The Second Life and Adventures of Benjamin Finn

by Lourdes23

Sometimes good men commit terrible wrongs. Sometimes even Heroes need to be saved. The question is will she let him save her, and the world, when he's the reason the Hero needs a savior of her own? The story of Ben Finn's return to Albion as told by Ben.

5. In Which the Author Finds Forgiveness

The Second Life and Adventures of Benjamin Finn:

Chapter 5: In Which the Author Finds Forgiveness Insufferable

It was abundantly clear to Wren and I that our time for research had come to a premature end, for every moment that we held up with our ancient books and scriptures was one in which our enemy was free to act without resistance. And so we left Jasper and the Brightwall scholars with the arduous task of piecing together the clues from the Auroran texts while we took to the far more satisfying chore of hunting down offending heads to lop off; Wren being temporarily blinded by the need for vengeance while I simply needed a way to abate the tingle that had once more taken up residence within my spine.

Fast Travel to Bowerstone Castle seemed almost blasé in comparison to learning of the danger we faced, and I found myself able to move with a purpose the moment my boots met with the manicured lawns of the gardens. Immediately we were set upon by the same two lieutenants I had encountered during my last visit to the castle, both of whom looked bedraggled and none too energetic.

"Your Majesty," the taller bloke panted with a stiff bow, and it was then that I noticed the bloody tear to his jacket along his ribcage, "we've staved off the invasion of Sir Walter's tomb, but I must inf-"

"I know," our Hero Queen interrupted in what Walter and I had once jokingly deemed her 'working voice' which she adapted while holding court or addressing folk in the capacity of Hero or Queen. "They took my mother's casket."

"Not the casket, Majesty," the soldier bobbed again, "just her body." Enraged light flared briefly from the markings upon Wren's skin and I was quite surprised though equally so relieved to see that neither of the men shied away; it seemed a true fight had delivered onto these soldiers something they had desperately needed – a backbone for each. "Had I sent men to stop the theft we would have lost our hold on Sir Walter." The taller of the two went on, lifting his chin as though preparing to accept a currently unknown form punishment for his failure. "It was clear we had to choose between the two, and so I made the decision. I am prepared to face whatever consequences you deem appropriate."

"Good." Wren affirmed with little to no tolerance for delay, it appeared, resulting in the compulsive need rising within me to defend these two men until she continued with, "Lieutenant Turner, you are herby promoted to the rank of Captain for your exemplary judgment and are subsequently assigned to guarding the body of Sir Walter Beck. This is imperative, Captain, for the entity known as the Crawler is still imprisoned within."

I might have thought the newly promoted Captain Turner had thereupon bled out from the wound at his side had the ground at his feet not remained pristinely unstained, for he staggered slightly as the parlor drained from his features.

"The Craw-" the man corrected his slight break in propriety with a guttural clearing of his throat followed then by straightening, saluting and bowing once more. "Yes Your Majesty. Thank you Your Majesty. As your captain, ma'am, I must report that we took casualties during the fight, and I find myself short of hands. I request reinforcements to replace the able bodies I lost during the last invasion."

"Granted. I will call Captain Morris and the Swift Brigade back from clearing up the balverine packs straying out from Silverpines. They will support you to their fullest, but Captain Morris will maintain command over his men and will answer to none but me, make no mistake."

"Yes ma'am."

"The Swift Brigade?" The oddest tightening in my chest responded to that familiar name. My second family; it had never occurred to me that they would still be intact. Wren seemed to sense my reaction, for I caught her glancing at me from the corner of her eye.

"It would have been a waste to break up such a well oiled machine. They were trained by the best; I knew I could count on them." It was here that she hesitated, as though debating on whether or not to further brief me on the status of my former unit. Then, for reasons still unknown to me this day, she continued. "Morris tried to refuse the position, you know; they all agreed it should be your command. I hope you won't mind having to wait to make that choice until after our work together is accomplished."

Another failure I had never anticipated. Swifty's men had been intensely loyal to the major, who had managed through no small effort to forge strong ties of comradery between the men in his charge. Despite the trust and responsibility I'd been openly given by Swift I'd never considered the men's loyalty might have extended to me through association. And here Wren was, making it sound as though my dereliction to my post had nothing to do with my sabbatical and everything to do with my first and foremost duty to the crown.

Thankfully Wren either had not noticed the onset of my melancholy or decided that we'd wasted enough time talking, for she was moving off towards her mother's vault without further commands, and remained silent until we reached the catacombs.

Within the warm glow of candles and torchlight two golden caskets flanked a massive statue overshadowing a stairway to caves beyond; both containers having been opened and the coverings over the bodies within removed – though only one corpse remained and had been left virtually untouched, the skeletal face grinning up at us from within its resting place. What struck me as strange was how small the body was; the size of the tomb implied someone of great stature would have been housed within.

"Aunt Rose," Wren's voice was softer than it had been back in the gardens, and she reached down to pull the shroud over the girl as though tucking her into bed for the night. "Mother's older sister; murdered in front of my mother when they were children. Aunt Rose all but raised my mother when they lived on the streets, you know. It took years, but mother eventually discovered where the murderer hid the body and brought her here – but only after killing the bastard."

Of course there would not have been a husband to bury beside the old queen. It was common knowledge that Logan and Wren's father, a greedy man by the name of Lord Eugene who had been born into Bowerstone's highest nobility, had divorced the Hero Queen after years of questionable behavior on his part. Dalliances and gambling marred his reputation after a time, though nothing of an outright illegal nature could ever be tied directly to the man. There had been very few blemishes to the Old Hero Queen's reputation, but I remember my mother gossiping with the other women of Gunk when the old queen's husband unexpectedly ended the marriage. That Eugene had drained a fair portion of the coffers and never returned to see his children had been a scandal the old queen had never been able to live down, and she'd never attempted to marry again after that, despite the abundance of willing candidates.

Lost to thought for an extended interval in which I could only assume she had spent reflecting upon her family history, Wren next turned to me with such a look of pain in her eyes I wondered what she had suddenly recalled to have caused such suffering. "I'm sorry Ben. I should never have overreacted the way I did."

My derisive humor could not be contained, even in the face of self destruction, and I found the words escaping, dulled only by the hushed quality of my voice in this sacred place. "You? Overreact? Bah! Nonsense!"

"No, I mean it." She pressed on, leaving me with the distinct feeling that there was more to her protests than I'd first surmised. "I hated you Ben, or at least I wanted to. In truth I expected more from you than you'd ever given to any woman, all because I thought… No. What I thought doesn't matter. You lost everyone you ever loved, and so you spent your latter years holding people at arm's length. I knew this; you never made a secret of it. It was arrogant of me to think that I should be the exception."

And so I learned exactly what had preoccupied my companion's thoughts so completely, and it came to mind all too quickly that this was not how I wanted to earn her forgiveness. She was attempting to accept that I cared nothing for her, when nothing could have been further from the truth.

"Now hold on just a second," I felt myself rapidly growing confused and not a little annoyed with the sudden and inexplicable turn in events, no matter that they were at last turning in my favor. "You're right to think you deserved better. If I'd wanted to distance myself from you I should have left well enough alone, instead of... " I found it impossible to utter the words and give name to the grievous wrong I had committed against her – an infringement she was attempting to excuse away for my benefit I realized, much to my disgust. "Queens don't carry on like that, Wren. Neither do Heroes."

"Had much experience with conversing with both types, have you?" She was making an attempt at levity, albeit a poor one, but for once I could not bring myself to rise to her banter.

I chose not to answer, having barely managed to swallow my ire with her for being so foolishly self-deprecating or with myself for being so selfishly weak in ways I'd never before considered. Instead I left the casket of Wren's child aunt at that moment and followed the footprints in the thin layer of dust upon the floor that lead into the caverns beneath the statue. Never mind that I was suddenly being granted the absolution I had been chasing since being reunited with my estranged friend so harshly – if it was to come at the expense of her sense of worth I decided then and there that I wanted no part of it.

A freshly fallen body in the path caught my attention and, attempting to lead myself from my current brooding, I bent to examine the man; the tattoo upon his hand easily identified him as a follower of the strange religious sect we hunted. Yet it wasn't the bullet wounds at his shoulder and arm that had killed him, nor had the great gaping tear at his back. Half of his throat had been torn out; I'd seen enough wounds of this nature to know what it was that had killed the man, and was reaching for Briar's Blaster before Chickenbane announced loudly that we were not alone in the cave.

Yet I'd been distracted by my thoughts, and the tingling warning in my spine had been coming on so frequently of late that to my discredit I'd all but ignored it in this place. And so it was that I found myself sprawled on my stomach, a solid weight pressing into my shoulders as scorching breath and saliva met my neck. I waited for the killing teeth, knowing I'd never raise my pistol in time while at the same moment pondering the ignoble death that was upon me, when my assailant was violently dislodged from my person. I rolled onto my back without hesitation, raising my gun to see Wren behind me, her elbows hooked beneath the heavily muscled arms of a balverine, Will markings burning brightly in the murky cavern light, while her captive screamed and gnashed ferocious teeth at her straining throat. Beyond her back more of the monstrosities were coming, yet I had not enough time to count their numbers.

I immediately emptied the contents of my pistol into the beast's face, splattering Wren in its blood and brain matter and was on my feet again, pressing my back to hers as I worked to reload my weapon whilst she held our attackers at bay with fire and bullets; her voice nearly obliterated by the sounds of gunfire at my back.

"Balls! Ben are you alright?"

"Oh yeah," I growled, "I'm just bloody fantastic! How about you?"

"Never been better!" The cavern flared a brilliant orange as she hurtled a massive fireball, and somewhere before her a balverine howled in agony. "You about done back there?"

"Oh, you know, just admiring the view!" With more aggression than prudent, I thrust the last bullet into the chambers and sped away from the Hero's back, pulling my trusty Swift Irregular free and adding to the upheaval of battle with cracking reports as I unloaded rifle and pistol into two of my attackers; the third thrown from the nearby precipice by Wren's Force Push spell, though not before it ripped a burning gash into my shoulder blade. "Looks to me like Morris missed a few!"

"Less talking, more shooting!" Surrounded, Albion's queen slapped a palm into the ground at her feet, throwing the creatures in every direction with the all-encompassing variety of Force Push that stopped just shy of where I made my stand, yet more of the fur covered fiends came in quickly to take their place; there were too many to escape this place unscathed and Wren's knees buckled when, overrun, she took the full force of a balverine's claws, twisting to spare her throat and taking great tears to her arm and chest instead.

I've never been the naive sort, and had always been aware that Wren had been injured during previous battles. I recall with vivid clarity discovering during our fateful affair a particularly frightening scar just beneath her left breast that spoke of how close Albion had come once to losing its last remaining Hero. Yet seeing the marks of old battles on her skin and watching her fall to the ground in person were two altogether different things, and I admit that in this case I panicked; bellowing out her name and launching bullets at anything which moved in her vicinity. With the final hail of gunfire, and her attackers' attention now drawn to me, I reached for my ammunition belt and found it missing from my chest, at last having to resort to the sword at my back, slicing at the creatures madly while trying to avoid their piercing, shredding reach only just enough to keep them focused on pursuing me.

"Come on you blighted bags of fleas! Fresh meat this way!" I taunted loudly while backing away from where Wren had dropped, knowing well that while the words themselves would be lost on their animal minds the concept would reach them. "Wren! You might want to think about getting up now!"

I was able to at last get an accurate count of my enemies' number, for at present all eight of the beasts circled me, snarling and lashing out with their bloodied nails and rank smelling muzzles, while I was forced to disregard the killing claws in favor of warding off those contaminated teeth which would have me begging for death if they found my flesh. As the balverines took turns slicing ragged tears into my arms and torso I fought back with everything I could spare; one received the edge of my blade across its throat, while another must have lost an eye to the heel of my boot when it thought to take me out at my knees. A third balverine swallowed my blade as it lunged and fell back impaled, wrenching the blood slicked pommel from my grasp.

"Bloody hell." Five more of the upright mongrels remained and, hurriedly bleeding out onto the cavern floor, I had neither sword nor firearm to defend what little life I had left.

Before my eyes one of the monster's heads exploded in a spray of bone and flesh, its body tumbling away granting me a clear view of a brightly glowing Wren kneeling upon the stone not twenty paces away with my Swift Irregular planted firmly against her good shoulder. The torn leather strap of my ammunition belt was clamped firmly between her teeth while her damaged arm hung awkwardly as she fumbled for bullets from one of the belt pouches.

A follow through shot from my pilfered rifle blew a ragged hole through the chest of the next closest animal. Unsteady glowing fingers reloaded the weapon and Will markings flared anew as two more of the animals fell before her flourish, having no time to finish redirecting their murderous intent and save their lives.

The final beast must have known its doom was close at hand for the balverine leapt impossibly high into the air, its claws scrambling for purchase on the rock wall above our heads.

"And where do you think you're going, you great walking hairball?" I asked and felt a surge of relief when the ringing crack behind me signaled the end of our impromptu struggle. I stepped back and watched the howling mass of limbs break upon the rocks before me, falling silent on impact. "Well, that went well, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh just smashingly." the Hero Queen murmured at my back and I returned to her side, staggering to my knees and accepting a vial of noxious red liquid that tasted like sweat, resembled congealing blood, yet patched up wounds better than any bandages or sutures; that is if one could afford the potions, outlandishly priced as they'd become. Wren grimaced after knocking back a vial of her own and rotated her shoulder gingerly as it knit up as if by magic. "Lovely job you did back there by the way, tricking the balverines into thinking you were a twit when you let them toss you down onto your face like that." There was no outright annoyance in her voice, though previous experience had taught me Wren could be decidedly deceptive when it came to her anger, and given my pre-balverine state of mind I was at the moment none too particular about what sort of reaction I elicited.

"You know me," I mumbled, "I've never been big on the whole 'looking intelligent' act. And who needs brains when you have a really big gun, right?"

And it was then that I heard something I had wondered if I would ever bring about in her again: Wren's laughter, nearly inaudible beneath her breath but still clear enough at such close proximity, which then lead into something even more amazing – an affectionate old taunt I'd last heard beneath Walter's statue over two years prior. With a shake of her head my old friend smiled ruefully and muttered for my ears alone. "Shut up, Ben."

There was no being cross with such a gesture I realized all too late, and could not hold back the seditious grin which broke free despite my better judgment, deciding that there would be time enough to set her straight on our previous disagreement later.

"Whatever you say, pal."

XXXX

According to Wren, there were only two means by which our culprits could have easily departed from the catacombs; the closest exit being one of the strange Hero platforms she referred to as a Cullis Gate. As it was all but guaranteed that the thieves could not activate the gate which lead straight into the heart of her Sanctuary this left only the Bowerstone Industrial Sewers in which to abscond with her mother's body.

At last we reached the large grate which swung open to reveal one of Industrial's canals and, not to our surprise, a pair of heavily armed and even more heavily muscled men whose villager garb did little to disguise the fighter's glint in both of their gazes. Former members of the resistance, of this I had no doubt, for each were bowing to Wren with the stiff movements of men not quite accustomed to dealing with those of stature or proper refinement.

"Page said you'd probably come this way," one of the men rumbled. "She said to relay to you that she's still searchin' but from what she can see the trail's already cold. Beggin' your pardon, Your Majesty, but you look like you just took a nasty turn."

With a dismissive flick of her wrist, Wren brushed off the spoken concern, shaking her head ruefully at the news. "Leave it to Page to know exactly what's going on in her town," the Hero Queen's compliment of the new mayor's keen sense of observation was not without ire though, for with the news we'd effectively lost all hope of finding our quarry.

"If Your Majesty would like, I can take you to her," the first man offered and with a silent nod clearly ordered his fellow to remain on guard at our exit. "Beggin' your pardon, but I think you'll still manage to surprise her. Page knew you'd come, but I don't think she'd planned to see The Captain with you."

"It was Captain Finn who brought this danger to my attention. Without him I believe we would all be in far greater danger."

"Be that as it may, I daresay The Captain won't receive as warm a welcome as you. Beggin' your pardon, sir, but since the moment you stepped off the docks some weeks ago Page has been spittin' scattershot whenever she hears your name – and given how popular you are now she's been spittin' too often for our taste."

It was here that I once again was able to piece together the facts without having been outright told.

"Page knows, I take it?" It had not been necessary to direct my question to my companion specifically, nor to elaborate as to what it was Page had knowledge of; Wren knew exactly what it was I was asking of her.

"Yes."

And there it was, and I found myself suddenly almost as apprehensive as I had been standing before the throne room doors all those weeks ago.

And yet, when we had crossed the town and reentered the sewers at another hatch, the woman we at last found seemed more shocked than angered at my presence, gazing wide eyed at me before turning that same stunned gaze upon her queen.

"He's here?" She asked in amazement, completely foregoing any form of a proper greeting for her queen. "With you? I don't understand. What-"

"There will be time for all that later, Page," Wren blurted hurriedly to my relief, for Page's tirades were all too quick in coming on, and once started they were not easily quelled by anyone. "First we have something important to discuss."

Truth be told, I had never seen Page look quite so confounded – the woman wore confidence in much the same way a noblewoman wore her powdered wigs. Clearly Page was expecting something closer to what I had encountered in the throne room, though the woman mustered herself better than any soldier I'd ever served with.

"All right," she responded with a bracing nod and a straightening of her spine. "I'm listening. Let's have it."

XXXX

Okay, so let me go on record as saying that my history for marriages in the Fable franchise sucks. In the second game my husband left me (though in the game he took the kid) and it took a while for the other NPCs to stop whispering behind my character's back and muttering rude things at her. I quit trying to marry her off after a while. Ugly, ungrateful jerks… *sniff*

And when I beat the second game I chose the good ending, and gave up the chance to get my loved ones back to save the innocents. So Rose remained dead. (And I would have found her and given her a proper burial if I were Sparrow.)

Thus an explanation for the two tombs in the catacombs came to me.