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 Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 2:19 pm
With refugees came names, people of good standing and bad - masters, apprentices, weyrbrats, Gathers. She'd gone to the Gather to get a good look at all the new faces, pryed away from her records and pens by the lure of knowing a few. Alina spotted one or two she knew at Malvren but a quick peek in the Healers tent gave her nothing.
He always stayed in the Healers tent. Alina declined to say what she looked for in the tent and instead flitted off to the infirmary. Save for a few Healers by their supplies, puttering, it looked all but abandoned.
"Bereck?" She called, preferring a game of Marco Polo if he happened to be there. One of the Healers gave her a sharp look and a 'shh!' sign before they deemed her worthy and pointed in the general direction of left. Ugh. Healers.
She turned left anyway, moving cautiously towards a man she could not yet see - and hadn't for twenty years. "Bereck. Are you about?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 2:41 pm
He had been trying to sleep. As indicated by the former verb, he hadn't been successful. Usually when he was tired he just had to stop focusing on work and he'd be out in an instant whether he was sitting up, lying down, or in extreme circumstances leaning against a wall. Now though he couldn't drift off, he'd slept too much already today but he was still tired. He also hurt - a lot - and that never helped. There just wasn't enough fellis to go around even if he'd accept more than a little of it, which he wouldn't; he'd seen what it did to people routinely for far too many years to want much of it used on him. As if his mind wasn't hazy enough as it was....
Somebody was calling him? Bereck opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and tried to focus. "Hello?" Had he imagined it? He didn't think so. He hoped not. It would be embarrassing if he had.
said Berath, who had been listening in.
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:18 pm
Oh! Oh, that sounded like him. A rather tired, mildly confused Bereck, but a Bereck never the less. And, at that moment, she froze, twenty years of apprehension settling in to a clutch of her stomach. Too late now, she'd spoken for him, and he was awake. Maybe she interrupted him when he dozed off over a project.
When Alina rounded the corner to see Bereck, it became quickly apparent that those assumptions fell into the category of wrong. The Starcrafter faltered, her eyes wide behind the glasses. He looked so small in that bed, pale, especially with --
Especially with bright sharding hair.
the hair knocked her from the shock and instead Alina shook her head quickly, eyes raking over the Master Healer. "You're looking much more wounded than I imagined. What happened?" (Because let's admit it - the idea of Bereck fighting a wher would not be a persons first guess.)
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:24 pm
He didn't know what he had expected but it had not been... had not been Her.
He stared; thrown, confused, lost.
This was Trine, wasn't it? What was she doing here? She couldn't be here. Maybe he was asleep after all. He didn't feel like he was though, everything looked and felt real. She looked real. Older, but with that certain... that something she'd always had. Why was she here though? She couldn't be here, could she?
Bereck kept staring. "...'Lina?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:29 pm
Oh. Right. Last he'd heard she lived in Trine. Right. Alina fiddled with the hem of her shirt, eyes appraising behind the lenses of her glasses - they seemed to get thicker each year, more and more so as she aged. Bereck silent and staring never struck as her a bad thing, really... So she smiled, corners of her lips quirking into a small, shy smile.
"When they said a Masterhealer was camping in the Infirmary, I didn't think as a patient," she said after a long moment and slowly made her way over to the bed, watching, waiting for some sort of reaction. "Fancy meeting you here, Ber."
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:36 pm
So he wasn't crazy, or asleep; Berath backed him up on both points. He looked up at her. He'd always looked up at her given the height difference, but with her standing up and him lying down it was a lot more than he was used to. "Fancy that," he said or perhaps more accurately, echoed by reflex. "You look well. Very well." She did. Still a lot more blond than grey, still tall and erect. Different glasses, but then his glasses were different now too.
What had she said?
Berath supplied, keeping her sent thought factual. She hadn't forgotten about this one, because Bereck hadn't forgotten. She didn't know what to think of the starcrafter's sudden reappearance; there was a lot of hurt feeling there... but a lot of old good feeling too. It was probably something she should keep out of and let him think about on his own in any case.
"Oh, yes, what happened." Bereck closed his eyes for a long moment. "Will you sit down? I do not enjoy being loomed over."
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:45 pm
"You're still so polite," And she smiled again. Alina obeyed regardless of her quips, settling down in the visitors chair. Bereck, strong, grumpy, always up Bereck put in this bed and requiring some sort of drugs to keep him comfortable, if she had any idea how infirmaries were run (and she did, thanks to this one here). She licked her lips and crossed her ankles, fingers resting on her knees while she stared at him. Perhaps not the most polite thing in the world but... "You're looking good as well, all things considered."
She waved an ink stained hand to him, eyes bright on the older Master. "I promise I'm not stalking you, Ber. They transferred me here from Landing about ... five turns ago. Something like that. It's been a while."
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 4:02 pm
"Good place to transfer. I hear the weather's nice, not been out yet." Not stood up yet, or even sat up without somebody lifting him and making soothing noises at him as the pain made his breath hitch involuntarily. He hated this, being so frail and utterly dependant on others for the most basic of needs. He wasn't supposed to be like this, he was supposed to be the healer looking after somebody else; he couldn't stand it, and yet he had to stand it every single day and for many more to come.
"It has been a while." It had. He still wasn't quite thinking right, he knew that but he felt worse about it now than he had until she'd appeared. He didn't want her to think he'd got stupid as well as weak.
Alina. He hadn't thought he'd see her again. A cloud of regrets, things he should have said or done... and they wouldn't have worked. Couldn't have got her back if he had also wanted to have Aleck, and Aleck had needed him, or not; maybe that was just his prejudice against the crèche. Aleck probably would have been fine growing up there knowing nothing else but even thinking that made him feel sick. Couldn't have given him up.
What had he been thinking just now?
When had his eyes closed?
Bereck blinked rapidly and focused on Alina again. "I didn't think you were stalking me. I just... well, I didn't expect to see you." He still wasn't one hundred percent convinced that he wasn't hallucinating.
"Tried to fight a big brown wher without weapons," he said after another pause. "Extremely lucky to have survived at all with how it tore me up." He still found himself glancing around for whers at odd moments, and dreaming of them when he slept. It was senseless, but he knew that sense didn't come into things like this very much.
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 5:31 pm
"I told them I felt old and needed better weather," Alina shifted in her seat, awkward with the entire conversation. Bereck closed his eyes, quiet, and she thought him to be asleep. The Master Starcrafter started to move, to get up, but Bereck opened those lovely bright eyes.
Shards, he'd changed. The lines around his mouth deepened through the years like Alina always imagined they would, being a serious, scowly man he had the tendency to be.
Had the baby done that too him? Work? The revolution? Whatever it was, it worked. He still looked good, if worn. Alina reached out and slid her hand over Berecks cheek and into that ridiculously bright hair.
"Maybe he saw your hair as a challenge. Red eyes equals oramge hair? Its a beacon and - shards, why would you go after a brown wher with no weapons?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 5:43 pm
Fingers.
He didn't know the last time somebody had slid their fingers into his hair. His eyes slid shut again, and for a moment he accepted and enjoyed it.... And then he slid back to claws. Almost peacefully closed eyes squeezed tight and a shiver ran through the pallid man's thin frame.
"I was shut in. Trapped. The handler had it kill my apprentice and then shut me in with it." He saw her throat torn out and swallowed, and his hands clenched to weak fists by his sides. "I tried to just stay away until somebody could save me, let me out, but then I heard Aleck outside and... and so I had to fight it. So it wouldn't have as much fight when it got to him. I didn't expect to live." It was the first time he had said that... the first time he had realised it really. He had assumed he was going to die. He'd been alright with that, if it meant Aleck had a better chance.
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 6:11 pm
Aleck. Right. Shards, Aleck. She remembered his name each time a kid frlocked past an appropriate age but not in that heart-clenching, lost motherhood sort of way. She wondered about him often, remembered his nameday each year. Maternal did not fit her but that didn't mean she didn't. Think about him every so often.
He'd be a person by now.
"Did you help keep it from him?" She saw the shudder, felt it under her fingertips. Alina stroked his hair once more before dropping her hand to the curve of the bed. "And... wow. He's - nineteen? Twenty? That's... and, wher fighting. Bereck, you just keep being impressive."
Bedridden but depressive.
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 6:22 pm
Why was she here? They parted and it had been two decades or so since he'd seen her and... he was glad to see her, and she had casually run her fingers through his hair as if nothing had changed. How could she do that? It wasn't fair, he would have liked nothing to have changed.
"I... I think so." Bereck looked unsure and confused, but not for the reasons one would expect hearing only the verbal elements of the conversation. Alina. Where had she been? What had she been doing? He had been far too busy for a relationship of that nature of course but... but....
"There was him and a whip. Nasty whip. Barbs?" Bereck's face tightened again; pain and fear and an attempt to focus through a haze. "He's fine though. He's fine. I've seen him. He's fine." If the soft mutterings sounded like a mantra, that is because in essence they were; if he was to hang onto himself then he had to hang onto that.
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 6:39 pm
Talking about the wher started to look like a bad idea. Alinas expression tightened when he started to drift, appeared confused and a little lost. She shouldn't have touched him; he'd stumbled when she first did. Right, stepping out of bounds and back near twenty one turns ago when they could do that. She pulled her hand back to her lap, fingers curling together again.
"He's fine, Bereck," Alina tried to make her tone confident, one he could trust, but she never excelled at that unless discussing her work. "They aren't going to let your son wander around if he isn't tip-top.it's this survival instinct healers tend to have, not wanting their boss to kill them."
She paused, cleared her throat. "Enough of the wher. Think of happy things. Tell me about work? Him? Maybe just... I'm sorry, I don't know. Breathe?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 6:49 pm
Hands went away, and after the initial moment of reconnection why shouldn't they? She wasn't his anymore, and he wasn't hers. Why should she wish to make such an intimate gesture? Neither of them were especially tactical with the vast majority of people. This was not a shock.
He felt lonely and cold, and because of that he knew he still wasn't thinking right.
"It hurt him." That came back abruptly with a stab of panic and inadequacy. "I tried to stop it but I couldn't.... But he lived. He's alright now, either way. Anyway." Anyway. Where was his brain? Thoughts were slipping though his hands like oiled... things; it was frustrating to say the least. "Work... let's see. Got Mastery like I wanted but you knew that right?" He looked up at her, bright blue eyes still a little unfocused, weary, pained. "And few years ago they made me Weyrhealer." Of Malvren Weyr.
Oh.
Oh!
For a moment Bereck looked crushed.
His face then went carefully blank.
"Oh. Damn."
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Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2012 3:01 am
Shards. Shards. She could never handle it when he looked that wayn heartbroken, destroyed in some way with his fragging eyes. Alina felt a squeeze of sympathy and before she could tell herself not to, she reached out in reflex to take his hand.
"Shh," the practical starcrafter murmured, thumb rubbing gently. "You are still a Master Healer and defended your Weyr barehanded. Think on that, Ber, not on the bad. Think on that when you're a little bit better. You protected your son, you're the best Healer they have here, you know that.
"It's alright," she said softly, not releasing his hand. "You'll get your position back, dear. It's okay. Everything is okay, except maybe the amount of blood in you."
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