Just around Auchindoun, I guess. Do you?”
“No,” she says, still strolling toward home. “Maybe there just aren’t enough dead people here.”
Surely it’s a trick of the light that her shadow seems longer than his. Must be the lowering sun, or the uneven ground.
As he scans the area around them, his gaze does snag for a moment on the anomaly. But they are moving, and the ground is uneven, and the city is busy and he is preoccupied; his notice moves on. “Would figure a city like this one would have its store of dead.” He focuses his attention ahead again, brooding. “Maybe they all get pulled down there. To Auchindoun. Like a compass-needle.”
“Or there are too many living people. Ghosts only ever seem to be where there isn’t anyone, or at least very few living people. Maybe it’s like… diluting salt water with fresh.” She lifts his hand from her arm so she can raise it to her lips and kiss his knuckles, holding them there for a moment. “I suppose I can go to Ironforge tomorrow. Can we have pancakes for dinner?” Her eyes lift to his and though her lips are still against his skin, she smiles at him anyway.
This draws him fully back to her, with an answering smile. He raises his eyebrows. "You want pancakes for dinner, or you want pancakes for dinner? Though you had a pretty rough day, I reckon I could do both."
Is it silly or charming that he can still make her blush? Whichever it is, she does, and looks away with a light laugh. “I do seem to have more energy after our walk,” she says, smiling up at him. All fatigue and quiet pensiveness is banished as her love for him warms her eyes. And, y’know, her cheeks because they’re still pink.
His smile widens at the sight of that blush. "Well, I will do whatever kind of pancakes you want, missus. If you are feelin' up to it. And tomorrow we can go to Ironforge and take a couple've days, and you can visit with Estel." He pauses. "I told Yel– May that she could use a bed at the Ironforge place. I reckon she's gone back to her people in Stormwind — it was at my visit home last week — but maybe we'll run across her."
“I’d like to meet her. I’d like to have a sister,” she says wistfully. “Maybe we can convince her that just because your father impregnated her mother, that doesn’t make him a real father, not any more than he was your real father. He was more like someone who throws seed on the ground. That’s not a farmer, after all.”
Then she snorts. “And in your case, it was more like throwing seeds and then hitting the ground with a shovel.” She hugs his arm tighter against her. “And see what a beautiful garden sprang up in spite of him. I guess that makes you a good crop, my lord.”
She stops at the door.
He’s still smiling at her, but there’s a line between his brows. “It ain’t for sure,” he warns her. “Just– it was a thing people said. Everyone knew Edna was sweet on him, an’ he was … well, he was him. And she married Thurm Mullby awful fast. But it ain’t–” He pauses, fishes out his key to unlock the door, steps aside to usher her in ahead of him. “It ain’t certain. I know what I think, but if May don’t want to think it herself, well. I sure as hell can’t blame her for that, and it’s Mullby raised her up from the time she was born.”
Duly ushered, Mizzy plops in her giant chair with its lumpy cushion. “She doesn’t have to leave her other family behind. No one would expect it of her. But maybe she could widen it a little?” She looks hopeful.
Mizzy’s shadow stretches long, then shrinks rapidly under her chair where it belongs.
Ben turns from the armor stand, to which he’d gone directly. He’s just in time to catch the strange shift in her shadow, and glances sidelong at one of the crystal draenic lamps with a frown. “Light seems weird in here sometimes. You notice?” He looks back at Mizzy as he begins unbuckling a pauldron. “That’s up to May, I guess. I got no objection, an’ I can’t see how she wouldn’t like the hell out of you, but it’s gonna be her call. I am happy to invite her, though. For meetin’. While we’re over there.”
“It’s the crystal lamps, I think. They bounce reflections in all sorts of directions.” She sits up, actually kneeling in her chair to face Ben. “I’m so sorry, I should be asking you how you feel about it! I’m a terrible friend. You don’t seem comfortable with the idea. Do you want to talk about it? About May, I mean?”
“A terrib–” Ben blinks at her choice of words. “No, you are not. I am fine with–” He hesitates and knits his brow as he unfastens his breastplate now and turns to set it on its stand. “If I am honest, I dunno,” he admits. He frowns at the wall behind the armor stand for a moment, and then returns to the task of shedding the rest of his armor.
“I always kind of left well alone, that kind of shit, you know? Not like Yellen was the only one, and not like a lot of folk wanted to admit it or have anythin’ to do with us. I mostly … I known what kids it was, or what ones people said it was, but I also known to keep away from most of ‘em. I did not– f’ I’m honest, I didn’t much want to do with ‘em. I hated ‘em, mostly, on no account of their own.”
He glances back at Mizzy. “I did not hate Yell,” he clarifies. “I mean– well. She was just a little kid, though, last I saw her, yeah?” Again he turns away, back to his task. “I would like to know her, I admit. Just, y’know. Now that all that shit’s past. I am … I mean, maybe it’d be nice? But also I am just used to them, the ones on the other side of it, not carin’ to know me, or wantin’ to admit nothin’. When I was a kid, that’s part of what I hated. That they got that, that they ain’t have to admit nothin’ or have nothin’ to do with him if they ain’t want to. I get it, you know? I can’t blame no one for it. But I can’t tell how Yell feels about it all, or about me. I can’t exactly be her brother without her permission, if she don’t know an’ don’t care to know whether I am.”
Armor set aside, he shrugs out of his gambeson and then peels off his sweat-damp shirt from beneath and drops it on the floor. He scrubs with both hands at his hair and then crosses the room to settle shirtless in his own chair. “I was tryin’ not to say nothin’ about it at Bruuk’s, in case she ain’t want people to know, but then she kind of … blurted it herself, just as she was leavin’.” His gaze is absent, absorbed in recollection. “Told me my dad was a asshole. Which, y’know, accurate. He was. But also, definitely ‘Your dad, Ben.’” He makes a rueful face.
Mizzy uncurls from her chair and walks to the kitchen area. She picks up one of the clean, soft cloths, rinses it with cool water, wrings it out, and comes back to Ben. Because she is a very helpful wife, she gently wipes his forehead, his cheeks, the back of his neck. There is no faint smile of possessiveness at all. Nope. Not here.
But she was listening. “I guess you seem a little… not just wary but maybe defensive a little? You’re usually so kind and welcoming, but when you talk about her it’s like you’re already a little angry about it. Not very much, and I suppose to someone else you might just seem reserved, but I’m sure Sil can tell. And I can. It’s not that you don’t like her it’s that you don’t even want to give her the chance.”
Now she wipes down his neck, over first one shoulder, then across his collarbone to the other. This is a very pleasant activity for her. “And if you don’t, if it will only be bad for you with no good to come of it, then I won’t mention it further. Sometime, maybe you can be friends. I already know you’ll be professional about working with her.”
Ben closes his eyes under her gentle ministrations. He exhales and is quiet for a time. “No,” he says finally, quietly. “It ain’t like that. I ain’t angry at her, not even a bit. I guess I am just– I mean, I dunno if I can explain how it was, Mizz. I reckon I am expectin’ not to be given a chance. Or, y’know. Like I said, I ain’t want to act her brother if she does not want me for a brother. I ain’t gonna put my hand out to pet a cat if I am just gonna get claws.”
(Hattie has repeatedly demonstrated this is not actually the case. Ben will, in fact, attempt to pet a bundle of irate claws and teeth.)
Not that Mizzy would be so crass as to point that out. Instead she sits on his lap. Well, straddles it because she has to face him, doesn’t she? If she’s going to wipe the sweat from his torso? His bare… muscled… torso? “I leave it all up to you,” she says, watching her hands because this is Important Wife Work. “If you’re content to have her as a member of the company, just like every other member, then I’m content with it. But if you think you might want to get to know someone who could be your half-sister, then we can talk about that. If you did, I could always talk to her and see if it’s something she wants. Then you wouldn’t get the… the angry rejection.”
He rests his head against the back of the chair, eyes still closed. “I like her,” he says. “She is– she seems like a real level-headed girl. She’s smart, sensible. Knows what she’s about. There is worse sisters I could have.” He pauses, frowns slightly: yes, they probably could be worse. These are the Hazans we’re speaking of.
“But I will let it lie unless I hear different from her. It’s okay if she is just a kid I known when I was a kid.” There is the slightest wistful undertone to this concession. “Anyhow, you should meet her for sure. You will like her, an’ you two are about an age, I think.”
Now that his chest has the worst of the sweat off of it, it probably itches a little. So Mizzy thoughfully runs her fingernails lightly through the wiry hairs over his pecs. “Rae didn’t like me, you’ll remember. Not everyone does.”
The corner of his mouth twitches slightly, though whether it’s at her ministrations or the memory is unclear. “Rae is prickly. An’ then once she got over prickly, she was embarrassed, I think, about bein’ prickly. I did not judge that one good. But you and Yell will get on for sure.” His tone is confident, authoritative. This time, things will be different.
He cracks an eye open. “Am I makin’ pancakes? Or do I just get to sit here a while?”
“Oh,” she says, leaning forward and letting her arms circle his neck, “I think we’re making pancakes.” Just so he knows which pancakes she means, she teases his lips with hers.
He opens both eyes now, his gaze dark and drowsy, and a wicked smile curves his lips. “Oh good,” he says. “I am in a mood for pancakes now.”