Author's Note

This little vignette was written several months ago as part of an always entertaining PM exchange with elizasky, and has since been expanded and updated slightly. It was written as nothing more than a little diversion, meant to entertain its recipient; I intended it to be a tongue-in-cheek pastiche but it just didn't quite want to be. By this stage it had been my pleasure and privilege to have known of elizasky's Wilkie Marshall and the happenings of 'The Happiness We Must Win' for quite a while and he – and those 'boys'- have since become a little of an obsession, in the way such characters can (perhaps that's just me?!) I imagined an AU flight of fancy to its source AU, in that Carl and Shirley don't ever meet till they are roommates at Redmond after the war. Naturally the course of true love doesn't run smooth here, either…

I hope that people who may read this will understand it for what it is; a loving homage to two of my very favourite characters; elizasky's Carl and Shirley, and to the uber-talented writer who created her beloved version of them.

A Knight's Tale

Once upon a time, there lived a young man named - improbably- Shirley. Shirley was quiet and taciturn, in the way that quiet and taciturn individuals often are, but people generally forgave him this, as he was also good looking and broad shouldered and a Blythe, in the great and grand tradition of Blythes. He had deep brown eyes and brown hair and a perpetually summer-browned skin year round, which leant a delightful swarthiness to his appearance, as in many a romantic hero. He was also a War Hero, though not really in the tradition of war heroes, in that he didn't much like to be reminded of the war, and he secretly doubted that someone who 'excelled at murder' *could be counted a hero.

At any rate, Shirley found himself at Redmond College, because that's what Blythes generally did. He roomed with another young man; gentle, cheerful, a little fey, like a woodland creature; a dappled deer with his pale skin and golden-brown hair, haloed by the late afternoon light through their window. The young man was handsome himself though he did not really see himself as such, and a patch over one eye made him look like a pirate but made Shirley think him a hero. So that's what a hero looked like. Not in the way of a sword-wielding swashbuckler, and not even in the way of a pilot stealthily stalking the enemy in the darkness, but of a brave, battleweary footsoldier, whose lone eye had helped deliver him home.

Shirley silently mused over the scars unseen under that patch; of the noises that made the boy nervous; of the sudden screech found too startling. Sometimes Shirley would awaken from another nightmare to find the other boy in the bed opposite in sweats and shivers, as if he was having the same dream as he, and he wondered how someone might know you, might actually see you, though he lacked the poetry that might have expressed his thoughts, not having met anyone before who might have memorised the pages with him, or even inspired him to search for them in the first place.

At any rate, Shirley's world was not limited to this one companion, for he was meeting others at college; young ladies he tried to avoid and some young men he did not. One of those young men, Wilkie, was every bit as handsome as Shirley, if Shirley had been rich and knowing and sly and problematically-intentioned as well as good looking. Wilkie was also audacious in a way that was exciting and dangerous. Shirley thought that the war had rid him of the lure of both, but apparently not.

One night Shirley was off to see Wilkie and was careful enough in his preparations that the one eyed boy, Carl, looked up from his book and contemplated him, unblinking in his lone, silent stare.

'Wilkie?' asked Carl eventually.

He received a raised, derisive eyebrow in reply.

'Is it love, then?'

Shirley scowled darkly in the way of Blythes whose motivations are questioned, which made him look rather handsomer, if this were possible or preferable, and stormed off almost theatrically into the enveloping promise of the evening.

Shirley would spend many nights preparing to go off to Wilkie's and Carl would spend many nights watching him do so. Though Carl's already pained, worn heart beat ever more painfully, he ventured nothing aside his one question;

'Is it love, then?'

By this time Shirley, ever so much more knowing now himself, and rather sorry for Carl in his naïveté, would chuckle darkly rather than scowl, wishing he took more pleasure in the betraying blush to those pale cheeks.

One night Shirley returned home early; silently thundering; quivering in fury. His beautiful Blythe lips were bloodied; his large brown hand was swollen and bruising.

'What happened?' Carl gasped his fear.

'It's nothing!'

'Let me take a look at it!'

'Just leave it!'

'Just let me look at it!'

Shirley didn't know why he let him, except there was something in Carl's tone he hadn't heard before. Carl bathed his hand and iced it, his own hands tormentingly tender, pressing a wet cloth to his lip, even as his own lips made a thin, tight line of something deeper than disapproval.

'Is this love, then?'

Shirley had no time or inclination for a lesson.

'What would you know about any of it?'

'Nothing,' Carl replied, his one eye sparking, neither cowed nor defeated. 'I know nothing.'

Many nights after that passed, and Shirley did not make any preparations, and Carl glanced over from his bed and his book to Shirley over on his.

'Wilkie?' Carl asked.

'No,' Shirley replied shortly, going back to his Dumas.

Many weeks passed after that, as weeks do, till one dread-night Shirley was awoken by a haunting, horrible cry; too strangled for a scream and too pitiful to be pushed aside. Accompanying the sound were Carl's long flailing limbs and the sound-sensation he might be choking. Shirley leapt out of bed to arrest him in his; the boy would do himself a harm if his terror continued to torment him.

'Carl! Carl!' Shirley's big Blythe arms locked around the trim, neat torso, though there were hidden muscles which pulsed beneath his touch, and his dreaming-awakeness gave him untold strength. 'You're alright! It's just a bad dream! You're safe!'

The seizing body sagged; Carl collapsed against him, shuddering woefully. The lamp illuminated the scarred wasteland of the eye that wasn't; through his other eye the tears streamed as a river, and Shirley wondered if the unshed tears built up as a dam, breaking free inside of him.

'Just go away…' Carl sobbed. 'Please, just go away…'

'Where would I go?' Shirley reasoned reasonably. 'It's two in the morning.'

This earned a guttural laugh, and Shirley sniggered himself as he slowly released him, knowing he could offer nothing but his hankerchief and his silence.

'You can say it. It's hideous.' Carl reached for the patch on the nightstand and armed himself anew.

Shirley shrugged indifferently. 'Only thinking that makes it so.'

'I don't have to think it. I know it.' The reply was deep and dismal.

'All heroes have their battle scars.'

'You don't.'

'Well, that's because I'm not a hero.'

Carl wiped at his face, and regarded him frowningly, but Shirley was already retreated to his bed-bunker, turning away towards the wall.

There were days of long hours thereafter, and nights lasting all night. Sometimes Shirley would still awaken to screams; sometimes to the sound of stifled tears, and only then would he notice his own brown cheeks damp in subconscious sympathy.

Sometimes Shirley would stay awake after, watching the body in the bed opposite him slowly rise and fall, and only when the jagged breaths turned calm would he feel around again for his own. One night Shirley stood sentinel only for that body to sit up and turn to him, and Carl's blue eye pierced him through, and his heart stalled as it never had during a mission, even when every mission might have been his last.

Every day Shirley felt freer than the person he had been with Wilkie, though he now didn't know exactly who that person should be. Carl's nights may have seen him chased by dragons, but his days were spent in courtly service to nature and humankind alike, with an especial talent for fostering foodstuffs for anything feathered or furred. The smallest creature was not above his notice, and his pockets bulged with his offerings. Shirley was reluctantly fascinated by this behaviour; was it madness or kindness? He realised it was something that went beyond those definitions; to a realm that Shirley had rarely visited…

Goodness.

Carl the one-eyed boy, his quiet roommate, was quite simply, good. Not in the way of an obedient child, or of a young person eager to please, though there was the touch of both about him, but simply, he was good. Kindness could be offered but goodness was a state of being. Goodness wasn't what he did but what Carl was.

And what Shirley wasn't.

Perhaps Carl wasn't trying to run from those dragons in his dreams; perhaps he stood there trying to slay them, again and again, though the outcome would never be any different and he knew that anyway. And Shirley realised he was right from the first; that's what a hero did.

He tried to tell Carl these things, but he was never one for words.

One night it was Carl who stood by the glass, preparing to depart, and Shirley watched on.

"You could come too, you know," he offered.

"You don't want me with you," Shirley gave wooden reply.

Carl did not arch his brow or chuckle darkly; he merely turned, his one eye contemplative. He smiled.

"Don't I?"

The lilt of the challenge in his tease tugged at something within Shirley; something that was clamped down so tightly it felt twisted and coiled within him.

"No."

The tone meant more than the word, and the tone would not be trifled with.

The smile on Carl's face tucked itself away again, folded up neatly for another time, but the eye seemed to know and it held him till he could no longer bear to look at it.

Carl was not gone so very long, and soon was back in the opposite bed. He looked up from a book on his critters, to see Shirley pacing the room, and with a particular set to his mouth he turned and sat on the edge of Carl's bed. The springs creaked their greeting, though Carl was silent in his.

There appeared a wide, strong, brown hand on his quilt; it sat there in uncertain question, till Shirley asked his own, hoarsely.

'Is it love, then?'

That clear, bright, beautiful blue eye regarded Shirley and saw him, and knew him, and Shirley was perhaps frightened as he had never been in the war.

A paler, long fingered hand reached out, hovered, and then covered his own.

'I don't know. Is it?'

Shirley had been ready for a blow but not quite ready for a kiss, though it was a kiss that came. He knew how to do most other things now - many, many things and more than that besides - but he had never quite gotten a handle on kissing. Kissing seemed for Shirley to be another thing entirely; too close, too personal, too intimate, too aching… too much like a letting go, when he had spent his life so far holding back.

Carl did not hold back, and Shirley learned a new lesson in how to be brave.

Later, Shirley thought he was able to answer his own question.

'Yes. Yes, I think it might be.'

Carl might have smiled his own knowing smile, if he had been anyone but Carl Meredith, but because he was Carl his smile was gentle and his heart was full, and he made room for Shirley Blythe beside him in the bed.

*From elizasky's 'Dispatches', Chapter 39 'Kitten'