Work Text:
Pining
Dah’lil Maksohm:
I set my bags down and flopped onto the bed. Next step: breakfast. The step after that: stretching. After a solid week sleeping on the hard, narrow “beds” in a parade of sleeper trains, my back was killing me.
I closed my eyes. The quiet was blissful. After a solid week cooped up with Chi and Bannen on a parade of sleeper trains, I desperately needed five minutes of quiet. They don’t mean to do it, but they drive me up the wall when they get bored. I tried not to yell at my team, but sometimes that was a struggle.
Naturally, my TMC tweedled at me. Naturally, it was my boss. I sighed. “Yes, Director? We’re back in Foxboro.”
“Don’t get comfortable.”
I groaned. “What, where, and why us?”
“Linnet needs backup.”
I sat up. If Special Agent Linnet needed backup, then something truly horrific was happening. “What’s going on?”
“They’re investigating reports of a strange creature wreaking havoc. The problem is that it’s not just one or two creatures like we thought. There’s at least eight of these things. They’re bigger than Baby, they have a ludicrous amount of claws, and they’re definitely magical constructs.”
I whistled. “So, there’s a rogue mage up there, too.” A powerful one, too, if they could create eight monsters bigger than Baby, Linnet’s grizzly bear familiar.
“That’s Linnet’s assessment, yes. They thought your team, specifically, would be best.”
Because of Rena, not because of me. Linnet had never once asked me for help in their life. Never asked anyone for help, really, so I didn’t take that personally.
“Train or portal?” I asked.
“Both. The situation’s pretty urgent. Some loggers were ripped apart by those things, and the attacks are getting closer to the town.”
“Please tell me we have time for breakfast.”
“Make it quick.”
**
To say that my team wasn’t happy to be on the road again would be an understatement. We portaled up to a town where we could catch a train to a place with another MISD mage who would portal us up as far as we could go. Then we would catch an overnight train headed for a little logging town called Pine Grove.
“Ok, now that we’ll be sitting for a while, what do we know?” asked Vee after settling into her seat. The train jerked into motion.
“Linnet needs help,” I said.
“LINNET needs help?” said Chi incredulously. “Murder Mage Linnet? Legendary Linnet, the one-person army? Did the MISD hire another person named Linnet?”
“No, there’s only one Linnet,” I said with a small smile. ‘Murder Mage’ wasn’t a nickname for my taciturn friend that I’d heard before.
“Have we met Linnet?” Bannen asked.
“Sure,” said Chi. “They fought Tohsie with us both times. Red hair, grizzly bear as a familiar.”
“I remember the bear,” said Rena.
“I don’t remember the bear. How do I not remember a bear?” asked Bannen.
“You were a little preoccupied,” Vee pointed out.
“I remember the bear,” said Emily. “But not the mage.”
“Compared to Baby, they’re easy to overlook,” I said. They were the sort of person who stayed quiet and watched, and they didn’t look like anyone special. Unless you saw them in action. Their spellwork was a thing of terror and beauty.
“If Linnet needs help, the situation must be pretty bad,” said Vee. “Do we know details?”
“They’re badly outnumbered by nine-foot-tall claw monsters created by a rogue mage.” I didn’t need to look to see that Vee, Bannen, and Chi were all grinning, spoiling for a fight. And that was the reason our team had a dedicated healer.
“No wonder they called us in. That doesn’t sound good,” said Rena.
**
By dawn, we were deep into almost-pristine pine forests covering rolling foothills. Here and there we passed cleared spaces for villages or farms.
The train rolled into Pine Grove, which wasn’t as small as I expected it to be. The population was at least three thousand people, nestled at the foot of a mountain. Snow covered the ground, and I wished that I’d brought a heavier coat. As the train pulled up to the platform and we unloaded ourselves, I called Linnet on my TMC.
“Little busy,” came the answer. I heard Baby roar in the background.
Alarmed, I asked, “Where are you and what’s happening?”
“On the mountain. Went looking for a missing kid, got ambushed. Yesterday. ETA?”
“We’re getting off the train now. How do we find you?”
“Follow the stream. I’ll make it obvious.” I heard something explode. The call disconnected. A plume of smoke appeared on the side of the mountain.
“Change of plans,” I told my team.
“Where’s Linnet?” asked Vee. A miniature thunderhead appeared beside the plume of smoke in the clear blue sky. Lightning arced down from it. Thunder rolled through the valley. “Oh. Never mind.”
“Excuse me? Agents?” came a hesitant female voice. I looked for the speaker. She was a young woman in secondhand work clothes and a battered hat standing beside a cart. “Your, um, colleague told me to meet you? They went up the mountain looking for my little sister yesterday, and they said to show you where, then to take your stuff to where they booked rooms for you at The Lodge. So I brought the cart…”
“Excellent,” I said. We climbed into the cart, except for Vee, who, as a half-giant, did not fit. That didn’t matter, as she could easily keep up with a cart.
The woman, whose name was Quincey, drove us out of town along a dirt road that ran alongside a stream. Her horses were faster than expected, but couldn’t be possibly be fast enough.
We hit the point where the road melted into trees and the cart couldn’t go any farther. We piled out and followed the stream up and up. We could smell smoke drifting down through the trees and heard thunder again and again.
And then the thunder stopped.
That was either very good or very, very bad. I’d never seen Linnet go into a Mind Down, but they’d been fighting monsters since yesterday and I knew that conjuring a thunderhead, even a tiny one, took a lot of energy…
Something big and heavy crashed down the mountain toward us. Bannen had his swords out, Chi had his bow drawn, and Vee had Seton in a ready position in the space of a blink.
“Wait,” said Rena.
The creature emerged. It was a grizzly bear with blood on her muzzle and blood streaked through her fur.
“Baby?” said Chi, lowering his bow. Linnet’s familiar looked terrified. And she was alone.
“Oh, no,” said Emily softly.
Baby ran over to me and nudged me in the back, pushing me slightly to the right of where we’d been headed. She charged up the mountain a little way, then looked over her shoulder at us. We followed her.
She led us to a clearing ringed by smoldering trees. Three monsters lay around the clearing, clearly dead, burnt and lightning-struck, one with its throat ripped out by grizzly bear teeth. They were bipedal, with dirty white fur, four long arms tipped with six-fingered hands adorned with wicked, hooked, black claws, and long snouts filled with more teeth than anything should ever have.
And there was Linnet. It wasn’t a Mind Down. It was worse.
They lay curled up in the snow, splashes of red around them, uniform shredded and black with blood, pale as the snow surrounding them. Blood on their grimoire.
Baby made a keening noise I hadn’t known that a bear could make. She galloped to her mage and licked their face. Nothing. I couldn’t breathe.
Linnet lifted their hand to pat Baby’s cheek. I gasped.
Emily sprinted over. I was right behind her. Emily slid to a stop on her knees beside Linnet, ignoring the blood in the snow. She laid her hands on deep, deep claw marks in Linnet’s side, casting healing spells faster than I could count them. Baby moved to give Emily space to work, crouching behind her mage.
“Good girl,” Emily told her. “Help keep them warm for me.”
Linnet’s big brown eyes fluttered open and focused on me. “Dah’lil…”
I knelt beside them, blocking their view of what Emily was doing. Nobody wants to see their insides. “I’m here. I’ve got you.” I held their hand. It was so cold.
“There’s…at least two left,” said Linnet, voice barely more than a whisper. “And the mage. Didn’t find the girl… But didn’t find remains…”
“So she’s still out there. We’ll find her,” I assured them. Dimly, I was aware of my team fanning out around the clearing, alert for danger.
Chi prodded one of the magical constructs with his toe to make sure it was dead. “Hey, Linnet? How many of these did you kill?”
“Ten.”
Chi whistled. “Has anyone told you that you’re amazing and kind of terrifying?”
Linnet didn’t answer. Their eyes weren’t quite focusing.
“Hey. Hey, stay with me. Stay with me, here,” I said. Did I sound desperate? I didn’t care.
“Sure…”
“Linnet. Linnet, look at me.”
“Always thought…you have…pretty eyes…” Their eyes drifted closed.
“Wait. Wait, Linnet! Wake up! You’ve got to tell me what you mean by that!” I patted their face, jiggled them lightly. I didn’t want to disturb the delicate work Emily was doing, but I needed them to wake up. They didn’t.
Emily laid a hand on my arm. “They’ve just fainted. They lost a lot of blood.”
My cheeks felt wet. Either it had started snowing, or I was crying. I looked up. It wasn’t snowing.
“Right,” I said, scrubbing at my cheeks with the heels of my hands. “There’s still a missing kid, at least two claw monsters, and a rogue mage out here somewhere. Vee, you and Emily portal down the mountain with Linnet and Baby.”
“No,” Vee told me. “YOU portal down the mountain. I can do more good up here.”
“But…shields,” I said.
“But Seton,” she countered, twirling her magical staff familiar.
“Fair point,” I conceded. Vee specialized in combat in a way that I did not. “Emily, is Linnet stable enough for transport?” I asked our healer.
“Yes. Vee, help me get them onto Baby.” Our giantess obliged. Poor Baby limped a little. “Sweet girl, I’ll heal you next, ok?” Emily told the bear. Baby whined.
“Keep me informed,” I instructed Vee.
“I will,” she promised. “Now, go.”
**
I portaled us to the train station, causing a slight panic. There wasn’t a hospital or clinic in Pine Grove, but there was a doctor. The station master sent someone to fetch her, then personally guided us to the hotel called The Lodge and Linnet’s room inside.
Emily sent hotel staff for warm broth and hot water bottles to warm Linnet up. A maid started a fire in the room’s fireplace. Linnet wasn’t quite frostbitten, but they were colder than they should be. They began to shiver as we eased them out of their wet clothes. A good sign.
A bad sign: Linnet had sustained many more injuries than had been immediately apparent. They’d bound some of them with makeshift bandages.
The doctor and the hot water bottles arrived at roughly the same time. The doctor was a no-nonsense woman with dark skin, and glasses, her white hair twisted up into a neat bun.
“A Mage Healer. Good,” said the doctor. She set her black bag down on the room’s little table. “How can I help?”
Vee called me. I left the room to let Emily and the doctor work.
“We got two more of those magical constructs. They’re no joke. The second one tried to flee uphill, so we’re headed that way now, trying to see if the mage is up there.”
“Everyone all right?”
“Not a scratch,” she assured me.
“Don’t assume all of those things are dead,” I warned.
“Oh, we won’t. Bannen swears he heard one more somewhere.”
“Be careful.”
“We will.” Vee ended the call.
I went back in. The doctor was stitching up one of the minor lacerations on Linnet’s arm, while Emily laid healing spells on an injury to Baby’s shoulder.
“Everybody ok?” Emily asked me.
“They’re fine,” I assured her.
“Magus, do you know how to get in touch with this agent’s family?” the doctor asked me. That meant that the situation really was as dire as I thought.
“Linnet’s an orphan,” I told the doctor, watching the slight rise and fall of Linnet’s chest, looking at their long red hair fanned out on the pillow. Numb. I felt numb.
Emily placed her hand on my arm. “Maksohm. Why don’t you go have a cup of tea?” she suggested.
“You don’t need me to boost your healing spells?”
“When I need you, I’ll call you, ok?”
“Sarding son of a Bauchi, I need to call Director Salvatore,” I realized.
“Not immediately you don’t. Tea. Common room. Go.”
I went. I ordered and drank a cup of tea like an automaton might. I don’t know what type of tea it was. I called the director. I have no idea what I said. The dregs of my tea were bitter and cold when Vee called me again.
“The girl’s ok,” was the first thing she said. “The mage is not ok. She won’t be making any more magical constructs, though, because Chi shot her in the throat before we could ask her any questions.” I could hear the glare she was giving her husband. I heard Chi’s garbled protest in the background.
“Come down the mountain,” I instructed. “Tomorrow we’ll go back up and make sure the constructs are gone.”
“Sounds good,” said Vee. “How’s…how’s Linnet?”
“Hanging on,” I replied, hoping it was true. I looked down at my mostly-empty teacup. Tea. Emily might like some tea. I ordered tea for her and the doctor, then went back upstairs.
Linnet was feverish. Another bad sign.
**
I didn’t sleep, and neither did Emily. I sat in an uncomfortable chair watching Linnet sleep fitfully and remembering.
Linnet as a junior agent, head cocked to the side, faint smile, telling me, “I can usually get through shields. Not yours. May I try again?”
Linnet when I lost my familiar, not mouthing platitudes or trying to cheer me up, just offering a shoulder to cry on or a hug as needed.
Linnet in the train compartment on the way to one of the few missions we’d done together, reading in companionable silence, leaning on Baby.
Linnet inside the barrier when we took down Toh’sellor, nudging me in the side and nodding sharply towards Chi and Vee, who were finally embracing. “Pay up,” they’d said. Astonished that they’d recalled that particular bet, I’d paid up.
I jerked out of a doze, unsure what had startled me. Across the bed from me, Emily jerked upright as well. Baby huffed, lifting her head from her paws where she’d been sleeping by the dying fire.
“Sparrow…” murmured Linnet in their fevered sleep. “Sparrow!”
I saw a glimmer of light and I glanced down. Tiny sparks of electricity flickered around Linnet’s fingers where they rested on the coverlet. Uh-oh.
I snapped a barrier up around the room. Lightning arced up toward the ceiling. My barrier absorbed it.
Baby was next to the bed in an instant, laying her head on Linnet’s arm. The lightning in their fingers vanished.
“What was that?” Emily demanded, eyes wide. “Who and/or what is Sparrow?”
“A childhood friend who was killed when a rogue mage destroyed their orphanage. Linnet took down the rogue mage with an entirely untrained lightning storm. They were nine.”
Her eyes widened and her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “That explains a lot.”
“Do not tell them I told you this. Ever. That is an order. I only told you because that might happen again.” I gestured to where my barrier spell had absorbed the lightning.
“I can tell when something’s told to me in confidence.” Emily laid her hand on Linnet’s forehead. “Hmm.” She cast a spell.
“That’s not a good hmm.”
“Hmmms are never good.”
We managed to rouse Linnet enough to get some medication into them. The fever didn’t go away, but it burned a little less intensely and there was no more delirious lightning. I kept the barrier up just in case.
**
My team went up the mountain to search for remaining claw monsters without me. By the time I’d knocked on their doors to collect them for the expedition, they were already gone.
“Emily, did you by any chance tell Rena and company to go without me?” I asked.
“No.” She scratched at her ear, an obvious tell. I lifted my eyebrow. “Ok, yes. I wanted you here in case of more lightning.”
I couldn’t be mad at her for that, but I also couldn’t have a team that ignored the fact that I was nominally in charge. “Run it by me next time.”
“I will. Sorry.” She was not really sorry.
Linnet’s fever broke completely around midday, drenching them with sweat. They slept much more peacefully.
Golden, sunset light tilted through the windows when Linnet’s eyes flickered open.
“Hey, good morning,” I said, grinning.
Linnet frowned, glancing toward the window. “Is it?”
“Evening,” I amended. “I’m glad you’re awake. You really scared me.”
“Sorry. Wouldn’t have gone up there, but…”
“There was a missing kid. I would have done the same thing. I think any of us would. My team found her, and she’s fine. Rogue mage is down, too.”
Linnet relaxed and nodded a little. “Glad I called you in.”
I hesitated. I wanted an answer, but… Screw it. “You, ah… You said you thought I have pretty eyes.”
“I did?”
“Yes. Um. Did you mean it?”
They looked away. “I’ve been in love with you almost since we met.”
“That was more than a decade ago!”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I don’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t want to ruin it if you didn’t feel the same way.”
“Look at me.” They did. “I’ve been in love with you for at least nine years.”
Their eyes widened in surprise. The corner of their mouth quirked up in their signature half-smile. “Ha. We’re idiots.”
I laughed. “Such idiots.” We’d lost so much time. “Can I kiss you?”
“Please.”
I kissed their smile. Their hand came up and twined through my hair. Their lips parted against mine.
“Oh. My. Deities,” I heard from the doorway. I broke off the kiss. I looked up to see Chi in the doorway. “Vee owes me so much money right now.”
“Chi, no. No. Don’t tell Vee. Don’t tell anybody,” I warned him.
Rena peeked around the archer. “Too late. Sorry.”
I groaned. “Why does Vee owe you money?”
“I bet her that the reason you were single is that you had a crush on someone,” Chi explained.
“This is why I don’t have a team,” said Linnet.
“They’re more trouble than they’re worth,” I said. “You realize you’re married to her and you share a joint bank account, right?”
Chi laughed. “We weren’t even together when we made this bet.”
I shook my head. Linnet snorted. “Don’t even start,” I said.
They started. “Turnabout. We bet on the Franklockes.”
“Wait, what?” said Chi. “You made a bet on me and Vee?”
“Spill,” Rena commanded.
I sighed. In for a penny… “Chi, when you first became Vee’s partner, Linnet and I made a bet about when you two would end up together. Linnet said five years or more, I said sooner than that.”
My teammates burst out laughing. Rena giggled until she wheezed. Chi had to lean on the doorframe to catch his breath.
“Was there something you wanted?” I asked the twin hyenas, a little peeved.
“We were going to ask if you wanted to join us all downstairs for dinner, Maksohm,” said Rena, recovering from the giggle fit first. “But I’m guessing you want us to send something up for you.”
“Yes. Please. Do that,” I said. They left. Linnet chuckled. “You realize we’re going to have to fill out form 692-A now, right?” The form for agents in a relationship.
They grinned. “Really?”
“Yes. Because I’m asking you on so many dates when you’re healed up.”
“And I’m accepting them. Get me the forms. I’ll fill them out.”
“You’re offering to do paperwork for me?” Linnet nodded. “You sure know the way to an MISD agent’s heart.” They smiled and waggled their eyebrows at me.
Emily was the one to bring up a tray full of dinner. “So, I hear you’ve been kissing my patient,” she said. Quietly, because Linnet had fallen asleep.
“Very, very gently,” I assured her.
“As long as you wait to do anything…more intense.”
I laughed. “We’ve been pining for years. Years. We’re patient. We can wait.”
“Good. Eat something.”
I did. It’s not a good idea to argue with a healer.