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darktrent182TITLE: Vignette - The First Spring Cleaning
DISCLAIMER: The Dresden Files doesn't belong to me – the TV series belongs to Lionsgate, and the characters themselves were created by Jim Butcher. Written for entertainment purposes, no money made, please don't sue, yadda.
FANDOM: The Dresden Files
PAIRING: Harry/Bob UST
WORD COUNT: 5,398
RATING: PG-13
WARNINGS: Spoilers for Things That Go Bump.
SUMMARY: After Things That Go Bump, Harry tries something new, thinks about what happened, and learns something new about Bob.
PRAISE BE: A warm fuzzy blankie of thank you goes out to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shiplizard and beachkid for beta-reading, encouragement, and questions. I wouldn't have been able to make it without their patience and awesomeness. Thank you, guys!
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is part of the Forged series, which starts with Desperate Measures. You might want to read that first to understand what's going on.
***
I felt like I'd needed to sleep for about ten years, and it was just after two o'clock.
The morning had been action-packed, what with dealing with the dragon who'd disguised itself as Murphy, and having to deal with Mai and Morgan and three Wardens in close-quarters. I couldn't stop feeling bad that two of them had died before the dragon bit the dust. I hadn't known either of them that well, but nobody's death should have been acceptable, no matter what Mai had said when she'd headed out of my place after it was all over.
At lunch with a very human, very real Lieutenant Murphy, a grilling about the explosion (complete with green flames) ended up becoming a walk-over to the crime scene, and after I was positive that I couldn't help Murphy out any further her with her freak explosion, she gave me a lift back to my place. Okay, she gave me a lift to an arts-and-crafts store because I asked, and then a lift home.
After it had settled in that I'd just survived an encounter with two dragons, other things had settled into place in my head as well, and I didn't like what I'd come up with as a result.
I opened the door and got inside, keeping the sign flipped over without having to think about it. I wasn't in the mood for customers, and while my wallet was still crying over how much I'd just spent, I knew that today wasn't going to be that productive. I checked the answering machine to make sure it hadn't crapped out on me, and then I headed for the lab, where I'd last seen Bob's skull.
I hadn't seen Bob since I'd headed out for lunch, but that really wasn't that unusual. He always found things to take up his time, and since I didn't see him in the lab, tinkering on an old project from when he was still alive, I figured he was doing something else. He could've been in his skull for all I knew.
I set the bag down on the lab table and pulled up the stool, grabbing the skull and putting it down front and center, the empty eye sockets staring at me, and the sigils carved into the bone standing out, probably due to all the dust and dirt and crap that had collected in the grooves over the years.
Bob had been a prisoner of his own skull for a long time. Passed on from owner to owner, lost, reclaimed -- you name it, it's probably happened to his skull. As near as I can tell, among the High Council he's considered a dangerous ghost who can drive his "forthright and honorable" owners insane, if he felt like it. I think I'm the only person that he's actually trained from a young age in magic, so you could say it gives me a different perspective on him.
The skull itself was old, but it had all kinds of spells of binding and invulnerability on it, so it wasn't like it was going to crack the first time I touched it. If it hadn't had all those protective spells on it, it would've disintegrated a long time ago. I pulled out a painter's brush, running the bristles against the palm of my hand to loosen them up. I didn't know what I was doing, and I had no clue if I was even going to make a dent in the centuries of caked-on dirt and dust and discoloration.
It didn't mean I wasn't going to try, though.
Passing the brush over the skull gently didn't really do much, so I pressed a little harder, making broad sweeps over the crown of the skull and the temples. I could see a little bit of dirt being knocked loose, but not a whole lot. Maybe part of the skull's protections was to keep excess dirt from collecting on it. As much as I'd fought long and hard with the Council about being Bob's keeper, I still didn't really know that much about his curse. Sure, I knew the basics -- he was a ghost, he was bound to the skull with a tether that kept him from wandering too far from it, that kind of thing -- but not the details. It had never felt like the right time to bring it up. If things weren't exploding, or customers weren't asking for my help and hitting my chivalry button, then it always slipped my mind.
I kept brushing at the sigils with the painter's brush, firm but gentle, as I mulled things over.
When the other dragon had finally revealed that it wasn't my friend, but the dragon who had attacked Mai, Morgan, and the Wardens in Eckhart Park, I had managed a glance at Bob. I don't know how I did it, or how I even remembered it, because a lot of things had been happening once. But the look on his face as he watched the other dragon shapeshift back to its original form had been... weird.
Most people, when they're facing down something they've never seen before, tend to react with awe or fear, sometimes both. Now, considering that Bob has been a ghost for hundreds of years, it's not like the dragon could've physically hurt him -- unless it somehow knew about Bob's skull, and the dragon hadn't shown any indication that it knew anything about Bob other than that he was a ghost -- so it was quite possible for Bob to be intrigued. Bob tended to get curious and intrigued when he came across things he hadn't seen before. There's not a lot that genuinely surprises Bob anymore, since again, he's existed for hundreds and hundreds of years, but sometimes, it does happen. I kind of like seeing it, since it means that there are still things in the world that'll make him look like a little kid.
I'm in love with him. So sue me.
Still, when I remember that one glimpse of him that I got somehow during the whole confrontation, it wasn't fear, or awe, or even curiosity. The look on his face was that of a man who knew exactly what he was looking at, had assessed what was happening, and was waiting for the other guy to make the first move.
In case you hadn't figured it out, that's a very weird reaction for Bob to be having when facing down a dragon.
Oh, sure, Bob had told me about dragons before, but it had been kind of a quick mention, and then on to Plato. I'd asked about it after he tried to change the subject, but he hadn't told me much. Usually, when I was a kid, Bob loved to go on and on about stuff he knew a lot about -- and when I was older, I liked watching him go on and on about stuff -- so when he didn't, he either didn't know much about the subject, or he'd touched on something that he didn't want me knowing about.
I'd asked him if bringing people back to life was possible when I was twelve. I only just found out a month or so ago that it was when taking on Sharon the Necromancer. If the look on Bob's face was anything to go by when he saw that dragon, I had a feeling it was going to take similar circumstances to get him to talk about it. Don't get me wrong, I can be more stubborn than a rock, according to Bob, but if I'm the irresistible force, Bob's the immovable object, especially about things that he doesn't want to talk about.
As much as I hated it, I'd have to wait him out on the subject of dragons.
After I finished brushing off the stray dirt on the skull with the painter's brush, I picked up the skull and swapped out brushes for a thinner one that had finer bristles. Bob had given me an anatomy lesson or two when I was eleven, using his own skull to teach me about the bones in the skull, and since I was going to be digging around in the eye sockets, I wanted to be careful. There was a little more dirt than before, which made sense, so I tilted the skull forward, letting the loosened dirt fall out onto the lab table.
I don't know how long I kept working, switching out brushes and polishing what I'd cleaned with a shammy that I'd found in a Tupperware bin. For my first time doing this, it felt... good. I'd never thought about cleaning Bob's skull before, but... it made sense to do it. I'd almost lost him this morning.
He'd been sent out as a scout into the annihilating darkness because we'd thought it was just a coat of paint on the house, or an energy field. Something thin that we could get through. Had I known that my place had been literally moved to the other side, I wouldn't have sent Bob out there. He hadn't needed to go out there. I'd risked his existence because we couldn't think of other options.
I could have lost him because we didn't know what the hell was going on, and that wasn't acceptable.
Feeling his skull under my hands helped. I'd grown up with Bob being incorporeal, so his skull had become a stand-in for his physical body. I hadn't touched it much when I was a kid -- Uncle Justin had told me not to, for one, and Bob had always been worried I might drop it -- so even the one physical thing that Bob was bound to had been taboo, in its own way. Touching it now, feeling it under my hands, felt intimate. Familiarizing myself with the grooves and sigils and edges was comfortable.
As I was attacking his teeth with an old toothbrush I kept around for scrubbing test tubes, a burning mote popped out of one eye socket at close range. I jerked back, but I didn't feel any heat coming off of it before it floated away. It landed on the ground a few feet away and swirled upwards in Bob's usual entrance. When he finished appearing, Bob started.
"Harry?" Bob sounded almost stunned.
"Yeah?" I said, a bit distracted. It was strange to see that familiar crooked grin with teeth yellowed with age. At least the brush seemed to be doing something.
"What on Earth are you doing?"
I kept my attention on Bob's teeth, changing my grip on the back of his skull so that I could concentrate on each tooth individually. "What's it look like I'm doing?" I asked back, not feeling that comfortable with actually saying what I was doing out loud. Bob could see what I was doing just fine.
"It appears that you're cleaning my skull," Bob said. "What I want to know is why you're doing it?"
It suddenly occurred to me that Bob might actually not like having his skull touched or cleaned like this. "Does it bother you?"
I glanced over at him just in time to see his cheeks redden a little, the spots of color standing out on his pale skin. "No."
I stopped, gently setting the skull down on a book I'd left out on the table from a couple days ago, swiveling the stool to look at him. "Should I have asked before doing it?"
Bob shook his head. "I've... never had an owner express the desire before."
I turned back to the skull and looked at where it lay. It might've been my imagination, but it looked a bit cleaner than before I'd started. "It looked like it could use it."
I sensed rather than saw Bob move closer to stand next to me. "It has been around for quite some time," Bob remarked.
I nodded. "I..."
"Yes?" I turned to see Bob looking at me curiously.
"I'm sorry about sending you out into the darkness," I said softly.
Bob shook his head. "You and the others didn't have any other options available to you."
"That doesn't make it any better, Bob," I mumbled looking back at his skull. I was tempted to reach out and touch it, but I stopped myself in time.
"Harry, I didn't know what was in that energy field anymore than you did," Bob said, a puzzled frown in his voice.
"And if you had?" I asked, not looking at him.
"I'm sure that you would have figured out what was going on sooner," Bob said reasonably. "But worrying about it is academic at this point. I discovered that the building had been moved completely to the other side, and I managed to return to you and report what I had found out." There was a pause, and then he said knowingly, "But you don't feel that way, do you."
I shook my head. "You had trouble getting back to us."
"I did," he admitted.
"You said there was stuff on the other side that didn't like you," I said, turning to look at him again. "I'm guessing something related to the love of your life?"
Bob winced a little, even though I hadn't said Winifred's name. Part of me hated seeing him like that, but he'd had a long time to think about her, about what how far he'd gone to the black to resulted in an eternity bound to his own skull. "In part, yes."
I frowned. "In part?"
"I'd made deals with a few demons in order to learn how to bring Winifred back from the dead, and I wanted more knowledge," Bob said slowly, his eyes not seeing me or the lab. "Since the majority of the beings I'd consulted were more closely tied to the other side than to the Nevernever, I felt safe in promising them things beyond my means at the time since they weren't in a position to affect the physical world unless I allowed them to."
"And when you went in there, those guys found you..." I finished, my eyes widening.
Bob nodded once, and I could see in that one gesture just how hard the fight had been to get free and make it back to us. After dealing with a demon or two myself, I know how scary those things could get, even when they're stuck behind a magical circle. What had they done to him?
"Oh, Bob..." I murmured.
Bob blinked and looked back at me. Then he shook his head. "Like I said before, Harry, it's all academic now. You uncovered the truth, and you made it out alive."
"Bob, two people are dead because of what happened here this morning," I objected. "If we had figured it out sooner, they wouldn't be dead."
"Harry, haven't you ever considered the possibility that today was their day to die?" Bob asked.
The question surprised me. Due to Bob's unnaturally extended lifespan, such as it is, he has a perspective on life and death that's creeped me out sometimes. I don't really think about it too often because it doesn't come up that much, but when that difference in perspective rears its ugly head, I can't help but feel a bit worried.
"It could've been, but you don't know that for sure," I said firmly.
"And neither do you," Bob pointed out. "Those two Wardens are dead, Harry. No amount of worrying about it is going to bring them back."
"Doesn't it bother you that you don't feel anything over their deaths?" I asked bluntly.
Instead of getting offended, like I thought he would be at the question, Bob look unruffled. "I didn't know them, Harry. They were two Wardens who could have hurt you because they would have blindly believed what Morgan has trained them to, instead of thinking for themselves. I'm sure you remember what Amber said about the Wardens having a case file on you? Required reading, I believe she called it?"
I shook my head. "The Council's always thought I was bad. That doesn't mean that those two Wardens should have died. At least one of them was a rookie. Don't you think he should've had time to figure out whether or not Morgan was right about me?"
Bob shook his head. "Harry, they're dead now." He looked at me for a long moment before he added, "It's not your fault."
"Isn't it?" I asked quietly, looking at the skull. "If I hadn't let the dragon in--"
"Harry, stop it," Bob said firmly. "You're human, and you're fallible. The dragon chose a shape that you wouldn't question, and that you would recognize as a friend so that you would allow her inside your threshold."
I turned to look at him, my eyes narrowing. Maybe I wouldn't have to wait so long to learn about dragons. "You sound like you're speaking from personal experience."
Bob looked at me wryly. "I'm afraid that I know very little about dragons in general."
"You still knew enough not to get freaked out when the dragon shapeshifted back to her original form. And how do you know it was a girl in the first place?"
"A dragon tends to assume forms that are consistent with its gender," Bob explained. "If you need further proof, you need only look at Ancient Mai."
I nodded slowly. "When did you learn about dragons?"
"Roughly the same time in my life as you," Bob replied, "though I was a bit older when I was an apprentice. And before you ask," he added quickly when I opened my mouth, "no, my teacher didn't know that much about dragons either. Despite all of the stories and legends you may have heard of the Medieval period, dragons were extremely rare, even then."
"So, St. George didn't really kill a dragon?" I asked, curious. Bob never talked about when he was mortal. Whether it was because he didn't remember it all, or because he didn't want to be reminded of the memories, I wasn't sure.
Bob looked surprised for a moment before his expression turned... almost nostalgic? I wasn't sure what he was thinking about, but he only said, "Oh, he did."
"How do you know?" I asked.
Bob came back from his memories and shook his head. "I just do, Harry."
"Did you know him?" I pressed.
Bob shook his head. "He was a legend -- more of a myth, really -- when I was alive. I learned what I could through my own research."
I frowned, confused. "Did St. George deal with life and death?"
Bob looked surprised for a moment before he shook his head again. "No, that research happened before I met Winefride." He arched an eyebrow. "Or did you think the only time I ever did research was for Dark purposes?"
I shook my head. "You just... never talk about your life." I shrugged, shooting him a hopeful smile. "Can't blame me for being curious, can you?"
Bob pursed his lips, looking thoughtful. "Perhaps not." He looked at the skull. "Were you planning to continue your cleaning? Because if you are, I believe you missed a spot over here." He pointed at one of the cheekbones.
"Not even a story, Bob?" I asked. I knew I was pushing it, and I was willing to drop the subject if Bob didn't want to talk about it anymore, but for all the times that Bob talked about how much magical knowledge he knew, he never talked about where he'd learned it from. No stories about a former master who had specialized in wards, or healing, or whatever. No funny stories about how he'd learned that burning amaranth and wormwood together would create a pretty big cloud of green smoke. When I was learning from him, he told me not to mix them and why, and that was it.
Bob looked at me for a long moment, and then at the skull again, lost in memories. "Once upon a time, in a small village in northern England, there was a wizard."
I had been about to reach for the skull and get back to work when Bob had started talking. I held my breath, not wanting him to stop, and not for the usual his-voice-is-my-guilty-pleasure reason, either.
"He'd recently moved northward because he was a journeyman at magic, and this little village seemed like a good place to set up shop," Bob continued, still looking at the skull. "He built a house on the outskirts of town because he liked his privacy, and after a while, the villagers were less inclined to burn his house down and burn him at the stake."
When Bob's voice trailed off, I cleared my throat. "What happened to him?"
"That's a rather loaded question." Bob shot me a peevish look, but went back to the narrative. "But as I was saying, one night, the wizard was awoken by a loud roar which rattled his lab table and broke a few bottles of ingredients. Then a villager pounded at his door. 'Wizard,' the villager shouted. 'Wake up! There's a bloody dragon eating the livestock!'"
I blinked. "He didn't really say that, did he?" I asked, frowning at Bob.
Bob shrugged. "I could tell you what he really said, but I don't think you know Old English. Now, the wizard, unable to get back to sleep, got out of bed and opened the door, glaring at the villager and demanding to know what the hell was going on. The villager repeated himself, and then ran, presumably to protect what livestock he had left."
I swiveled in my chair to look at Bob squarely. "What'd the wizard do?"
Bob snorted. "The wizard, rather annoyed at all of the noise, got his staff from next to the door and headed outside. He was lucky, since at that moment, a blast of green fire landed on his thatched roof and set the house ablaze."
I blinked. "Did the wizard save his stuff?"
Bob shook his head. "He didn't keep much of his valuables inside the house -- too easy for things to be stolen by curious villagers, you see. So, the wizard, very annoyed that he was going to have to rebuild his house, went out to find the dragon."
"How big was it?" I couldn't help myself.
"About the size of one of the houses," Bob said mildly. "It appeared to be fairly young, with its wings outstretched."
I shook my head. "I don't get it. What's that got to do with anything?"
"Apparently, younger dragons outstretch their wings while feeding because they're not fast enough to unfurl their wings and take off in one motion if they're threatened," Bob explained. "Now, may I continue, or do you have more questions?"
I mimed zipping my lips and rested my chin on the the palm of my left hand, propping my elbow on my lab table. Talk about story time.
Satisfied that I'd shut up for two seconds, Bob nodded and continued. "The wizard found the dragon eating a horse, the animal still screaming until the dragon finally decided to break its neck. And, still thoroughly annoyed, the wizard stepped up to the dragon and demanded to know what the hell the dragon thought it was doing. The dragon stopped its chewing, glared at the wizard, and then a soulgaze happened."
My eyebrows shot upwards. "What?"
Bob nodded. "A soulgaze happened. The dragon was as surprised as the wizard, I believe. The dragon's soul was..." His voice trailed off and he shook his head. "The wizard could hardly fathom how long the dragon had existed, what it had done during the course of its life. How many eggs it had laid, and how many it had lost. When the soulgaze ended, the dragon glared at the wizard again.
"'Know your place, whelp,' the dragon told him. 'Or I will remind you of it.' The wizard glared back, and began concentrating on a spell to wedge the dragon's scales apart. 'And you,' the wizard said back, 'shall know the consequences of disturbing a wizard's rest.'"
I tried not to chuckle, but I could see what was happening so clearly. Bob, getting out of bed with bedhead and looking murderous, facing down a dragon in his pajamas. "What happened?"
"After more back and forth between the two, the dragon decided that it would find an easier meal elsewhere," Bob said with a shrug.
"Would any of that 'back and forth' have involved magic, by any chance?" I asked curiously.
Bob shook his head. "Dragons are immune to most magic, unless it's very powerful. Mai's idea to bring your house to the other side in order to trap and kill the other dragon was actually an excellent strategy. Anything less would have resulted in extensive property damage."
I frowned. "So, you couldn't use magic against it? How did you make it leave?"
"Who said that I was the wizard in this story?" Bob asked mildly, raising a white eyebrow at me.
"The wizard, then," I corrected myself, even though we both knew exactly who the wizard in his story really was. "How did he make it leave?"
"He had a weapon at his disposal," Bob said with a smile. "Naturally."
"C'mon, you've gotta give me more than that." I protested. "What kind of weapon?"
"A little something he put together," Bob said. "It was effective enough against the dragon."
I snorted. "All right, fine. I won't ask anymore about the anti-dragon 'weapon'. So, the wizard was able to fight the dragon off. Did the villagers do anything for him?"
"By way of compensation, you mean?" Bob asked, his eyebrows lifting. "They very grudgingly helped him rebuild his house, and afterwards, they insisted on coming to pay their respects and pestering the wizard for magical solutions to their problems."
"So, the good guys saved the day, and got a good reward for services rendered?" I asked, smiling a little at the mental image of Bob having to deal with star-crossed lovers and farmers needing help with a drought.
Bob nodded. "Pretty much, yes. Much to the wizard's annoyance, considering that he had research to conduct."
"What kind?" I asked.
"After that encounter with the dragon, he felt the need to explore the concept of weaponry that would be effective against supernatural creatures," Bob explained. "Silver against certain kinds of werewolves and vampires, whatever metal might be effective against dragons, that sort of thing."
"And Saint George had tangled with a dragon before this wizard had," I said slowly, putting the pieces together.
Bob arched an eyebrow at me, but I could tell he looked pleased. I'm not a total genius, but I'm also not the village idiot. "Indeed."
I nodded slowly. "So... why tell me this story now? Don't get me wrong, I loved hearing it, but you could've kept it to yourself. Or you could've told me about something else."
Bob considered me for a long moment before he said simply, "Perhaps because it related to your own experience this morning with the dragon?" he offered. "This wizard had only himself and a number of hysterical villagers in order to combat his dragon. You, on the other hand, were trapped inside your own house by an indiscriminate cloud of death, contending with two trained Wardens, yourself, and an incapacitated Mai. You were incapable of moving about freely, and you thought of using what had been a disadvantage to your benefit."
I nodded slowly. When he put it like that, in terms of who had the worse dragon experience, I won hands down. Still, the mental image of Bob taking on a dragon by himself while having to worry about civilians getting in the way or getting hurt, and winning? That took a lot more skill than I had, I'd give Bob that. "And hysterical villagers are always so helpful."
Bob rolled his eyes. "'Save me! Save me!' There was a reason why the wizard was a hermit."
I grinned. "I bet the hoard of admirers and people asking for love potions was fun."
"And the star-crossed lovers, and the farmers wanting enchanted plows and hoes and things," Bob continued, sounding like he'd had to deal with a lot of annoying villagers. If I had too few customers, it sounded like Bob had too many, back in the day.
I grinned at him again, and when Bob saw it, he shot me an irritated look and then sighed. "Oh, very well. Go on and laugh."
"Sounds to me like this wizard could've made a mint," I said, a bit wistfully since my own business hadn't taken off like I'd been hoping it would ever since I hung up a shingle.
Bob shook his head. "It was a very small village, Harry. And quiet, which is what the wizard wanted in the first place."
"An interesting life seems to be an occupational hazard for us wizards, doesn't it?" I said, frowning a little.
"Indeed it does," Bob replied. "But, there are moments of solitude to be had if one is astute enough to find them." He looked at the skull again, and then back at me. "You realize that you don't have to keep cleaning the skull, don't you?"
"And what if I wanted to?" I asked.
"Then I would commend you for remembering that clean tools tend to give better results," Bob said, a smile in his voice. "Shall I leave you to it, then?"
"I don't know," I said with a smile, "do you have anymore stories about the wizard?"
I had meant it to be joking, but Bob's fondness faded a little. "Would you be terribly hurt if I told you there isn't much to tell?"
I shook my head. "Not really. You can keep me company, though."
Bob looked at me, and then nodded, looking back at the skull. "What sort of cleaner have you been using for the teeth?"
I held up the toothpaste so he could read the label. "I was tempted to get the new kind of toothpaste that came out a few weeks ago, but I wasn't sure if you wanted minty fresh breath or not."
Bob paused for a moment, blinked at me, and then chuckled.
And while he was chuckling, I took a moment to sit back and admire my handiwork. Sure, the skull was clean, but making Bob laugh is something I don't think I'll ever get tired of enjoying. Telling me a story about himself was a big move for him, from what I could tell. Twenty five years of knowing that he had extensive magical knowledge, but not knowing how he'd learned what he knew, I'd always wondered how much he'd learned while he was alive, and how much he'd learned after being a ghost for hundreds of years.
Telling me this story about facing down a dragon while only just out of his apprenticeship and half-asleep.... It was enough to give me a new respect for the man. He'd managed to make the dragon leave instead of killing it, and even when he was literally a ghost of his former self, he had been able to escape 'presences' on the other side in order to report back to us what was really going on outside of my place.
Now that I thought about it, Bob had two kinds of strengths, actually. He had the kind of strength to face down beings that he'd gypped which had come to collect centuries after the fact, and he had the strength now to stand there and comfort me about sending him into the unknown like that, and not hate my guts for what happened. It wasn't strength in the conventional sense, but it was still strength. It was just a kind that I'd never really thought about that much. It only went to show that the more I knew someone, the more I had to learn. And when it came to Bob, I was going to be more than happy to spend the rest of my life learning about him.
I picked up the toothbrush and went back to brushing the teeth on Bob's skull, feeling content.
END
To start from the beginning, this way to Desperate Measures.
This way to the prequel, Vignette - The First Meeting of Minds.
This way to the sequel, Head Case.
DISCLAIMER: The Dresden Files doesn't belong to me – the TV series belongs to Lionsgate, and the characters themselves were created by Jim Butcher. Written for entertainment purposes, no money made, please don't sue, yadda.
FANDOM: The Dresden Files
PAIRING: Harry/Bob UST
WORD COUNT: 5,398
RATING: PG-13
WARNINGS: Spoilers for Things That Go Bump.
SUMMARY: After Things That Go Bump, Harry tries something new, thinks about what happened, and learns something new about Bob.
PRAISE BE: A warm fuzzy blankie of thank you goes out to
shiplizard and beachkid for beta-reading, encouragement, and questions. I wouldn't have been able to make it without their patience and awesomeness. Thank you, guys!AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is part of the Forged series, which starts with Desperate Measures. You might want to read that first to understand what's going on.
***
I felt like I'd needed to sleep for about ten years, and it was just after two o'clock.
The morning had been action-packed, what with dealing with the dragon who'd disguised itself as Murphy, and having to deal with Mai and Morgan and three Wardens in close-quarters. I couldn't stop feeling bad that two of them had died before the dragon bit the dust. I hadn't known either of them that well, but nobody's death should have been acceptable, no matter what Mai had said when she'd headed out of my place after it was all over.
At lunch with a very human, very real Lieutenant Murphy, a grilling about the explosion (complete with green flames) ended up becoming a walk-over to the crime scene, and after I was positive that I couldn't help Murphy out any further her with her freak explosion, she gave me a lift back to my place. Okay, she gave me a lift to an arts-and-crafts store because I asked, and then a lift home.
After it had settled in that I'd just survived an encounter with two dragons, other things had settled into place in my head as well, and I didn't like what I'd come up with as a result.
I opened the door and got inside, keeping the sign flipped over without having to think about it. I wasn't in the mood for customers, and while my wallet was still crying over how much I'd just spent, I knew that today wasn't going to be that productive. I checked the answering machine to make sure it hadn't crapped out on me, and then I headed for the lab, where I'd last seen Bob's skull.
I hadn't seen Bob since I'd headed out for lunch, but that really wasn't that unusual. He always found things to take up his time, and since I didn't see him in the lab, tinkering on an old project from when he was still alive, I figured he was doing something else. He could've been in his skull for all I knew.
I set the bag down on the lab table and pulled up the stool, grabbing the skull and putting it down front and center, the empty eye sockets staring at me, and the sigils carved into the bone standing out, probably due to all the dust and dirt and crap that had collected in the grooves over the years.
Bob had been a prisoner of his own skull for a long time. Passed on from owner to owner, lost, reclaimed -- you name it, it's probably happened to his skull. As near as I can tell, among the High Council he's considered a dangerous ghost who can drive his "forthright and honorable" owners insane, if he felt like it. I think I'm the only person that he's actually trained from a young age in magic, so you could say it gives me a different perspective on him.
The skull itself was old, but it had all kinds of spells of binding and invulnerability on it, so it wasn't like it was going to crack the first time I touched it. If it hadn't had all those protective spells on it, it would've disintegrated a long time ago. I pulled out a painter's brush, running the bristles against the palm of my hand to loosen them up. I didn't know what I was doing, and I had no clue if I was even going to make a dent in the centuries of caked-on dirt and dust and discoloration.
It didn't mean I wasn't going to try, though.
Passing the brush over the skull gently didn't really do much, so I pressed a little harder, making broad sweeps over the crown of the skull and the temples. I could see a little bit of dirt being knocked loose, but not a whole lot. Maybe part of the skull's protections was to keep excess dirt from collecting on it. As much as I'd fought long and hard with the Council about being Bob's keeper, I still didn't really know that much about his curse. Sure, I knew the basics -- he was a ghost, he was bound to the skull with a tether that kept him from wandering too far from it, that kind of thing -- but not the details. It had never felt like the right time to bring it up. If things weren't exploding, or customers weren't asking for my help and hitting my chivalry button, then it always slipped my mind.
I kept brushing at the sigils with the painter's brush, firm but gentle, as I mulled things over.
When the other dragon had finally revealed that it wasn't my friend, but the dragon who had attacked Mai, Morgan, and the Wardens in Eckhart Park, I had managed a glance at Bob. I don't know how I did it, or how I even remembered it, because a lot of things had been happening once. But the look on his face as he watched the other dragon shapeshift back to its original form had been... weird.
Most people, when they're facing down something they've never seen before, tend to react with awe or fear, sometimes both. Now, considering that Bob has been a ghost for hundreds of years, it's not like the dragon could've physically hurt him -- unless it somehow knew about Bob's skull, and the dragon hadn't shown any indication that it knew anything about Bob other than that he was a ghost -- so it was quite possible for Bob to be intrigued. Bob tended to get curious and intrigued when he came across things he hadn't seen before. There's not a lot that genuinely surprises Bob anymore, since again, he's existed for hundreds and hundreds of years, but sometimes, it does happen. I kind of like seeing it, since it means that there are still things in the world that'll make him look like a little kid.
I'm in love with him. So sue me.
Still, when I remember that one glimpse of him that I got somehow during the whole confrontation, it wasn't fear, or awe, or even curiosity. The look on his face was that of a man who knew exactly what he was looking at, had assessed what was happening, and was waiting for the other guy to make the first move.
In case you hadn't figured it out, that's a very weird reaction for Bob to be having when facing down a dragon.
Oh, sure, Bob had told me about dragons before, but it had been kind of a quick mention, and then on to Plato. I'd asked about it after he tried to change the subject, but he hadn't told me much. Usually, when I was a kid, Bob loved to go on and on about stuff he knew a lot about -- and when I was older, I liked watching him go on and on about stuff -- so when he didn't, he either didn't know much about the subject, or he'd touched on something that he didn't want me knowing about.
I'd asked him if bringing people back to life was possible when I was twelve. I only just found out a month or so ago that it was when taking on Sharon the Necromancer. If the look on Bob's face was anything to go by when he saw that dragon, I had a feeling it was going to take similar circumstances to get him to talk about it. Don't get me wrong, I can be more stubborn than a rock, according to Bob, but if I'm the irresistible force, Bob's the immovable object, especially about things that he doesn't want to talk about.
As much as I hated it, I'd have to wait him out on the subject of dragons.
After I finished brushing off the stray dirt on the skull with the painter's brush, I picked up the skull and swapped out brushes for a thinner one that had finer bristles. Bob had given me an anatomy lesson or two when I was eleven, using his own skull to teach me about the bones in the skull, and since I was going to be digging around in the eye sockets, I wanted to be careful. There was a little more dirt than before, which made sense, so I tilted the skull forward, letting the loosened dirt fall out onto the lab table.
I don't know how long I kept working, switching out brushes and polishing what I'd cleaned with a shammy that I'd found in a Tupperware bin. For my first time doing this, it felt... good. I'd never thought about cleaning Bob's skull before, but... it made sense to do it. I'd almost lost him this morning.
He'd been sent out as a scout into the annihilating darkness because we'd thought it was just a coat of paint on the house, or an energy field. Something thin that we could get through. Had I known that my place had been literally moved to the other side, I wouldn't have sent Bob out there. He hadn't needed to go out there. I'd risked his existence because we couldn't think of other options.
I could have lost him because we didn't know what the hell was going on, and that wasn't acceptable.
Feeling his skull under my hands helped. I'd grown up with Bob being incorporeal, so his skull had become a stand-in for his physical body. I hadn't touched it much when I was a kid -- Uncle Justin had told me not to, for one, and Bob had always been worried I might drop it -- so even the one physical thing that Bob was bound to had been taboo, in its own way. Touching it now, feeling it under my hands, felt intimate. Familiarizing myself with the grooves and sigils and edges was comfortable.
As I was attacking his teeth with an old toothbrush I kept around for scrubbing test tubes, a burning mote popped out of one eye socket at close range. I jerked back, but I didn't feel any heat coming off of it before it floated away. It landed on the ground a few feet away and swirled upwards in Bob's usual entrance. When he finished appearing, Bob started.
"Harry?" Bob sounded almost stunned.
"Yeah?" I said, a bit distracted. It was strange to see that familiar crooked grin with teeth yellowed with age. At least the brush seemed to be doing something.
"What on Earth are you doing?"
I kept my attention on Bob's teeth, changing my grip on the back of his skull so that I could concentrate on each tooth individually. "What's it look like I'm doing?" I asked back, not feeling that comfortable with actually saying what I was doing out loud. Bob could see what I was doing just fine.
"It appears that you're cleaning my skull," Bob said. "What I want to know is why you're doing it?"
It suddenly occurred to me that Bob might actually not like having his skull touched or cleaned like this. "Does it bother you?"
I glanced over at him just in time to see his cheeks redden a little, the spots of color standing out on his pale skin. "No."
I stopped, gently setting the skull down on a book I'd left out on the table from a couple days ago, swiveling the stool to look at him. "Should I have asked before doing it?"
Bob shook his head. "I've... never had an owner express the desire before."
I turned back to the skull and looked at where it lay. It might've been my imagination, but it looked a bit cleaner than before I'd started. "It looked like it could use it."
I sensed rather than saw Bob move closer to stand next to me. "It has been around for quite some time," Bob remarked.
I nodded. "I..."
"Yes?" I turned to see Bob looking at me curiously.
"I'm sorry about sending you out into the darkness," I said softly.
Bob shook his head. "You and the others didn't have any other options available to you."
"That doesn't make it any better, Bob," I mumbled looking back at his skull. I was tempted to reach out and touch it, but I stopped myself in time.
"Harry, I didn't know what was in that energy field anymore than you did," Bob said, a puzzled frown in his voice.
"And if you had?" I asked, not looking at him.
"I'm sure that you would have figured out what was going on sooner," Bob said reasonably. "But worrying about it is academic at this point. I discovered that the building had been moved completely to the other side, and I managed to return to you and report what I had found out." There was a pause, and then he said knowingly, "But you don't feel that way, do you."
I shook my head. "You had trouble getting back to us."
"I did," he admitted.
"You said there was stuff on the other side that didn't like you," I said, turning to look at him again. "I'm guessing something related to the love of your life?"
Bob winced a little, even though I hadn't said Winifred's name. Part of me hated seeing him like that, but he'd had a long time to think about her, about what how far he'd gone to the black to resulted in an eternity bound to his own skull. "In part, yes."
I frowned. "In part?"
"I'd made deals with a few demons in order to learn how to bring Winifred back from the dead, and I wanted more knowledge," Bob said slowly, his eyes not seeing me or the lab. "Since the majority of the beings I'd consulted were more closely tied to the other side than to the Nevernever, I felt safe in promising them things beyond my means at the time since they weren't in a position to affect the physical world unless I allowed them to."
"And when you went in there, those guys found you..." I finished, my eyes widening.
Bob nodded once, and I could see in that one gesture just how hard the fight had been to get free and make it back to us. After dealing with a demon or two myself, I know how scary those things could get, even when they're stuck behind a magical circle. What had they done to him?
"Oh, Bob..." I murmured.
Bob blinked and looked back at me. Then he shook his head. "Like I said before, Harry, it's all academic now. You uncovered the truth, and you made it out alive."
"Bob, two people are dead because of what happened here this morning," I objected. "If we had figured it out sooner, they wouldn't be dead."
"Harry, haven't you ever considered the possibility that today was their day to die?" Bob asked.
The question surprised me. Due to Bob's unnaturally extended lifespan, such as it is, he has a perspective on life and death that's creeped me out sometimes. I don't really think about it too often because it doesn't come up that much, but when that difference in perspective rears its ugly head, I can't help but feel a bit worried.
"It could've been, but you don't know that for sure," I said firmly.
"And neither do you," Bob pointed out. "Those two Wardens are dead, Harry. No amount of worrying about it is going to bring them back."
"Doesn't it bother you that you don't feel anything over their deaths?" I asked bluntly.
Instead of getting offended, like I thought he would be at the question, Bob look unruffled. "I didn't know them, Harry. They were two Wardens who could have hurt you because they would have blindly believed what Morgan has trained them to, instead of thinking for themselves. I'm sure you remember what Amber said about the Wardens having a case file on you? Required reading, I believe she called it?"
I shook my head. "The Council's always thought I was bad. That doesn't mean that those two Wardens should have died. At least one of them was a rookie. Don't you think he should've had time to figure out whether or not Morgan was right about me?"
Bob shook his head. "Harry, they're dead now." He looked at me for a long moment before he added, "It's not your fault."
"Isn't it?" I asked quietly, looking at the skull. "If I hadn't let the dragon in--"
"Harry, stop it," Bob said firmly. "You're human, and you're fallible. The dragon chose a shape that you wouldn't question, and that you would recognize as a friend so that you would allow her inside your threshold."
I turned to look at him, my eyes narrowing. Maybe I wouldn't have to wait so long to learn about dragons. "You sound like you're speaking from personal experience."
Bob looked at me wryly. "I'm afraid that I know very little about dragons in general."
"You still knew enough not to get freaked out when the dragon shapeshifted back to her original form. And how do you know it was a girl in the first place?"
"A dragon tends to assume forms that are consistent with its gender," Bob explained. "If you need further proof, you need only look at Ancient Mai."
I nodded slowly. "When did you learn about dragons?"
"Roughly the same time in my life as you," Bob replied, "though I was a bit older when I was an apprentice. And before you ask," he added quickly when I opened my mouth, "no, my teacher didn't know that much about dragons either. Despite all of the stories and legends you may have heard of the Medieval period, dragons were extremely rare, even then."
"So, St. George didn't really kill a dragon?" I asked, curious. Bob never talked about when he was mortal. Whether it was because he didn't remember it all, or because he didn't want to be reminded of the memories, I wasn't sure.
Bob looked surprised for a moment before his expression turned... almost nostalgic? I wasn't sure what he was thinking about, but he only said, "Oh, he did."
"How do you know?" I asked.
Bob came back from his memories and shook his head. "I just do, Harry."
"Did you know him?" I pressed.
Bob shook his head. "He was a legend -- more of a myth, really -- when I was alive. I learned what I could through my own research."
I frowned, confused. "Did St. George deal with life and death?"
Bob looked surprised for a moment before he shook his head again. "No, that research happened before I met Winefride." He arched an eyebrow. "Or did you think the only time I ever did research was for Dark purposes?"
I shook my head. "You just... never talk about your life." I shrugged, shooting him a hopeful smile. "Can't blame me for being curious, can you?"
Bob pursed his lips, looking thoughtful. "Perhaps not." He looked at the skull. "Were you planning to continue your cleaning? Because if you are, I believe you missed a spot over here." He pointed at one of the cheekbones.
"Not even a story, Bob?" I asked. I knew I was pushing it, and I was willing to drop the subject if Bob didn't want to talk about it anymore, but for all the times that Bob talked about how much magical knowledge he knew, he never talked about where he'd learned it from. No stories about a former master who had specialized in wards, or healing, or whatever. No funny stories about how he'd learned that burning amaranth and wormwood together would create a pretty big cloud of green smoke. When I was learning from him, he told me not to mix them and why, and that was it.
Bob looked at me for a long moment, and then at the skull again, lost in memories. "Once upon a time, in a small village in northern England, there was a wizard."
I had been about to reach for the skull and get back to work when Bob had started talking. I held my breath, not wanting him to stop, and not for the usual his-voice-is-my-guilty-pleasure reason, either.
"He'd recently moved northward because he was a journeyman at magic, and this little village seemed like a good place to set up shop," Bob continued, still looking at the skull. "He built a house on the outskirts of town because he liked his privacy, and after a while, the villagers were less inclined to burn his house down and burn him at the stake."
When Bob's voice trailed off, I cleared my throat. "What happened to him?"
"That's a rather loaded question." Bob shot me a peevish look, but went back to the narrative. "But as I was saying, one night, the wizard was awoken by a loud roar which rattled his lab table and broke a few bottles of ingredients. Then a villager pounded at his door. 'Wizard,' the villager shouted. 'Wake up! There's a bloody dragon eating the livestock!'"
I blinked. "He didn't really say that, did he?" I asked, frowning at Bob.
Bob shrugged. "I could tell you what he really said, but I don't think you know Old English. Now, the wizard, unable to get back to sleep, got out of bed and opened the door, glaring at the villager and demanding to know what the hell was going on. The villager repeated himself, and then ran, presumably to protect what livestock he had left."
I swiveled in my chair to look at Bob squarely. "What'd the wizard do?"
Bob snorted. "The wizard, rather annoyed at all of the noise, got his staff from next to the door and headed outside. He was lucky, since at that moment, a blast of green fire landed on his thatched roof and set the house ablaze."
I blinked. "Did the wizard save his stuff?"
Bob shook his head. "He didn't keep much of his valuables inside the house -- too easy for things to be stolen by curious villagers, you see. So, the wizard, very annoyed that he was going to have to rebuild his house, went out to find the dragon."
"How big was it?" I couldn't help myself.
"About the size of one of the houses," Bob said mildly. "It appeared to be fairly young, with its wings outstretched."
I shook my head. "I don't get it. What's that got to do with anything?"
"Apparently, younger dragons outstretch their wings while feeding because they're not fast enough to unfurl their wings and take off in one motion if they're threatened," Bob explained. "Now, may I continue, or do you have more questions?"
I mimed zipping my lips and rested my chin on the the palm of my left hand, propping my elbow on my lab table. Talk about story time.
Satisfied that I'd shut up for two seconds, Bob nodded and continued. "The wizard found the dragon eating a horse, the animal still screaming until the dragon finally decided to break its neck. And, still thoroughly annoyed, the wizard stepped up to the dragon and demanded to know what the hell the dragon thought it was doing. The dragon stopped its chewing, glared at the wizard, and then a soulgaze happened."
My eyebrows shot upwards. "What?"
Bob nodded. "A soulgaze happened. The dragon was as surprised as the wizard, I believe. The dragon's soul was..." His voice trailed off and he shook his head. "The wizard could hardly fathom how long the dragon had existed, what it had done during the course of its life. How many eggs it had laid, and how many it had lost. When the soulgaze ended, the dragon glared at the wizard again.
"'Know your place, whelp,' the dragon told him. 'Or I will remind you of it.' The wizard glared back, and began concentrating on a spell to wedge the dragon's scales apart. 'And you,' the wizard said back, 'shall know the consequences of disturbing a wizard's rest.'"
I tried not to chuckle, but I could see what was happening so clearly. Bob, getting out of bed with bedhead and looking murderous, facing down a dragon in his pajamas. "What happened?"
"After more back and forth between the two, the dragon decided that it would find an easier meal elsewhere," Bob said with a shrug.
"Would any of that 'back and forth' have involved magic, by any chance?" I asked curiously.
Bob shook his head. "Dragons are immune to most magic, unless it's very powerful. Mai's idea to bring your house to the other side in order to trap and kill the other dragon was actually an excellent strategy. Anything less would have resulted in extensive property damage."
I frowned. "So, you couldn't use magic against it? How did you make it leave?"
"Who said that I was the wizard in this story?" Bob asked mildly, raising a white eyebrow at me.
"The wizard, then," I corrected myself, even though we both knew exactly who the wizard in his story really was. "How did he make it leave?"
"He had a weapon at his disposal," Bob said with a smile. "Naturally."
"C'mon, you've gotta give me more than that." I protested. "What kind of weapon?"
"A little something he put together," Bob said. "It was effective enough against the dragon."
I snorted. "All right, fine. I won't ask anymore about the anti-dragon 'weapon'. So, the wizard was able to fight the dragon off. Did the villagers do anything for him?"
"By way of compensation, you mean?" Bob asked, his eyebrows lifting. "They very grudgingly helped him rebuild his house, and afterwards, they insisted on coming to pay their respects and pestering the wizard for magical solutions to their problems."
"So, the good guys saved the day, and got a good reward for services rendered?" I asked, smiling a little at the mental image of Bob having to deal with star-crossed lovers and farmers needing help with a drought.
Bob nodded. "Pretty much, yes. Much to the wizard's annoyance, considering that he had research to conduct."
"What kind?" I asked.
"After that encounter with the dragon, he felt the need to explore the concept of weaponry that would be effective against supernatural creatures," Bob explained. "Silver against certain kinds of werewolves and vampires, whatever metal might be effective against dragons, that sort of thing."
"And Saint George had tangled with a dragon before this wizard had," I said slowly, putting the pieces together.
Bob arched an eyebrow at me, but I could tell he looked pleased. I'm not a total genius, but I'm also not the village idiot. "Indeed."
I nodded slowly. "So... why tell me this story now? Don't get me wrong, I loved hearing it, but you could've kept it to yourself. Or you could've told me about something else."
Bob considered me for a long moment before he said simply, "Perhaps because it related to your own experience this morning with the dragon?" he offered. "This wizard had only himself and a number of hysterical villagers in order to combat his dragon. You, on the other hand, were trapped inside your own house by an indiscriminate cloud of death, contending with two trained Wardens, yourself, and an incapacitated Mai. You were incapable of moving about freely, and you thought of using what had been a disadvantage to your benefit."
I nodded slowly. When he put it like that, in terms of who had the worse dragon experience, I won hands down. Still, the mental image of Bob taking on a dragon by himself while having to worry about civilians getting in the way or getting hurt, and winning? That took a lot more skill than I had, I'd give Bob that. "And hysterical villagers are always so helpful."
Bob rolled his eyes. "'Save me! Save me!' There was a reason why the wizard was a hermit."
I grinned. "I bet the hoard of admirers and people asking for love potions was fun."
"And the star-crossed lovers, and the farmers wanting enchanted plows and hoes and things," Bob continued, sounding like he'd had to deal with a lot of annoying villagers. If I had too few customers, it sounded like Bob had too many, back in the day.
I grinned at him again, and when Bob saw it, he shot me an irritated look and then sighed. "Oh, very well. Go on and laugh."
"Sounds to me like this wizard could've made a mint," I said, a bit wistfully since my own business hadn't taken off like I'd been hoping it would ever since I hung up a shingle.
Bob shook his head. "It was a very small village, Harry. And quiet, which is what the wizard wanted in the first place."
"An interesting life seems to be an occupational hazard for us wizards, doesn't it?" I said, frowning a little.
"Indeed it does," Bob replied. "But, there are moments of solitude to be had if one is astute enough to find them." He looked at the skull again, and then back at me. "You realize that you don't have to keep cleaning the skull, don't you?"
"And what if I wanted to?" I asked.
"Then I would commend you for remembering that clean tools tend to give better results," Bob said, a smile in his voice. "Shall I leave you to it, then?"
"I don't know," I said with a smile, "do you have anymore stories about the wizard?"
I had meant it to be joking, but Bob's fondness faded a little. "Would you be terribly hurt if I told you there isn't much to tell?"
I shook my head. "Not really. You can keep me company, though."
Bob looked at me, and then nodded, looking back at the skull. "What sort of cleaner have you been using for the teeth?"
I held up the toothpaste so he could read the label. "I was tempted to get the new kind of toothpaste that came out a few weeks ago, but I wasn't sure if you wanted minty fresh breath or not."
Bob paused for a moment, blinked at me, and then chuckled.
And while he was chuckling, I took a moment to sit back and admire my handiwork. Sure, the skull was clean, but making Bob laugh is something I don't think I'll ever get tired of enjoying. Telling me a story about himself was a big move for him, from what I could tell. Twenty five years of knowing that he had extensive magical knowledge, but not knowing how he'd learned what he knew, I'd always wondered how much he'd learned while he was alive, and how much he'd learned after being a ghost for hundreds of years.
Telling me this story about facing down a dragon while only just out of his apprenticeship and half-asleep.... It was enough to give me a new respect for the man. He'd managed to make the dragon leave instead of killing it, and even when he was literally a ghost of his former self, he had been able to escape 'presences' on the other side in order to report back to us what was really going on outside of my place.
Now that I thought about it, Bob had two kinds of strengths, actually. He had the kind of strength to face down beings that he'd gypped which had come to collect centuries after the fact, and he had the strength now to stand there and comfort me about sending him into the unknown like that, and not hate my guts for what happened. It wasn't strength in the conventional sense, but it was still strength. It was just a kind that I'd never really thought about that much. It only went to show that the more I knew someone, the more I had to learn. And when it came to Bob, I was going to be more than happy to spend the rest of my life learning about him.
I picked up the toothbrush and went back to brushing the teeth on Bob's skull, feeling content.
END
To start from the beginning, this way to Desperate Measures.
This way to the prequel, Vignette - The First Meeting of Minds.
This way to the sequel, Head Case.
