“You’re back,” Stefan whispered as he sat on the wooden floor of Janine Bernard’s old bedroom after the door creaked open, wearing only a pair of long trousers amidst the incalescence of the summer night. “How was the induction?”
“Not exciting,” Anwen said. “Jay just brought us up in front of everyone and gave us these masks.”
She threw her mask on top of a wardrobe, then took a seat at the edge of the bed.
“I didn’t even get an induction, the Anbieter just gave me my mask and said I was part of the Black Shield. Even Leon had his not that long after you left with a couple other new medics,” Stefan said. “But the Black Shield isn’t a very formal group anyway, so it’s not that important to them.”
“It might have to do with you being someone the Angels want to get their hands on so badly, to keep it low profile,” Anwen surmised, when her eyes were drawn to something in Stefan’s hands. “What’s that?”
Anwen lay on her stomach to look over Stefan’s shoulder which rested against the bed’s mattress. She peeked over to see a book that was very familiar to her.
“Oh, that’s my cannon assembly manual,” she said nonchalantly. “Why are you reading it?”
“I’m surprised you aren’t yelling at me to give it back now,” Stefan laughed lightly. “I’m just bored, that’s all.”
“When you have a whole town to walk through, you choose to read a book? That’s not like you at all, Stefan.” Anwen remarked.
“I… I just needed something that would get my mind off of everything that’s been happening. This book seems to do the trick.”
“Does it really?”
“It does the job,” he shrugged, his eyes never taken off the manual. “It’s a lot better than having to be downstairs in the clinic and having to listen to Dr. Bernard crying every other hour.”
“44 years,” Anwen sighed, rolling onto her back. “That’s a long time to be alive, let alone to spend with someone. 44 years crumbling away just like that… how could you not cry?”
“I mean, he’s not totally alone,” Stefan said, eyes still on Anwen’s manual. “Janine and her husband come every day from their village to drop off some food for him while he’s working. They stay a bit to talk when he’s on breaks. And Leon’s always here, too.”
“I don’t mean that, Stefan. Imagine your own parents, how long they’ve been together, but a whole lot longer. That’s what Leon’s grandparents had.”
“My mum was never married,” Stefan refuted. “And I’ve never met my dad. I have no idea who he is.”
“O-Oh,” Anwen stuttered. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t really care, to be honest. My mum’s always been enough for me, but my Uncle Ruben helped raise me when my brother and I were really young. I don’t care to meet my dad even if he’s alive, but my mum… I’d really just like to see her again.”
“Have you spoken to Gareth after we came back?” Anwen asked after a short pause, dodging a complicated topic that her mind was not prepared to handle at that moment.
“I haven’t. Why?”
“Well, I… I wanted to know if he’s said anything to you after being away from you for so long. I know he really wants to protect you for whatever reason, so…” she trailed off.
“You know he’s not the easiest to approach, and vice versa. I guess we’ll talk after I’m back on duty tomorrow when we get the chance to. Oh, and you can have this back by the way,” Stefan said, closing the book and placing it beside Anwen’s head. “Are those your drawings in there?”
The amateur, slightly messy sketches contrasted the neat, professionally printed diagrams by a great deal, but it was clear that they served to compliment them. She put it on the wardrobe, next to her Black Shield mask.
“Yeah. The manual’s just a rough guide, I don’t follow it step-by-step. I have to make my own adjustments and additions, so the end product does what I need it to do.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“They look nice.” Stefan said as he laid down on the floor parallel to the bed, throwing a blanket over his legs and stomach.
“Thank you.” Anwen said quietly. She rolled her left pant leg up as high as she could so that she could detach the limb, then she laid on the bed in the same orientation as Stefan.
Sleep did not come to Anwen very easily, plagued by memories of a woman who was lively, humorous and beautiful despite her older age. The speaker of the first words Anwen remembered hearing, the teacher of many essential life skills, the provider of the emotional foundation that Gareth couldn’t had passed away six days ago, and Anwen never got to say goodbye. The closest in memory she had to a mother was gone, forever.
“Are you asleep yet, Stefan?” Anwen stuttered throatily, after several hours of continued consciousness.
“…No.” he whispered after several seconds of delay.
“Get your blanket and pillow and lay next to me. There’s a lot of space.” she said quietly.
“I’m fine where I am.” Stefan groaned, rubbing his face with a hand.
“Please,” she pleaded as softly as she could. “I don’t wanna sleep alone. I just need someone to be with me right now. Don’t think anything weird of it. I just can’t be alone right now.”
Without speaking another word, Stefan climbed onto the mattress to repose, making sure to face away from Anwen.
-
After transferring Hugo to the Anbieter’s custody and handing the leatherbound tome recovered from the abandoned village without a name to Jay, Gareth used the cover of the night to visit Marius’ cemetery and see the final resting place of someone he had allowed himself to become familiar with.
“I never got to thank you for being so good to Anwen,” he said, his eyes fixed on the engraved print of Isabel Bernard’s gravestone. “And to me too, I guess. If my mother was even half as strong as you were… maybe my life would be different. But if it was, I may have never been able to meet you, or your family for that matter. Sleep well, Isabel.”
After laying a single red rose on the soil that kept Mrs. Bernard’s earthly remains protected, he turned around, ready to return to the inn and get a night of rest. But Gareth had not been the only one who wished to visit Isabel’s grave.
“Dr. Bernard…” Gareth muttered upon seeing a small man whose eye bags he had never seen so dark or puffy before. “I’m… sorry for your loss.”
“Welcome back, Gareth,” the exhausted old doctor said, while attempting to display politeness to his years-long friend. “You wouldn’t mind coming over for a bit, would you? The children are already there, asleep.”
Minutes later, the two men would find themselves in the Bernard kitchen. Eating bread and soup that the doctor’s granddaughter had brought over earlier in the day, silence reigned, and it was deafening. It wasn’t long until Felix decided to break it.
“Have I ever told you how Isabel and I met?” Felix said, dipping a piece of bread wet with soup broth.
“No, you haven’t.”
Felix popped the bread piece into his mouth, chewing and swallowing before starting his story.
“Well, there’s not much to it,” he explained. “45 years ago, I was a local doctor’s apprentice and I traveled throughout the continent with him, since this little town could not give me that experience. We were hired by a small militia band, who mostly guarded villages during festivals or events. This was back when the mountains didn’t exist and interactions between us northerners and the southerners were common, so not only were we victims to the Angels, but to those people too. I met Isabel there. Her time as a fighter was short, though, since we got married the next year when she was 19 and I was 22. Let me tell you, she was never meant to fight. She was just too sweet, and gentle, and…”
Felix’s lips quivered as he trailed off. He stepped away from the dining table to retrieve a receptacle about halfway filled with amber-coloured liquid. His shaking hand poured the ale into a glass but was stopped when Gareth’s giant fingers wrapped around the bottle.
“That’s enough, Doctor.” Gareth said sternly. Despite the taller, younger and much stronger man’s reminder, Felix still tried to empty the bottle. Gareth responded by wrenching it out of his hand and whipping it out an open window, but without any apparent aggression or anger. Felix looked him in the eyes with a pained expression in his eyes.
“You can try to hide your love of alcohol from me, but what about Isabel? Is this what she wanted? That time we visited the tavern, I remember you told her that you were only heading out to have a chat with me. You lied to her that time, didn’t you? Are you going to continue that lie even when she isn’t here anymore to remind you of how irresponsible that is?”
“It… calms the nerves…” Felix muttered.
“Bullshit!” Gareth exclaimed. “Calm the nerves? I won’t pretend to understand the anguish you’re facing right now, but I too have had more than my own fair share of it. My mother was a weak woman, my father was a monster, my siblings were indifferent to me, and my entire community hated me just for existing! One of the two people who understood me is dead, and the other I will never see again because of things I can’t go back to fix. I only have Anwen… and you only have Leon and Janine now. Don’t destroy yourself. Be a man and face your problems by working through them, not by sticking a bandage on them!”
Gareth smacked a fist against the dining table, startling Felix and snapping him back to reality.
“I think…” Felix said, putting a hand to his forehead. “I think I need to rest.”
“Good. Don’t worry about making breakfast for Anwen and Stefan, the Black Shield will take care of it,” Gareth said, his voice quickly returning to its normal monotone cadence. “Also, please pass along my condolences to young Leon. I’ll be heading out.”
Wiping the remaining dribbles of liquor off his face, Felix then returned to his bedroom, a room he only had six days of experience sleeping by himself despite having lived in it for over four decades.
“Who does he think himself to be?” Felix whispered to himself. “A saint? He’s hardly an Angel…”