A New Old New Life

[Ram]

Ram stared at the ceiling. The TV was playing high on the wall of his hospital room but he wasn’t really seeing it. Or the tiles on the ceiling for that matter. His mind was elsewhere. Circe, Gerrit, and Titania had hurried off, leaving Ram bleeding on the floor.

All according to plan. Except that having to be axed in the chest… twice… had not been part of the plan. Neither had the second man (who was currently a couple rooms down) being there been part of the plan. Or seeing bolt cutter being used on his belt that hung suspended in midair till the sun broke the horizon. Ram was getting worried. His bluster with Titania before was hard to hold onto when she wasn’t in the room telling him he couldn’t do it.

Now there was only his mind to say that and he had a harder time getting angry at it. Or angry at all now that the fight was done. With the threat of death and the need to kill gone, his body was catching up to him. So were his thoughts. The battlemind gone, the narrow view expanded.

How was he going to explain what happened to the police? How about the belt? Would that be a problem? Was the guy even alive? Had Circe killed him? And what (the worst thought of all) was he going to say when…

She entered. She looked panicked, scared and disheveled like she’d woken up from bed and hurried straight here. Even as relief washed over her face when she saw he was awake and Ram smiled, he felt a pit in his stomach.

“Hi Ashley,” he said to his wife.

She broke down into sobbing laughs to hear his voice and he wasn't sure how he should feel.

[Ram]

The police weren’t as bad as he thought. It was disturbingly easy to put himself in the fetch’s position. Not knowing who was attacking him. Or why. That he was having a hard time remembering things. Describing Gerrit and Ram as large men with white shirts over their heads. Hearing shots below the stairs.

Being scared he’d be killed and never see his family again.

Ram realized his hands were shaking. From… quilt?

He clenched his fist.

No, he didn’t know why he’d been attacked or what they wanted he said again as he cast his eyes down at the ax mark in his torso.

The detective’s looked at each other. Ram wasn’t sure they believed him but it didn’t matter. What would they suspect? That he hadn’t been attacked. He had been the attacker. That Ram had murdered an ignorant tool and the Gentry. You’d have to be insane to think that.

[Ram]

Ram felt like he was in a daze of hypervigilance. Trying to take in everything but with there being so much he wasn’t even sure where to start. Ashley probably sensed it. She kept telling the kids… his kids… to stop let Ram rest.

And he would have liked to. He would have liked to lay in bed, letting his wounds heal.

However, as he heard the cars pull away he knew he couldn’t. Not if he wanted this to work. Not if he wanted to spare them the pain of a stranger stepping into the place of their father and husband. Not if he wanted to pay of the debt of guilt at killing an innocent man. A dangerous, false, Fairie-made man. But innocent in the end.

Ram groaned as he pushed himself up, feeling the stitches pull against the crags in his skin. It would scar soon enough, but until then it would hurt like… well an ax to the chest.

Undeterred he started walking the house. Opening drawers and closets. Taking out and refolding clothes. Looking over bookshelves in the hopes of scrapbooks and journals.

He got to the bathroom and was looking around when he realized he wasn’t even sure which toothbrush was supposed to be his. He sighed and looked at himself in the mirror, letting a skin of glamour form over his mein till he was looking at his face. Michael’s face.

He felt suddenly sick with pain, guilt, fear, sorrow, and desire. The ogre vomited into the sink, forced to lean against the mirror with one hand against the waves of nausea and revulsion. When it finally passed and he looked up again, there was a sharp shard of chipped glass in his palm. Blood flowed from a cut and Ram could feel it being pulled toward the mirror.

If he wanted this to work… the Wyrd would have its price.