A/N: Oh, Haar and Jill. I can't get enough of you. This will be a multi-part piece - probably five chapters. It is, of course, about Haar and Jill - but everything takes place pre-grame, so no true romance yet.
The title comes from the difference in their ages. If you do to the math, Haar is probably between 15 and 17 years older than Jill. (If you're curious... The "math" is the fact that, at the beginning of PoR, we know that Shiharam and Haar had left Bengion 18 years earlier. Since back then, Haar had been Shiharam's "hotshot young protegee," we can assume he was 14 then - a young soldier, but it's possible. 14 + 18 makes Haar 32 at the beginning of PoR. As for Jill's age, we know she was raised in Daein because of her hatred for laguz, and I'm assuming she was born there too because it would be nearly impossible to flee a country like Bengion with a newborn baby. So at the oldest she's 17 in PoR, but I'm assuming 16, since she's the same age as Mist and Mist looks really young. So there's the math!)
Some people find that age difference strange... I don't! It's just my thing for older guys. Most of this story is Haar-centric, and it all works with canon, but I invent a LOT of Haar backstory. I hope you enjoy reading it! Just had to say that, yes, I am inventing certain characters and speculating as to certain events.
As always, please read and review!
Disclaimer: This applies to this chapter and all future chapters as well. Everything you recognize belongs to Nintendo, not me.
The screams haunted him as Haar ran, away from Talrega keep, away from the dark room full of frazzled healers dashing in and out, fear shining starkly on their lamplit faces. Twelve hours ago, Shiharam and Lorrie had entered that room, the bright noonday sun highlighting the hope and excitement on their faces and masking the worry and pain. Haar had been so excited to hear that it was finally time – something to truly cement their return to Daein, Shiharam's child with the wife he had loved for as long as Haar had known him.
Haar could still remember meeting her for the first time, two years ago. Haar had been introduced as Shiharam's most promising young soldier, a boy of only fourteen. Lorrie had long, dark hair that hung to her waist, and sharp eyes like Shiharam's, though they were of a paler color and held all of a mother's loving warmth. When she had entered the healers' room today, her eyes had been glowing. Shiharam had pulled her hair back, away from her face and neck to help keep her cool, and entered with her, though the healers would not let Haar come too. Instead, he resolved to stay right outside, basking in the sunlight that poured from a nearby window. He imagined what the baby would look like – a boy or a girl? – and if Shiharam would let him hold him or her; he had never held a baby before.
Now, it was deep in the night, and the baby still had not come. He had sat there, Lorrie's screams growing more frequent and more pained with every passing hour. Worry settled into his heart like a stone. Every time a healer left the room, to fetch clean rags or water or another healer from town, he assailed them with questions, and they answered none. He craned his head around the door as they slipped past, and he saw nothing. He could only hear. He knew nothing of childbirth, but even he was aware that twelve hours of such unbearable pain could not be a good sign.
When the moon reached its height in the sky, Haar could stand it no longer. He ran until he reached silence and solitude, slamming his fist against a tree trunk. The pain that shot through his hand and arm made him gasp and cleared his head. Lorrie's screams still echoed in his ears, slashing through his silence. She was usually a soft-spoken woman; stubborn, but she never raised her voice, even in anger.
Had his own mother suffered so, bearing him? The thought brought a bitter smile to his lips: perhaps his mother deserved it, for deserting him as she did. She left him in the darkest streets of Bengion, alone, and he would have died in days had Shiharam not found him.
Haar thought then of the girls he knew in the village. They were all young and so full of life, looking forward to their futures as wives and mothers, and did they truly know what awaited them? He remembered one girl in particular, Sasha, who he had half-dressed against the wall of the darkest alley in town. He teased her, acting as every sixteen-year-old did, kissed her and made her weak for his touch. Now all he could imagine were Sasha's screams, her voice straining and breaking with the pain by the end, and he shuddered to know that it would be his fault.
He collapsed to his knees in the woods and closed his eyes. Turning around, he rested his head against the tree trunk, wishing he could sleep, wishing he could forget for only a few hours. He'd go back eventually, he knew he would, but he could not help but hope to delay his return to the truth, the reality of the pain.
Three more hours passed while he sat alone, unable to sleep, yet unable to open his eyes. He didn't know what finally brought him staggering to his feet, stumbling back to Talrega. The first thing he noticed was the utter silence in the halls. He hurried back to the healer's room, which was still lit by various candles and lamps, and when he burst through the door, no one stopped him. Barely a head moved to note his entrance.
Long, aching minutes passed as he tried to comprehend the scene in front of him. There were three candles and two lamps, all flickering faintly as if left untended for the last few hours. Piles of bloodied rags and sheets lay in the corner, but no one moved to clean them. Water dripped over the edge of a large wooden tub that sat slanted at the foot of the bed, making steady, rhythmic taps that sounded as loud as the bangs of a war drum in his ears. Shiharam sat on a tiny stool by the bed, his eyes fixed on the bundle in his arms. A healer, a kind-faced, older woman, stood at his shoulder, and she was the only one who looked up at Haar as he entered. Her face betrayed nothing.
And then Haar's eyes fell on the bed. There was no blood there; everything was fresh, clean, and white. It was all he could see. For a thin sheet had been pulled up over a familiar shape, gently falling to match the shape of a nose and lips and chin. Nothing in the room moved. The shape on the bed did not breathe.
Haar's knees felt weak beneath him. In a flash of memory, he was not in the quiet healer's room anymore, but on a deserted battlefield in Bengion, the remnants of a fight to the death surrounding him. He felt, then, like a foolish boy, terrified, staring at people who stared right back, unblinking, and did not see.
In a trance, Haar walked over to Shiharam, whose face was blank and drawn as he stared fixedly at the bundle he held. The healer held a finger to her lips as Haar knelt at his teacher's feet and looked down at a tiny, impossibly red little face. With a trembling finger, he touched the baby's cheek, marveling at the softness of the skin. Shiharam's eyes flickered to his face, and seemed to recognize him slowly.
"Would you like to hold her?" he said. His voice was hoarse and quiet.
A girl. It's a baby girl. Wordlessly, Haar nodded. Feeling the healer's watchful eyes on him, he took the baby from Shiharam so carefully, terrified that he would do something wrong. But he held her with his hand cradling her head, like he had seen babies held before, those rare occasions when he was young and had seen a newborn. As she moved, she woke, and opened her mouth and yawned and wriggled a little. The healer knelt quickly and cooed to her, touching her face gently, soothing her back to sleep.
"What's her name?" said Haar. His voice, too, was cracked from lack of use.
There was a long pause. Haar met the healer's eyes, for Shiharam was not looking at him, but the healer, too, looked quickly away.
"She said… she said that she wanted to name her Jill," Shiharam whispered. "She saw her only once, and said 'Jill.'"
Haar looked up again at the bed. Lovely, kind Lorrie… dead giving birth to her first child, her little girl. He couldn't imagine how such a thing could have happened, not after everything else that Shiharam had been through, not this as well. They had escaped Bengion together, escaped the violence of the wars and the madness of the senate, only to fall to nothing more than the hope of peace and future.
He passed Jill back to her father, who took her and held her as if she were the most beautiful, most precious thing in the world. He was captivated by her. He didn't notice the faintest beginnings of sunrise stealing through the single, tiny window. But Haar watched the sun illuminate all parts of the room, from the hand-made baby's cradle that Haar and Shiharam had built together, to the bloody sheets in the corner that still no one had cleaned because no one had wanted to move. At the touch of the sunlight on her face, Jill yawned again and made a little baby's noise, almost like a whistle, which shook Shiharam out of his daze and made him, too, stare at the rising sun. It made his pale face look a little healthier, his eyes a little brighter. Quickly he turned back to his daughter.
"We'll be all right, little one," he said. "Be strong, my daughter. We'll be all right."
He repeated the words over and over, quietly, a mantra to himself. Haar listened and let his teacher's words fill his mind and permeate his heart. Here, he knew, was a lesson in grief. He found the spark of love amongst all the sorrow, and clung to it, promising to himself that he would watch over little Jill for as long as he lived, for Lorrie's sake, for Shiharam's, and for hers.
"Sir Haar," she said petulantly. "You're s'posed to battle with me. Papa told you to."
"He did not. He told me to watch you. I didn't know that meant getting beaten – ouch! Jill!" Haar jumped away from her "lance," which was in fact no more than long stick that she could just barely lift. All the same, Haar eyed it nervously, for he knew he'd have quite a few bruises tomorrow. She was shaping up to be a fine fighter, that was certain.
"Well, if you don't wanna get hurt, fight back! How'd you get to be a soldier if you never fight?"
"I'm not going to fight you," Haar explained. "I can't hit a girl, see? We soldiers, we're almost all men really, so we don't have to worry. A girl doesn't have what it takes to be a soldier - "
She whacked him across the shins for that. "Take it back!" she shouted. "I'll show you, I'll be a soldier!"
"Ouch! All right, all right, I believe you!" Haar said, laughing as he dodged her next strike. He grinned; he had only spoken to get a rise out of her. If any girl could rise through the ranks of an army, it would be this one, he knew. She was Shiharam's daughter through and through, even at the age of five.
"'Kay! So get your weapon, Haar! I'll start training by beating you!"
"You're asking for it," Haar said, finding a stick of his own and hefting it experimentally in his hand. When she made him yelp in pain again, with another hit to the shins, he sighed and shook his head. "Why can't we just have a tea party or something? Like most girls like?"
Jill stuck out her tongue at him. Haar grinned, and blocked her next blow with his stick.
He'd forgotten - she wasn't like most girls.