Work Text:
Valter turned his lance on Glen, and Glen was utterly unprepared. Gasping for air, bleeding into the dirt beneath him, Fenarin’s roar in his ears and Valter’s mount growing distant in the sky, Glen thought that this was a poor way to die. A poor way to leave the service of his king, a poor way to leave behind his brother, his people. One hand pulling at his shattered breastplate, the other clawing into the dirt, Glen’s breath rattled in his lungs and he stared up at the sky and he hated , even as his vision faded.
And he woke up in a poorly lit room. The roof blurry and indistinct, the walls grey, the ceiling also grey. Arms heavy, and chest aching sharply, Glen rolled his head to the side and =tried to focus on anything not the uniform color of shadow. Frustratingly, he could feel himself sliding away again, back into unconsciousness. Burning anger and discomfort kept his eyes open for a little while, but eventually the emotion slipped through his metaphorical fingers, and he slept.
When he woke, and the sun was warm and bright and in his eyes. His breath was a faint wheeze, his chest ached and ached, and his arms and legs were heavy. At least, Glen thought with only a hint of panic, he could see much clearer, now. The walls were brown, not grey, and the ceiling was darker even than the walls, and there was a window…somewhere to his left, letting in enough light to turn the wooden walls golden in places.
It hurt to breathe, and it hurt to twitch, but mostly just being awake and aching was exhausting. Without truly comprehending the way the light shifted angles against the wall, Glen stared ahead of himself, and the walls were shadow, and the ceiling was lost to the dark of night, and Glen slept. He didn’t dream, and it was as though he’d only just closed his eyes when he opened them again, and there was a person perched just within eyesight.
“Wakey wakey, young man.” She intoned, wrinkled and grey in the weak light. Morning, or dusk, probably. She didn’t touch him, and looked off in the direction of the window, and said only, “My husband will be back to change your bandages as soon as he’s done with the water.” And then she did not fill the still morning with inane chatter, about her grandkids, how she was teaching her daughter to take over the farm, speaking only of quiet things. She sat there quietly, in stony silence, until she wasn’t alone.
And then there was an equally wrinkled man, who had gentle hands and then Glen was alone again, though he could hear one of the two just out of sight. “We didn’t think you’d ever wake,” The man’s voice, heard from a distance, the sound muffled by Glen’s inescapable slide into sleep once more. “Any less skill of mine, don’t think you would have. Marjie, she told me to let you die, could tell you were Grado, but I’m a retired healer, you see?
“Wouldn’t have been right, after all…”
Something under his nose smelled amazing, and roused him from sleep again. A bowl of broth, and though the taste was bland it was filling enough, and he fell asleep again. And woke, and was bullied gently into eating and shifting by the old man only to sleep again, and then woke again. And so his days were filled with sleep, and exhausting, short breaks from that sleep in which he was allowed to eat, and wash gently, and then was put back to bed.
It was the roaring outside the home that truly roused him, from the simplicity of the routine of eating, sleeping, and healing that had let his mind drift. Glen’s eyes fluttered, and the woman, Marjie, swore quietly and her chair scraped along the floor as she stood. “Silly thing, I’ve been telling it that the Grado boy weren’t well enough to come visiting, but of course it won’t listen. Worthless Grado wyrm.”
Glen pushed himself up to a sitting position despite the intense discomfort, and watched Marjie go. “Fenarin?” He called, voice not as strong as he’d hoped it would be, soft as only disuse could make it. “Fenarin?” The distinct sound of Marjie’s voice, the words muddled by distance, was clear enough, but so was the welcome sight of Fenarin’s ridged snout, pushed into the open window. The curtains bunched up around the dragon’s nose, the bottoms billowing with each exhale.
Marjie grew louder, and Fenarin’s snout disappeared from the window, much to Glen’s disappointment. Still, if he concentrated, he could hear Fenarin grumbling. As he relaxed back into a prone position, Glen missed even that smallest sight of his mount. “Overgrown lizard,” Marjie groused, sitting back at the table with her figures and a window planter, and every so often she paused from her figuring and pressed seeds down into the wet dirt.
“You should have taught him some better manners, Gradoan.” She addressed him as she pulled her boots on, grouchy. “Stomped all over my rosemary, and it only just recovered from Bill’s black thumb.” Turned away from him, “Ought to tan his hide for that, but no…” The door shut behind her loudly, and Glen was left alone.
In a way, that was fine. He was too tired to think much, but too awake to sleep, and in the end dozed fitfully until there were candles lit and Bill and Marjie had returned from working their farm. The light from the hearth made the shadows dance, and Glen slept through that until Marjie moving throughout the house woke him. Bill slept soundly on, and for a long moment Glen thought this would be as every morning since Valter had turned that cursed lance on him.
But then Marjie huffed, and whipped back the covers, and helped edge Glen up to a sitting position. “You were asleep for it, Gradoan, but Bill said you should see some sun soon.” She pause, and Glen could actually make out the grimace as she continued on, “Pale enough to be a ghost, you know.” As though it were his fault. “Come on then.” She demanded, hands gentle as she hefted him bodily, and supported him to the porch.
“Stay there then,” Marjie said, bending to pick up her bucket and pitchfork. Her arms were well muscled, and her face did not seem gentle, set as it was into a deep frown. She could have been any drill sergeant he’d served under, in that moment, before she turned back to the fields. “And tell that fool lizard of yours to stop trampling my herbs!”
Fenarin didn’t, couldn’t fit on the porch. He was too big, and every time he tried to put his head by Glen’s feet the warped wood of the porch groaned warningly. His clawed feet scratched furrows into the dirt and his tail whipped up dust clouds where it twitched idly. “Misbehaving?” Glen inquired, and Fenarin’s eyes half-closed, and he settled. “Naughty,” Glen judged.
Still, the sun was nice, and Bill came out before it was even mid-morning, an ancient stave in hand and a bundle of yellowed books hanging from the stave by twine. “Lovely day, hm?” Bill asked, shading his eyes against the morning light. “Tell Marjie I’ve gone to town, will you?” And off he went.
Marjie returned, sweaty, with a dark stripe of dirt over her chin and red-faced, and glowered. “Gradoan!” She swore, “My basil!” And she shook her pitchfork at Fenarin, who didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed.
(And the next day, it was her thyme, and her lemongrass was the day after. By the time Glen was pronounced healed enough to go home, to his brother and his king and his troops, Fenarin had ruined almost all of Marjie’s garden. Much to Glen’s own embarrassment. Marjie hadn’t warmed to him or Fenarin either, and she harrumphed and shooed him off without any warmth in her voice, as Glen limped to the road.)
“Good riddance, Gradoan,” Glen repeated to her, when he showed up again, a year or more later with Cormag three steps behind him. Bill stepped forward and pulled Cormag off to go see his newest litter of mousers, and Glen tried again. “That was what you said to me then.”
“And it’s what I’d say to you now, if I could turn you away.” Marjie declared, fists on her hips. “I didn’t want you then, and I don’t want you now. What do you want, boy?”
“To thank you.” Glen said only. “Bill said, you thought he should let me die. I wanted to thank you, for helping him save me.” Marjie’s face did not change, there was no softness to the expression. At least Bill and Cormag seemed like they were getting along.
“Do you regret it?” Glen asked, watching his brother smile shyly at whatever Bill had said.
“No, you foolish Gradoan.” And when he looked over her face was watching Bill with a softness about her eyes. “I most certainly do not.” And things were quiet between them for a moment, and then she swatted his arm, hard. “I hope you boys won’t land those overgrown lizards in my garden, especially you, or I shall surely do something i will regret!!”