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shinon1. Reaction
Word count: ~1700
Notes/warnings: Language. This is one of the least depressing Bertrand things I've ever written, and as such it makes me uncomfortable
“Hey, wait a minute. I'm supposed to play nurse? Me? Are you out of your mind?”
“You know she adores you.”
“Yeah, no accounting for taste.”
“Bertrand, come on. She'll probably sleep the whole time. I'll be back with the medicine by tomorrow afternoon. All you have to do is not kill each other until then.”
“Y'know, I could go get the stuff and you could stay -”
“Oh, no.” Chloe's father smiled, an expression at once serene and somehow calculating. “She specifically asked to see Trand.”
And that was how things ended up here. “I'm bored,” Chloe announced, as soon as she was aware of his presence. “If I sit up, all this stuff comes out of my eyes and nose and I can't read. But if I lie flat and hold a book up like this” - she demonstrated, hoisting it straight up above her head - “my arms get sore and I can't turn the pages. I tried to go for a walk but I got tired and I can't stay warm. I can't do anything. War healing doesn’t work on stuff like this, or maybe I haven’t learned enough yet. But I have to just lie here. It's so boring.”
“And what do you expect me to do about it?” He hadn't caught so much as a cold in nearly a hundred years, and he hadn't spent any serious time near a sick person in almost as long. What did you do about it?
“I don't know. Something interesting. Everyone's gone and I'm not even hungry. It feels like I don't exist. But I have to exist, because someone who didn't exist couldn't be this bored.”
“What are you complaining about?” he said. “I'd kill to lie down all day and not have anyone bother me.” But it felt forced, and in fact it was. Chloe didn't get existential. Chloe didn't stop being hungry. Something was really wrong here.
“That's because you're old. I'm not old. I wanna go catch frogs, but I have to stay here and rest because I have a fever. I hate resting.”
Oh. Was it a fever? Was he supposed to have checked for that somehow? Dropping the ball already. Was it tomorrow afternoon yet? “Yeah, you're not having fun, I picked up on that,” he muttered.
“You'll stay with me, right?”
“I got nowhere else to be.”
“Then tell me a story? I can't go to sleep yet.”
It took two and a half before she finally dozed off, by which time he was getting really tired of the sound of his own voice. And then it was just him sitting by the bedside of a sick little girl in an otherwise empty house, slowly darkening into twilight. Every now and then a fox screamed out in the woods.
What the hell was he doing? In just a couple more years he’d have to return to Ginnungagap and find a way to end things - what the hell was this detour into being all domestic? It didn’t change a damn thing. In a couple more years he’d break that door down. He’d finally know what happened to Violetta. He would, if he had the option this late in the game, offer his life. Everything else was a distraction.
Was it a distraction when he left her there? Could he have stayed and finished the ritual, refused to go to his sister, left her with no one? Should he have known that you can’t be everywhere at once? That if you try to protect everyone, you can’t save anyone? Should he have understood then that he never had any power to fix anything?
Okay, fuck this, he told himself, this is going nowhere good, better just think about the task at hand. Except there was no task at hand. He was just keeping an eye on Chloe, and Chloe was asleep. She was shivering as if she was cold, and restlessly dragging the sheets tighter around herself. He had no power to fix this, either. She was small. She wasn’t invulnerable. He would outlive her.
Maybe he should cut his losses. Wait for her parents to get back, hand her over, and go. Thanks for ten years of hospitality, I’m out. Nobody get too attached.
Except that, lying there, she looked like his sister. Not an exact resemblance - hell, most times it wasn’t even close - but sometimes there were glimpses of a face he thought he’d forgotten. Maybe he really had forgotten, maybe he was imagining all of this, but it wouldn’t go away. How were you supposed to choose between the person in front of you and one you’d left behind? Why were you really here?
“Nobody get attached,” huh. Too fucking late. He thought, Getting out of here is gonna suck. And then he thought, See, I knew this was going nowhere good, and resolved to sleep instead. She’d wake him up if she needed anything. All he’d committed to was being in the room.
And then - who knew how long he’d been out, but his next waking sensation was a small overheated hand pulling at his sleeve, followed by a hoarse, insistent voice. “Trand. Trand, I heard something. Wake up. Please. Trand, something’s here.”
He didn’t even have to think. He was already on his feet. “Go back to sleep. I’ll handle it.”
“Trand?”
He left her room, shut the door behind him, and started down the hall. Two possible approaches here: sneaking up on the intruder and taking them down, or making his presence so obvious he either ran them off or flushed them out of hiding. And stealth was so incredibly not his game. His steps were heavy and deliberate. He lit every lamp he passed. “Come on,” he muttered under his breath. “I’ll teach you to fuck with these people.”
But there were no takers. Finally he reached the front hall, and the whole house was lit up as if everyone had spontaneously decided to throw a dinner party at two in the morning, and he stood for a full minute listening. And heard nothing.
And then heard something. Something, in the direction of Chloe’s room, falling over. He tore the door open before he was even aware he’d crossed the hall, stared blindly into the room - of course you can’t see, idiot, all those lamps trashed your night vision -
“Trand.” The voice came from a pale heap beside the bed. “It’s okay. I was wrong.”
“Chloe?”
“There’s nobody here. Listen.” A fox screamed out in the woods. “It’s just animals. I got confused.”
She’d lived here all her life. She knew what a fox sounded like. But she was sick, and that was clearly messing with her head. An easy explanation. Maybe she just couldn’t tell where a dream had ended and real life began. Just this once. “Yeah, I didn’t find anyone.” His eyes were adjusting, finally. “What are you doing on the floor?”
“I got up to tell you. But I’m all wobbly.”
He sighed. Way to overreact, Bertrand. “All right. We don’t need to mention this to your parents, got it?”
“Why would I?”
“Smart kid.” He crossed the room, scooped her up without ceremony, and put her back on the bed. “I’ll get the lights. Don’t go anywhere.” As if she could.
It was only as he was putting out the last lamp that he noticed. The veins in his arm showed black where they should have been blue, through skin blue-gray where it should have been pale. All well and good, if that had been his right arm. But it was the other one.
Ah, shit.
He hadn’t decided to transform, he knew that much. He’d transformed on purpose maybe twice since the day he’d gone back to the Door of Boundaries and Violetta hadn’t been there. Wherever he went, taking this form was just a quicker way to guarantee he couldn’t go back there. But sometimes in emergencies it just happened, whether he wanted it or no. As if the Fafnir was something separate from him, and would do what it had to to keep its host alive. Or as if it was just a reflex now - as if there was some threshold for stress beyond which, boom, you’re a monster.
So, this time… had he just been so freaked out about Chloe that it had woken up the instant there was a prospect of something to fight?
Again: overreacting, much? God damn. That was just pathetic.
He looked back toward Chloe’s door, calculating. He would’ve been backlit when he came back in, so she probably hadn’t seen anything in detail. She was mostly asleep, she didn’t have her glasses on, and the fever was already playing havoc with her senses. So maybe she didn’t know, or maybe she’d write off anything she’d noticed. Maybe it’d be enough that she kept her word about not telling her parents; maybe if she knew something she’d just keep it to herself.
Hell of a lot of maybes. It’d be safer just to go now. Or first thing in the morning, once he was sure she’d be okay overnight. It would be safer to go.
It was morning, and Chloe was cautiously sitting up. “I feel a lot better,” she said. “I must’ve slept well. I had a cool dream.”
“Well, that’s one of us.”
“You were there.”
“Wow,” he said, in the flattest tone he could muster, “neat,” because outright telling her to drop it might tip her off that there was something there. And there wasn’t.
She nodded solemnly and leaned back on the pillow. “It was neat.” After a moment she looked over at him. “Thanks for staying. Next time I’ll take care of you.”
He chuckled. “All right, if you say so.”
“Don’t laugh. I will.”
“You don’t have to make it sound like a threat.”
“Can I have breakfast now?”
“Hang on, I’ll see what your parents left us.” But he stopped by his own room first to change the bandages on his right hand, wrapping them tighter this time, so much it almost hurt. No mistake, he was going to have a hell of a time escaping when the time finally came. How fucked-up was it that sometimes he didn’t want to?
2. More Trouble
Word count: ~200
Notes/warnings: Morri suggested a role reversal from the above. Chloe is the best.
The man was hauled away still pointing and shouting curses at Chloe, another sore beginning to break out on his eyelid. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. All the same, Bertrand grabbed her by the arm and hauled her away, and definitely didn't smile.
“What?” she said, sulky. “Why are you pulling me?”
“You can't just throw random diseases at people. We gotta get out of here before things get ugly.”
“He was already ugly. He was being mean and his friends wanted to fight you.”
“People do that sometimes. Didn't I tell you we didn't want to make scenes?”
“He started it. He made the scene. I just finished it.” She dug her heels in. He kept dragging for a few more steps – she was too small to even slow him down much. But she'd never give up, and when the soles of her shoes wore out he'd be on the hook for new ones. He stopped, and sighed. “Chloe.”
“You're supposed to fight back.”
“You know why I didn't?”
“Because you're lazy?”
He snorted. “That, too. But trust me. If I'd wanted to, I would have given them a lot more trouble than they were looking for.”
Chloe considered this. “I'm not sure if I believe you or not. But you sounded cool saying it.”
“Great. Can we go?”
“You're not usually cool at all.”
“Chloe. Can we go?”
ETA Jan 2019
3. I wrote a third thing for some reason
"If you're going, then I'll come along and protect you."
"For the last time, no."
"Why not?"
"It'll take months, for one thing -"
"So I should come. You can't just be alone for months."
"And honestly, I don't want to be responsible for feeding you."
"Mom says it's okay."
"Of course your mom said that. It'd cut her grocery bill in half."
"Trand. You're too old to not have any savings. And you don't eat, and you can sleep anywhere. You can afford to buy me steak."
"For months, though?"
"It'll be worth it. Like I said. I'll look out for you."
"How are you gonna look out for me? You can't even talk to strangers."
"You can talk to strangers, and if they're jerks then I'll poison them."
"Okay. Yeah. That's actually another great reason you can't go where I'm going."
"Trand!"
"End of discussion."
But of course, it wasn't.
Word count: ~1700
Notes/warnings: Language. This is one of the least depressing Bertrand things I've ever written, and as such it makes me uncomfortable
“Hey, wait a minute. I'm supposed to play nurse? Me? Are you out of your mind?”
“You know she adores you.”
“Yeah, no accounting for taste.”
“Bertrand, come on. She'll probably sleep the whole time. I'll be back with the medicine by tomorrow afternoon. All you have to do is not kill each other until then.”
“Y'know, I could go get the stuff and you could stay -”
“Oh, no.” Chloe's father smiled, an expression at once serene and somehow calculating. “She specifically asked to see Trand.”
And that was how things ended up here. “I'm bored,” Chloe announced, as soon as she was aware of his presence. “If I sit up, all this stuff comes out of my eyes and nose and I can't read. But if I lie flat and hold a book up like this” - she demonstrated, hoisting it straight up above her head - “my arms get sore and I can't turn the pages. I tried to go for a walk but I got tired and I can't stay warm. I can't do anything. War healing doesn’t work on stuff like this, or maybe I haven’t learned enough yet. But I have to just lie here. It's so boring.”
“And what do you expect me to do about it?” He hadn't caught so much as a cold in nearly a hundred years, and he hadn't spent any serious time near a sick person in almost as long. What did you do about it?
“I don't know. Something interesting. Everyone's gone and I'm not even hungry. It feels like I don't exist. But I have to exist, because someone who didn't exist couldn't be this bored.”
“What are you complaining about?” he said. “I'd kill to lie down all day and not have anyone bother me.” But it felt forced, and in fact it was. Chloe didn't get existential. Chloe didn't stop being hungry. Something was really wrong here.
“That's because you're old. I'm not old. I wanna go catch frogs, but I have to stay here and rest because I have a fever. I hate resting.”
Oh. Was it a fever? Was he supposed to have checked for that somehow? Dropping the ball already. Was it tomorrow afternoon yet? “Yeah, you're not having fun, I picked up on that,” he muttered.
“You'll stay with me, right?”
“I got nowhere else to be.”
“Then tell me a story? I can't go to sleep yet.”
It took two and a half before she finally dozed off, by which time he was getting really tired of the sound of his own voice. And then it was just him sitting by the bedside of a sick little girl in an otherwise empty house, slowly darkening into twilight. Every now and then a fox screamed out in the woods.
What the hell was he doing? In just a couple more years he’d have to return to Ginnungagap and find a way to end things - what the hell was this detour into being all domestic? It didn’t change a damn thing. In a couple more years he’d break that door down. He’d finally know what happened to Violetta. He would, if he had the option this late in the game, offer his life. Everything else was a distraction.
Was it a distraction when he left her there? Could he have stayed and finished the ritual, refused to go to his sister, left her with no one? Should he have known that you can’t be everywhere at once? That if you try to protect everyone, you can’t save anyone? Should he have understood then that he never had any power to fix anything?
Okay, fuck this, he told himself, this is going nowhere good, better just think about the task at hand. Except there was no task at hand. He was just keeping an eye on Chloe, and Chloe was asleep. She was shivering as if she was cold, and restlessly dragging the sheets tighter around herself. He had no power to fix this, either. She was small. She wasn’t invulnerable. He would outlive her.
Maybe he should cut his losses. Wait for her parents to get back, hand her over, and go. Thanks for ten years of hospitality, I’m out. Nobody get too attached.
Except that, lying there, she looked like his sister. Not an exact resemblance - hell, most times it wasn’t even close - but sometimes there were glimpses of a face he thought he’d forgotten. Maybe he really had forgotten, maybe he was imagining all of this, but it wouldn’t go away. How were you supposed to choose between the person in front of you and one you’d left behind? Why were you really here?
“Nobody get attached,” huh. Too fucking late. He thought, Getting out of here is gonna suck. And then he thought, See, I knew this was going nowhere good, and resolved to sleep instead. She’d wake him up if she needed anything. All he’d committed to was being in the room.
And then - who knew how long he’d been out, but his next waking sensation was a small overheated hand pulling at his sleeve, followed by a hoarse, insistent voice. “Trand. Trand, I heard something. Wake up. Please. Trand, something’s here.”
He didn’t even have to think. He was already on his feet. “Go back to sleep. I’ll handle it.”
“Trand?”
He left her room, shut the door behind him, and started down the hall. Two possible approaches here: sneaking up on the intruder and taking them down, or making his presence so obvious he either ran them off or flushed them out of hiding. And stealth was so incredibly not his game. His steps were heavy and deliberate. He lit every lamp he passed. “Come on,” he muttered under his breath. “I’ll teach you to fuck with these people.”
But there were no takers. Finally he reached the front hall, and the whole house was lit up as if everyone had spontaneously decided to throw a dinner party at two in the morning, and he stood for a full minute listening. And heard nothing.
And then heard something. Something, in the direction of Chloe’s room, falling over. He tore the door open before he was even aware he’d crossed the hall, stared blindly into the room - of course you can’t see, idiot, all those lamps trashed your night vision -
“Trand.” The voice came from a pale heap beside the bed. “It’s okay. I was wrong.”
“Chloe?”
“There’s nobody here. Listen.” A fox screamed out in the woods. “It’s just animals. I got confused.”
She’d lived here all her life. She knew what a fox sounded like. But she was sick, and that was clearly messing with her head. An easy explanation. Maybe she just couldn’t tell where a dream had ended and real life began. Just this once. “Yeah, I didn’t find anyone.” His eyes were adjusting, finally. “What are you doing on the floor?”
“I got up to tell you. But I’m all wobbly.”
He sighed. Way to overreact, Bertrand. “All right. We don’t need to mention this to your parents, got it?”
“Why would I?”
“Smart kid.” He crossed the room, scooped her up without ceremony, and put her back on the bed. “I’ll get the lights. Don’t go anywhere.” As if she could.
It was only as he was putting out the last lamp that he noticed. The veins in his arm showed black where they should have been blue, through skin blue-gray where it should have been pale. All well and good, if that had been his right arm. But it was the other one.
Ah, shit.
He hadn’t decided to transform, he knew that much. He’d transformed on purpose maybe twice since the day he’d gone back to the Door of Boundaries and Violetta hadn’t been there. Wherever he went, taking this form was just a quicker way to guarantee he couldn’t go back there. But sometimes in emergencies it just happened, whether he wanted it or no. As if the Fafnir was something separate from him, and would do what it had to to keep its host alive. Or as if it was just a reflex now - as if there was some threshold for stress beyond which, boom, you’re a monster.
So, this time… had he just been so freaked out about Chloe that it had woken up the instant there was a prospect of something to fight?
Again: overreacting, much? God damn. That was just pathetic.
He looked back toward Chloe’s door, calculating. He would’ve been backlit when he came back in, so she probably hadn’t seen anything in detail. She was mostly asleep, she didn’t have her glasses on, and the fever was already playing havoc with her senses. So maybe she didn’t know, or maybe she’d write off anything she’d noticed. Maybe it’d be enough that she kept her word about not telling her parents; maybe if she knew something she’d just keep it to herself.
Hell of a lot of maybes. It’d be safer just to go now. Or first thing in the morning, once he was sure she’d be okay overnight. It would be safer to go.
It was morning, and Chloe was cautiously sitting up. “I feel a lot better,” she said. “I must’ve slept well. I had a cool dream.”
“Well, that’s one of us.”
“You were there.”
“Wow,” he said, in the flattest tone he could muster, “neat,” because outright telling her to drop it might tip her off that there was something there. And there wasn’t.
She nodded solemnly and leaned back on the pillow. “It was neat.” After a moment she looked over at him. “Thanks for staying. Next time I’ll take care of you.”
He chuckled. “All right, if you say so.”
“Don’t laugh. I will.”
“You don’t have to make it sound like a threat.”
“Can I have breakfast now?”
“Hang on, I’ll see what your parents left us.” But he stopped by his own room first to change the bandages on his right hand, wrapping them tighter this time, so much it almost hurt. No mistake, he was going to have a hell of a time escaping when the time finally came. How fucked-up was it that sometimes he didn’t want to?
2. More Trouble
Word count: ~200
Notes/warnings: Morri suggested a role reversal from the above. Chloe is the best.
The man was hauled away still pointing and shouting curses at Chloe, another sore beginning to break out on his eyelid. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. All the same, Bertrand grabbed her by the arm and hauled her away, and definitely didn't smile.
“What?” she said, sulky. “Why are you pulling me?”
“You can't just throw random diseases at people. We gotta get out of here before things get ugly.”
“He was already ugly. He was being mean and his friends wanted to fight you.”
“People do that sometimes. Didn't I tell you we didn't want to make scenes?”
“He started it. He made the scene. I just finished it.” She dug her heels in. He kept dragging for a few more steps – she was too small to even slow him down much. But she'd never give up, and when the soles of her shoes wore out he'd be on the hook for new ones. He stopped, and sighed. “Chloe.”
“You're supposed to fight back.”
“You know why I didn't?”
“Because you're lazy?”
He snorted. “That, too. But trust me. If I'd wanted to, I would have given them a lot more trouble than they were looking for.”
Chloe considered this. “I'm not sure if I believe you or not. But you sounded cool saying it.”
“Great. Can we go?”
“You're not usually cool at all.”
“Chloe. Can we go?”
ETA Jan 2019
3. I wrote a third thing for some reason
"If you're going, then I'll come along and protect you."
"For the last time, no."
"Why not?"
"It'll take months, for one thing -"
"So I should come. You can't just be alone for months."
"And honestly, I don't want to be responsible for feeding you."
"Mom says it's okay."
"Of course your mom said that. It'd cut her grocery bill in half."
"Trand. You're too old to not have any savings. And you don't eat, and you can sleep anywhere. You can afford to buy me steak."
"For months, though?"
"It'll be worth it. Like I said. I'll look out for you."
"How are you gonna look out for me? You can't even talk to strangers."
"You can talk to strangers, and if they're jerks then I'll poison them."
"Okay. Yeah. That's actually another great reason you can't go where I'm going."
"Trand!"
"End of discussion."
But of course, it wasn't.
