XII: Eldest

"A brother is a friend given by nature." - unknown.


They were a far cry from those clumsy footpaths, strewn with mud-splattered leaves that arched and swerved across the Northern valleys: remnants of ancient roads formed by ancient magicians. They weren't graced by ancient history or magical fortune. The Badlands were not Carvahall. They were bad – they were empty, dry, and most of all, poor. Poor was reason enough to be filled with disgust.

'Poor' being a word always emphasised – Pa had always stressed how damn lucky they were that they owned their own land, and weren't a family of poverty-stricken, starving sons of a bitch who were kissing the feet of a landlord and kneeling in their own shit. Carvahall was revolutionary, he had always said, although in the scathing, bitter tone he always used to describe anything political – or perhaps, anything he had ever said. Years of toiling away at his own land, watching his own future being held ransom by the merciless fires of the sun, the scathing glare of the moon, and the rain: this was life as a revolutionary. Those chilling downpours would last for weeks and would wash his livelihood, his starving children away as quickly as an aristocrat could snap his silk-gloved fingers, as quickly as a hired assassin could slit a dirt farmer's throat. Pa never had much to be happy about.

It was difficult for Roran to remember anything about his father now, having shuffled through so many foreign fields like herded cattle. These empty, broken roads, paved barely, with broken pieces of stone and dirt (the dry kind, the only kind in the southern edge of the Empire, as opposed to the sludgy, wet kind at home) mingling together, were nothing like the ones thousands of miles away, in valley that was his father's birthplace, bread and coffin. These dirt tracks were supposedly the main trade routes – wide, long, and straight as bean sprouts – but not a trader's cart had been seen for weeks.

They were less than two days from Belatona now, with only burnt eucalyptus trees, collapsed onto the roads in the heat, as company. He wasn't disappointed – well, actually, he was. The son of a young dirt farmer had been told of great stories of the Empire's towering, bustling, lively cities – probably exaggerations, as most sixth-hand country tales were – and had hoped to be amazed at the off-chance he'd finally see them. In reality, he'd been disturbed, almost scared by what was great, and let down by what wasn't, so far, dogged by constant longing for the ashes that were now his home. Pa would have had some wise crack to say about that.

It was not only the roads, the parched olive groves, the distant fields of abandoned vineyards whose owners fled weeks ago in fear of a merciless hellish bloodbath, which were different. Even the evening skies had changed: after the sun had set, the turned purple and grey and red and strange, with a vast, yellowish, almost cheese-like moon hung in the sky. It was a distorted reflection, a shattered mirror (not that Roran had ever seen a mirror) to the stark black and blue of the skies above in Palancar valley.

The stars, though, twinkled the same.


"Ro'! Ro'! Ro'! Look! Look! Look!" The boy danced with the word, lolled them about on the end of the tongue, spun them around rapidly, then, finally, cut them off with a sudden flick.

"Shuddup."

"Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-Ro'!"

Roran looked. His younger boy had a maple leaf balanced exactly on the tip of his nose.

"Shuddup, Egg-face."


Back when summer days were cool and wet like muddy feet dipped in a stream, and 'war' was something boys did with whittled down sticks and stray pebbles, and usually ended with someone crying and calling Ma, Roran liked to go fishing. It was something Pa did when he could – that was reason enough. Sitting at the stump of a spindly tree, with a straw hat (borrowed from Ma) sat crooked, chewing sunflower seeds because that's what fishermen did, he would fish. It mainly consisted of Roran swatting at the humongous bluebottles which whizzed over the water, and muttering to himself.

"Stop your blabbering," Pa would grumble, "You'll scare the fish."

But, Roran protested, fishing was never about catching fish. And besides, Pa did it too – softly grumbling about barley stocks and recent summer storms and the broken wagon that had needed fixing for months now and god knows how we'll feed the boys this year Marian. This was a ritual Ma tended to smile wryly at – a gentle smile, a woman's smile, a smile he'd know he'd never understand even years after she had left the world. Pa's grumblings, especially when life was so sweet, so plentiful, was not something he truly understood either. But Pa did it. And that was reason enough for Roran to do it too.

Of course, the magic was ruined as soon as he had to take his baby brother along. Because he was his brother then.

His younger brother was a shy shadow that tended to waddle behind him in oversized hand-me-down tunics. On the odd occasion when the stubborn, intent face would break, it would break with laughter and a smile like the sun. 'Odd' was a word you would place with Eragon – he never quite got it. Away with the faeries. He never even copied in the right way. When he fished, he perched on the branch of a willow directly above Roran, making birdie noises, with a straw hat several sizes too large and flopped over his eyes as he bobbed his head up and down, and sucking his sunflower so hard that he nearly choked. Finally, whilst whacking a huge fly with a fist, he tumbled forward from his perch into the river with a splat. Roran found this perfectly hilarious until his brother caught pneumonia four days later and nearly died. That wasn't funny.

Eragon was like that. Roran liked him enough – he'd never tell anyone, that was sacrilegious, that was blasfemmy – but beneath the scraps and squabbles that Eragon usually started by clinging too hard and Roran by hitting him back, he really did like his baby brother. They'd tell each other nearly everything – well, Eragon did, at least. Roran would listen to him involuntarily, but still listened to him. And Roran would take him everywhere – slightly grudgingly, but slightly proudly. Sometimes during the autumn nights (winter was too chilly) they'd sneak out into the yard, with thick woollen blankets and a ransacked pair of Dad's socks, huddled together whilst the stars twinkled. They'd tell gruesome stories – boys' stories – of ghouls and spirits and monsters. Interestingly, it was always the Elder brother, out of the pair, that tossed and turned and shivered ceaselessly in their sleep on those starry nights.

That didn't stop Eragon being an irritating, snotty-nosed, snivelling little flea (flea could be exchanged for any word beginning with 'f'). Such as with the fishing incident, when Ma said Eragon couldn't go to the riverbank for the rest of the summer, which meant Roran couldn't either, because Eragon would follow him anyway and Roran would be the troublemaker, the culprit, and the one who got no supper.

"Then don't go fishing." His father had looked up from his steaming broth the first time that evening, and now he had spoken. And that was that.

So the two siblings – cousins, he still sometimes forgot to say, cousins – decided to go hiking for the first time on Roran's tenth summer, and began to trek barefooted along those winding, leafy footpaths he now knew so well.

"Ro', I have an Owie."

"Eragon, you're nine. You're too old to be saying 'Owie'."

"Am not." He stuck out his lip. He was being deliberately childish right now.

Roran stifled a groan. He was the Eldest. He was supposed to be the sensible one, his mother would say when she was cross, despite being a middle child herself – it was hard though Ma, it was hard.

They walked a few yards more along the track, his brother hobbling behind him, grasping at his left foot rather blatantly, before speaking again with a wolfish grin spreading all over his face.

"Owie."

The elder boy twitched.

"Owie."

Roran pummelled him.

For the next five minutes, Eragon stumbled along behind him, more slowly, more carefully, his hand grasping a now bloodied nose to stop it streaming all down his face. Roran didn't look at him – he knew he'd feel bad if he did, because whether Eragon would be staring intently or hiding tears or wincing in pain, he wouldn't be scowling at Roran. Sometimes Roran wished he would. It was always Roran who bared his knuckles first – and that made him feel guilty, it made him feel hot and uncomfortable and sweaty and he didn't like it.

After five more minutes of walking in angry silence, his brother stopped. Roran didn't notice until a minute later, span back down the mudtrack and ran at lightning speed, 'till the evening silhouette of a lanky, greasy-haired nine year old farmboy could be seen squatting among the ferns.

"What the hell are you thinkin', Egg-face, what the hell-"

"Look."

So Roran did. From the rough, beaten track, a glimpse of a view could be seen, framed by the scent of gorse bushes washed in mud. They were up high. Very high. Dizzyingly high – high enough to make Roran feel a bit ill. He could see the entire valley – a flourish of green, tangling and sprawling up to the shadowy points of distant mountains Roran did not know the names of. Beyond, was the slither of an afternoon moon in the warm sky, lingering as the sun began to sink below the mountains, and rolling mists from far-away lands tumbled into the valley.

"Don't they look like ants?" It was Eragon mumbling the question, who whispered as if it was for nobody to hear.

Roran veered a little closer to the edge which his little brother freely dangled his sore and reddened feet over, and slowly tipped his gaze downwards. The wild forest was eventually cut back by arrangements of neat, rectangular fields, and a cluster of thatched cottages, huddled together. Horsedrawn carts were just blurry dots, weaving in and out, like... ants. Roran couldn't see any people – they were too small, too insignificant, too forgettable. On the tip of the valley, you could see no one, and you could hear no one... it was almost lonely.

Roran didn't like it much.

"We should go. It'll get late in not too long, I think," he suggested.

His brother did not respond.

"We should go, Eragon."

His brother still refused to move.

"Go."

The boy still remained frozen, statue still, glaring determinedly out at the horizon. Roran wondered if Eragon had heard him at all.

Roran nearly punched him then. But he stopped himself. Just. He wasn't an animal, Roran didn't just punch people. He sank down next to Eragon. The view was sorta nice, after all. Maybe he could go see the world some day. Roran wanted to. Sorta. He'd probably be too busy with the farm and all... because Roran would own the farm one day. It was his Pa's. Which made it his own too. His inheritance. But maybe he could travel. Dunno. Could be nice.

It then struck Roran that Eragon hadn't shifted at all for the past twenty minutes. He hadn't said anything.

"Do you have a problem?" Roran asked. The question sounded so blunt. Like a fist. Roran tensed up. "Just. Y'know. I can help. I'm yer brother."

Eragon did nothing.

Roran did punch him then.

"I hate you."

Eragon did nothing.

"You're annoying," Roran spat. He was angry now. "And I hate you."

Eragon did nothing.

"Shut UP!" Roran screamed. "Shut up shut up shut up!"

He tried to kick Eragon but he teetered on the edge as he did so, and oh god oh god I'm gonna fall Ma, I'm gonna fall help me oh god –

But he didn't fall.

And still, Eragon did nothing. He didn't say a word. He stared blankly, alienly, scarily out at the valley. Like he despised it with every muddy-blooded, country bumpkin, ruddy-faced fibre of his being. Or maybe Roran was just imagining things – doing an Eragon, being stupid. Eragon didn't hate him. Eragon couldn't hate anyone. Could he? Roran couldn't imagine Eragon – head in the clouds Eragon, lost in his own little world Eragon, his own baby brother who told him absolutely everything – ever being able to do something as ordinary and as common as hate.

"You're... so stupid." Roran sighed. "Gaaaaargh. Why are you like this? Why don't you do anything? Can't you be normal?"

Eragon was silent. Roran tried to pull him up, forcefully – Eragon resisted, squirming and squiggling like a wiggly worm. But Roran was the stronger brother. He dragged him away anyway, Eragon's raw, blistering, bloodied feet scraping against the leaves – that was when Eragon started screaming.

It struck Roran like a blazing hot hammer. He dropped the boy.

"Sorry."

Eragon was silent.

"You know I don't mean it. You that, right?"

Eragon was silent.

"You – me, I... well..." Roran couldn't say anything. The two stood in silence for a minute, in the middle of the track. Then, of his own accord, Eragon got up diligently and traipsed behind his older brother as they walked home, slowly, but surely.

"Sorry," Roran said, five minutes later. He offered an arm to help his limping brother. Eragon didn't respond. Roran didn't want to touch him again. He might scream.

The stars had just began to prick the night sky when they got back. Ma was livid. And Roran was in trouble. Eragon was in trouble too, but Roran was in bigger trouble. He got a beating from his father. Because he was the Eldest.

Things changed that day. Or maybe they didn't. Maybe things had always been this way and Roran had only just noticed. He didn't know. Eragon and him returned to that view, a couple of times, and watched it in silence. Together. Eragon did, at least – he was the only kid Roran ever knew who could voluntarily watch something for two hours straight without moving and do it with joy. Usually he would twitch, and squirm, and beg to go home – Roran was the patient one – but Eragon was the stubborn one. When he chose to be, he could be the most patient boy in the world. Roran couldn't sit still that long. So whilst Eragon watched the view, Roran would watch his brother.

Eragon was ordinary enough looking – scruffy hair, a bit greasy. Lanky. His face looked twice as young as his body – it was all puffy and flabby and 'cute'. His nose was okay, a little crooked, after he broke it running into a tree (who runs into a tree?). The eyes... the eyes were wrong though, those big round wide eyes, he'd decided, those deep, dark, brown eyes glazed with a thick dollop of honey. Pa's were the same colour. Roran had his Ma's eyes, which were a paltry, speckled hazel-y green-y yuck colour – he wished he'd had Pa's eyes.

Eragon's eyes didn't crinkle and crease and roll like Pa's though – they were filled with something more. Like a lust, a desire, a longing. Something that wanted to jump out of them and scream. A caged bird – he imagined it like that – with long, twisted squawks no one could hear. It was stuck in the wrong place. It was lost.

Which was what Eragon was like. He didn't have many friends. He didn't seem to want to make them – but he seemed to want them anyway. It made no sense to Roran. A friend was a friend. Absent-minded, clumsy, away with the faeries Eragon – lost Eragon – made up his own friends instead. Roran couldn't even begin to try and comprehend joining him there, in his own world.

When Roran was with the village kids, he'd shuffle behind him, cowering in his shadow, mumbling softly to himself. He'd always been shy, Roran knew. But it was just weird now, thinking about it – he wasn't a little kid anymore. I don't like them, he had said, when Roran asked. Some of them tried to chase and corner him when he was alone, call him things and hurt him. Roran made quick work of them though. They only ever did it once. Roran made sure.

"You're a good kid, Ro'," his father had said to him after he'd scared them off. He'd even gotten a hand placed clumsily on his shoulder; by the time Roran had noticed it was there, that large, warm and sweaty Pa-hand, it had gone. It had been a surprise that he'd even said anything at all.

Eragon then started asking questions. They were the wrong kind of questions. Villagers didn't usually ask questions. Questions were suspicious. Questions would plague the fields and starve the crops, questions would send ghouls to burn the village to ash, questions would stop the rain.

"What ever happens to people who leave the village?"

"Did you always want to be a farmer Ro'?"

"Have you ever wanted to fly, Ro'?"

"Why do we grow crops – and why can't we ever have any cattle when we live on a mountain?"

"Why can Pa read and we can't?"

And then: "Why won't he teach us to read, Ro', why?"

And then: "Did you ever think of not doing everything Pa tells you to do Ro', just this once?"

And then, much later: "He's turning you into a damn bloody darn f-fucking caveman, Roran, isn't he? Both of us. Both of us, fucking damn it. Eh? Eh?"

Eragon earned a bloody nose for that particular question. Eragon bit him back. It was the first time Roran ever heard Eragon really... well. He didn't hear him speak like that again for a long time.

"Don't those little sets of pebbles that Ma keeps in the yard – don't they look a little bit like tiny gravestones?"

This one lead to the saddest face he'd ever seen; the day his Ma explained to him what a 'miscarriage' was.

"Don't you ever want to just... turn back the clock?"

It was shortly after that one he started insisting on going hiking by himself. This deeply unsettled Roran: didn't Eragon used to follow him? He didn't like it. He protested to his mother about it. She laughed – daintily, as someone half her age did – continuing to stir at the saucepan – "It's vegetable stew again, if you want to know," – and called it being a teenager. Roran said he was a teenager too, he had been one for over a year now, and he didn't do this.

"Not every teenager is the same as you, Ro'," she said, sipping at the bubbling stew, not caring to glance over her shoulder to look at her son.

"Yeah, I know," said Roran, as if he hardly knew at all. "But I still don't get it... why is he so different?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know..." Roran was tongue-tied. His fingers made funny shapes in his hands as they grasped at each other awkwardly. He didn't know what he meant at all. Well, he did. And he didn't. It was complicated. Eragon had a tendency to make things complicated.

"Oh." And suddenly she knew exactly what he meant. "Well, your father had a little sister once like your little brother. The pair of them were very much like you two." She was now facing Roran directly, bending down instructively to where his height might have been as a bouncing child, despite the fact he loomed over her small and slight figure now. He could tell what was going to happen next – Ma was going to give one of her well known little 'talks'.

"Everyone's different, Roran, we all do funny little things we don't understand. We learn to live with them. And Eragon... well, Eragon likes to dream. Not everyone is born to be a farmer. I know didn't think I was one at all – and I ended up here," she paused, smiling again. That strange, distant smile he sometimes caught on her face – was joyful? Was it sad? He couldn't tell. Roran was always confusedwith women and their emotions; they hurled them around like clashing, stormy tides he'd never seen before.

"I do want to be a farmer, though. Like Pa," he found himself suddenly saying. It sounded so stupid aloud.

"I know dear. You will."

Roran looked slightly baffled by the remark. "Where is she now?" he asked. "Pa's sister, I mean."

For a moment, Marian looked completely alarmed. It was one of the rare times, beneath the calm, gentle, female composure, that he saw his mother's face.

"I don't know, dear. I mean, she's dead now. She died quite a while ago. She moved away before she died." She stopped, her sudden, sharp wrinkles softening again, and regained her previous poise. "Don't tell you Pa that I said this."

The next day, Roran asked his father if he had a sister.

"Where the devil did you hear that from?" he snapped.

"The market." Roran stuttered. "I heard someone mention it. I don't know who."

"Don't listen to them. They're talking bullshite Roran, bullshite."

And that was that. Roran just supposed it was a sibling thing. Siblings bicker. They weren't the same – and sometimes they were the opposite. Eragon was a creature of the sky, soaring on an updraft, blown away by a blustery wind. Roran... well, he wasn't sure what he was. Rooted? Maybe. He kept his feet on the ground though. However hard he clung to his brother, however firmly he tried to reign him in, he'd float away. The wind would call him.

And maybe that was how things were. Maybe it was how things were supposed to be. Maybe Roran was, as always, worrying far too much, fretting like an old mother hen thrice his age. He frowned – why do people call me that? I really am not that overprotective. But maybe they were right about one thing: he should slow down. He shouldn't get too upset about his brother deciding to hike alone for once. Maybe Eragon would finally to learn to shoot an arrow straight if he started hiking by himself – Roran doubted it.

And so Roran began to meet up with friends more in the village, without his brother tagging along. He began to talk to the village girls – an action considered unthinkable in boyhood, comparable with licking forest slime off the bark of a dead tree. He met Katrina – Katrina! – for the very first time. Simple, dainty, smiling Katrina: oh yes, Roran was completely besotted by her small, delicate smiles; happy smiles, that were never confusing or vague. It was enough to make him forget what the word 'worry' meant. For a short while.

But then of course, came the revelation. It gouged through him like one of Eragon's arrows: now deadly, now lethal, now straight as a dagger's edge. They were sharpened, silvery, unused daggers everyone now fastened to the front of their belts – there was 'social unrest' and 'dangerous times' coming. People bought less. The fields began to wither. People called them omens, and started locking their doors and painting them with big white 'X's to drive the spirits away, or hung garlic over the door frame.

Perhaps then, he should have seen it coming. Because it was not brother – but cousin. Ma and Pa became the austere, unknown, Aunt Marian and Uncle Garrow. And he went from 'Ro' to Cousin Roran.

That was the winter Ma got sick – just days afterwards they'd told Eragon the truth – and died. But not like that – it was slow, agonising, gradual. She caught a fever. Roran watched her grow weaker, her movements strained, jittering, shivering uncontrollably; he watched her skin grow paler, colder, and stiffer with each passing day. She turned into a living corpse. In the final weeks, you could almost smell it rotting. Roran just wanted it to be over. Roran just wanted her to die. For it to be sudden as a thunderclap. But death didn't work like that. It was sudden to those who didn't deserve it, and heartlessly sadistic to those who did. But Ma... did Ma deserve that? Did Ma deserve to be so, so sick, for so, so, long? Roran heard his father crying at nights, a forced, choked, grisly snuffing and snorting; Pa couldn't bear to howl, to scream, to arch his back and roar: not whilst his kids could hear him. Did Pa deserve that? Did Roran have the time to watch his brother's – cousin's – every movement, when his own (not their own) stuttering, grief-stricken father was so close to tying a noose around his neck and hanging like a scarecrow?

Maybe if she hadn't left so soon, then he would have understood what was going on with Eragon. After that long, bitter, frost-bitten winter ended, after the cruel, cold mists had risen, and the earth was no longer as hard as iron... things had changed. During those long, black nights, Roran did not have time to notice that there was a world, a world struggling with its own griefs and turmoils – what use was the world when it had done this to his Ma? But when the sun rose and the birds began to sing again, his brother had already morphed, without warning, into a stranger, a cousin.

He couldn't tell what this cousin was thinking, or feeling, this cousin told him nothing and gave away nothing, kept his thoughts prised closed. He was jovial enough – he smiled, he talked, he even laughed: as rarely as anyone else in the family now did. But they were the words and faces of a talkative, friendly traveller who was sticking around to work through the summer and pack his bags before the snow fell. The doors had been closed on Roran, barricaded forever, and he could never understand his brother's world, even through the rare glimpses, he'd be like any other village boy – an outsider.

Maybe that was why he wasn't surprised when he ran away. Maybe that was why he wasn't surprised when he'd found a dragon and became its rider. Maybe that was why he wasn't surprised when he had become the figure head of a war campaign, no, an entirely new era of history. Maybe that was why he wasn't surprised when he found a brother of his own – half-brother – a more formidable companion, one with his own dark secrets, murky past and mysterious powers. A mirror image to... well. How would one describe his cousin's life now? Maybe –

"Hey Ro'!"

Roran turned to the left. Illuminated by a crackling fire, a certain magician had decided to plonk himself down right beside him. He's going to accuse me of 'brooding' again. Roran hid a grimace – he certainly did not brood, or do anything as such. It was such a ... feminine thing to do.

"Nobody's called me that in years, Carn."

"I apologise, Cap'n," he replied, with a mischievous grin and a mock salute.

Roran laughed. "You be chirpy tonight, it seems." He'd had a few drinks – to be sure, he could hear the rowdy lot yodelling only a couple of hundred yards away.

"Of course!" replied Carn, delightedly. "A good haul tonight helped with that too. I never expected war to be so boring," his laughter was much darker now. "I expected enough guts each day that we could tie up the prisoners with their brother's intestines. I guess I was disappointed, eh?"

Carn, was when speaking of a 'haul', referring to his collection of eyeballs.

After the adrenaline pumping rush and bloodied chaos of the battle, there was always surprisingly little to do. Travelling took weeks. And men eager for morbidity would find it in their own ways – ways that the villages of the Northern Valleys would have once condemned as the wrong kind of magic and would have sent men armed with flaming pitchforks and rotting garlic. Most men couldn't stand to touch the splattered corpses that were scattered in the Badlands and mutilate them for their own greed – most men, that was. But when piles upon piles of dead bodies became common enough sight, no one cared.

When Roran had asked about the eyeballs, Carn quietly mentioned something about how they reminded him of gobstoppers – something he'd never had enough spare pennies hidden in his grubby pockets to gorge on as a child.

Roran said he had absolutely no idea what a gobstopper was. Carn had laughed – you country boys, we need more of you. Roran still couldn't decide whether that was insulting or not.

"Anyway, the Varden's finally moving quickly now – yet enough reason to drink before it's too late – but you seem decidedly sober, my friend," said Carn expectantly.

Here we go again –

"My missus. She's not too well and I don't want her to fret." Pregnant women. Roran would have rolled his eyes if it weren't Katrina. He was still besotted with her, even now.

"Ah," Carn said, with a sympathetic smile. "You're a good man, Roran. You're going to make a great father."

Father. Roran hid a grimace. Still a painful word. He still had little idea where his father's body was buried – or hidden. He had dug through the ash and the blackened wood, of what was once his home, fingers raw and bleeding, face streaming with tears, Katrina begging him to stop, begging him – why did you have to leave us, so soon, too? Why Pa? You never liked the question 'why', but please Pa, answer it just this once, just this once –

"Hey, isn't that your cousin over there?"

It was. The figure on the horizon he had seen before: but it was taller, more graceful, and more beautiful. Draped now in expensive silks and jewelled finery, gifted by foreign queens whose names Roran could barely pronounce, it was difficult discern the silhouette of the lanky kid with the big brown eyes who sat stubbornly at that viewpoint all those summers ago with him.

"Yeah, that's him." His cousin.

"Well, why don't you call him over? You're family, right?"

Roran sighed. Well, not loudly. Carn could catch a funny look fifty miles away completely pissed whilst riding bareback naked on a horse backwards if it was loud enough.

"When was the last time the two of you spoke together?" The magician asked.

Too long.

"What sort of question is that?" Roran said, eyebrows raised. Carn only laughed uneasily in response.

Eragon spoke to Roran fairly often, actually. But Roran never spoke back to him. They never spoke together. It was always very exacting, almost stiff, the way Eragon did it. Formally. With firmly pegged and punctuated words. Full. stop. Mo. No. Syll. La. Bic. And he'd repeat things. Occasionally. He'd repeat things.

It was sort of condescending, actually. And usually Eragon would glance to the sky or check an elfin-design pocketwatch now and again, raise his eyebrows questionably, make some remark about being rather strained for time but I've decided to pop over and visit you anyway, despite being ever so busy with fighting a war and slaying a king and hunting my rogue half-brother which no one knows about and trying to bed elfin princesses and attending Dwarven clan meets to debate politics for twelve hours a week and I like to swing away at a good odd fifty men a day with a sword to keep in shape, but I'm going to visit you anyway because it's good for the morale of the soldiers and makes good propaganda posters and I guess you're my cousin now, aren't you?

Since when did Roran become so cynical? It was the sort of thing his father would have said.

He was being unfair, he knew. Watching the silhouette on the horizon... that silhouette was pacing frantically like his brother would, his shoulders stooped his brother used to, his muscles tensing, hunching – Roran couldn't see, but he knewhis fingers were opening and closing anxiously, his palms sweating by now, and his face turned very pale, just like his brother used to do. Roran couldn't fail to notice that, brother or not.

"Look Carn, he's got better things to be worrying about right now. I don't want to trouble him."

Carn met Roran's sturdy gaze right in the eye. "If you say so," he said. "Well... what do you think is the matter with him? Between me and you, eh?"

"I couldn't honestly say."

He wasn't lying. He didn't know at all.

Roran could guess though - just guess. Arya had been missing for five days now – the elves had finally began to ask questions about it, cause trouble because of it, stall the next battle, even, he'd heard – although he was sure Eragon had been asking questions since the first day.


Roran was wrong.

Eragon wasn't thinking about Arya. He had thought about that for the past four nights obsessively, stupidly, scarily. The lovesick cretin he was. Then Saphira had told him to stop. Which meant Eragon had to stop.

So tonight, he was going to worry about his brother instead.


A/N: I'm leaving you guys to interpret the last sentence as you want. Even I'm not sure exactly who Eragon is referring to. I think it's probably Murtagh, although it could as easily be Roran considering how close they used to be. I'm aware this chapter is mostly filler - the most important details are the last, really, about how Eragon is agitated and distant. I said this fic would be slow! This could stand as a one-shot on its own - I might actually rehash the ending and do that. It became a lot longer than it was meant to be, mainly because I slightly fell in love with Roran as a character (I still hate Katrina and Saphira though :3). I really did not like his character before, but he can be interesting, really interesting, if you play about with canon a bit. There is some canon dissidence - Eragon isn't half as... unhappy in the books as he is here. But he keeps things largely to himself.

Scotland was rainy, although there was no internet, allowing me to write mammoth 5k long chapters. Reviews:

EminemBitches: Ahhh... well one of those issues will defintly be resolved later. As for the age thing, I figure if Arya is going to sleep with an Empire dude, she probably gave up smaller moral concerns like age a while back. It's defintly not a perfect relationship, that's for sure.

Marshall88: Probably not... although then again, I haven't quiet decided yet on teh ending. We'll see.

Unique Fantasiser: ;D. There's a lot of unique fantasies in here for ya. Glad you liked it.

Restrained. Freedom. : There's not enough information at the moment to get to the bottom of Arya's mystery. A lot of those voices and thoughts in the second person were actually her own - she's been spending a lot of time talking to herself. It's not the 'exotic feather', that's for sure :P.