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Chapter Text

One (Pilot)

“A goat?”

The words are incredulous, and matched with an equally disbelieving look at the daemon by Morse’s feet. DI Thursday’s own daemon, a sheepdog, thrusts her head past Thursday’s leg to see what’s going on.

Morse keeps his gaze steady, aiming straight past Thursday to the warm, slightly shabby hallway he can make out through the open door. Despite himself, the tips of his ears flush pink with more than the cold.

“Sir.”

Thursday eyes him for a moment, and Morse does his best to remain expressionless. The rim of a finely curled horn accidentally glances against his chilled fingers, and he resists the urge to run fingertips along well known grooves.

“Well,” the other man says finally. He hadn’t seen Euripides, of course, that first night at the station. She’d been tucked under the desk Morse was working on, thoroughly disapproving that he hadn’t gone home yet. Morse hasn’t seen much of Thursday since, and clearly the DI has taken little enough notice of him in return. “Takes all sorts, I suppose.”

A dull roar starts in Morse’s ears - anger and humiliation and a fierce desire to prove himself. It’s a familiar refrain, one that has driven him through years at his father’s house, at university and after. It should be easy enough by now to damp it down but it isn’t, and Morse meets Thursday’s eyes with bold challenge.

Morse’s daemon chooses this precise moment to lip inquiringly at the side of his trousers, just above the knee, and then pull whatever slack material she can find into her mouth to chew.

A smile twitches almost unwillingly at Thursday’s lips.

“No DS Lott today then?”

Something inside Morse relaxes, just a fraction. “Unwell, sir.”

“You don’t say.”

-------------------------

A month or two later Thursday mutters, “Of course. Too clever by half, stubborn, always going where he shouldn’t. Always leaving a great bloody mess behind him.”

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Two (Fugue)

“Hurry,” she cries. “Hurry!”

Morse has no idea where Thursday and Mason Gull are on the rooftops, but Coeus is flying great circles above and to the right. Gull will know he’s coming then, will know that they’ve figured out his ploy. Morse hopes it doesn’t tip him into acting too quickly, hopes Thursday can stall him for long enough.

He clambers out onto the roof, hands clutching white knuckled at the slates. Wind whistles cold and painful past his ears, making his eyes sting and water, and he can feel Coeus’ reflected joy battling his own terror.

A memory surfaces - one from Oxford, all those years ago. After a formal dinner, all of his friends stripping off their gowns and tossing them carelessly to the side when they got back to their rooms. Two of them mock-boxing slightly drunkenly, their daemons darting back and forth with little hisses and caws at each other. 

Morse had gone to the window, opening it for Coeus who hopped off his shoulder and tentatively fastened her claws on the metal rim of the frame. He’d feathered his fingers lightly over the crest of her head, and she’d ducked swiftly around to affectionately run the tip of her beak over his wrist.

The pleasure of watching her take flight had been immediately followed by the wrenching fear fear fear of being thrust forward, dangling out of the window held only by his legs.

“Who ever knew a bloke with a bird daemon afraid of heights?” he’d heard called from behind him as they laughed and laughed.

Who ever knew a bloke with a bird daemon afraid of heights?

Now Morse inches along, driven only by the cold iron knowledge that Thursday will die if he doesn’t make it. That he might die anyway, because Morse made a mistake in guessing the next victim.

“Hurry,” Coeus cries again, and when he looks up the bright glare of the sun through the clouds is filtered through the long primaries of her wings.

As he finally makes it to Thursday and Gull, hearing the echoes of their conversation and trying for stealth, Coeus can hold herself back no longer and dives at the killer, flapping her wings desperately at his face from a foot away to distract him.

Morse makes it two quiet steps closer and thinks that he might actually get the jump on the man when Gull reaches for her, fingertips just brushing the edges of her wings. She rears back in alarm and Morse yells out and thinks he might throw up right there and then. Gull’s own stoat daemon is rushing Morse now, snarling ferociously, and Morse sees Gull’s hand snatch again, fingers outstretched and grasping as Coeus doesn’t manage to move quite far enough.

The motion is broken as Thursday’s fist sinks satisfyingly into Gull’s gut, doubling the man over and leaving the stoat whimpering and ineffectual.

“Morse,” Thursday shouts hoarsely, and then Morse is there, barrelling into Gull’s back and taking him down, tumbling over and over in a way which pulls at the wound in his side and hitches Coeus’ flight as she soars above.

Handcuffing someone has never felt so gratifying in his life.

---------------------------

Three (Random)

Morse has never properly introduced his daemon to anyone at the station, though they’re all used to the sight of the elegant looking Dalmatian roaming the halls. Unusually for a dog daemon, she doesn’t follow loyally everywhere at his heels, frequently preferring to entertain herself. She’s told him she feels stifled in the station, in a room dim and musty and smelling of the sweat of twenty men in a confined space. He can’t disagree. She isn’t interested in conversing with any of the other men’s daemons, either, although she watches them closely sometimes, observing their habits.

“Jakes’ Sundancer couldn’t stop grooming herself today,” she would confide. “She’s going to wear a bald patch on her fur. They must be very worried about something.”

Or, “Stay clear of Thursday this morning, his daemon’s growling up a storm.”

It’s impolite, of course, not to have mentioned her name. A fairly standard introduction is: I’m so-and-so, and this is my daemon insert-name-here. Morse had just said he was Morse, and left it at that. They all thought him odd in the first place, though, and it was only one more thing for them to sneer and jibe at him over as he settled in at Cowley. ‘Probably some fancy Latin name, snobby and pretentious,’ Jakes had once suggested.

“It’s not that I’m ashamed of you,” Morse says quietly, one night after everyone has left. She pushes her muzzle into his cupped hands.

“I know that.” Her eyes are calm and wise, and her voice steady.

“I just…”

“I know.”

But it’s not fair to her, and he knows it. The next time he and Thursday go to the pub, just the two of them, he waits until their food comes and then takes a breath.

He doesn’t need to call her, of course. Somehow, over the years, they’ve perfected knowing when one of them wants the other’s attention. It’s how he’s gotten away with this at the station for the month since he started, when all around him policemen are calling right, left and centre for ‘Hunter’ and ‘Shadow’ and ‘Ermintrude.’

Thursday’s daemon is called Alonza, meaning ready for battle. She’s a badger, and Morse had never realised quite how fast a badger could move until he’d met her.

Names are a reflection of nature, character, imagination. Deep in his innermost thoughts – so deep that he hoped his daemon would never hear it - Morse had at one point wished for a daemon with a name which was more poetic. Perhaps he still wishes that, at least a little, and it had been a lie when he told her that he wasn’t ashamed. But he shouldn’t be. She doesn’t deserve it.

“Spot,” he says, and his voice cracks a little. His tone is more of a question than a command.

Thursday glances up from his lunch, not sure if Morse is talking to him. Morse ignores him, clears his throat.

“Spot.”

It’s been years since he’s spoken her name in company. She raises her head from where it’s resting on her paws, looking askance at him from her spot by the door.

He opens his mouth, but can’t bring himself to speak again. She, however, rises gracefully to her feet and trots over, nimbly stepping over Alonza to reach his side. She sniffs interestedly at his trouser pocket, then looks up at him inquiringly.

His hand fumbles as he slips a bit of cheese from his plate to give to her, and she happily licks his fingers clean afterwards.

Thursday’s eyes, when Morse turns his attention back to the table, are measuring and curious. He says nothing, however, merely grumbles about the football scores, and the tight band around Morse’s chest eases.

“Spot,” he calls again when it’s time for them to leave, and she bumps happily into the side of his leg in reassurance as they walk.

----------------

The End

Chapter Text

Morse and Euripides

Euripides has always been very spatially aware. More so than Morse, in fact, who still feels like his rangy arms and legs will never lead him to be described as graceful. With her long, curling horns, every turn of her head could lead to a collision. In the narrow confines of the police station that’s a constant possibility.

Today it’s with Strange, flattening himself and sucking his stomach in in an awkward gesture as he goes to pass her in the aisle - at the same moment as she turns to watch Jake’s bobcat leap to the next desk. Strange is startled, jerking sideways, and Euripides barely manages to pull back in time to prevent contact.

“Sorry,” Strange mutters, glancing down, and continues on his way.

Morse shuffles his chair back from the desk, leaving a bigger gap for her to occupy underneath.

“Get over here.”

Though she comes to stand beside the desk, she shows no sign of complying. His sigh is echoed by her soft snort, and he reaches absently to grip the base of one of her horns, resting his hand cupped around it.

She’d liked it under the desk, of course, the first few days when the office was empty enough (it being late at night or everyone being out canvassing). Now that it‘s actually necessary to save space and avoid bumping into people, she refuses point blank. She likes picking a spot between rows – a different one each day. Yesterday she spent half the morning standing by Jakes’ desk, slowly chewing imaginary cud just so that she could watch his eye twitch. He’d eventually given in and snippily told Morse to keep a lead on her. It had taken him two hours, though; Morse had been reluctantly impressed.

For all that she’s good at dodging out of the way of the situations she inevitably causes, Morse doesn’t want to provoke too much bad will around the department. There’s apple slices dampening his pocket for just such occasions, and he fishes one out and slides it in cupped palm under the desk.

Her head dips down immediately to see what’s on offer.

Morse looks around the room, ignoring her completely, observing the ebb and flow of people’s movements. Other men’s daemons crowd the sunny window ledges, or perch on their desks or under them. It’s not a calm room, by any means, having so many men and daemons crammed together, but there is some form of order and cooperation most of the time.

Euripides butts her horns gently at the side of the desk, and Morse let’s his fingers slide away from their spot at her crown. The hand he has under the desk is damp and sticky now, and he feels like everyone in the room must be staring at them.  

Morse has never met anyone else with a goat daemon.

Police officers tend to have canines. Great danes and pointers and sheepdogs. Pitbulls and terriers – Bright has a terrier, and Morse has to force himself not to smile every time it scruffs fiercely at him with all of its fifteen inches. It’s not a universal trait, though, and there are plenty of other species too. Just no goats.

He almost murmurs ‘please’ under his breath. He’s too proud though, and in the end it’s her decision. She seems to sense the tipping point, however, because mere seconds later there’s the rough scrape of her horns along the underside of the desk, and then the soft, silky texture of her lipping the apple out of his hand.

He pulls away after a moment, wiping his hand carelessly on his trousers, and chews on the end of his pencil as he prays that they get called out soon.

-------------

Morse and Coeus

They don’t normally speak on nights like this – content in each other’s silence and company in the dimly lit flat. Another long day. Another change in the weather forecast which the ache in Morse’s hip agrees with.

Just him, his daemon, and a quiet drink to unwind with.

He has Puccini on in the background, volume low enough that the vibration doesn’t hurt Coeus’ ears. They’ve come to many compromises over the years, and accommodate each other where they can. Tonight he wishes it were louder, wants to wrap himself in the heady swell of notes and lose himself for a while. The feeling builds in him for a few minutes, sparking faint, irrational resentment, and eventually Morse swigs the rest of his drink as he hauls himself up.

“I’m going to turn it up for a bit,” he says.

The only response is the discordant flap of wings as he walks across to the record player. He fiddles for a moment, taking his time and finding his way in the pure notes of the music as they rise louder around him, and the room is empty when he turns.

He tops up his glass and stands by the open window. The sun is going down now, catching the tan and red brick of the houses in a rosy, picturesque glow. The evenings are getting colder, and Morse revels in the feel of a cool breeze across his flushed cheeks.

The first swallow of liquid stings as it goes down. He takes another, his eyes tracking the path of his daemon’s flight. Coeus drifts lazy circles in the space over the street, wings caught in shafts of golden light from the sunset. It’s a picture he’s admired many times before.

This time there are jarring notes to it.

Her flight isn’t quite graceful. Her arcs spin too wide or too shallow, and several times she wheels almost too late to avoid trees, power lines, lampposts. She goes higher for a minute or two, and he watches her outline dark against the sky as it fails to soar a straight line.

He takes another mouthful, grimacing at the taste of it, and closes his eyes in self-disgust.

Time passes, the glow of the sun fading against his eyelids. The noises of the street fade a little, and when he opens his eyes again Coeus is just landing on the nearest street lamp, having bullied a pair of pigeons off it. Her claws carefully grasp around the metal, and he can feel the weight of her gaze even with the distance between them.

“I’m dizzy,” she says, and he can hear her as though she were speaking in his ear.

It’s not quite a complaint.

The cheap alcohol sits hard in his stomach, and Morse knows it’s the forth night this week.

He can make out that her shoulders are hunched forward; watches for a moment as she shifts her weight forward ever so slightly, and then back again. Swaying, he realises.

She’s never mentioned his drinking before.

Thursday has. Thursday’s become a bloody broken record about it, even though it isn’t a problem at all – not the way the man thinks, anyway.

The two of them stare at each other in the darkness, man and daemon. The glass, resting against the windowsill, almost slips in his fingers and he catches at it wildly, heart drumming a quick beat. The amber liquid sloshes in it, still a finger or so.

He pours it down the sink.

Puts the kettle on, takes a piss. Turns the record player off, fitting the record back into its cover with less than his usual care.

She doesn’t come back in, not yet, and he takes a seat in his chair and rests his head in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” he says through his fingers when he hears the muffled sweep of her wings sometime later. She comes to perch on the back of his chair, claws scrabbling at the wood.

Her beak glides through his hair, and he breathes in and out and in again.

------------------

Morse and Spot

Spot is, hands down, the best tracker in the station. Not just because of her sense of smell, but because she notices things that no one else does.

“Put us all out of a job, that one will,” Thursday had joked in their first case together, but Morse had been unable to smile because it didn’t matter how perceptive she was if no one would believe the two of them.

“Making up evidence to support your wild theories?”

“Pretending she’s a bloodhound?”

“Oh look, it’s Sherlock and Myton again!”

They were a well-known joke throughout the station within two weeks of starting. Snobby Morse and the daemon that thought she could divine how crimes happened with her nose. Now that Bright’s arrived, now that Morse has been demoted to general duties, things have gotten worse.

“Don’t listen to them,” he says to Spot as they walk out of the station to follow up on a theft inquiry which had landed on Thursday’s desk that morning.

“Myton was a parrot,” is her slightly offended reply. “And he doesn’t really do anything useful in the books anyway – just flaps around to agree with Sherlock’s theories and tell Watson how obvious it was.”

Morse is briefly amused that this is the part she’s decided to take issue with.

“They can’t accept anything they don’t understand.” He kicks a pebble aside, watching it bounce into the road.

“But it was all there,” she insists. “The way the dust was disturbed, the smell of turpentine.”

She’s talking about the crime scene of last night – an ongoing missing persons. They had gone to the victim’s home with Thursday and several other officers. Spot had relayed her findings around the property to Morse, and he had synergised them with his own information to present a valid theory.

Batshit crazy, apparently. Even Thursday hadn’t looked particularly convinced, though he at least hadn’t said anything within Morse’s hearing. But then, here Morse and Spot are, out chasing thefts when they’re chafing at the bit to be let back on the case. Morse has thought more than once that he should just say sod it and go follow up on his theories despite their orders.

“Are their daemons stupid?” she continues after a moment. “Didn’t they notice any of it?”

Morse lets out a sigh, a shrug. He’s used to it by now, though he’d been foolishly optimistic about Cowley.

“It’s like they’re all deaf and dumb and blind.”

This is not far from Morse’s own opinion of the situation. For a perverse moment, he feels the need to defend the other officers, but it passes speedily enough. “I don’t know why they can’t see!”

“Or why they won’t listen to us.” She sniffs. “You’d think it would be worth investigating any lead, at least.”

Limited manpower, Thursday had said to him. Cover the most likely possibilities first. Highest chance of...

“I know,” he says.

“They never listen to us, and we’re always right.”

They return to the station later to discover the missing girl retrieved based on his information. Thursday had sent out a follow up to Morse’s theories this morning, ‘just in case.’

Morse should be glad the girl’s safe. He is glad. It’s just…

“We should have been there,” Spot says quietly, leaning hard against his leg under the desk. Her warm, furry body feels like the only true connection he has to the world, sometimes.

He sits and stares at the typewriter for a few minutes, utterly unmotivated to write up his report on the morning.

There hasn’t been a word of acknowledgement from anyone, not even Thursday. All of Bright’s accolades have gone to Jakes, who was the one who found her, never mind that it was only because of Morse that they knew where to start looking.

“Hush,” he says, and slips his hand down to fondle her ears, but the injustice of it rankles for some time to come.

-----------------------

The End (take 2)

Chapter Text

Morse has no idea what his father’s Whiskers might have named Morse’s daemon if he’d had the chance. Whiskers is a rat with a clever eye and a mean streak, and Morse has never liked her - which led to plenty of friction in the household, growing up. Certainly from the stories his mother told him there wasn’t much of a democratic process involved; his mother’s daemon, Earnest, had apparently pinned Whiskers to the floorboards and insisted on having her way with the naming. Thus Morse was given the name Endeavour, and his daemon was called Verity.

It’s not a particularly apt name.  

Verity lies when they’re young, telling Earnest that Morse has done his chores and Whiskers that he’s already been out to put that bet on for his father.

She tells the teacher’s daemon, when he subtly inquires, that no, there are no problems at home.

She is a pine martin, a hawk, a dragonfly and a leopard. She is monkey and bluebird and spaniel.

She turns into creatures they have only seen in books, as they spend hours in the library pouring over the pages, until, one day, she is only a snow-white fox. Vulpes lagopus, the books say. She can look angelic, regal and mischievous (when covered in dirt) by turns. Neither of them are any different than before she settled, not really, but somehow everyone treats them differently from one day to the next.

Verity tells Joyce and Joyce’s daemon Pickle that of course Endeavour likes her mother, Gwen. She tells Whiskers that the university admittance letter he spied them opening was just a standard form all of the teachers sent out.

She lies to Susan’s daemon, and Morse, unthinking, contradicts her lies.

Morse knows that to him, at least, Verity has never lied. He would feel it, he thinks, somewhere inside him. He asks her to try, but it is more because he knows her every expression and tone so well that he can detect it. Still, that is enough.

He wends his way away from and then back to Oxford, the intervening years a blur. He finds some sense of purpose right on the brink of losing it, and Verity nips sharply at his fingers as he draws in breath to tell DI Thursday ‘no, thanks, I’m finished with the police,’ so he doesn’t.

-------------------

Oxford the third time around is only slightly less surreal than when he was here a few weeks ago on the Mary Tremlett case.

“Find the place alright?” DI Thursday asks when Morse knocks at the man’s open door, and Verity is scrupulously polite in staying tucked behind Morse’s legs.

He’s invited in to discuss his new post over a cup of tea.

“Actually, mind making me one at the same time? Kitchen’s first door on the left as you go out on the right. We’ve got a secretary, but she’s kept busy enough – easier to just do it yourself. Milk and sugar.”

Morse finds the kitchen, tiling old and cracked and linoleum worn and yellowing. The kettle is the only thing in the room which is new. As he fills it, Verity pokes her nose interestedly into all the corners and then pads silently back to him.

In the arctic, she would be the epitome of stealth. On the days here in winter when it snows sometimes even he can’t make her out amongst the snowy banks; her fur blending in perfect camouflage. Most of the time, as now, however, her quietness is betrayed by the pure white shock of her coat against any background.

“What do you think?” he asks, although it’s not as though they haven’t discussed the move a hundred times.

“The cleaner ought to be fired,” she replies promptly.

He gives her a sardonic look, and digs two teabags out of the caddy. The mugs resting on the draining board are all chipped and faded; he selects two and tries not to fall over as she sits on his feet and he has to shuffle back and forth to grab the sugar. He could just nudge her off, of course, but she gets snappish if she doesn’t have her fair share of attention and she likes to play games.

Thursday has clearly forgotten all about him, because when he makes it back to the DI’s office the man blinks in startlement for a moment before waving Morse in and telling him to close the door behind him.

“Here.” Thursday clears off some of the paperwork on his desk, piling it haphazardly to the side. “Trust me, it won’t make it any worse,” he adds when he sees Morse eying it.

He and Morse talk about duties and the Sergeant’s exam and if Morse has found somewhere to stay, but Morse only has half an ear on that because the other half is on the conversation their daemons are having, off to the side.

Verity is sitting on her haunches looking dignified and elegant, white puff of tail curled around her side and sharp muzzle tilted in enquiry, and Thursday’s slightly craggy buzzard has swooped down to perch nearby. She’d introduced herself as Russet when they met previously, but held herself somewhat aloof. Now she seems to have a wary interest in the pair of them.

“What’s it like, being back in Oxford?” she asks. “You were here before, weren’t you?”

“I like Oxford,” Verity says. “So many interesting smells.”

The buzzard nods seriously, clearly unable to imagine anyone not liking Oxford. “You must be glad we’ve given you the chance to come back, then.”

“Oh yes,” Verity says. Morse can feel in her the sharp cutting loss still, that here they had lost Susan  – the first person to ever touch her – and Susan’s Pericles. “Glad.”

-----------------------

He’s shot, and Verity tells Russet, “He’s fine, I can feel he’s fine to travel.”

He sees Joyce and Pickle, still aching from the bullet wound, and Verity says, “We’ve missed you,” and “Everything’s going fine,” and “No, there’s nothing wrong with him, he’s just recovering from a pulled muscle, that’s all.”

It’s occurred to him over the years that perhaps she lies for him. That his own skill at dissembling is somewhat lacking; that his only ability to deceive is only to pretend not to feel at all, rather than to be able to redirect and deflect with skill.

“I never liked the police,” his father says, not long before the end, and Verity replies, “We’ve never cared what you think.”

The heaviness of that particular untruth sits on them for months afterwards.

----------------------

She’s jumpy, unusually so, for the next few months. They spend most of that at County, recovering, where no one notices or cares about them, and perhaps that’s why it’s only Morse that sees the difference. It becomes a regular occurrence for Morse to sit up tense in his seat, heart pounding and mouth desert-dry, and then find her frozen in a startled tableau some feet away.

He doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. He’d think she might be sick, except that daemons can’t get sick. He jolts awake at night, sick with her fear, and she can’t explain it.

“I’m fine,” she says again, “there’s nothing wrong,” and the lie hangs bitter and twisting between them.

----------------------

Back in Oxford, and Thursday’s cautious glances are directed at him rather than Verity. Jakes gives him a funny look or two as well, and Morse starts to feel like even the other men’s daemons are watching him.

Verity freezes and freezes again, snaps and snarls at nothing, and Morse can’t stop his corresponding jerks in response. He dodges Thursday’s comments, and again, angry and confused, until Thursday finally comes right out and speaks his mind at the pub one day -says that he doesn’t think Morse has recovered from the shooting; his mind rather than his body.

For all that Thursday’s careful solicitude is aggravating, it is useful on one point. Two points. Firstly, it’s only when Thursday actually says it that Morse realises Verity is being startled by loud noises. Every incident has been caused by a car door slamming, a file dropping, or a myriad of other day to day things. Morse hadn’t even realised that was triggering it, he’d barely noticed anything beyond the sudden thrust of reaction and fear each time.

And secondly, she’s not sick, it’s just…

It’s just what? Thursday seems to be implying it’s combat fatigue, or something like it. If it were merely his own reaction, Morse could discount it, push it aside and carry on. But there Verity is, time after time, the physical embodiment of reaction and terror. He can’t pretend it’s not real.

She crawls into bed with him that night, and he eases his palm over the curve of her skull. He won’t speak first, but the air between them is expectant and strained.

“I thought you were dead,” she says finally, whisper soft. “There was the bang, and then I was falling, and…”

His fingers dig into her fur for a moment, and he realises she’d thought that she was going to die too.

They haven’t spoken of it since it happened two months ago, barely acknowledged it beyond the way she presses closely more often now, as though she’s afraid he might disappear.

“It was just my hip,” he says numbly, and she takes his wrist between her teeth in retaliation because she knows that.

“Every time I hear… I just – it could be happening again. Someone could – at any moment they could! And they’d take you from me, and I’d be dust.”

He holds her, because he can’t think what else to do, and presses the side of his face against her soft fur to hide the sudden wet brightness of his eyes.

--------------------

The next day he pays attention, thinking perhaps that he can disprove any such notion by attending to the whole thing logically for once. Now that he’s watching, of course, nothing happens. The day goes by smooth and easy, and they amble home together in late summer warmth and everything’s fine.

“Do you think he’s right?” Morse asks as they reach the flat and she trots up the stairs ahead of him.

No need to state which he; Thursday’s comments have been all that’s been on either of their minds.

She waits until he shuts the door. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Their most recent experience with any psychological analysis was Mason Gull - perhaps Morse ought not to tar and feather a whole profession based on a psychotic impersonator of a psychiatrist, but he can’t help it all the same.

“I don’t… I didn’t…”

Lying to one’s daemon is particularly self-defeating.

“You wouldn’t get so angry about it if you didn’t think it might be true,” she observes shrewdly.

He reaches up to tangle his fingers through his hair. “I get angry at them thinking I can’t do my job.”

She’s quiet, but he can read the argument in her eyes.

------------------------

The next day he’s at the grocers and someone makes a sudden movement in the corner of his eye. There’s a sharp crack, and all of a sudden his mouth is full of the taste of blood. He jerks, spins, eyes wide and panicked, and opens his mouth but can’t even manage to croak out a terrified sound.

When clarity returns he sees Verity first, body held low and frozen a mere foot away, and this time instead of letting his mind shy away from the incident he forces himself to look and think and see.

There is a woman in a dark coat some ten feet to his right; she’s crouched on the ground retrieving a paper-wrapped parcel from the ground. A man rushes to help her, and Morse brings his mind under control as though wrestling the reins of an unruly horse. He tracks backwards. She must have dropped the package, moved quickly to try and catch it; it had hit the floor.

Try as he might he can’t remember anything after the crack of sound. There had just been blood pounding and absolute, irrational terror. His mind had just… stopped. His heart is still thumping too fast now, his breathing just evening out.

He thrusts the jar he was holding onto the shelf, and the two of them stumble blindly out of the shop. There’s a low brick wall just across the road, and he perches on the edge of it and lets Verity tuck herself behind his leg.

It hadn’t been any better or worse than any of the previous times, Morse thinks. He’d just been more aware of it afterwards.

“How did that feel, to you?” he asks sometime later.

Her head scruffs against his trouser leg, one snow-white ear folding under as she tips her head back to look up at him. “I didn’t feel anything.” A van rattles past, but she doesn’t budge a millimetre in her consideration of him. “I was still aware of everything, but at the same time it was like it didn’t exist. I couldn’t react to anything that was there, because-“

“You were reacting to something else instead,” Morse finishes, thoughtful.

She settles down onto her forepaws, looking out at the street now.

“You knew that this was real, but something else was more real.”

“Yes,” she agrees.

--------------------

A few days after they close the case, after Morse finding the truth out has eased a little the sting of his very public mistake, he suggests the pub for lunch.

Thursday is surprised, but amenable enough.

“How did you… You said you knew people, in the army?” Morse broaches after they’re served.

“Hmm?”

Thursday is busy picking apart his sandwich to see what’s inside. Morse could have told him, but his mind is busy dwelling endlessly on how to ask what he needs to.

“How do you make them,” and here he tips his head to the side to indicate Verity, “stop, uh, worrying?”

Verity is several feet away, stretched out in the sun with her head on her paws, but she’s listening keenly. Thursday’s daemon hops a little closer.

Morse notices that Thursday is careful not to look at him. “Worrying?”

“Uh.” Morse ducks his head, rubs his hand ruefully over the back of his neck. “Overreacting. To, uh, noises and things.”

Thursday slowly sets his sandwich down. “Talking about this, are we?” he asks, somewhat rhetorically. Then he sighs. “It’s not something you can put away just like that, lad. It happens for a reason. And you need to stop thinking of it as her problem, and start thinking of it as yours.”

Hard not to react defensively. To curl in and lash out. Morse has already worked that out, after all, that maybe he’s the one reacting just as much as her.

He peers with great concentration into his half of ale. “So?” he asks again.

Thursday sighs. “It needs time, lad.” Off to the side, Verity lets out a low grumble. “And patience. There’s no point just denying it’s happening. I, uh, might know someone you could talk to.”

The “No,” is out of his mouth before his cheeks have time to stain red with shame.

“He’s done it,” Russet rasps to Verity, and Verity’s ears prick up. “When he came back.”

Morse darts a glance at Thursday, whose own face has gone ruddy. It’s not the kind of information she would have confided without permission, without trust, and all of a sudden Morse rewinds the happenings of the last couple of weeks and overlays the idea that Thursday was worried for him, rather than thinking him unfit.

“Oh,” he says, quiet and stunned. It feels like all the wind has been knocked out of him.  

“We don’t know what to do.” Verity’s voice, as she makes this confession to Russet, is shy and vulnerable.

It’s the most honest either of them has been about their feelings in years.

--------------

The End