walking with a ghost

interlude: sleep tonight

. o .

Sabe's Note: This is less a sequel than a lost chapter; in going through old notebooks, I found most of this, and it seemed a shame not to share. As it's been years since I posted Walking With A Ghost, it felt more honest to add this separately instead of in the midst of the original.

(Within the larger story, it fits as the fourth segment, before the part that begins "Four days later...")

. o .

"What're you reading?"

His voice startles her out of the book's hold; surprised, Marlene nearly drops the text. "A story," she replies. "It looks well-read enough. Your place; isn't it some sort of crime for you to not know your books?"

"I'm not much of a reader," he admits, collapsing beside her on the couch. "'Sides, this wasn't always my place." Loz reads the uncertainty in her sideways look with a lazy grin. "Hey, hey, short stuff, don't give me that glare – I didn't kill them or anything. Place was empty when I found it." He frowns, leaning forward on his elbows to look at the page. "So, are you gonna read the story sometime this century, or should I start with the napping?"

Marlene's arm extends to smack Loz's shoulder with a satisfying thump. "You want me to read it? Out loud? To you?"

"That's what I just asked, hey." Rubbing his (much-abused) shoulder, he smiles at her – a real smile, or what seemed to pass as one with him.

She isn't certain which is more disturbing: that she's beginning to be able to tell his smiles apart, or that the last time she'd seen this grin, he had been locked in a playfully vicious fight with the woman who'd help raise her in a city both reborn and very far away.

"Hey," he echoes, "are you even there? Planet to bookworm, come in?"

With his words, a reluctant smile quirks the corners of her lips (old nicknames have power, even here, she's finding), and she bumps his shoulder with hers. "Here; I'll start a new one for you – 'in a house beside an ancient well, a father and his two daughters lived, and for a time, they were very happy...'"

For a short while, the only sounds in the room are her voice and the occasional rustle of a page turning. Loz, however, does not excel at passive listening. "You miss him, huh."

"'...and they –' Who? I?" Marlene looks up from the page.

"Your old man, who," he replies. "You get this stupid poor-me look whenever you read about that old guy in the story. What's the big deal about dads, anyhow?"

"They're heroes," she says, weighing her words, and frowning as she remembers he has a decent reason to ask the question. "When I was growing up – when I was tiny, before you and I ever met – Dad would throw me up and catch me and laugh as he caught me again. His laugh would shake the walls of our little place, and I'd scream and laugh and ask him to go once more. He's the reason," she adds softly, looking away, "that one of the first memories I have carries the feelings of flight." Marlene's eyes are far away as she looks back at the book in her hands. "So – so reading this is a little hard. After the Company came to Corel, things changed, and Dad – well, he just wasn't the same. Before I knew it, there was fighting, and he was in the middle of it. I was too young to understand much then. All I knew was that one day, we were moving away, and my days of flying as I knew it were over. It was more danger than it was worth to roughhouse with a gun-arm."

"You're telling me," Loz quips.

"True," she agrees, looking over. "That reminds me. How did you manage the motorcycling? I mean, back then..."

"I figured that out pretty fast," he says, proudly, flexing both hands; hands that he's had ever since he lost his brothers; hands that seem to hint that someone in the Lifestream has a weird sense of mercy. Or humour, or both, he tells her; either way, he doesn't miss the silvery prosthetic. "No accidents or nothing, though it's a hell of a lot easier now. Well, maybe I had a bang-up or two back then," he adds, at her skeptical frown, "but nothing too bad."

"Really?" Marlene questions. "I guess being descended from a crazy demigod has a few perks..." She trails off as she sees him tense beside her.

"Don't say bad things about Eldest Brother, girl," he demands furiously, his smile gone. Though he no longer wears the gunarm, anger moves his hand over the gun he habitually keeps at his hip. Theirs is no longer a world at war, but the coast is not without occasional bandits or curious monsters – or, he thinks wryly, wandering trouble-makers with very big eyes.

"I -" she protests, flinching away and steadying herself on the arm of the couch.

"You?" he asks, resting his hand and frowning at how, in seemingly half a breath, she'd dropped the book between them and risen to stand behind the couch, using it as part-crutch and part-shield.

"I could say a lot of things, and for good reason," Marlene counters, leaning heavily on the furniture between them. "Your brother killed my sister-of-sorts, for starters. But I'm under your roof. I'll stop, you can relax. Really," she breathes. "Put – put the gun down, Loz, or you'll have holes in your couch and be short a storyteller."

He looks from her to the gun in his hand: drawing it had been a reflex, but she had a point. "Hey, old habits," he grumbles, gruffly, hiding his relief as he holsters the weapon and she seats herself gingerly. He has his pride, and holds his few memories of his brothers highly, but it is a good couch, and no-one has read him a story in a very, very long time...

Shaken by the weapon and mildly surprised to find herself still breathing, Marlene focuses on her index finger as it skims down the page to where she had stopped reading. "Mmmhmm, here. 'It was on a fine day in mid-winter that their fortunes were to change...' "

To her surprise, they finish the story without further incident, and while he frowns and calls the ending 'kinda dumb' before heading outside to gather firewood, she does not miss that a new book rests beside her couch when she wakes up the next day.

"A present?" Marlene asks, gesturing towards the handsome volume.

"Figured you'd be tired of reading the same stories over again," he replies from the next room over, pointedly not meeting her eyes.

"Hey, thanks," she says, hauling the book up and starting to page through it. He doesn't respond, and she shrugs, seeing the book for the sideways apology it could be. Her suspicions are confirmed when, later that day, he sprawls on the opposite end of the couch from where she is curled up and tells her to 'find another one with a half-decent hero.' Marlene tempers her pithy initial response into a teasing "couldn't stay away, could you?"

"Whatever," Loz says, shrugging and settling in. "You gotta earn your keep somehow."

"My keep?" she squawks, indignant.

"Well, yeah," he replies, gesturing behind them at the table still piled with dishes from dinner. "Food doesn't exactly hunt itself, y'know. And you eat a lot – ow! The hell was that for?" Cursing, he grabs for the foot that just plowed into the side of his thigh, but Rude must have trained her reflexes well, he finds, as she's already curled her good leg out of reach, and he's not cruel enough to retaliate towards the one still outstretched and healing.

"A lot?" she asks, as she follows his gaze to her leg. "I'm supposed to eat to recover, y'know."

He does, and he nods unconsciously as he remembers his first days alone, spent wandering the coastline and feeling as if he never paused between eating, then hunting, and eating again. It isn't a time or a memory he'd wish on anyone, pushing those thoughts aside to listen to her voice as she starts the story, sarcasm seeping out of her tone and replaced by a lively cadence as she realizes he's listening, only occasionally a peanut gallery glad to point out plot holes or improbabilities.

One story turns into three, and as she finishes the last, she looks over to where he's fallen asleep, still sprawled and taking up at least half of (what is supposed to be) her couch. "Sleep well," she murmurs, before adding "you'd better, you're taking up all the space."

He smiles, the next morning,when he thinks of it; he'd only been mostly asleep at the time, waiting to see how she'd respond (a larger part of him than he'd like to admit is glad she didn't take his gun, nor try to use it), and though he isn't sure whether it was her words or the stories themselves, something worked.

For the first time in months, he does.

. o .

disclaimer: Updated and edited while listening to far too much Fiona Apple, Neil Young, and Stars; the interlude's title is from the last's song of the same title. The characters themselves still belong to Square.