When he steps off the boat, it's as if all the sound has been sucked away, just a silence thicker than he's ever felt. Like he's ten feet underwater, and he can't surface. Lucretia is at the forefront of his mind, and he can't shake that thought. Davenport is spinning. It aches, somewhere in his chest, and his breathing is shallow when he comes to the wraparound porch. Through the lilies of the valley, the green brushing his legs like so many hushed voices, he takes a step, and then another, and it's as if cotton is stuffed in his twitching ears. Everything is muffled, and he's sure this is his own nerves doing it, but still, still , Davenport struggles to reach for the door.
The knob is within perfect range of his grasp, and he's sure it wasn't like that the night or morning or whatever time it was he left. That sends a chill through him and it doesn't leave until he turns the knob in his fingers. Inside is hushed the second the door squeaks open, and he picks up the gesture Magnus makes to quiet the others, a wave downward, barely noticeable. It's Magnus, Lucretia and Julia around the table, a warm fire blazing in the stove, setting the whole room in a stifling heat, orange yellow gold reflected on their faces.
"When you left in a hurry last night, we…" Lucretia says, and her voice tapers off when Davenport looks at her. Something about him is weary, and when his shoulders sink she continues; "We got worried."
"You know, the only other landmark for, well, for forever , is the Stockade, and you can't exactly get into it." Julia adds, gently. "You could sail out there forever and not find anything but us." She shares a look with Lucretia and he can see fear, stark and distinct on both of their faces.
He settles at the table beside them, across from Lucretia. The chair is small, the legs tall enough to lift him to everyone's height, a bracing bar across the legs a perfect height to help him clamber up - a perfect fit. There's another similar stool beside him. Merle's seat, he assumes. A thrum of heat picks up at that thought, and it fills his cheeks with a flush at the idea that they made him a place at the table. It's a start, then, isn't it?
"I needed some time, alone." Davenport says, hands gathering. "To reconsider things." He thinks about Dr. Miller, and when he looks at Lucretia, he reaches out toward her. There's a second where he looks as if he's going to take her hand, but he pulls back at the last moment. The look she gives him is heartbreaking. "There are some things I'm sorry for, and some things I ought to forgive and forget." Davenport's ears twitch down, flushed to the tips.
Lucretia's lip curls, and she looks like she's going to cry. The low buzzing in his head and in his chest picks up again, and he gathers his hands close to his lap. The words stick in his mouth again, and Davenport's throat works and clicks like it hurts. Everything is muffled, and he lifts his hand to his face and scrubs furiously at it with the heel of his palm. "I can try. That's all I can promise." Davenport says, his voice thick.
"Okay," Lucretia says, and her voice breaks, and when Julia's hand closes around her forearm, and when Magnus looks at her the way he does, Davenport closes off into himself. "That's more than I could have asked for."
He is proud, in a way, that she's made something of herself, of her plan executed so flawlessly. It burns lower than the anger, hiding in the hollows of his chest, like nostalgia but so much stronger. He's proud that they managed to save the world, and that they managed to find each other, and still, he is hurt that Lucretia took so much from him, and maybe he's a little jealous the others didn't lose quite as much. Especially Merle. Somehow that hurts worse than Lucretia's actions. He knows it's bad, and it's something he could never tell Merle, and the not-telling eats at him like the coldest acid.
With Merle beside him, leaning his back end against the woven fence post, John's crouched low, almost on his knees in the dirt. Beside him, there's a stack of rose cuttings nearly up to Merle's waist.
"You never told me your captain's favorite flowers." John says, without looking up. His mouth is pinched in concentration each time he prunes the roses back and gathers the leftover flowers and brambles in his hands. No gloves, and Merle can see where the scratches from the thorns have battered his poor weary hands. Merle's hands, his own tan ones - he's still blown away he has both hands again - encircling John's. The human's hands are cold, the knuckles weathered in a way that is simply just John . He can't explain it any other way.
"That depends on why you wanna know," Merle huffs, hands still cradling John's. "Bet there's alyssum in the seed packets."
John pauses, looking at him. This time he goes to his knees. Merle knows the human's been looking at him, but there is something in his expression that wasn't there before. "Yellow or white?"
"Yellow." Merle says, and John hazards something like a smile. "Those were his favorites."
"Small and hardy." He comments, voice soft. "A safe plant. Unsurprising." He remarks, adding flatly. Merle's lip twitches down at the thought he's commenting on Davenport.
"How about you show me yours since I showed you mine?"
Something in John's face colors, and his fingers twitch beneath Merle's palms. "My favorite flower?"
Merle nods, urging him on. John's fingers close tight around the rose stems, but he doesn't make a sound about it. Merle's own squat little hands wrap around John's, and his thumb brushes the line of John's wrist, right along where the tendons jump each time his fist tenses. Right where the blue of his veins, still somehow pumping, crests the edge of his wrist, standing out against the surface. He pauses when John takes a breath, and doesn't resume until the human closes his mouth.
"I don't know. I've never thought about it."
Merle lets out a breath that sounds like a laugh. "Well, what really jumps out at ya?" John grows thoughtful, gaze wandering the garden. He lingers on the jasmine flowers. A breeze picks up, scattering the petals, stirring some up into the air. One or two land haphazardly in John's hair. Merle, without thinking reaches up, and John, in return, without thinking, bends a little toward his touch so the dwarf can comb his fingers through John's hair.
Merle plucks out the petal, and holds it in his thumb and forefinger. "Guess the jasmine chose you instead." He laughs, and releases it. The cream white petal brushes, soft as a kiss, across John's cheek before departing on the wind. Merle's thumb follows, tracing its path, his palm curving around the jut of John's jaw. A lock of hair, glossy and dark like a raven's feather, curls down onto his forehead the second Merle's fingers leave his hair. Something about it twists Merle's stomach, nervously, like he's some horny teenager again, and John covers his hand with his own.
Comparing hands, his fingers are long, inelegant in the way they're dusted with dry mud from the flowerbeds, scrapes of green chlorophyll and deeper scratches of red. He takes it John doesn't feel them. Its weird, Merle finds himself thinking again, that blood is a thing out here, that woundsexist. It's not like anything could kill them, though, not if they're already dead.
"What happens if I bring him some." John asks, faintly, his free hand crushing around the forgotten stems and cuttings. "That is to say, alyssum?"
"Are you asking me what would happen?" Merle is just looking at him, taking every inch of the way John's eyes flit across his tanned features, how his eyes focus on Merle's lips, just visible past his beard.
"I think they have to grow a little first." John responds, fingers lacing between Merle's own thick ones. "Can I trust you to keep it a secret?"
Merle laughs, heartily. "Are you asking me to keep a secret from my husband ?"
That word makes John falter for a moment, and Merle retracts his hand, just one instant of hesitation. John's smile twitches, downward, a brief glimpse into something deeper.
"You want to give him flowers, John. Why not start with these?" Merle plucks a rose out from between John's fingers. "These used to grow out by the bay."
"I know." He responds, as Merle tucks the flower behind John's ear, knuckle grazing just past the side of his head, through his hair. "I thought you'd appreciate them."
"Dav might too," Merle adds, softly. "He loves the beach just as much as me."
John pulls the flower out from behind his ear and brings it to his nose. The scent is subtle, but it is with pinpoint accuracy that he recognizes it. Merle is looking at him, and when he lifts his eyes to Merle, the dwarf closes his hand around John's fingers, clutching the one lone blossom. It blooms in their grip, sprouting a second bud.
"Go get 'em," Merle says, with a grin. "Knowing Dav he wouldn't know if someone was interested if they came up and told him so themselves."
Davenport was funny like that, Merle knew. Took him four years after the Day of Story and Song to even acknowledge they were good together. Took three times as long for Davenport to get the hint and marry him already.
Something like guilt blooms in Merle's gut knowing that John was thousands of light years away, looking for him, and he was busy on Faerun trying to convince Davenport to let himself be wooed. He waited, he did. For John. He tried to be optimistic, but life was waiting too. A life that was a hundred plus years in the making.
He wonders if, that day, the last time he saw Davenport for a whole decade, the gnome knew about the ring in his pocket. Before everything went belly up. He thinks, no. And maybe he thinks about what would have happened if he never met Hekubah, who, come to think of it, had the same orange-red-gold hair the gnome did. Well, back before it went an early gray. That was probably his fault too.
Merle waits, half hidden by the trellis, the green on green that wraps around it. If this is what it takes to get Davenport to face it all, then so be it. The gnome doesn't know how to grasp his own happiness, so its up to Merle.
He's on the porch, a hundred yards from the garden, coat collar turned up to block out the wind. Shoulders hunched upward, closer to the ridges of his long ears, and his hands sit in his lap. There's a stack of seed packets in his grip, sitting in his twisting cold fingers, red from the cold, legs close together, feet on a step below. Davenport's hair is loose, curling like steel and copper ribbons down around his shoulders.
When John approaches, he doesn't look up but he shifts over to give the human some space, silently, without acknowledging his presence. John perches on the top step, one long leg outstretched in front of him, reaching almost the bottom step. There's a small smattering of roses in his grasp, just enough to call it a bouquet. John's free hand comes up behind him, splayed against the old wood deck, and he's leaning back on it. So does the gnome. The warmth of the human's arm, longer than Merle's and thinner too, stands out, pressed to the curve of his spine. It takes Davenport a moment, but when he speaks, his voice is steady. "When Taako asked me what kind of flowers Merle would have wanted, I only thought of the flowers that grew outside our house." He lifts his head and rattles one of the packets. "Guess I was right in choosing the best suited plants for a sandy beach." That thought prompts a twitch upward of his lips under his moustache, and his tail is coiled around John's forearm, as if to keep him close. "It was Taako's idea."
John does not bring up the fact that Davenport chose his favorites to send to Merle. But he thinks on it, for a good long time, before he considers his options, and reaches out behind Davenport to pick up the flowers.
There's a flash of surprise when John brings forth a twisted vine, a full blossom, a half opened bud, and a broad dark green leaf that makes Davenport think of a long gone forest on a plane a hundred years away. His brow furrows at the thought. and then deeper at the realization this is for him .
"May I?" John asks, and his hands are far more elegant than the gnome ever gave him credit for. He figures this is what attracted Merle to him, more than the nihilism, more than the need to be taught something better, more than the new leaf color of his eyes. Davenport does not stop him, not when John lays a long hand across the rise of his chest, nor when he pins the boutonniere to the gnome's lapel, and then again when John's fingertips and palm smooth across the planes of his chest to set it even, just above where the burning of his heart has picked up again.
Davenport's eyes settle on some foreign thing in the distance, glazed over as he stares ever onward at the unending silver horizon, and he reaches to brush his fingers against the petals. They bend like silk under his touch, leaving behind a yellow tinge of pollen where his fingertips graze the centers. His movement is stiff, aching. His heart pounds in the hollow of his chest like a war drum. He's half-certain John can hear it from across the steps. "You did this? For me?"
John doesn't blink, instead focusing forward, settling in his seat beside Davenport, his gaze locked on the same thin line of silver where the sky meets the glittering sea. There is a silence that settles between them in lieu of an answer from the human, and Davenport is astonished to discover this silence is no throbbing wound. It sits between them, an anticipatory beat, before something bigger. The gnome does not want to broach the silence first, lest he shatter it prematurely.
"It was Merle's suggestion," John says, after one too many staccato heartbeats between them, lacing his fingers in his lap.
"Of course he put you up to this." Davenport hisses, pressing his palm to the flower. It crumples under his hand, flattened to his chest. The pin digs into the calloused flesh of the heel of Davenport's hand. His ears go back like a cat's, and his tail twitches like a whip somewhere behind the both of them. "This has his handiwork written all over it." He laughs but its bitter, dry, and aching. "Where did you get the pin?"
"Lucretia," comes the response, plainly, nearly flat. Davenport's breath catches in his throat at the name.
He grows somber, instantly, like the dousing of a flame. "Was it her idea too?" This time he doesn't answer, and Davenport closes his hand around the flower as if to tear it off, the pin plunging into the soft crease of his palm. He does not flinch.
"No. I don't-" John doesn't finish the sentence, but Davenport knows. With a lurch, he realizes what John was going to say. He doesn't talk about him with Lucretia. A bloom of sick satisfaction rises in him, and he turns his head away. John remains by his side, only moving to stretch his long legs and then fold them closer to himself. It makes Davenport think of a cricket or mantis, absurdly, all of sudden. Something like a surprised hysterical bark of a laugh escapes him despite himself, and he claps his hand over his mouth, giving John a wary look.
"What is it?"
"You're taller than Merle and I combined."
"I don't think that's necessarily true, but what of it?" John angles forward to get a good look at the gnome beside him.
"It's hyperbole," Davenport remarks, mouth sinking into a slight frown. "It's just… ridiculous. " He pulls his hand free of the pin's cold grasp in one swift yank, and presses his thumb to the spot of blood that wells up where it pierced him.
"Is it my height that catches your attention?"
Davenport digs his thumbnail into his palm to quell the sting of the minor puncture. "It's the face on top of your too tall body that manages to hold my attention."
"Oh?" There's amusement in John's voice when he turns toward the gnome, and Davenport is refusing to look at him. "And why is that?"
"I'm sure Merle told you."
A genuine laugh erupts from the human beside him, and it echoes off the sand around them, the beach deserted up to the garden, but he pushes the garden out of his thoughts. He doesn't want to think about Merle right now. Not even the dogs are around. Davenport isn't sure where they go sometimes. He figures they come when needed, and disappear when not.
Something in Davenport burns when John laughs, and the second he stops, the gnome makes move to get up. When he stands on the same step he's only inches taller than John seated.
"Does Merle do all your talking for you?"
Those words do slow him but probably not for the reason John hopes. Davenport stiffens, back ramrod straight. His hands close into tiny fists. "If you notice," Davenport begins, coldly, rounding on him, "My words were stolen from me a long time ago." When he turns to face John his expression is twisted in something that's reflected in John's own face. "Because of-of you . And your selfish need for the Light! And your selfish inability to see beyond your own suffering!" He shoves at John's chest, his shoulders, with each exclamation - the closest part he could reach.
Surprise shows vividly on John's face. He didn't think Merle told them that. He's not sure why he never considered it, that Merle was reporting back everything.
Davenport's voice breaks, and he points one painfully accusing finger at John. "If you-if, if the Hunger never happened, I-" He freezes, hands coming up to his face. "Lucretia never would have done her own damn plan without anyone's help, and I wouldn't have lost an entire decade! I wouldn't have been some - some pitiful thing, and Lucretia never would have had to care for me like some lost soul, and I never would have lost any part of myself, and-and-" He stops, chest heaving, and when he looks at John, when John holds his gaze, he's got his hair loose and streaming down his shoulders, and his throat is threatening to close, to cut off every possible emotion that threatens to spill. Davenport is shuddering and hyperventilating, holding in his breath, his tears, everything that is caught in the center of his chest, in the base of his throat. Davenport's hand encloses around his throat, where it aches. "Lucretia followed through." He swallows, and there's a thickness to his voice. "She had a plan, and she pulled it off, and some small part of me is so proud of her, but she should have trusted her family, trusted me -"
Davenport stops again. swallowing hard, his breathing a little easier, but it still hurts, and it sounds like it hurts. "Ten whole years. You'd think it was nothing compared to a century of running away. But I was gone . That Davenport that followed Lucretia blindly? That wasn't me. I don't know that Davenport. I can't even recognize him. I don't, I can't remember most of it." He says, in disbelief, shaking his head. "And I can't believe I'm telling all of this to you ."
The wind that drifts begins to billow, to bellow as it rises to a scream. Davenport's hair whips around his head, and when he looks at John there's something broken there in the human's expression. His eyes follow the curls of John's crow-feather hair being batted around by the wind when he finds he can't match John's gaze entirely. "There's some things even Merle doesn't know."
"And you're telling me." John intones. "I'm aware of the implications."
Davenport's eyes flit across his features, as if unwilling to land for too long where he has the possibility of maintaining eye contact. "Guess that's why the Hunger was so successful. People just tell you their problems."
John opens his mouth to respond, and glances up at him. "Some problems I can't fix."
Davenport scoffs, and crosses his arms over his chest, the box of seeds forgotten behind him. His body language suggests closing off, but his ears say otherwise. The half cocked, careful, vigilant position, and the way his tail curls around the length of John's forearm where he's leaning it back against the deck suggests to the contrary. When he leaps down, John lets him, and when the curled pressure of his tail leaves John's wrist, he turns to watch him go.
It's almost on accident that Davenport spots Merle, and when he starts toward him it's with a purposeful deliberate measured stride. Merle knows that walk - that's his taking care of business walk. A gentle smile crosses his mouth at the thought, and he combs his fingers through his beard, just taking in the sight of Davenport taking stiff steps away from the human. Somewhere inside, he knows Davenport's almost there. He's stepping away because he's flustered . Merle knows this, he's seen this a few times. He's caused it a few more.
Merle stands, steady as ever, in the garden gateway. Davenport pauses, hesitating, the second he sees him. His feet dig in to the sand, sticky and wet, and his legs feel too heavy to move.
"I could hear the whole thing, you know." Merle says, wearily. His hands are stuffed into his pockets, and he's toeing the mud in his sage colored galoshes. His beard blows faintly in the wind, and he wears a bleak smile. "Pan, I bet the whole island heard you. I missed that Dav, the one fit to blow like a teakettle if anything made him mad. Think the ocean put out that fire that burns in your chest?"
Something like a smile passes over the gnome's expression, the quickest quirk upward of his lip under his drooping moustache, accompanied by a snort, almost a laugh, and then it's gone again. "Anger is tiring, Merle. I'm tired. I'm tired of hurting." He covers the boutonniere, over the left side of his chest, over his heart and some part of him chokes up.
"Figured talking to someone who didn't emotionally have any horses in the race so to speak would help."
"Thank you, Merle." Davenport says, and he's not sure if he means it. He extends his hand, and it closes around Merle's wrist. He squeezes, gently, and Merle brings his other arm up and around the gnome's narrow waist, gathering Davenport to him. "I still don't understand how you're so at ease here." He murmurs, leaning in toward Merle's comforting presence, tucking his head in close to Merle's temple, and his fingers come up to curl into Merle's beard. His tail, too, coils around Merle, almost protectively, his ears folded back all the way.
"I'm a homebody, Dav, you know that, more than anybody else. Except for when, y'know, that home's got a wife that resents me for being in love with a half recalled shadow, or kids I can't relate to because I can't remember how to love somebody I spent every waking moment with." Merle shrugs his shoulders, hand picking at the fabric of Davenport's coat along his back, despite the unwelcome painful truth of his words. His words are not bitter, though Davenport can sense where they ought to be, where they would have been if he was in Merle's shoes.
That difference between them is what hurts the most. Merle would have forgiven Lucretia. The same way he's forgiven John for killing him half a hundred times.
Davenport doesn't know if he can, but the way John put his hands on him elicits a shiver of a different kind. It turns his stomach, and when he thinks about it, he's more angry at himself than anyone else.