Title: Spirit of Health
Author: smilingsoprano
Rating: K+ for some dark themes.
Pairings: None.
Summary: Neal has a late-night conversation in the healer's ward.
A/N: Just a short fic I wrote because of a coding error on Goldenlake that randomly causes the BairdGhost to appear. It inspired me, however weird that might sound. Definitely partly inspired/influenced by parts of Hamlet and Macbeth.
Sir Nealan of Queenscove was probably going insane.
Many people—most of them his ever-friendly yearmates—would say he had been insane for years, but as a healer, he knew the difference between eccentricity and real madness. Eccentric people kept odd hours, made strange comments, held unpopular opinions, but they retained their grasp on reality, however tenuous. Mad people saw ghosts.
And only the truly bonkers talked to them.
"Hello again." His voice sounded small in the empty ward, swallowed by the new straw pallets, the freshly scrubbed floor, the pale, neatly folded bedsheets. Not entirely deserted—in the more permanent parts of the infirmary, wounded knights and soldier and Riders groaned softly—but here where the less serious wounds were treated, the frenzy of the day had given way to an ominous quiet.
He sighed, once again scrubbing at the hands he could never get clean. "More dead than saved today," he intoned. The words fell flat, lifeless on the stone beneath his feet. He looked up, away from them, into a kind, familiar face.
"You would have saved more."
His father didn't answer. He never did.
"You would have known what to do with that man whose lung was punctured. I could barely stop the bleeding. He drowned from the inside." Neal heaved a sigh, feeling the tension uncoil on his breath, deadening the freezing night air. "I was never as good as you."
Baird smiled, though whether to comfort him or confirm the statement, he couldn't guess. He reached out a translucent hand—not like air, more along the lines of carved ice—but if he touched Neal, the healer couldn't feel it.
"Why don't you talk?" He was crying now, the tears hot against his cold cheeks. They were tears of exhaustion, and despair, and the slow, sinking realization that he was truly, undeniably insane.
The ghost smiled and smiled and would not reply, fading slowly from his sight.