Chapter Text
When the pandemic was declared, Will wondered if it was the Dark rising again.
It felt like it could be. The virus, the danger they couldn’t see, reminded him of the cold that Christmas time when he turned eleven years old. Later, the unthinking, brutal reactions of some people - targeting Chinese students, refusing to abide by the restrictions - reminded him painfully of that boy (Richie Moore, that had been his name) a couple of years later. Any excuse to hurt others.
The part that worried him most was that he couldn’t tell.
It had been so long. Twenty years, since he was twelve years old and standing on the roof of Wales with tears in his eyes, despite the golden sands glowing against the shining sea. The watchman, Merriman had called him then, and he had kept a good watch, perhaps too good a watch, he sometimes thought. A small, secret part of him that wasn’t an Old One, with an Old One’s cold certainty, but wasn’t a little boy anymore either - that part of him longed to feel something happening. Anything. Obviously, he told himself, he would rather feel that indefinable sense that Merriman was near (he missed Merriman so much) or hear the music of the Lady (he heard that music in his dreams, very occasionally, and would wake to find his pillow damp). Yet, if it was that unease, that dread, that meant the agents of the Dark were near… Well, it would mean he had a job to do. That there was a reason he could still remember it all. That it had been worth it.
Worth it. He scoffed at his own thoughts, chastised himself for thinking like the child he had been. He was a grown man now, as well as an Old One - he should know better than to look for sense, for balance, for perfect justice in this world. He remembered Hawkin with even more sympathy now.