Guild Wars 2

(Part One)

I can still see his eyes.

Mendel’s.

When I sleep, just as I’m waking up. I see them. Those pitiful, dying eyes, begging for someone, anyone, to help him. And every time that nightmare plays, I can’t. I watch him die, both in body and in spirit, every time, almost every night.

I’ve saved hundreds, maybe thousands, of lives since then. But no matter how many breathless “thank you’s” I get, the one time I failed still haunts me.

My eyes open. It’s the dead of night. That’s fairly common. I’ve learned since the first few times not to thrash about when the nightmares rouse me, which is a good thing since my bed partner needs her beauty sleep.

Lady Kasmeer Meade; for what meaning her title holds anymore. The poor thing has been thrown to the wolves of Divinity’s Reach, metaphorically, through no fault of her own. I know that I’m here because of my own failure. Kaz didn’t do a single thing wrong, and yet she’s the one suffering for the failings of her brother. She’s the one whose world had been falling apart piece by piece, like one of the condemned buildings that spot this street.

She’s the one that had managed to quell my demons, keep the nightmares at bay.

Until tonight.

I slowly slide out of bed, careful not to stir my golden-haired goddess. My feet fall silently onto the wood floor, and I gently lift my weight from the mattress. I freeze momentarily as I hear Kasmeer snort, but settle back into a restful breathing pattern.

My eyes catch sight of a raggedy, well loved stuffed brown bear at the top of our headboard. Kaz’s most valuable possession. It really said a lot about how pure of a soul she had been, and still is. That with anything she could have chosen as the guard picked her family clean, she chose the one thing that didn’t have the most gold attached to it… but the most heart.

I gently pat the bear on its matted head. It reflected Kasmeer in so many ways, most notably that despite all the dirt its picked up, no matter how much it gets beaten down, it still has that same goofy smile that won’t ever go away.

“Watch her for me, will ya?” I whisper as if it can hear me. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

My… our… home isn’t large. I wasn’t exactly rolling in coin to begin with, and Kasmeer’s presence hasn’t made the bills easier. To spotlight the absurdity of the distribution of wealth in Tyria, I’ve made more money in the last handful of months picking through the pockets of Scarlet’s fallen armies than I had made in the first two years of my detective agency.

Where did Scarlet get all her money and resources anyway? That might be one mystery I never solve.

As a result of my meager dwelling, it’s about four steps from the bedroom door to the dining room. To the west side of the room, there’s a small island of perfectly plain and lightly polished pine that serves as a dinner table, preparation space, and border between the dining room and the kitchen.

The bottom cupboard on that island was where my alcohol reserves were kept, along with a couple bottles of wine that Kasmeer would occasionally splurge on. I kneel down and open that shelf, gazing emptily into the faces of old, forgotten friends.

I hadn’t had a drink from any of those bottles in one hundred and sixty seven days. It’s one of those details that sticks with you. For a long moment, I can almost hear those old friends calling my name, telling me that they can help me forget about Mendel’s eyes, just like they used to.

I’m so tempted… so very tempted… to forget all of it. Mendel… E… Rox… Braham… Kaz…

Then I shut the door, just like I have every time I’ve had that temptation these last one hundred and sixty seven days. Maybe failure hurts. But it’s my failure, and I won’t let myself forget it. Not even temporarily. Not anymore.

I stand up, forcing my legs to straighten even as my knees feel like they’re locking in resistance. Gods, you’d think it’d get easier to resist that call the longer I go without it… but it doesn’t. If anything, that call gets louder. I close my eyes, take two deep breaths, and shuffle to what I call my “crying corner.”

It’s the northeast corner of the dining room. From that location, I can’t see any of the windows of the house, and no one outside could see me. I’m all alone there, and it’s where I would finally let my face fall. I curl up into a ball in that corner, making myself as small as I can, hoping that I can vanish.

Truth is, the reason I could deny my “old friends” tonight was because I knew that Mendel really wasn’t what was tormenting my mind. And what is gnawing at me is something that couldn’t even be banished by an alcohol fermented straight from Lyssa’s tears.

I could remember moving forward, Mendel’s weapons in hand, my investigator’s curiosity completely overridden by the desire to prune that malignant weed, Scarlet Briar…

… then black.

(Part Two)

The very next thing that I somewhat remember was Rox tending to my face… her devourer doing something to the wounds on my arm that I suspect I’m glad I don’t know the details about. Then another haze… and finally… Kaz. She was looking down on me, a look that I knew intimately.

The face of a person who was seeing the last bit of hope die. A girl hitting the bottom. I know that feeling. I’ve been there.

She was so happy when I finally started talking. Gods, I was happy when I finally started talking. But those eyes… how the light slowly bleeds out of them… no doubt they were what triggered Mendel’s return to my nightmares.

When Kasmeer stumbled into my life, I instantly could feel the connection… but now I’m doubting just what connection I felt. I began questioning why I stayed with her, the more she told me of her story, how she got to where she was… then that chilling moment… when I saw myself in her eyes, in her face…

… And that scared me.

Was that the real reason I hired her? Was that why I’m with her? Because I saw myself in her? A cold, lost, crying woman looking for anyone who could help her… and here I am… selfishly taking all that in, latching on desperately for a perverse reason… taking advantage of her state to try and make me feel better about myself.

Is that really what I am? Some emotional leech… taking in her adoration not because she’s a genuine, caring, smiling person underneath all the pain… but because it makes me feel like I’m doing a good deed? Would I even have given Kaz a second glance if she hadn’t looked all desperate and on the verge of breaking?

I tuck my head onto knees, rocking gently while the tears fall. Am I that sick? Am I that terrible of a person?

A voice timidly calls out to me. “Jory? What are you doing down there?”

It takes me a few seconds to process that its not my mind playing tricks on me. Kaz is standing over me again, clutching her robe tight to her body. Poor girl must be freezing. She really doesn’t have the frame for wandering about during a Colossus season’s night.

I smile in vain, knowing that it would do little to dispel any worry, considering my eyes were no doubt visibly red even in the low light. “I’m just… thinking, Kaz.” I say with a complete lack of conviction. Not even Braham would have bought that line, and he was a guy who bought a vial of krait oil.

She drops down next to me, taking a similar posture. With a thin smile that tells me that she completely sees through me, she points to the northwest and says, “Funny, I do the same thing, but it’s usually in that corner. Not when you’re around, of course… I never wanted you to know how guilty I’ve felt.”

I blink the water out of my eyes. “Guilty?” I ask. “About what?”

She laughs once, an empty, bitter one, and says softly, “How terrible I am to take advantage of you like I have been.”

Now I’m blinking simply because I can’t mesh what she just said with any facts. “You taking advantage of me?” I repeat. How does she figure…

Then she tells me. “Remember about two months ago? When we went out to the gardens in the Upper City? Spent most of the day there?”

I nod, encouraging her to continue.

“Then when we were going back home, and it was getting late, and we nearly got bowled over by some random drunk? Remember when he nearly ran headlong into a lamp post, then clung to it while he tried to regain his balance?”

I nod again. We had a bit of a laugh about that scene… though now that I look back on it, Kaz did seem a little put off by it. I had chalked it up to disgust about nearly getting run over by that oaf… but could there had been something else to it?

“That’s been me. From the moment I stumbled into your ‘office’ in the Dead End, I’ve been using you as a support. I burdened you with my weight… when I really didn’t have to. I mean, even with the guard ransacking my home, I wasn’t without options. It’s not like I didn’t have resources.”

“Gods, I was able to run off on a vacation to Southsun Cove right afterward. Granted, the tickets were cheap… and I found out why…” I smile with a hint of humor at the grumble her voice takes at that memory, but the fun vanishes quickly as she continued. “I wasn’t nearly in as dire of straits as I painted it out to be. I only thought I was. And instead of taking hold of my life, I… clung to the first lamp post I could find, and I’m still clinging to it.”

(Part Three)

She then looks directly at me, and I can see the pain, the guilt… and it hurts me even more. “How is that fair to you? When things got darkest, you stood tall and persevered through it. I fell apart and used you shamelessly for support. How terrible am I that even now…”

I throw my arms around her, comforting and shushing her. The poor, silly girl. How could she feel that way? “Don’t talk like that, Kaz.” I say soothingly. “You’re no burden that I wouldn’t want. Don’t ever cry about that. I’ll be your lamp post for however long you…”

I come to a jarring stop as I realize I’m doing it again. I’m letting her express all her fears, all her emotions, and I’m eating it up. This has to stop, and it has to stop now.

I release her, then curl back up into my ball. I don’t want to do this… but it’s time. I have to. “Kaz, honey, if anyone is taking advantage of anyone… it’s me taking advantage of you.”

Kasmeer reacts to this concept with all the disbelief that I had when she expressed a similar thought. “How… how do you figure?”

And so I tell her. About Mendel. I had told her about the boy, of course, and the weapons his ghost trusted to me; but this time I tell her the whole story. How I watch the boy die, and how I watched his spirit get cast to the Mists by a hired necromancer. How it spurred me to resign from the Ministry Guard and start my detective agency.

Then I go further. “I know it seems like I got my life on track after that. I was free to do what I felt was right, even if I never entirely trust this ‘E’ fellow’s motivations. But that… wasn’t true. It wasn’t true at all. I failed Mendel, twice, and that memory has haunted me ever since.”

“For the next year and a half, I would wake up in the middle of the night, much like this, curl up in this corner, much like this, and cry. Cry and cry and cry. But there was one difference between then and now.”

Kasmeer had an awestruck look on her face, clearly stunned by this burst of transparency from me. “What’s that?” She asked with a whisper.

I point to the bottom shelf of the kitchen island. “Before I came here, I’d take a bottle from there, and take a good hard shot. It started simply enough, just one glass to take the edge off so that I could at least not completely collapse into a blubbering wreck.”

“But it didn’t stay at one. One became two. Two became three. Three became five… six… seven. Eight became however many I felt like taking.”

The tears began to form again. “I’m told my father was much the same way. I really don’t like talking about him because while I’ve been told any number of awful, terrible things he had done, there’s few of them I can prove; except that he beat me and my sisters, and that he drank. Heavily.”

I choke back a sob, and shrug off Kasmeer’s attempt to put her arm around my shoulders. “Do you want to know why I really don’t talk with my family much anymore?”

“Yes, Jory. Of course I do.” She replied earnestly. “Please… tell me.”

“My mother was disappointed when I left the Ministry Guard. She objected to me dropping out of such a dignified position to live in the slums. She had worked so hard to get out of my father’s control, and had worked so hard to give me the opportunity to make a better life for myself… and I threw it all away.”

“Jory…” Kasmeer protested, but I silenced her with a raised finger.

“My younger sister simply fell in line with my mother’s wishes. She was probably scared to see me doing what our father did. My older sister, the one in the Seraph, tried to help me. She really did, but she didn’t know how. The Seraph were used to death and not being able to find the answers to every problem. She couldn’t understand why Mendel’s death ate at me. But she tried. But everyone has their limits.”

My head drops at the memory… when I hit the bottom one hundred and sixty seven days ago. “She finally gave up, and I can’t blame her. I had just completed a trifling case, and with that money, I just about bought out the first cursed bar I saw. My sister pulled me out and said, ‘How can I help you if you don’t even want to help yourself?’ Then she took me home and told me to find her when I was ready to start trying to be a real person and not some worthless drunk.”

Kasmeer again tried to interject, and again I hushed her. “That night, I went through my nightly routine, only this time I had four empty bottles at my feet. I was all alone. My entire family had rejected me. All I had was nightmares, bitter memories, and alcohol. I decided then and there that I was going to go out and get my revenge on Henrick Baker. In reality, I stumbled out into the streets in a drunken stupor and attacked the first official-looking person I saw.”

(Part Four)

I laughed, part bitterly and part in genuine mirth. “I was lucky. It turned out to be Captain Logan Thackeray. He knew me, at least in passing, through my older sister. Anyone else in Divinity Reach probably would have killed me at that moment. He claims to this day that it was by pure chance… but I think either my sister or E tipped him off.”

Kasmeer gasped. “What happened?”

“I was more drunk than a rat in a Canthan Quarter wine cellar after the great collapse.” I said. “What do you think happened? Logan beat me senseless, drug me home, then stayed the night while I sobered up. As he left, he told me that he’d stop in every night, and if he learned I had been drinking that he’d drag me off to the stockade until I learned my lesson.”

I snorted once. “He meant it to. Checked in every night for thirty nights… I never had to test his threat, because I haven’t touched a drink since.”

Kasmeer blinked in disbelief. No doubt she was thinking of several cases where that didn’t seem true. “But at The Dead End…”

I smile. “The ‘Delaqua Special’ that only I am allowed to order? Seltzer water with a hint of lemon. I kept going there because the barkeep was a gentle sort and let me run my business there without asking for anything. It was a good place to find people who needed help and could give me cases to work on. Never drank a spirit or liquor or beer in that place in the last one hundred and sixty seven days.”

“Well, what about whenever Braham would share some of the stuff that he would get from his fellow norn?”

A mirthless chuckle escapes my lips. “Some sleight of hand if it was in a flask or skin, and some careful disposal when no one was looking if it was in a glass. Fortunately, I could usually pass it off after one ‘sip’ as something terrible.”

Kasmeer coughed, “Don’t worry. It usually was.” She then looked at me with such tenderness that I swore I felt my heart lurch. “Why didn’t you ever tell me… I mean, all of us this, Jory?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t want to ruin all of your fun by not joining in. But now you know, Kaz. I didn’t stand tall when the darkness hit me. I fell apart, piece by piece, until I had next to nothing left. You came to me, and I saw myself, on the verge of falling apart, and I’ve… used you, trying to make myself feel better by giving you what I never had.”

This time when she hugged me, I didn’t fight back. I could feel her tears on my cheek, and it triggered my own. “Oh, Jory… you don’t have to hide anything from us; not from me, or Braham, or Rox or…” She stopped abruptly, her eyes crossed in confusion, “Or… Tammy? Taffy?”

I quickly gathered who she was talking about; the child asura. “Taimi.”

“Yes! That’s right! Taimi.”

I gave Kaz a suspicious eye and asked, “When exactly was she invited into our group again?”

Kasmeer sighed, “Braham reached the conclusion that she’d invite herself in if we didn’t. Rox and I figured that at least with us we could keep an eye on her where clearly no one else would.” She gave a surprisingly light hearted laugh, and said, “What a group we make huh? Between you and I… the gladium Rox… Braham and his wartorn home… Taimi’s legs… we’re just all a bunch of horribly broken people fighting whatever bad guy or girl or plant comes in our way.”

Then her face lit up like one of the street lights. “That’s it!”

Now I’m worried. “What’s it?”

She turned to me with that broad, genuine smile that lit my whole world. “Our guild! We can call ourselves… Breaking Baddies!”

My jaw drops instinctively before I can pull it back up with a stern and simple, “No.”

“Awwww….”

My left eyebrow lifts, and I ask suspiciously, “And what is wrong with Delaqua Investigations now, anyway?”

Kasmeer shrugs, and she says sheepishly, “Braham thought it sounded stupid and Rox didn’t think it was intimidating enough.”

“I’ll show that kitten intimidating.” I growl. “But alright. The complaints are noted. We’ll talk about a new name… as a team.”

That earned me another one of Kaz’s smiles. “So… are we done thinking for tonight?”

I nod, “I think we are, love. Let’s get back to bed.”

I stand, then help her up, and as we retire to the bedroom once more, Kasmeer has one final question.

“So, with all this new sharing, have you warmed up a little bit more to the idea of pink curtains?”

I grin. Not a chance in the Underworld, girlie.

END

Author’s Note: This is a little something that I’ve actually been putting together slowly bit by bit as the Living World progressed and Marjory was introduced, evolving as the story evolved, and at this point, I think it’s finally ready. I hope you liked it.

I like this. Adding dimension to existing characters within the framework of the original story is one of the more fun and rewarding ways of writing fanfiction. This works really well and portrays the characters in a genuine, convincing way. The only criticism I have is that Logan’s role does seem a bit contrived. Does the head of the Seraph really have nothing better to do at night than babysit an alcoholic? It would be a little more realistic if he had delegated that task to her sister. Overall, this was an enjoyable read.

…Also, when she calls Rox a “kitten” was that intentional or just very apt wordfiltering?

Well, let me put it this way:

I had to rework a couple parts of the original manuscript in order to avoid the dreaded word filter…

… except the one place where it was entirely intended.