Work Text:
The girls were clearly attempting to appear stealthily inconspicuous, but it wasn't working very well; they kept nervously half-lowering their hoods to glance around the room. The younger one had her arm tucked into the older's, her face pressed against her companion’s shoulder as her bright eyes scanned the tables in the low light.
The older…well. It was hard to tell exactly what she was thinking. She looked not unlike Khalid just before a tense mission. Her eyes lit on them and she tugged her companion forward, both of them stumbling a bit on their way over.
Jaheira didn't need to look at Khalid to know he'd already gone all soft. She felt a twinge of warmth herself, looking at them. Gorion had spoken of the girls often. Sweet, mischievous little dreamers, by all accounts—but if they were here, and without him—?
The older girl lowered her hood all the way, dark curls spilling free. She'd dyed bits of it pink and green, and not very well; it looked as though an enchantment had gone wrong. “Hi, um!” she said, her voice already wobbling. “Jaheira and Khalid?”
“Bry, we're adventurers,” said the younger girl. “We're dignified. We're not going to—”
“Oh, n-no, it's all right!” said Khalid immediately, standing up from the table, which seemed to be all the invitation the girl needed; she burst into tears. “Oh,” he said, hurrying over immediately, hands fluttering awkwardly round as if unsure where to land when it wasn't Jaheira. “Well—y-you—th-that is—”
More than time to rescue her valiant husband. Jaheira stood up and took the sobbing girl by the shoulders. “Briar,” she said, hoping to all listening gods that she'd remembered the name right. “Briar, breathe with me, why don't you? In and out. Good girl.”
Briar began to sob even harder. Her friend supplied, “Yeah, when people are nice to her and she's sad it just makes it worse. I put lizards in her hair or tell her she looks ugly, that helps, but we don't have lizards this far out, and—” She tugged at Briar's shoulder. “Briar! Bry! You look all blotchy in front of Gorion's friends!!”
Briar's head fell forward, already dampening Jaheira's shoulder. Jaheira awkwardly patted Briar's back. To the younger girl, she asked as steadily as she could, “Then am I to assume that Gorion is—?”
Briar's sobs increased in volume. Imoen—yes, that was the name—swallowed hard, her mouth becoming a flat, sad line, and said, “Yeah, uh. Yeah. Yes. I saw—saw some of it, but Bry, she was right there when it happened.”
“Poor thing,” said Khalid, emphatically unstuttering, and moved forward to place a hand on Briar's shoulder. “Well, w-we're here, and w-we always, th-that is, w-w-we w-were t-to be—”
Jaheira gathered Briar a bit closer. “We would have been your guardians, some time ago, had anything happened to Gorion,” she murmured. “You are a bit old for it now, I know, but if it comforts you—”
Briar tucked her face into Jaheira's shoulder and didn't answer. Her sobs had died away, but her body still shook with the echo of them.
“Gorion didn't let Bry bring all of her books,” said Imoen suddenly. There was a tremor to her own voice, now. “Bry wants to be a bard, but she doesn't like traveling if she can't bring books to read on the road, or books to write in, or both, usually, and Gorion got mad at her while she was packing to leave 'cause he said pack light and she said if he wasn't even telling her where she was going, she'd have to bring extra books in case it was a long journey. And at the end he picked her two least favorite books because he was getting—not mad, just scared, but Bry did get mad and called him tyrannical and went outside and kicked lots of rocks, and she was still mad when they left, and she wouldn’t talk to him down the road, so she’s sadder than me,” she was shaking too, “I don’t have to be as sad, I said goodbye proper, but I can’t get her to not be sad about it, so if you know how—”
“He did love you,” said Jaheira quietly to Briar, “very much. One last spat before the end does not change that he died protecting you. I knew Gorion very well; I am sure he did not harbor any true ill will towards you for committing that dreadful sin of petulance.” She tucked her thumb under Briar’s chin, catching the girl’s face in her hands. “It is an awful thing,” she said, “and I am truly sorry. He was a good man. A good father, too, I would imagine. Your grief is ours.”
Briar ducked her head forward and hugged Jaheira again, very hard, with all the unselfconscious clinging of a girl some years younger. Jaheira would not hold it against her. To have seen Gorion cut down in front of her…
Khalid asked Imoen, “W-would you like something t-to eat?”
“Oh, yes, thanks!” said Imoen with relieved enthusiasm. “Bry’s the worst cook!”
Briar stiffened in Jaheira’s arms. Turning around, she said, “Well, excuse me, Immy, for not knowing how to cook in the woods, in the dirt, after Gorion just got murdered in front of us!!”
“Ha, see?” said Imoen. “Not crying. You’re welcome.”
Briar’s mouth trembled dangerously. She let her cheek fall against Jaheira’s shoulder in a way that suggested Jaheira would spend the rest of dinner with the girl affixed to her side, and said, “You’re an awful person, you know.”
“Mhm,” said Imoen. Her hand darted out to briefly grip the hem of Briar’s sleeve.
Food helped substantially. Imoen ate with graceless gusto, punctuated by delighted asides through a full mouth as to how great it was to actually be eating real food for once, and how much she'd missed it. Briar remained quiet and tearful until her first bite, at which point her eyes lit with hungry relief and she shoveled down half the plate in a handful of seconds, then pressed a hand to her mouth and winced. “Too hot!” she said emphatically.
“Eat like a pack animal and this is what happens,” Jaheira experimentally chided.
She did not know very much about being anyone's mother, and as such, the sentence sounded absurd coming from her. Khalid hid his smile behind his drink. Horrible man. Briar, however, raised sparkling and delighted eyes to Jaheira, then said, “Did you mean it, then? You'll—only I've never had a mum before, and you're so cool!”
Jaheira had absolutely no idea how to respond to this. She took a stab at the meat in front of her.
Khalid said, “Sh-she is very c-cool, isn't she,” and smiled at Jaheira in a way that could be misconstrued as helpfully affectionate, if one did not know him particularly well. Jaheira kicked him under the table. His smile grew.
“Gorion,” Briar stumbled a bit on the name, but made it through, “always used to say he'd trust you both with his life, so of course he'd trust you with mine. And with Imoen's too, I suppose,” she added.
“Yeah, Bry, don't forget about me!” said Imoen through a mouthful of food.
“We will do our very best to live up to that trust,” Jaheira promised, patting Briar's hand over the table. “How have you two been faring on the road thus far?”
“Well, bad, if you count Gorion,” said Imoen immediately. “And then—well, yeah. Bad. Just bad all round. Bry's been writing a song about it—”
“No, I haven't,” said Briar.
“Yes you have! You should sing it for them!”
“They don't want to hear it,” said Briar immediately.
“I'm s-sure it's wonderful,” said Khalid.
Jaheira, who could not think of anything worse than listening to the semi-hysterical child of one of their oldest friends singing a song about the misery of the open road, kicked him again under the table. “There is no need to sing if you do not wish,” she started.
“I can sing it,” said Imoen, “I remember it!”
“No, you don't!” said Briar.
“O-ooooooh,” trilled Imoen, “I hate this road and I hate these boots and I hate that I can't find a rhyme for boots and I hate the mud and I hate the rain and I hate my bag, it's an awful pain, and I hate—”
Khalid, who had been endeavoring to hide another smile with a sip of ale, was now choking on his drink as he tried not to laugh outright. Jaheira turned delighted eyes towards Briar.
Briar said, “It's in the wrong key!” then, belatedly, “and it doesn't—it wasn't a real song, I was just— shut up, Imoen!”
“I like your fake songs better than your real songs,” said Imoen. “Your real songs are sooo pretentious and sooo long. Gorion fell asleep," she said to Khalid, "last time she sang us one of her ballads—”
“You're being awful,” said Briar, but she was beginning to really smile. “I'm still learning!”
“Here, then, sing us a good song,” said Jaheira, nudging Briar's shoulder with her own. “One of your favorites. Go on.”
Briar glowed. “You'd really like to hear it?”
“W-we would be h-honored!” said Khalid, smiling encouragingly at Briar.
Briar's cheeks colored. She sang:
“O, once I sailed across the sea,
Through stormy intranquility,
To see what lay in wait for me
In the home I'd missed so dearly.
And when I came upon my love,
The stars and moon and sun above
Could scarce compare with beauty of
A good heart that loves sincerely.
She waited through the cold and rain,
She waited time and time again,
She waited for the moment when
I'd be home to bring her cheer—”
Here Briar paused, made a face, and tacked on, “—ly,” in a way that made it very clear to Jaheira that this was an original composition.
The words were clumsy. The voice, however, was clear and sweet, and the tears on her face were drying. This Jaheira knew how to do, at least; anyone worth their salt knew what to do when a child performed. “Beautiful,” she pronounced.
“Oh, you're just saying that,” said Briar, smiling shyly.
“Yeah, she really is,” said Imoen. “Cheer-ly?”
“It's in progress!!” said Briar, and lobbed a spoonful of mashed potato at Imoen, who shrieked, ducked sideways, and knocked Khalid's chair into the wall as she tumbled off of her own.
“Girls!” said Jaheira loudly. This did next to nothing. Khalid was also doing next to nothing; he'd doubled over trying not to laugh again. She rapped the table a few times, then gave up and took Briar's spoon away.
“No, I need that!” said Briar immediately. “I need to defend myself against Imoen!”
"How old are you?" said Jaheira disbelievingly.
Briar ignored the question. “Did you really like my song?”
Oh, Jaheira always did have such a soft spot for sweet, sparkling eyes like that. Joyful, hopeful, both such difficult things to cultivate and such wonderful things to protect. She dipped her finger into Briar's mashed potatoes and swiped the food across Briar's cheek. “Don't play with your food,” she said.
Briar laughed outright. Perhaps it was all the musical training, but even her laughter sounded like little bells.
In the room adjacent to theirs, the girls seemed to be having some sort of unconscious contest as to who could possibly snore the loudest. Jaheira was fairly certain that Imoen was winning. “How can they sleep through that racket?” she hissed.
“I-I somehow d-don't think that you n-need to whisper, my love,” Khalid pointed out. “Th-they do seem to be sleeping through each other w-well enough.”
“You were no help at all through dinner,” said Jaheira. “They were throwing food at each other.”
“Hm.” Khalid leaned down to kiss her temple. Jaheira felt that flurry of warmth, just as always. “Briar seems to like you.”
Jaheira flushed and said, “Shut up.”
“Sh-she'll be calling you mum w-within the w-week, I expect,” said Khalid, smiling crookedly.
“Shut up,” Jaheira repeated.
Khalid tugged her up to a standing position and asked more seriously, “H-how are you, dearest?”
Jaheira bit her lip and didn't answer. The knot of grief in her chest would take quite a while to untangle.
“W-well,” said Khalid. “W-would you like to…?” and glanced sidelong at the bed.
“Do you ever think of anything else?” Jaheira demanded.
“Oh!” said Khalid, cheeks flushing. “N-no, I—that is, n-no, hardly ever, y-you are too—so—b-but I only meant—that is to say, I m-meant to hold you, and s-stroke your hair, and rest! Reflect!”
Jaheira felt that complicated and adoring irritation that was very hard to put into words, followed by that warm recognition that Khalid would never ask her to do so. She stood on tiptoe and pressed her cheek to his. “We are going to be good parents,” she whispered.
“I-I have no doubts,” she heard the thread of real uncertainty in his voice, “wh-when it comes to you, Jaheira, b-but—”
“You shut up,” said Jaheira, for the third time that night, and kissed him properly. “You are the exact sort of indulgently affectionate father that any child would be lucky to have. Of course Briar already had a father; in her grief, she may not notice the joy of you just yet, if she is so inclined to take us up on our offer, but she will soon enough, I am sure.”
Khalid said, “It s-seems to me th-that she is already p-partial to—”
Jaheira kissed him again, deeply. Years with Khalid had demonstrated that this was one of many very easy ways for her to win the argument.
“Oh,” breathed Khalid when she pulled back, eyes starry. “My love.”
The low light hid her blush. Jaheira looked up at him through her lashes.
“Was I…what.…” Khalid's head fell forward again. His mouth drifted back to hers, the world's softest, surest drawing-in, and the rest of the conversation was lost.
After, with Khalid sprawled across the bed, Jaheira untangled herself with careful reluctance from his arms and tiptoed across the floor to listen at the adjoining doors. The snoring had died down a bit, but her trained ear could still make it out: Imoen’s louder breaths, Briar's odd little wheezes. She would get used to the noises, train their duration and rhythm into her very being, ensure that any deviation would wake her from her own slumber, just as with Khalid. Tonight would be that first night.
Khalid sat up on his elbows with that amused smile playing on his lips and said, “Beloved, c-come back to bed. W-work can wait.”
“This isn't—” Jaheira huffed, embarrassed. “Never mind.”
Khalid held out a hand, palm-up.
Loftily, Jaheira said, “I was coming over there anyway,” and made her way back over towards him, settling herself back against his chest.
Here was a rhythm she knew like breathing: his heartbeat, his warm body against hers, his steady hand moving to gently stroke her hair. Nothing safer. Nothing better.
Her eyes slipped slowly shut.