milliways_bar | (no subject)

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ichabod crane

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It's been a day or two since Ichabod was last in the bar, by his own reckoning... and they don't seem to have made anything much better.

He walks in and immediately heads over to sit by the fire, staring at the small cloth object in his hands.

Empaths in the vicinity - or anyone with eyes, really - will certainly pick up on the grief and despair coming off him in waves.

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Joly's in the bar for liquor, frankly, no playing around; he's been having a bit of emotional whiplash this week. But he's not so far in his own head that he could miss *that. He walks over, hardly limping with the cane, and reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder.

"My friend- would you like company?"

He'll take no offense if the answer is no.

He glances up, brought out of his own thoughts, and offers some kind of a smile.

"Master Joly. Yes, gladly."

Joly nods,and gives a passing waitrat an order before pulling a chair close.

" You look as if you have seen a disaster." It is not a question. If Crane wants to speak, he will. If not, silence is no insult.

Edited 2014-10-24 22:55 (UTC)

"It was... a smaller tragedy than most disasters", he says quietly. "Just one boy."

His boy.

Joly frowns, but only in sympathy. "A child's life means as much as anything can. And the loss of one dear to you is...more than enough of a disaster." And close enough to his own thoughts lately that he actually needs a moment to collect himself.

The waitrat is, conveniently,back. With the wine. And the two glasses he forgot to ask for. Bar has him pat. He puts it all on the table for now.

Bar is very good at predicting what people will want or need, it's true.

"I'd so hoped my son had lived a long life."

"I am truly sorry." He knew very few parents in his time, including his own, who had not lost a child; still, somehow, the pain is always unanswerable. "It is a terrible loss." A child, and the hope of the man he might have been. And after so much time to let that hope build--

"How did you learn?" And who would tell a man such cruel knowledge, centuries past its time?

"My wife told me some of it. And the coven who ended his life, the rest... they said he was out of control, left with powers he was never taught to use, but I can't believe there was no other way."

Murdered, then. If there was anything that could make the sheer loss worse.

" I--think I must agree with you. I only know the word coven from myths. It meant a gathering of witches, and their spells in our stories were not as impressive as your own survival. But surely, a world with magic enough to bind your horsemen could have found another way to control a confused son."

"He couldn't have been more than fifteen, and alone in the world." The ache in his voice is hard to hear. "And that's exactly what it was, a group of witches... my wife was one of their own once, and I wonder if this wasn't as much punishment for her as anything."

"Your wife-did she escape them somehow, then?" He cannot quite understand what happened with Madame Crane. "Or do they always punish children for accusations against the parents?" He has known laws that will do both.

"She hid me from them, while I was in my sleep outside of time. They considered it the greater good to kill me and so kill the evil that was bound to me... but she loved me too much to allow it. And then they hounded her, captured her and sent her to Purgatory."

Joly frowns again. This is even harder to work through than the usual losses of the world.

But one thing is obvious. "You must not blame yourself for any of this."

"I know it wasn't my choice to leave him, any more than it was Katrina's. But still... our son was abandoned."

Joly nods; understanding,not agreement. "And that is a very hard thing. But if he was abandoned, it was not by you who had no choice in it. I...do not know if that makes it any easier to bear. I do not know if anything makes it easier. But know that you do not have to bear it alone."

"...that actually makes a great deal of difference", he says with a slight smile. "I thank you for it."

He returns the smile. "However I can help, only say. And remember the friends you have in your world. Let them aid you too."

"They are few... but they do exist, and their quality is higher than their quantity."

He nods. "Far better than the other way around. Have you seen them, since learning of this?"

"One of them was with me when I learned it. But I needed some... time to assimilate the new knowledge."

"I understand how that is." Oh, how well he does. "Sometimes a blow hits too hard to even feel it properly at first, and you know only that you must be careful of the injury. "

Ichabod nods. "Precisely. And when it's not a physical injury, perhaps even the more so."

Joly pours them both a drink, and sets Ichabod's down without comment. "...Would you wish to speak of him? I will not advise you to act faster than you find wise; but you need not hesitate to speak, either."

Edited 2014-10-25 22:31 (UTC)

He nods slowly, taking a long drink.

"From what I know of him, his mother handed him to friends for his own safety... but he was a danger to himself and to them, he had powers from infancy. When he cried, fires lit themselves, and it ended... badly. He was taken to a church orphanage after that, and I'm sure you know what those are like."

Joly does indeed- perhaps not the specifics, but he can guess the differences in their worlds, and the few decades between times, did not change charity orphanages nearly enough.

"And they saw someone doing things they could not explain." In his time, using the left hand was enough to earn a bruise in some church schools. He can't imagine what actual magic would do.

"Yes. They thought it was a sign of the devil in him. They beat him, until finally he... made a friend, of sorts, of the doll my wife had left with him." He raises it in his hand, a rough and ugly little thing. "Made a living protector of it, charged with his own blood, without meaning to... and then took to the woods with it."

...All right, Joly's out of his depth about making dolls come alive and such. But the drive behind it- surely anyone would understand.

"Of course a frightened child would make a friend of anything."

And how could it be a harm to anyone, if it only protected him --as his teachers should have?

"But it went too far. He was so frightened, and it so strong, it took to attacking anyone who came near him... which is what led the witches to him."

" I see. These covens sound rather like our own lawmen, when it comes to children in need." Ignore them, until they begin defending themselves.

"They sent the golem - what the doll had become - away from him, and then they offered to recruit him. When he refused - and why on earth would he trust them? - they took the... definitive... action."

"They gave him no aid, took his friend, and then demanded his obedience. Of course he resisted them. How could they have expected otherwise?" Joly takes a moment to calm himself. "Forgive me. It is not my outrage, only-- it is so familiar."

He takes a drink and watches the odd fire-fish for a moment.

"You are handling yourself with far more grace than I could."

"I... expressed my outrage, when I came face to face with the four leaders - witches in my world live long lives, you see. And then the golem returned to exact its own punishment on them, which I could not prevent."

Not that he tried too hard.

"That you tried to stop it at all..." Joly shakes his head. "Many men would kill for less; and I wouldn't be the one to judge them."

"I confess it wasn't the most determined effort", he says dryly. "And only at all because I hoped they might bargain their protection for freeing my wife - but they said it was fated they should die that night, so I left them to it."

Joly nods. "I don't see how you could have argued with them AND the doll,from what you say."

He looks at it. It's not a pretty doll, but it hardly seems a thing to kill a young man over. "And now it's...just a doll again?"

"It died", he says quietly. "A drop of my son's blood gave it life, and my blood on a shard of glass took it away."

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