Author's Note: A requested vignette based on the writing prompt "loyalty." Originally published on my Tumblr account, and now posted here.
Time Heals Most Wounds
There are those who say that time heals all wounds. They're wrong, of course. Some wounds never heal, and others that do heal, leave scars. On the body, or on the soul.
In all my years here in Chicago, all my years of bringing the underworld under my control, I have been injured many, many times. Shot at, stabbed, mauled, at least one poisoning attempt, left to die at the hands of a slavering loup-garou…
… but only once have I been wounded. And that wound has never healed.
Perhaps it never will.
I have consulted the finest doctors available. I have even trod the long-abandoned, never-missed path of faith.
To no avail.
Even my consultants among the supernatural find themselves at a loss. I could, perhaps, make a bargain with any number of resources, dark and light, but what they would want, I could never give up.
My Name? I left that behind along with my regrets.
My soul? Never - as Henley once put it, or so Hendricks keeps quoting, I am my own captain.
My life? What good would that do?
No, I know what they would want. What it always comes down to.
Power. Control.
Could I give that up? Could I sacrifice everything I have done all these years, everything I achieved? Would it render all I have done meaningless?
I… honestly don't know.
It's strange. As eternally aggravating and infuriating as he is, I almost wish… that I could ask Dresden. I've heard the stories - about how time and again, since his arrival here in Chicago, he was offered the chance to walk away from this self-imposed crusade of his, to start over… And in all those years, in all those temptations… only twice did he ever willingly concede his autonomy, his independence, his power. And I don't mean those vague, half-considered bargains he made with his godmother, or his contract with me in exchange for that hellish night in the Deeps.
And he did it… both times… for a child.
Perhaps… like me… Dresden strives to protect innocence, in the face of losing his own amidst a single, terrible moment of fate.
As I have done.
I look at what power he has achieved in the face of that loss, and how he has brought it to bear to preserve order and light to a world whose center cannot hold.
As I have done.
And I think of what hells he has unleashed, in the name of the innocents that he protects.
As I have done.
And I look at her, lying there.
Pale.
Fragile.
A living wound upon my soul.
Perhaps I understand Dresden a little better now.