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Jaheira is home early, which is not unprecedented but is unusual enough to send the children bouncing around the house.
She greets each cheerfully, admiring Tate’s artwork and Fig’s blade forms.
Jhessem asks if she’s related to a handful of new names she’s dug out of the history books, and Jaheira’s deadpan doesn’t waver.
“I don’t know, cub, you tell me,” she says, like she always does. (On her crueler days, Rion wants to tell Jhessem to ask Jaheira why she doesn’t know who she’s related to, and cut off this whole nobility nonsense, but it would soothe nothing but her temper to do it, so she never does.)
Then they talk her into Cat Tag, and she shifts form easily enough that Rion doesn’t think she’s injured.
Finally, when the kids are miraculously worn out and draped over various pieces of furniture, Rion pulls her aside.
“So?” she asks.
“What?” Jaheira asks, but can’t keep up the facade. Her eyes shine with uncharacteristic excitement, her shoulders relaxed.
“What happened?” Rion asks slowly, cataloging.
“I found an old friend,” Jaheira said. “One I thought I had lost.” She can’t seem to stop herself from smiling. “If everyone wants, I thought he could stop by dinner tomorrow to meet you all. He is usually good with children.” Her expression fades briefly to thoughtful consideration. “I will remind him not to give Fig a real sword.”
“You don’t have old friends,” Rion says, too fast and too sharp, and winces. Nothing she’s said to Jaheira lately has come out right. But Jaheira doesn’t flinch away or snarl, just smiles. Again.
“No, only old enemies and one-time allies,” she agrees. “And, apparently, one friend, who I thought dead.”
But you don’t have people, Rion doesn’t say. None of us do. It’s what this family has in common.
“But he’s not dead?” she asks instead.
“Remarkably, he is not,” Jaheira agrees. “And neither is his hamster.”
“You found Minsc?”
“Your mother is a great warrior,” Minsc tells the children seriously over dinner, and Rion rolls her eyes. Everything about him screams storybook hero, and he is almost hard to look at in his sincerity.
The children seem split in their reactions.
“Of course,” Jhessem says. “It’s in her blood.” Rion would roll her eyes harder if she wouldn’t pull something.
“Mom?” Tunor says doubtfully. “She’s usually too tired to even play Owlbear right.”
“We should spar!” Minsc booms, sending the children reeling back at his volume.
“Inside voice,” Jaheira chides, reflexively, but a smile dances across her face. It’s the one she’s been getting since she found him; a little reckless, a little excited. Rion doesn’t like it. “A spar, hm?”
Minsc nods eagerly, and the children bob their heads along with him.
“And where are we to do this ill-advised and probably property-damaging thing?”
Why a wizard has given Minsc an indestructible clear sparring globe is actually pretty easy to guess. Wizards love to show off, and there are few audiences easier to entertain than Minsc. Rion resolves not to look too closely at the how of it, as she and Jord and the children settle outside with snacks.
“Is this really a good idea?” he asks in an undertone. “I mean… bezerker, right?”
“She won’t let it get that far,” Rion says distractedly. She is watching Jaheira stretch, making little verbal jabs at a broadly smiling Minsc and doing a terrible job of hiding her radiant joy. It isn’t like her. Normally, even her happiest faces have a hint of a frown splashed overtop (like Rion).
Eventually they shake hands, step apart, and draw blades. Minsc has a greatsword taller than Jaheira, and she has her usual dual scimitars. His sword is well cared for but battered, almost blunted, the cost of decades of slamming into armor and hides. Jaheira’s have that half-dull shine that speaks of regular bloodshed and daily oiling. They circle each other for a moment, then Jaheira freezes and Minsc copies her.
Silence falls in their little patch of the city, though you can still hear the fishsellers crying and the rumble of carts on the street.
Minsc lunges, unsettlingly fast for his bulk, a roar ripping out of his throat and echoing around the courtyard. Fig and Tunor yelp, and Rion’s eyes go to them, but then they giggle and lean forward. Tate slips back into the shadows, but doesn’t seem distressed.
Jaheira steps out of the way, not to the side but into his space, one blade dancing inside his guard before he whirls and knocks it away with his hilt. He is brutal and efficient, huge sweeps of his blade sending Jaheira dodging away from him with startling grace.
“Stop toying with him, Mother,” Rion calls, hoping that she’s managed the flat boredom she’s attempting and kept her pride out of her tone. Jaheira’s eyes flash brighter for a second, amused and energised all in one, and she spins into a swirling dance that forces Minsc to pull back from his sweeping blows and muster a defense. Where his blade sang through the air in broad, dangerous arcs, hers cut and spin in tight, lethal circles.
Rion notices two things.
Firstly, Jaheira has clearly been holding herself back in every fight Rion has ever seen. That makes sense, because there isn’t normally an impenetrable barrier protecting her children. And Rion knows that if even only she is there, at least some of Jaheira’s attention is always on her in combat. Unleashed and untethered (and Rion’s heart lurches at the thought), she is resplendent.
The second thing that becomes clear to Rion’s practised eye is that Minsc expects her to be faster. His block is up a split second before her blow is close enough to warrant it, his eyes widening slightly as he catches a hint of a slash that he then dodges without effort. She is, perhaps, still his equal, but she is not the equal of the Jaheira his muscles remember. It stings, a stark reminder that her mother is not somehow holding back the tides of time by will alone.
And Jaheira is tiring, her blows slightly sloppier and slower. Which Rion thinks might be a problem, because Minsc’s eyes are taking on a shine she doesn’t like.
Jaheira darts left, then drops flat to the floor and spins a blade one-handed to draw a line of blood across Minsc’s leg. “First blood!” Rion calls, a touch warily. Her mother instantly drops her swords, springing to her feet, but she doesn’t take her eyes off Minsc. A wise decision, as he swings again. She dodges, quick and textbook, and then steps into his space again.
“Let an old woman take a moment to breathe,” she says, gently settling a hand against his arm. Minsc slows, finally notices her swords on the ground, and drops his even before the rage clears from his face.
“Ah!” he says, breaking into a broad grin. “A fine victory!” Rion and Jord relax slightly, but Rion notes that Jaheira keeps her eyes on the bezerker for a few more moments before she truly lets her guard down.
“See!” Minsc says, grabbing up the small spell focus and collapsing the dome. “The greatest hero of the Realms! Besides Boo, of course.” The children, suitably impressed, gather around to compliment the fighters and investigate the injury on Minsc’s leg. To a chorus of boos, Jaheira heals it before any of the children can get too good of a look. Rion saw the depth of it, so she doesn’t wonder at the hasty erasure. But she does wonder at this other side of Jaheira, who would cut so deeply in a friendly spar and lose herself to the spin of her blades.
“So, do you hate him less now?” Jord asks, hours later, as Jaheira chases the children into bed upstairs. The two of them are sharing a pot of his tea in the kitchen, a nighttime routine Rion complains bitterly about and loves dearly.
“More, I think,” she says, and he laughs. She sits forward, brows drawing together. “He doesn’t see her, Jord. He sees who she used to be, like no time has passed. Didn’t you see him in that fight? He thinks she’s faster than she is, stronger. That’s the kind of stuff that gets people killed.” Jord clears his throat in warning, and she takes a sip of the earthy tea to stop her rambling as Jaheira emerges from the upstairs bedroom.
“Well,” she says, taking the stairs with exaggerated caution and collapsing at the dining room table. “That is the last time I will spar with Minsc, I think.”
Rion and Jord trade looks.
“It seemed like you had fun?” Jord says, cautiously.
“Ha, that I cannot deny,” Jaheira says, but her gaze shutters quickly. “No, I am not so young as I once was. That finishing move was born more from desperation than strategy. It would be wiser, I think, to turn him on my new recruits.”
“That’s wise?” Rion asks acerbically, thinking of the flatness of Minsc’s expression as he made a swing that would have cut an unarmed Jaheira’s head off.
“He would not hurt them,” Jaheira says, with a perfect confidence that makes Rion want to shake her and demand her cynical mother return. “He will not see them as enough of a threat to lose control.”
“Hm,” Rion says. “Whatever keeps him off the streets, I guess. Or out of the sewers.”
“You do not like Minsc,” the bezerker says, and Rion nearly falls off the rooftop.
“You move stlarning quietly when you want to,” she says, heart hammering in her ears.
“Minsc is sorry,” he rumbles agreeably, dropping to sit next to her on the small patch of flat roof. “Are you keeping watch?”
Is she? No, she doesn’t think so. Jaheira’s warded the roof to hell, as with all of the entry points, so she only comes up here when she needs a moment alone.
“No,” she said. “I was enjoying my solitude.”
“Ah!” Minsc says cheerily, evidently not taking the hint. He lets his legs dangle off the edge. “I will enjoy it with you.”
He doesn’t speak again, and when she sneaks a look at him his head is tipped back. He seems to be examining the stars, what little of them can be seen through the torchlight reflecting off the sooty skies.
“What are your intentions with Jaheira?” Rion asks, and then briefly considers flinging herself off the roof. Minsc looks startled, and Boo appears on his shoulder to squeak at him.
“I have only honourable intentions,” Minsc says solemnly. Boo squeaks again and his face twists in sudden discomfort. “I do not intend to woo her, if that is your concern!”
“I- I didn’t think you did,” Rion says, giving a brief but energetic second thought to escaping via gravity. “I meant, are you going to try and get her to go adventuring again?”
Minsc thinks harder about this question.
“Jaheira is smarter than Minsc,” he says at last. “If she says her place is here, in this city of good and evil, tending her wild things, than that is right. I might wander, but I will not go far. It burdened her heart much to lose Minsc the first time.” He frowned. “I should not like her to suffer thus again.”
“Did she say that?” Rion breathes. “That her place is here?”
“Yes,” Minsc says. Then he tilts his head. “Boo would like to give you a suggestion.”
Rion meets the rodent’s beady eyes. It looks back blankly.
“Yes?”
“You should ask her yourself. An unmet need, unvoiced, is not more of a tragedy than an unmet need, shared.”
“Of course it is,” Rion says. Minsc blinks, taken aback at the vehemence of her response. “I can’t ask her to stay. She has to save the world every two months. We all know that.” She glares out over the city and ignores the blurriness of her vision.
Minsc’s hand is hesitant as he sets it on her shoulder. When she doesn’t bite or flinch away, it settles more firmly. It’s sort of nice. Grounding.
“I did not mean you should ask her to stay,” Minsc says softly. “Only that if you are hurting, it is alright to ask for help.”
“I told her I would be able to handle things,” Rion says, and then tries to inhale the words back from the air.
“A mistake Jaheira tends to make,” Minsc says, and the words are so unexpected from him that she fully turns to look at him. “Is that she takes as truth what those she loves say, and forgets they may be wrong.”
“Go away,” Rion says miserably. Minsc stands at once and pads softly to the ladder down to the courtyard. Before he leaves the roof, she mutters to the mossy shingles below her.
“Tell Boo I said thanks.”
While Minsc dies in the sewers, nearly having gotten them both killed, Jaheira comes back fractured. Rion is too scared by the hollowness of her mother’s gaze to feel anything approaching vindication.
Jaheira mumbles something about an ilithid cult and a shadow curse, warns Rion and Jord to take the kids out of the city if she isn’t home soon, and puts her blades on like she doesn’t even see them.
She kisses the kids’ heads, squeezes Jord’s shoulder, and strides outside.
“You shouldn’t go out like this,” Rion says, following her and catching her wrist just outside the door. Jaheira looks back at her, and for a second there’s a fierce pride on her face in place of shellshocked blankness.
“You are right, of course,” she says simply. She pulls Rion into a hug, and she’s too shocked to resist. “But these Harpers will be outnumbered and afraid. Someone must lead them.”
Rion doesn’t ask if it has to be her, because she knows the answer.
“You’d better come home,” she says, both harsher and more scared than she’d intended to sound.
“I will try my hardest,” Jaheira promises.
Rion doesn’t ask for anything more, because Jaheira doesn’t make promises she can’t keep.
When Minsc returns, he flashes Rion an apologetic look. They don’t stay long, this new group. There’s a city to save.
Jaheira is alive. That’s what Rion has to hold on to. Theatrical Sending aside, she is in one piece and only sporting a handful of new scars.
Jaheira gives her a look that promises she’ll sneak back later when the others are busy, but Rion grabs Minsc before he leaves. She hasn’t missed how he’s glued to Jaheira, watching her back.
“I am very angry with you,” she says. His eyes widen comically. “Mother almost went in after you. We almost lost her.”
”She wouldn’t be so foolish,” he protests.
”Not doing it nearly killed her,” she snaps. “I thought she wasn’t coming home. The state she was in when she left…” Regret and pain is written across Minsc’s open face.
”I would repay this debt,” he says solemnly.
”Bring her back alive,” Rion breathes. “Please. I need her alive.”
”I promise,” Minsc says, because he’s a storybook hero, and she cannot stomach him for a second longer. She goes back to the others.
She trades barbs, receives more cryptic warnings (doppelgängers??), and lets Jaheira leave again.
After the brain falls from the sky, Minsc literally drags Jaheira back home. She’s concussed and spitting mad that he didn’t let her heal anyone, but she sees Rion and shuts up immediately, pulling her into a hug.
“The kids are fine,” Rion mumbles.
”I never doubted you,” Jaheira says, and Rion muffles a bitter laugh in the crook of her neck.
”I was wrong,” she says, and pretends like the soot-streaked air is part of a dream. “I can’t keep handling this. Jord and I can’t keep doing this alone.”
Jaheira pulls back, looks at her face. She touches a knuckle gently to Rion’s cheek, which is when she realizes she’s crying.
”Oh,” Jaheira says. “We will figure something out.”
”I’m not asking you to stay,” Rion adds hastily.
”We will figure something out,” Jaheira says again. “I promise.”
Over her shoulder, Minsc gives her two thumbs up and Rion has to squeeze her eyes shut before she bursts into tears or kills him.
”I’m going to kill Minsc,” she mumbles.
”A fitting end for such a noble hero,” Jaheira says promptly, and Rion’s tears dissolve into helpless, semi-hysterical laughter. Jaheira laughs with her, the kids running out at the sound to join them. Jord is seconds behind, the healing spell he keeps in reserve for Jaheira sparking at his fingertips.
And Rion makes herself forgive Minsc, because against all odds and common sense, he kept this impossible promise.