Who Loved You Best

[shinon]

Fandom: The Wizard's Shadow - Susan Dexter
Characters: Miall/Rhisiart
Word count: ~1k
Warnings: This one's just incestuous pining and whump that's all it is
Notes: Yuletide treat for CorpseBrigadier.

---

Stay with him. The peddler little knew what he asked. How could he know how often Miall had done it – what scant excuse he needed to do it again? Often as the child Rhisiart had been ill, his other brothers had bored of it. Tierce had been cruel – Tierce had been made to pay for his cruelty – and even best beloved Ruane had eventually left off visiting him. But Miall had gone to him. Miall had known something of loneliness. And the child had been lonely.

Was he less lonely now, with childhood so far behind? Rhisiart must be at or near the age Miall had been when - when he betrayed me.

And for all that, Miall could not begrudge him one more bedside vigil.

Shadow though he was, he leaned in close. Rhisiart had taken a blow to the head, after all. He’d think nothing of seeing swirling dark shapes before him, of his vision curling up and missing pieces. Emboldened, Miall raised his shadow from the floor and drew closer – even closer – so close that had he been a living man, Rhisiart would have felt breath on his face.

But I am not living, he thought. And we know whose fault that is.

Strange, to look at him fully. Strange to be alone with him. Tierce, who had not liked either of them, had tried arguing for keeping them apart in life – and though knowing his concern for Rhisiart was feigned, Ruane and their father had quietly accepted his pretense, that the bastard must be a bad influence. Now they were all dead. Miall, dead too all these years, could stay with his ailing brother as long as he wished. But speak to him, no. There was no peddler here into whose mouth he could put words, and – there were no words he wished the peddler to know.

Although the peddler, too, was forever making excuses to look at Rhisiart. He never seemed able to look his fill. Where he looked, in daylight hours, with folk around, perforce his shadow must look too. This had been convenient. But it had felt like – the teeth Miall no longer had, biting the inside of his lip, which was also gone.

Alone, now, it did not hurt the less.

This was Rhisiart, who had betrayed him. This was the face of his brother, older now but little changed. Narrower about the cheeks perhaps. A crease in his brow – but even that was not new; it had appeared whenever he was deep in thought. Time and habit had stamped it on him more permanently, that was all. It gave him a look of concentration even now, when he could surely not be concentrating on anything. His face was slack and sweating. His breath was harsh. Miall might, at one time, have put a hand to that brow, crudely trying to gauge if the medicines were working.

If I’d known it would come to this, he thought, perhaps I wouldn’t have thrown you from your horse.

Of course he would have. Better Rhisiart be hurt than dead, and – seeing him hurt was not without its appeal.

So long as he recovered. So long as he found his strength again, as he always had.

Miall was dead, bodiless, without the reflexes a body would have. Not the human impulses, nor those of any other shape he had ever assumed. The shadow form to which he was confined did nothing unless by his express will, every contour and angle closely managed. And yet the awareness was on him, slowly breaking, that if he had still had hands, they would have done… thus.

Miall made the shadow shapes – the Raven, the Wolf – and watched Rhisiart’s glazed half-conscious eyes for any reaction. There was none.

Damn you, brother. I need you awake. I need you strong.

Cast aside sentiment, then: no need to limit himself to the shapes he could have framed with his dead human fingers. Miall cast impossible shadow scenes: a falcon arrow-struck and falling. Stormraker in full caparison. A boar slashing with its tusks. Rhisiart jerked, as one will who is falling asleep, or as if he was losing the battle not to faint again.

No! Stay with me. Miall showed him the Wolf again. The Wolf, for courage. The Bear, for strength. The Boar. This must be you, Rhisiart. Look at me. The Wolf, the Wolf, the Wolf. Something of light came into Rhisiart’s eyes, and then -

You never wept when a child, Miall thought. Weak and ill as you were, you bore pain and fear like a true prince. Tears slid unheeded down Rhisiart’s face, his expression blank with pain and incomprehension. He made no sound. Was it Cailin? Was it her death that made a wreck of you? Or did Edryd’s death do for you both? The shadow of a snake writhed along the wall, coil after liquid coil. The shadow of a funeral procession in slow march, the casket sized for a child. I could show you. I could give you a shadow-play to trouble your sleep even more. I’d show you what the boy did to them.

To think you serve that boy – and it was me you betrayed.

You spared Tierce, and you still abase yourself over Ruane. But I was the one who loved you best.

What now, with no one else left to care for him?

Rhisiart’s eyes fluttered closed. Swearing to himself, Miall lunged forward, willing himself solid enough to pry those eyes open – but subsided when he saw Rhisiart’s hands move. Slowly, as if in a dream, he was making a hand sign. Sitting where he was opposite the hearth, the shadow would not be cast on the wall, but only on himself. But the intent, the telltale bend of each finger, was enough. “The Hawk,” Rhisiart said softly. “Swift dispatch of enemies. Just like you taught me, Miall.”

His eyes opened again. Properly conscious, now, and if he did not already see the strange behavior of the shadows in this room, it would be dangerous to show him. Himself again, he would resume observing and making his own conclusions. Let him think it was all a dream, and himself alone in this room. Let him think Miall, from the land of the dead, had forgiven him. That would be best.

Still Miall lingered longer than he ought, before shrinking to a shadow’s natural position over the floorboards – knowing this was as close as he would ever come to making himself known.

The peddler returned with Mistress Ivy. Rhisiart gathered himself, tried to stand, failed, and submitted with no particular grace to examination. Back in the peddler’s shadow, Miall watched as closely as he dared. Whenever a jolt or sudden movement had Rhisiart beginning to fade, shapes would swim up in his periphery. Courage, wisdom, and the Boar.