Disclaimer: I hereby declare I have no rights to Tapestry, or any real capability to see inside David Menlo's head or profit from what I find there. I just hope I don't disgrace things by playing.

Jonathan

David Menlo had never had what one could call a 'normal' family. He had never known his father, and Old Magic had burnt out his mother's mind long ago, so that Emer Menlo was, for all intents and purposes and as harsh as it might sound, retarded. His house had been a dilapidated trailer. David didn't really know how he had survived his earliest years, but the fact of the matter was that ever since he could remember, he had been taking care of both himself and his mother.

While the Old Magic in their family line had not destroyed David's mind as it had done to Emer, it had exerted its toll on David's body. There had been long illnesses, desperate waits, time spent more in hospitals than out. Not one, but two heart transplants before he turned ten years old. Still the Old Magic within David Menlo tore at his health. Emer Menlo was over four hundred years old. David doubted he'd make it to thirty.

What with his handicapped mother, his health problems and the strange things that had happened around him since before he could remember, David Menlo had never had a home or a friend any more than he had had a family. At school, he had always been horribly behind or ridiculously ahead, depending on how recently and how severely he'd been medically indisposed. He was only rarely even present, and when he was, the other students had either shunned or bullied him. Well, he was conspicuously different. He frightened and confused them.

David had not known how lonely he had been until the day he arrived at Rowan Academy, located by Recruiters and taken to that place where there were others—not like him—but who at least could begin to understand. To a place where he could begin to understand. All at once, there was comfort, and safety, and support. David could visit the infirmary without worrying he and his mother might starve for the care he needed. More—there were resources, more books than even David, with the voracious appetite for reading he had developed in hospitals and empty school libraries, could hope to read in a lifetime. There were expert teachers that if they could not replicate the feats of Old Magic David could produce, at least could explain to him what they were at first, and later got excited, rather than angry, when they increasingly couldn't. For the first time, David had a place in the world. He had a home.

David had friends. The students at Rowan, themselves different, had not rejected him as those at his old school had done. David had been somewhat bewildered to find himself liked and included by other students in his year, even though his early admittance to Rowan meant they were usually older. At first, he had been frightened it wouldn't last. Though he was a Rowan student, he was more than a student, too, and he feared envy and resentment. There was a little of that. But for the most part, David Menlo found his talent accepted as a force of nature, and he found that he was welcomed for who he was beside that. There was Maya, the most perfect, giving friend he could ever ask for. His companion and helper that knew his mind without him ever needing to speak a word, and loved him without bounds. But besides his charge, even, David had other friends. Sarah, strong and quick and loyal. Lucia, who expected so much only because she herself was always willing to give so much, fiery and generous and brilliant. Connor, who could be rash, and could be insensitive, but who made David actually laugh when he hadn't known before that he could. Connor reminded David sometimes, miraculously, that he was just a kid, and that he could be one. Cynthia was kind and steady and nurturing. She was always supportive, always honest; reliable in a world where David hadn't found anyone like that. And then there was Max.

David had had a feeling the first time he saw Max, coming in late for orientation, alone, when so many others had brought parents. Max had looked afraid, but defiant, too. Like he wouldn't let his fear rule him, would kick it back in the teeth. There had been something about him, a brightness that was greatly diminished in the other students. Later, Miss Kraken had explained auras to David, and he'd realized that the first day he'd seen that Max was different, stronger, than the other students. Like David, but not like David. But even that first day, David had known when Max stood alone in the hallway before a door with two names on it that his would be the other. David had known, somehow, that Max was someone who would be important to him, even someone without whom he could not do without. He had been afraid, and naturally, instinctively, Max had taken the lead in configuration, protecting David with his presence as the Old Magic of the Manse reached into David's mind and provided for the two of them what they would need. When David had opened his eyes and seen the symbols of the room, he had connected to the moons of his side just as Max had connected to the suns on his. Max had not realized the significance of the décor of their room. David hadn't at first, either, but the next time he saw the Rowan heraldry he realized he and Max belonged to Rowan to together light its way someday, he the moon to watch the night, and Max the sun to guard the day.

As those first months went by, the stars in David and Max's room began to speak to David in their sage, silvery letters. It was wonderful and terrible, as David learned more of Old Magic from Miss Kraken, how their messages unfolded for him with more and more clarity. David saw the stars prophesy Astaroth, but he also began to see the role he must take, and the role Max must take. He saw how only together could they prevail against the Enemy.

But even as the stars told him how he and Max would be companions, comrades-in-arms at the front of the coming war, David had formed a solid friendship with the boy himself, not his destiny. David could not help but admire Max's strength of will, his fierce defense of justice and the right. David watched Max reach out to Mum and Bob where many others feared to connect, watched him shepherd Hannah's tiny goslings, and stand up for their class against bullies, and he admired Max just like the rest. Max was the defender he must be, all by himself. And as naturally as Max did everything, he extended protection and friendship to David. Max talked, laughed, played with David, and he made it easy for David to do the same with him. After David began to observe that he had actual friends that liked and accepted him, he realized that the reason this had happened so naturally was because his roommate had taken David with him into friendship with the others. Max had built the bridges for them both. David was grateful to Max, and did his best to protect the other boy from himself, because sometimes, Max needed it. Though David was not strong like Max was strong, could not run like the wind or jump forty feet in a bound, still he had his own strength, that he could use to stop his friend when Max needed stopping.

David had found a home, a place to belong and matter. He had found friends, people to laugh with and rely on. But the day David realized he had found family, too, it took him completely by surprise. It started the day Scott McDaniels came to Rowan, that overly enthusiastic, slightly ridiculous, but so thoroughly loving man. Mr. McDaniels didn't flinch, didn't blink, but much like his son had swept David up into friendship, he swept David right to the heart of the little, broken McDaniels family. Dinner, gifts, overwhelming, sudden, backbreaking hugs; it was affection, inclusion, like David had never experienced before. And Max didn't resent it, didn't keep his father to himself. Instead, Max welcomed David into this smaller, more precious circle of belonging with the same natural generosity as before. The McDanielses couldn't know how David had longed for family. David never revealed to Max in its entirety what his life had been like before Rowan. But Mr. McDaniels became a sort-of father to David, and Max a sort-of brother.

There is a friend that is closer than a brother, one that is family, friend, confidante, comrade-at-arms, the other-self, the most-trusted, most-loved. David had read about such relationships before, but it was not until he truly got to know Max McDaniels that he understood them. Sometimes, he compared them to Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, the brilliant detective and the army doctor, that each gave the other something they sorely needed, and together fathomed the mysteries of the world and made it better. But much later, when David learned of Max's true heritage, he understood that the true comparison was to an even older pair of friends: a young poet, and the son of an unscrupulous king, a warrior prince. The two young men had been very different, the one a peasant musician, a scholar whom deity alone could raise to a higher place, and the other a soldier prince, born to rule. Yet despite their differences, the warrior prince had welcomed the peasant poet into his palace and his family, even given up his birthright to be a friend to this other man. David only hoped that he would prove as worthy as the poet of his friend's, of his brother's trust, and that he could protect this Jonathan, his Jonathan, from a similar fate as the first, burnt out in the strivings and vanities of war, struck down in his prime. If David could, he and Max could rule their kingdom together, as David and Jonathan should have ruled theirs.

A/N: So Henry H. Neff's Tapestry is a massively underrated series. I am completely at a loss to find other readers to appreciate the series' merits and debate its (sporadic) shortcomings with. I need people to anticipate September with me, and talk character and plot to stave off the pain until it gets here!

This need has manifested itself in a relationship-study I didn't actually have time to write. I should be focusing on writing the three end-of-course papers due next month for my graduate classes. But I just had to get this out of my head, first.

Curiously, though Max McDaniels is the main protagonist of the Tapestry series, I feel like the central David-Max friendship is presented better from David's perspective. Max's sense of duty gets in the way of his feelings, and he is more instinctive than reflective, whose character is understood better through his actions than his thoughts. So I find it easier to begin with to get inside of David's head. As subtle as he is, the way he thinks makes more sense to me than the way Max thinks. I may be completely wrong about what's inside there, I'm not sure yet. But I hope I haven't disgraced it here.

I do present David here as two years the junior of Max and the other students in the year. Upon a recent rereading of Hound of Rowan, I found that Max observes that the First Year Apprentices look a variety of different ages. Judging from the fact that David is always described as smaller than the others, and is said to be sixteen at a time in the narrative when Max is eighteen (or thereabouts), when they both spent the same amount of time in the Sidh, I hazarded a guess that students are admitted to Rowan when their abilities manifest themselves, and not based on age. David's abilities would have manifested themselves early, and I guessed that the sixteen-eighteen age description was an accurate reflection of an age gap of about two years between David and the other students in the year all of them entered Rowan Academy. If David and Max spent two years in the Sidh, that actually makes David the same age as the others now, while Max is two years older.

Readers get intellectual, traditional, (and moral!) virtual points if they recognize the other-David and the Jonathan referenced in the story, and for whom it is named.

If you enjoyed the story, drop a review to let me know! Or if you think I could improve it in any way. It's almost not a story at all, and more of a rambling relationship-study. There were probably several things I could make better next time I'm putting off grad work.

God Bless,

LMSharp