Title: The Crippled Man
Day/Theme: 23rd December/"What's the use of feet"
Series: Emily of New Moon
Character/Pairing: Dean, Dean/Emily, implied Dean/Douglas Starr
Rating: PG
Dean travels.
He wends his way through hill and dale, sails over sea and river and drinks in the sight of seven hundred wonders of the world. He trudges through mud and sand and snow to discover the wisdom of ancient times. He finds, staring up at the Pyramids, that for entire moments at a time he can forget.
But there is always something that reminds him of her, some idle comment in a hotel lounge or a quick toss of a dark head that catches his eye. Or worst of all, picking up a glossy magazine and seeing her smile in an illustration by Teddy Kent. He wonders if Emily ever did tell Kent she loved him and for days afterward he cannot help but picture them kissing. The image is burned into his brain; that and Emily's lost expression when he turned to leave the garden.
The darkest moments are before the dawn – literally. His "white nights", his "three o'clocks" make him fight the urge to bite his pillow and choke a scream into the softness. In Egypt, the morning light should be warm and gentle; instead it cuts into his room with a harsh gleam and he can't stand it.
The letters that he writes hurt only a little less than the ones he receives, particularly the ones postmarked Blair Water, P. E. I.. He reads the chatty, news-filled missives from his cousin Mary with agonised anxiety; waiting for the careless "Did you know the Murrays are having a wedding? That Emily Starr and the Kent boy" to rip out his heart again. Not for Jarback Priest the careful, trained carving of human sacrifice, not even a warrior's trophy. He was too weak for anyone to want to feast on his virtues.
Even the cool, impersonal ones such as "Sir, your balance is overdrawn" irritate him to fever pitch, because damn it, they just don't know. They don't know what being Tantalus is like: to have the vital fruits of life almost within your grasp when they slip away into the hands of some uncultured boy. They don't understand why someone might just not care about what his bank statements look like when he's wandering the world a broken man.
Then again, he's been a broken man since the day he was born with a twisted spine. The twisted smile came later, after one too many hissed "Jarback" and worse, "The poor dear". There was something in his hometown's water that added pity to women's eyes and disgust to men's and that was why he spent so much time away. Emily had been a medicine against the ills of primitive Blair Water, a shield to his soul as her father had been before her. He'd loved both of them for seeing Dean Priest, warped and bitter and taking him for what he was.
Like father, like daughter, as Emily had never said but had, Dean knew, been proud to think. It was truer than she knew. True that Dean Priest had loved them and true that neither of them had loved Jarback enough in return.