(2023-02-23) It's a Sad World

Details

Author:	Jessa
Summary:	Ben brings worries and a task home to Mizzy.
Rating:	T for Teen

Arc: Season 9

Chain: Bizzy

A subdued, blue twilight has settled over Westguard Keep. The sounds of construction have ceased, and while this means the Keep’s yard is quieter, the inn is proportionately louder as workers and tradesmen crowd the downstairs tables raucously. The air is greasily redolent of Chef Kettleblack’s infamous shoveltusk soup, which at some helpful soul’s suggestion she has begun flavoring (with a vengeance, one might say) with herbs. In this case, with goldclover, which is both locally abundant and probably not intended for soup-seasoning.

Most of the workers seem to be taking their dinner in the form of beer.

On the inn’s top floor, the door to the Hazans’ little slope-ceilinged garret room opens, and Ben Hazan stoops through.

He looks not much the worse for wear, considering the way he sometimes returns from missions, but oddly he’s already removed half his armor — breastplate, pauldrons, and gauntlets — and carries the pieces in an awkward bundle with his sword and shield and pack. His gambeson and shirt are soaked, his hair plastered wetly to his head — and already beginning to freeze in the cold — and his teeth are chattering.

Ismene is, as always, curled up in a chair. She’s under a blanket, as always, and wearing her shawl, as always. She’s scribbling furiously at something on her lap desk, to which she’s fastened one lone Draenei crystal that shines a soft lavender light on her and her work.

Until the door opens.

Her welcoming smile fades into an expression of pure astonishment. “Ben!” she says, setting the desk aside and scrambling to her feet. “What in the Light…” She flings her blanket over him. It… doesn’t cover him as well as it covered her, but still it’s a blanket and it’s warm. “I don’t know any heat spells, you know. I’m not a mage.” She scrubs the blanket over his arms, heedless of his shirt.

“Sh-shorry,” Ben chatters thickly, bowing his head meekly with a wince to submit to blanket-scrubbing. “I sh-stopped at the trough. Girls are in the bath– houshe and I din’t want–” More wincing, more allowance for scrubbing. He stoops carefully to one side to set his pack and armor on the floor. “Din’t want to come up here dirty from — today.” He wraps his arms around himself to scrub at his own arms briskly, in vigorous aid of the blanket. “Lemme get — dry things?”

“Strip,” she orders him, which normally might be sorta fun but he is very cold and she probably won’t judge. She’s busy flipping open the footlocker and rummaging inside, tossing a plaid flannel shirt at him and a sweater that she purchased for him but he probably doesn’t wear because Man. These are followed by a heavy pair of pants and one pair of socks.

Mizzy’s aim is bad.

“Next time, come up here dirty.” The lid of the footlocker slams down emphatically. “What could possibly have been so disgusting you’d rather have ice in your hair than come up here and use a wash basin by a fire?” She plants her hands on her hips and waits for his response, Bennarin Marie.

“Plague,” he says succinctly and a little muffled. He’s already hastily and halfway stripped and re-dressed: He’s gotten the flannel shirt on, buttoned at least two buttons unevenly and with shaking fingers, and is now sort of stuck in the sweater which he’s trying to pull over his head. Sweaters: how do they work? “A new plague. Speaking of —” He manages to find the neck of the sweater and peers through it at her. “Uh. I brung you somethin’?”

At the word ‘plague’, she pulls her hands to her chest. Buy her pearls so she can clutch them, Ben. If it helps, she follows this up with a few prayers aimed at him, prayers that send light shimmering over him and through him. It’s not warm, but any viruses or bacteria that were thinking of setting up housekeeping have been soundly disabused of that notion. “Speaking of plague, you brought me something?”

So he can answer, she walks to him and yanks his sweater into place, then nudges him at her abandoned chair by the fire.

Ben, who is now half in armor — greaves and boots — and half cozily ensweatered, clunks dutifully to the fireside chair and drops bonelessly into it with a sigh. He surveys Mizzy a little cautiously, the glimmer of nascent puppy-eyes in his gaze. “There was… we got some samples. For an alchemist to have a look at. Only it turns out the alchemist here in the Keep we was s’posed to deliver ‘em to is… that drunk gnome down in the bar. Wrongnozzle? An ‘amateur’ alchemist. We decided — I mean, I decided, but the squad was very strong in favor — that since we got our own actual alchemist on premises, maybe… you? Could? Have a look? Instead?”

Oh, there it is: full puppy-eyes now.

Mizzy kneels at his feet and begins unfastening his boots. "She's… I think she's bothered somehow. Disturbed. Like something happened to her, though I suppose the fall of Gnomeregan would unseat anyone." Yanking off one of his boots almost makes her fall backwards. "Sample of what? Look at what?"

Ben sits forward and reaches a hand out as if to prevent her fall, but relaxes back again when he sees her catch her balance. “Um.” He clears his throat. “The… whatever it is the Forsaken are brewin’. Their… plague stuff.”

She tugs and wriggles his other boot. Don't tell her that her tongue is sticking out of the corner of her mouth. "You brought plague samples here? I certainly ho–" Then all his words seem to click into place. She snaps a startled look up at him and falls flat on her butt, gaping at him.

Ben gives her a strained look. "I mean. You don't have to. But… if there's anything we can figure out about it? You would for sure do a safer and more responsible job. If you want to work with Wrongnozzle — but definitely I don't want her handlin' it on her own. We got… bigger problems here, and we don't need an outbreak on top of it." He drags a hand wearily through his damp hair.

“Then you shouldn’t have brought it here, Ben!” She gets to her feet. “Where is it? Who has it?”

“Uh.” Ben glances toward the smaller of his two brass-bound footlockers; it’s been slid into a corner of the room, and its former contents are now stacked neatly on the floor beside it. “It is sealed,” he emphasizes, as he looks at her again. “Not the trunk, I mean, the samples inside. In the trunk, in a box, sealed vials.”

Ismene goes pale. She grabs his wrist and yanks him toward her, yanks her toward him. The flat of her hand slaps against his forehead and stays there as she looks through him again, eyes both vague and intent. Then she shudders and sighs. “You’re fine. The others, was anyone exposed?” Now she digs through the heap beside the footlocker for her things, stuffing them in her empty travel pack.

“We all — I mean. We all were there. Clearin’ out tanks of the stuff, and then collectin’ the samples from… the village. There was a vrykul village, Mizz, and the Forsaken just… rainin’ the shit down on ‘em from the bluffs above.” He gaze is briefly bleak. “But they burned, the tanks did. We lit ‘em up and they burned off. And between me and Miss Lu and Ace, I reckon we kept everyone pretty well clean of it.”

“Fire does for it,” she agrees, though she’s a bit distracted. “I have to get it out of here, though. One slip, one loose elbow…If we’re lucky, they won’t have been able to change it much from the batch that almost got us last time. I have the cure for that, hopefully I can modify it.” She stands, slinging her pack over her shoulder, then turns to face him.

She shakes her head, her eyes dark with dire remembrance. “They just… broke apart in my hands, Ben. I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t help them. No one could. We were fighting to buy time, do you realize that? We were dead, all of us, it was just really hitting its stride. No prayers were enough. The Light heard us, it responded, and it wasn’t good enough. Do you realize how many hours it took, how many people working in desperate shifts, to–” She laughs, bitter, quite a sound from Ismene Hazan. “And now it’s just me and a drunk gnome.”

“Mizz,” says Ben gently, reaching out a hand. “I know. I know. What y’all did, what you all went through —” He shakes his head, dark-eyed and pained looking. “But this is — I dunno. The Forsaken helped cure that one, or that’s what we got told. Their Apothecaries. I got no idea why they are cookin’ this shit up now. I don’t think… I dunno that it’s the Scourge plague. The vrykuls in that village, they wasn’t Scourged, they was… somethin’ else. Sick as hell, dead and dyin’. But not… it ain’t that. It ain’t what we saw in the south. And I don’t know why they’re doin’ it. If there is anything we can figure out…” He regards her steadily. “I would not be bringin’ Andorhal grain into this place, Mizzy. You know that. I wouldn’t. And if I thought this was that, I’d’ve just burned the whole place down.”

She studies him, wary and hopeful at once. With an explosive sigh, she backhands his arm. “Bennarin, you cannot come in here and say ‘plague’ and think I’m not going to think about that plague. You…” She sets her Ben-slappin’ hand over her stomach. “Blessed Light, I think I’m going to throw up.”

Must not be too mad, though, because she snuggles against him. “Well, if it’s just an ordinary goop plague we’ll see what I can rustle up. Isn’t that how you say it? Rustle up?”

Ben looks down at her wryly. “It is how I say, because it is a perfectly good Common expression. People rustle shit up all the time.” He hesitates. “To be clear, I ain’t sure what their aim with the thing is. That’s why we got to have a look at it. Might could be they just want sick and dead. Might could be they are up to somethin’ else. Captain Adams asked us to sort out what they’re up to, exactly, so that is what we got to do.”

“All right,” she says, agreeable once again. “Fetch me a vrykul.” She tips her head back to smile at him. Go on, Ben. Go get one.

Ben stares at her uncertainly. “Um.”

“Well I can’t be expected to know if it works unless I can test it, can I?” Blink blink. Pure innocence.

Ben continues to stare. Stare stare. “D’you want… I can take you down there? To see the village? If you want?” Surely Mrs. Ismene Tiffin Hazan does not require live test subjects. D-does she?

Ismene Tiffin Hazan giggles and pats her husband's chest. "No, but now we're even for you making me think you had the plague here. Turn over what you have, I'll get started."

Ben sags with relief. “Holy– damn, you had me goin’, kitten-cat. Just when a fellow thinks he knows his wife….” He shakes his head, smiling ruefully. “Okay.” He goes to the footlocker himself and crouches to unlock the latch, then gingerly lifts from inside it a battered wooden box. It doesn’t clink or shift when moved; the vials it contains are packed tightly and well-padded. “You want me to put it… where should I put it?”

"Set it down on the bed," she instructs. "Oh! Or better yet, take it over to that little house and inform the owner that I'll be taking it over." She sighs and steps into her boots. "I have to go sober up a gnome."

“Okay.” He hesitates. “I need to — talk to you about another thing. When you are done with… the gnome, or whatever you got to do straightaway. It’s to do with… this place. And what we did today.”

"What did you do today, besides steal disease samples?" she asks. "That wasn't eventful enough?"

He is still for a moment, gazing at nothing in particular, and then shakes himself and seems to remember he’s still wearing his greaves. Flannel shirt, sweater, bare feet, greaves. He turns to where he’d deposited the clothes Mizzy tossed at him, and begins unfastening his leg armor. Over his shoulder he says, “You know the — there’s a gulch runs along the north of this place?”

She looks around, turning a full circle until she sees a glove. "I didn't know," she says. "What about the gulch?"

“Well,” says Ben, pulling on his pants and beginning to button them. “So: There is a gulch. Runs right along the north, behind the Keep. Cuts kind of the boundary of the place.” Pants achieved, he settles in Mizzy’s armchair again to deal with socks. “I can see why they built here — would make a good defense, f’we were still back south. Steep sides, long fall, wide across. Unless you got, I dunno, a proto-drake or a harpoon trebuchet.” His tone is arid. “Anyhow, I reckon the second reason they picked it is on account of the dwarves reckoned they could mine down in it. They sent a team of Explorers League miners down to see what they got down there by way of metal an’ whatnot.”

He falls briefly silent, snagged on some memory, halfway through pulling on his second sock. He’s wearing a sock and a half.

Ismene stops in the act of pulling on her glove to look at him. She cocks her head to one side and looks him over. “And?” she asks quietly, sinking down to sit on the now-closed footlocker.

“And.” Ben blinks, remembers where he is. “And they did not come back. Couple’ve fellows they sent to check on ‘em either didn’t come back neither, or come back in a real fucken hurry talkin’ about how they was all gone mad as hares down there. Up to the Keep, they wanted someone else to have a look, an’ maybe to get some samples of whatever they were diggin’ up, so we went.”

He finishes pulling his second sock on, then looks from one foot to the other: Yes, good, socks. One per. Mission accomplished. He leans back in the chair and gazes at Mizzy. “They tried to kill us. Every last one of ‘em. Here’s us, a whole squad in arms, callin’ out to see if they need a hand, and there’s them, these dirty-faced fellows in rags, comin’ at us in ones or twos wavin’ minin’ picks and rantin’ about it and the truth and some kind of thing that should not be named.”

“And,” Ismene says quietly. She looks down at her hand, at her one glove, and nervously tugs at the fingers until it slips off her hand. “You had to kill them, I suppose. Wer–” She pauses to clear her throat. “Were any of you affected?”

Ben drums his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I mean — I think we are all… I don’t think any of us carried any of it back with us, whatever… it is? But I am pretty sure it got under some skin. Rae, Ace. Maybe Lena. I know it —” He breaks off to shudder. “Once I kind of understood what it was, I mostly could ignore it to look to the rest of ‘em. But there is somethin’ down there, Mizz. In the earth, in the ore, I dunno. It whispers to you.”

She starts to reply, then snaps her mouth shut. After a moment’s wary thought, she says, “Sometimes I guess things and they turn out not to be true but they can be upsetting, like the room full of bodies in Medivh’s tower.” She sort of leaves it there, in case he wants to ask.

Ben focuses on her, brow furrowed. After a moment he says, “Like… how d’you mean, in this case? You… guess a thing, or you think I am guessin’ at things? Also —” He studies her somberly. “The fact we ain’t find a room full of bodies in Medivh’s tower don’t mean there wasn’t one. I just — we did not poke every corner of that place, and as unnatural how it was, I would not be surprised if it had all kinds more secrets knotted up in it that we didn’t… figure out how to un-knot.”

“I’m just… I was wondering if it has some connection to Arthas,” Ismene says. “I keep thinking about him saying he was a shaman, when we know he wasn’t. So clearly it’s not just him in there. Maybe… maybe it’s this thing, too.”

Ben frowns, his gaze going distant. “This thing… in there. You mean, like — in the spirit world? Or in… like, in Arthas? Or …?”

“If whatever’s in the earth there did something to Arthas, too,” she explains. “If that’s what happened that made him kill his father and … and do everything else he’s done.”

Ben sinks back into the chair. He’s staring at Mizzy but he doesn’t seem actually to be staring at Mizzy. “So you think… there is somethin’ here, in Northrend, in the earth, that… whispered to Prince Arthas? To make him the Lich King?” He contemplates this prospect with queasy, distant disquiet. “When I heard it — the first whisper in my head — I thought it might be him. You know? Because of what happened. But —” More deliberation. He shakes his head slowly. “It didn’t… feel like him. He feels…”

Ben sits back, rifling his store of vocabulary. “He’s got a command to him, an’ it feels like… rage, and… dread, and it’s so fucken cold. This was… somethin’ else. It was… persuasive, it was sympathetic. It was warm. But like the way if you got — you know how if you got a chimney don’t vent right, the air can go bad and you don’t maybe even notice until you’re dead? Just poison air, and you keep breathin’ it because you can’t tell. It was like that. There was kind of a malice in it, a poison, but so sly you hardly notice. The Lich King… he ain’t sly like that.

“Maybe, though —” He rubs his jaw, frowning. “If it got in him sly like that and made him… but those dwarfs, they weren’t… they just were stark wild. The shamanism thing — I don’t think whatever’s down there could call itself a shaman. It didn’t feel like… any kind of person. Somethin’ deeper and darker. But if it’s in the earth, or in bad air like you can get in a mine… maybe? Maybe it knows shamanism?”

He stares into space a moment longer. “I will talk to — who’ve we got with us is a shaman? Nunuzac. I’ll talk to her. And to Bran, since he’s Explorer’s League and knows… a lot of shit. And to Paluuva again, too. I’ll talk to our people.”

“If you say it’s not the same thing, then it’s not,” Ismene says, firm and sure. “You’re the only one who’s been touched by both, so you’d know. I suppose I just keep grasping around, trying to understand what turned a prince of Lordaeron into an ice-king undead lich so powerful he can resurrect armies and turn them into Death Knights.”

She rises and moves to Ben, rearranging his arms so she can sit in his lap. “Do you have to go back down there?” she asks, unhappily certain she knows the answer.

Ben tucks his arms around her. “I do not,” he says firmly. “None of our people do, and I am gonna put that in writin’ to Adams. No one from here should be goin’ down there. Ace said we ought to fill the whole place up with cement and I don’t think she’s wrong. I’m just hopin’ whatever it is down there, it stays down there.” His arms tighten around her, less in an embrace than a brief shudder.

“The north is so… sad,” she says, resting her head against his shoulder. “Was it always this way, do you think? Plagues and war and even the very earth is haunted. At least we have sunny days and harvest festivals and ice skating on frozen ponds.” A pause. “I’d have to turn shaman if I wanted to heal a continent, I suppose.”

This time he squeezes her in earnest warmth. “I wouldn’t be surprised a bit if you did it, neither. It’s how you are.” He hesitates, ponders: “Can humans do that? Be shamans? I reckon probably not, no more than they could be druids, though I dunno why.”

“Too selfish,” Ismene says, teasing. A little. She pulls away to give him a soft kiss. “There should be a way for a healer to heal minds too, don’t you think? Maybe I’ll research that, when we can get home again. But I suppose for now, I better get to work curing disease. That, I know how to do.”

He drops his head back to rest it on the chair. “Could talk to Anchorite Paluuva about it, f’ you like. Reckon she might have thoughts on that, too. Healin’ minds, I mean, not the disease. For that, I am relyin’ on you.” He pats her hip and musters up a tired smile. “When the girls are done with the baths I reckon I will go an’ have a proper wash, an’ then you want me to see if I can sweet-talk Miz Kettleblack into lettin’ me borrow a corner of the kitchen to do up somethin’ that ain’t shoveltusk soup?”

“That sounds wonderful,” she says, sliding off his lap. She knows what the hip pat means. “I’ll certainly need a bath myself, after this. I’ll go find Peppy and see if she knows where we can work.” She turns and goes to the box on the bed to see if it's pick-uppable for a Mizzy.

As the samples were pick-uppable for a gnome, they are presumably also pick-uppable for a Mizzy, although I don’t know the relative upper body strength of a Mizzy vs. a gnome.

Ben doesn’t move from his position, wearily melted into the armchair, but his soft gaze follows her. “Thank you, kitten-cat. You’ll be careful.” It isn’t a question so much as a reminder, and possibly to himself: He knows Mizzy. Mizzy is careful.

Ismene pauses at the door to blow him a kiss, then heads out to cure the plague.