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I thought I'd finally try this pair. They, ah, they're more fluffy than my usual. Heh. This is sort of a combination of a couple of kinkmeme prompts, one about Segundus and Childermass on a quest in Faerie, and one about Childermass with a sword in his hand. I'm not sure how well it hews to either one, but it's too late now. Heh.
Title: The Bramble Path
Rating: PG
Fandom: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV)
Characters/Pairings: John Segundus, John Childermass, Mr Honeyfoot gets crashed into in passing. Childermass/Segundus
Summary: John Segundus and John Childermass find themselves trapped in a dark dream of a faerie forest together, and must escape before sunrise or risk never waking again. The fact that they somewhat fall in love over the course of it is largely an accident
Wordcount: 7613
Warnings/Notes: Dreams, quests, faerie forests, magic, swords, comrades in arms, falling in love, violence, fluff and silliness, reunions, kissing
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: The Bramble Path
Rating: PG
Fandom: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV)
Characters/Pairings: John Segundus, John Childermass, Mr Honeyfoot gets crashed into in passing. Childermass/Segundus
Summary: John Segundus and John Childermass find themselves trapped in a dark dream of a faerie forest together, and must escape before sunrise or risk never waking again. The fact that they somewhat fall in love over the course of it is largely an accident
Wordcount: 7613
Warnings/Notes: Dreams, quests, faerie forests, magic, swords, comrades in arms, falling in love, violence, fluff and silliness, reunions, kissing
Disclaimer: Not mine
The Bramble Path
John Segundus looked around himself curiously. He was standing outside, in the middle of the night, in what appeared to be an unfamiliar thorny woodland. This was, to say the least, not a usual circumstance, and it was made only more so by the fact that he couldn't quite remember how he'd gotten here. He was almost certain that the last thing he remembered doing was going to bed, and the fact that he was still wearing his nightshirt gave some credence to this memory. So how in blazes had he ended up out here?
Something stirred among the brambles around him. Not a small rustling, such as you might get from a startled nighttime animal. No, something slower and much more deliberate. John swallowed, looking uneasily around, and reflected that perhaps the question of how he'd gotten here might be somewhat less important than the question of how he was going to get back. The sooner the better, perhaps. As soon as possible, even.
He cast around himself but, to the extent there were paths at all through this wood, they all looked rather much the same, and none of them particularly inviting. He could not go wandering about willy nilly, however. He wasn't sure why not, given how thoroughly lost he already was, but some instinct told him it would be a bad idea. He might be lost, but that was no reason to lose his head as well. John Segundus was a sensible man, and had perhaps a few more options open to him than the average bewildered traveller.
He closed his eyes, ignoring with some difficulty the increase in the rustling this caused, and began to turn slowly in place, trying to focus on his ... other senses. Something was wrong here, something magical, and it seemed to him that finding the centre of it would, at the very least, let him know just how much trouble he was really in, and at the most it would hopefully show him the way out of said trouble.
There. He opened his eyes, flinching a bit as something seemed to dart back out of his line of sight, too quickly to be caught. He ignored it, with somewhat strained nerves, and focused instead on the sensation of magic. Well, the concentration of it, at least. There was magic all around him, so thick it was almost syrupy. The whole wood seemed drowned in it. In this direction, though, there was something sharper. Something smaller and bitter and focused, and it seemed to him as good a destination as any at present. He had an idea that if he could only reach it before the ... the rustling things caught up with him, then he might have half a chance of being safe. It was a flimsy sort of hope to cling to, but it was not as though he had much else.
He set out, therefore, walking with what he hoped was a confident stride between dark, twisted trunks and low knots of brambles. They seemed to lean over him. The trees. The path seemed to shrink around him, not because it had always been small, but because the trees didn't like him, and wished very much for him to know about it. John hunched his shoulders apologetically, and picked up his pace a little to hurry past them all the faster. It didn't seem to do much good, but at least they did not swipe at him or try to trip him up, which he had the impression was not beyond the bounds of possibility.
After a moment or two, the path seemed to widen again ahead of him. He saw it, saw a vague glow of pale light up ahead, like moonlight through an open space, and nearly ran the last few yards to the offered clearing. Anything, he thought, would be better than the oppressive dislike of these trees. Or almost anything, but that magic he'd sensed was up ahead as well, and while it was much more bitter than anything else around them, it also didn't seem to hate the sense of him quite so much.
As he broke into the moonlit space, he realised why. A figure spun about in the centre of it, a man in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, feet incongruously bare, and John Segundus came abruptly face to face with an equally bewildered John Childermass. He squeaked, in surprise and no little relief, and made very short work of the intervening space. He pulled up before he actually crashed into the man, he didn't think Childermass would appreciate that, but he was so entirely happy to see familiar features in this dismal place that he found he could not quite maintain the proper distance. He stopped barely more an arm's length from the man, and found himself beaming somewhat inanely at him.
Childermass, for his part, blinked at him in some consternation for a second, before an angry sort of worry settled across his features instead, and he crossed his arms just exactly the way John's old schoolmaster used to. Privately, John thought that Childermass made a better show of it. Certainly old Mr Crofton's disapproval had never wilted him so very thoroughly in so very short a time. Childermass could do withering like no-one else in the world.
"Mr Segundus," the man greeted shortly, looking him up and down with a fierce sort of look, one that reminded John very abruptly that he was standing there with only his nightshirt on. Oh, good god. At least it was long enough to be mostly decent, but of all the times to stumble across Childermass ...
Oh, not the point, John! Worry about your attire some other time, you do have rather more pressing worries at the moment!
"Mr Childermass," he said, nodding back a little before glancing around them warily. The clearing was not so very big, and those dreadful trees still loomed blackly around them, the thorns and brambles creeping out from their bases to threaten the moonlit space. The rustling was back, and in larger volume, and it seemed that Childermass heard it as well. He cast a wary, jaundiced eye around their surroundings himself, before looking back at John grimly.
"... I'm not entirely certain," he said quietly, "but I think we may be dreaming, Mr Segundus. I do not remember how I came here, and unless we were somehow snatched from our beds through all of Starecross Hall's protections, I can think of no better explanation."
John swallowed, nodding. He had begun to suspect as much as well. It did explain a great deal, not least their nightclothes, their lack of memory, and the drowning sense of magic around them. That it could well be a dream was not so much of a comfort as many people might think. He had learned very well from his time with Lady Pole that dreams might be far more dangerous than the waking world, and not least when they were steeped in such thick magic as now surrounded them. In Faerie, and he did think that was where they were, dreams were not at all the same safe things they were at home.
"I ... I had begun to think as much," he agreed, and grimaced faintly. "I confess, I had not yet thought what to do about it. I sensed your magic, and thought it best to come here before anything else."
Childermass raised an eyebrow at that. "My magic?" he asked, and it was not sceptical so much as interested. "You knew it for mine? I'd thought you seemed too surprised to see me for that."
John flushed, and ducked his head a little. "I did not know it for yours," he confirmed. "It only felt so different from what surrounds us that I thought it must be either a solution or at least a better illustration to my problem. Either way, it seemed best to at least investigate it."
He braced himself for some mockery at this, some saying about fools rushing in and so forth, but strangely it did not seem forthcoming. Childermass only looked thoughtfully at him for a moment, before shrugging the concern away.
"No worse a thought than many," he said lightly. "It would seem that you became aware first, then, for I had only ... arrived, shall we say, just a few moments before you came running up here. That is suggestive, perhaps. There may be a reason for the order of our arrival."
John blinked at him. "Perhaps I was simply sleeping longer," he offered absently, and flushed when Childermass looked at him. "Well, I mean. You are rather more dressed than I am still. You do not look as if you had quite made it to bed yet, whereas I have been asleep some time, as my attire rather shows." He gestured down himself, without quite wishing himself to do so, since it drew attention to something he would rather not draw attention to. He felt somewhat compelled to justify his half-thought observation, though. He did not wish to appear ... well. Any sillier than he undoubtedly already did.
Again, though, Childermass did not mock him. Perhaps he simply had larger concerns at the moment, but still. He was being quite civil tonight, as far as such things went when it came to Childermass. He was being quite friendly altogether.
"Fair enough," he said, clipped and short. He was still Childermass, after all. His attention was cast more around them than at John, however. He was watching the brambles with lucid, suspicious eyes, and John had the impression that Childermass was seeing rather more in them than he had earlier. Not, he thought, because Childermass was more sensitive exactly. It was more that Childermass did not dart his eyes around in a panic. He swept them coolly across the darkness, a calm, flat study that seemed to know in advance where danger might lurk. Whereas John had been the hunted, Childermass seemed more the hunter, or at least a calmer, more dangerous sort of prey.
"... Can you see them?" John asked him quietly. Childermass glanced at him, an eyebrow half-raised in question, and John shrugged uneasily. "I do not know what they are. I only sensed them moving around me. I, ah. I think they were hunting me. Forcing me to move, to come here. It was only an impression, though. They did not let me see them."
"Actually, I think they did," Childermass said, though mildly still. His eyes moved back towards the trees and the shadows, an odd little smirk at the corner of his mouth. "You saw them. You just did not see them move. I believe our hunters are standing in plain sight about us."
John blinked, a shiver crawling up his spine as he followed the man's gaze. But of course. Of course, they had not liked him at all, had they? He had sensed that about them.
"... The trees?" he asked softly, just for confirmation, and Childermass nodded shortly.
"Aye. And the brambles. And maybe a few stray beasts as well. We stand on unfriendly ground, John Segundus. We were left stranded in unfriendly territory, I believe."
Which rather begged the question, John thought hysterically, of who exactly had done the stranding. It was not the most important question, however, even still. The question of how they had come here was still far, far lower in importance than the one of how they were getting out again. Childermass' presence, however comforting, did not change that very much.
The thought did prompt another, perhaps more pertinent one, though. They'd been stranded here by someone, a person or entity that had stolen them from their dreams and brought them to these woods. It would have been for a purpose. Even if it had only been meant as a malicious sort of a game, there would still have been a point to it. A set of conditions, a reason to bring them where they had been brought. They were in Faerie, had likely been brought by the inhabitants of same. That meant this would, in all likelihood, follow some of the rules of fairy tales. A test, or a quest. Something of that nature.
"... Sunrise," he said, rather suddenly from the way Childermass looked at him. "Or three sunrises. We've got to find our way out before then. It's a test. They always are in fairy tales. You have to prove your worth before a certain time runs out, or you'll ..."
He trailed off. He did not want to say the words 'be lost forevermore'. Besides, he did not need to. Childermass had very visibly followed his train of thought, if the grimace and the following expression of grim purpose were anything to go by. They had been stolen from their dreams and brought to Faerie. It stood somewhat to reason that they had to find their way out again before those same dreams came to an end, or risk them never doing so. Reasons in the rhyme. That was the sort of logic that magic, and faerie magic in particular, seemed to run on.
"Well then," Childermass said, very softly. His stance had changed, John noticed. Where before it had been wary, now it was purposeful, both feet grounded firmly in spite of their nakedness. His hand had come up, touching lightly at his waistcoat pocket, and for some reason there seemed to be an inherent danger to the gesture, for no particularly articulate reason. There was nothing a man could fit in so small a pocket that could be dangerous, yet the way Childermass touched it, it seemed that it could not hold less than a pistol, in spite of all physical sense.
"I think you may be right, Mr Segundus," the man said, very quietly, and slipped his hand beneath the pocket flap. "We must hurry, then. And if we must be on our way, it seems to me that we should not go unarmed, don't you agree?"
John made some sort of noise of agreement. He must have, however bemused he may have felt, but whatever it was it did not last very long. It cut off, with something of a shocked squeak, as Childermass reached inside his pocket and drew out ...
Well. Drew out a sword. A very big sword, a mediaeval broadsword unless John very much missed his guess, and drawn from quite where he could not tell. Something flat had preceded it, he thought. He'd caught a glimpse of something pale brown and thin, like a bit of old paper, just as Childermass' fingers cleared the pocket flap, but then it had been a pommel instead. Then it had been a hilt, and the rest of the weapon had followed it, quite nonsensically, all the way out of the man's very tiny waistcoat pocket. It was ... good grief. It was quite the most ridiculous bit of conjuring he'd ever seen. It was impossible.
"... What?" he managed, rather stupidly. Childermass turned to him, grinning faintly as he reversed his grip on the hilt to hold it properly, balancing the sword casually in his hand. John stared at it, and honestly could not be bothered to disguise his amazement. "Childermass, that is a sword. Where ... How?!"
He was a magician, you understand, he understood the idea of conjuring, but summoning an object did not work like that. Neither did transmuting one, not by any method he had previously seen, and a shrink-unshrink spell might only work that way if Childermass had for some reason already had a bespelled broadsword tucked away in his waistcoat pocket. Before bedtime. In Starecross Hall. Which, even for Childermass, would be a very odd thing to have occasion for. This was not blind confusion on his part, nor the bewilderment of any dazzled child on the roadside. As a magician, he knew that what Childermass had just done was not how things were supposed to go.
"This is not England, Mr Segundus," Childermass said gently, with that odd little smirk of his, as he moved the weapon almost hypnotically through the air. "This is not only Faerie, either. It is a dream, and in dreams the rules may be bent a little more than normal. A man who needs a weapon might have one, if he can but focus his magic and his imagination to the task."
Oh. Oh, that did make sense. John felt rather foolish for not having thought of it himself, and for his slack-jawed gaping at what was so simple a trick, once one had the correct information. He flushed, and tried to think of something slightly less stupid to say.
"I did not realise you were a swordsman," was what came out, which was not quite what he had been hoping for. Childermass blinked at him, and then dropped his sword arm to his side as he abruptly started laughing. Definitely not what John had hoped for. He bore it stoically, however. As much as he was able. He had some small experience of being laughed at.
Childermass noticed this. The laugh tailed off, though a smile still shaped his lips, and he shook his head in some apology. "Forgive me, sir," he said, still with some amusement. "It is only that I'm not, you see. A swordsman. Particularly not this kind. Where would I have learned how to wield an English broadsword? Even a modern sabre is a weapon for gentlemen, not upstart servants. No. The rest of us must be content with knives and pistols, I think you'll find. It would be a rare thing indeed, for the likes of me to know his way around a sword."
John blinked at him, nonplussed. "Oh," he said, intelligently. "But ... then why?" He waved at the weapon, still very large and very prominent in Childermass' hand. The man looked down at it, and a very strange sort of smile crossed his features. Soft, and sort of wistful.
"Because it is not a sword," he answered quietly, and in defiance of all evidence. "It will answer as one, but only here. Only because this is a dream. This is a card, Mr Segundus. The Ace of Swords, which is the mind in its purest form. It stands for force and intellect, for decisive thought and a means to cut through whatever problems lie ahead. It is the weapon I have always relied on above all others, and the one that I may say has served me quite well at times. If I am to die by magic and illusion this night, there is no other weapon I would have in my hand."
"... Oh," John said again. This was not the same sort of sound, though. It came not from blankness or confusion, but from a sudden and rather deeper understanding than he had anticipated. Childermass had ... He had offered up quite a lot, with that little explanation. He had laid bare a great deal of who and what he was, if only through the smallest of glimpses. A man who would trust his own mind as the first and foremost of his weapons.
That was ... not quite the way he had always seemed to John. Childermass had always seemed so very physical a danger, a dark, looming shape on a massive horse that brought ruin in his wake. He had seemed a ... well. A sort of a thug, Norrell's strong arm. Yet that physical threat had very rarely manifested, now that John thought about it. One could even argue the reverse, that Childermass had far more often been physically threatened by them. They had threatened to shoot him, after all. His own threats had been more political pressure and vague menace than anything, and not even really on his own behalf most of the time. Quite suddenly, John wondered at that. He wondered how much of what he had always thought about the man was really true, and how much lay beneath it that he had never seen.
They had no time for that either, however. The night was not getting any younger, and Childermass was looking at him in some askance. Some wariness, as well, something that might have been ... not worry, exactly, but a challenge towards how he might react. They'd no time for that either, though. They had to leave, and perhaps ... perhaps John might need to arm himself as well, and maybe offer a revelation in turn in the process. Not that he was a particularly secretive or mysterious person, you understand, certainly not compared to Childermass, but reciprocity had always seemed a good value to John.
He closed his eyes, therefore, and focused his magic and his imagination to the task at hand. He ignored the small sound of query Childermass made, ignored the suddenly violent rustling in the trees around them, and simply asked inside himself that his magic might take a shape that would help get them out of this dreadful mess in more or less one piece. He held out his hands, somewhat less dramatically than Childermass' pocket conjuring trick, and willed something to take shape, whatever it might prove to be. After a moment, he felt smooth wood against both his palms, two worn handles that fit his grip as though they had been born there, and he opened his eyes to look somewhat ruefully at his prize. He looked up at Childermass, who was staring at him with something very odd in his eyes, and smiled crookedly as he held up his 'weapon'.
"Well," he said, standing there in the dark woods in his nightshirt, holding up a lovely pair of gardening shears. "It's even less a sword than yours, Mr Childermass, whatever that says about my status as a gentleman. You may feel free to laugh at your leisure."
Childermass looked away briefly, his lips pressed very tightly together. There was laughter there, yes, but for some reason John did not feel that it was cruelly meant. It was not laughing at him, he didn't think. There was a brightness to Childermass' eyes, something closer to startled amusement than mockery, and his tone when he finally spoke was not cruel either. Childermass seemed caught by the whimsy of the moment, more so, and maybe not unhappily.
"... Actually," he said, shaking his head at the pair of them. "It suits you very well, sir, and perhaps it is more suited to the circumstances than my own. We shall have a hard path to tread, and a great deal of thorns in the way of it. It seems to me that a good pair of shears might be just exactly what we need."
He looked back up at John then, his eyes very bright and warm in the moonlight, his sword shining in his hand, and quite suddenly John felt the need to say 'oh' again. Faintly, this time, and from a rather more personal sort of revelation. In the darkness of the wood and the absurdity of the moment, Childermass seemed like such a shining thing all of a sudden. A fairy knight, in his shirtsleeves and his bare feet, with his mind laid bare in his hand for all to see. Something happened inside John at the sight of him, and somehow it could only be summed up by 'oh'.
He did not say it, however. He was already standing there like a silly twit in his nightshirt with his magic in his hand, undressed in half a dozen ways already. He was not about to add that little tidbit to the mix. He should like to get through this night without completely losing his dignity, with thanks to all and sundry.
"Um," he said instead, with rather too much squeak to it for his tastes. "Shall we go, then? I'm not sure when sunrise is, exactly, but I should like to be back in my own bed for it, if possible." He should like to have more than just himself in that bed as well, but for god's sake John, now was not the time to be thinking such things. Nightshirts do not cover such sins very well. Kindly keep that in mind, and focus on the bloodcurdling danger instead, hmm?
Childermass squinted suspiciously at him for a second, catching the edges of something in his tone or his posture, but thankfully he did not seem to make that much of it. He shrugged, instead, and brought his sword up to balance it crossways across his other palm. John blinked at him, startled by both the manoeuvre and the odd showiness of it, but Childermass was back to ignoring him now. Possibly thankfully, though John could not claim that he enjoyed the sensation. The man focused instead on the weapon, holding it out ahead of him at full arm's length and whispering some sort of spell over it. A spell of revelation or pathfinding, he realised, as the sword spun lazily atop Childermass' palm, and came about to face out into the trees.
It did not face the way John had come, he noticed. He wondered if that was a good sign or not. In England, retracing their steps to find the way by which they had been brought here would seem the sensible course. In Faerie, however, and in dreams moreover, the direct route was not always the best. The way forward was sometimes the way back. Or the way sideways. Or the way to nowhere sane at all. Logic was only so useful, here. It seemed they would have to trust to magic, instead, and simply hope for the best.
"It's all right," Childermass said quietly. He was looking back at him, John realised, and maybe seeing more than he let on. There was a small smile on his face, but it was mostly an expression of encouragement. "The Ace of Swords has not much care for mazes. It was the sword that cut the Gordian knot, after all. It will not lead us false. I have trusted these cards at many turns in my life, and they have not yet betrayed me. The path is good, if you will trust me in my turn."
John blinked at him. He could not immediately answer that, and not because he did not trust the man. He could not answer it because he only now realised that he did, and was not entirely certain of the reason why. It seemed an older feeling than just this night, with all its revelations, but it must have snuck up on him if that was the case. It must have been a gradual thing, for he honestly had not noticed it at all.
"... Of course," he stammered, very earnestly, and Childermass oddly straightened a bit at that, as though the words meant more to him than John might have expected them to. The strangest look flickered across his face, too fast for John to get a proper hold of it, and then it was gone again. Then Childermass only shrugged, and acted as though nothing had happened at all.
"Then we should go," he said, rough and uneasy and with a genuine glimmer of impatience. "Sunrise will not wait while we tarry. Stay close, Mr Segundus. There will be trials aplenty yet, I have no doubt of that."
He turned even as he said it, and strode away towards a gap between the trees in what approximated the right direction. John blinked at him for a second, and then recalled himself enough to hurry after the man, perhaps muttering a little impolitely under his breath. For goodness sake, it wasn't as though he'd forgotten! Childermass had been standing around as much as him, and waiting on as many tangential answers. It took more than one man to carry a conversation, as John had had a great many occasions to discover in his life!
The affront did not last him long, however. As they left the clearing, the trees closed back around them with angry mutterings, hissing hatefully at them in the sudden dimness, and only worse the more Childermass cleaved to his chosen path. It came alive, all and once and in far more violent fashion than anything previous. No sooner than they had entered into it, brambles began hissing and snapping at their ankles, the thorny lashes a very real threat to a man who hadn't even got his shoes on. Roots tried their very damnedest to trip them and tie them to the earth, and as they went further black limbs began to sweep down at them from above, making every effort to physically part their heads from their shoulders. John very shortly had little enough time for anything save desperate stumbling and stabbing harriedly with his shears, Childermass only just ahead of him and hewing furiously about him with the broadsword.
It was probably a good sign, he thought desperately to himself. Surely the woods would not fight them so very viciously if they were not on the right path? Please, please let it mean they were on the right path. It was too violent to suffer uselessly.
It lasted for hours, that trek along the bramble path. Longer than hours. John honestly could not say how long they struggled beneath those trees. It was all one long, black nightmare, where soon enough even the word 'sunrise' ceased to have any real meaning. Whatever purpose they might have held when they had first plunged back into the shadows, it very soon began to seem more than a little distant and unreal, lost under repeated and far more immediate concerns. Before very long at all, they were both in a considerable amount of pain. Some wounds, cuts and blows across them where they had not managed to defend themselves in time, but mostly it was sheer exhaustion. It was burning limbs and fire-filled chests, arms too leaden to move, heads too heavy to lift. They staggered together, taking turns to be the one striking out so that the other might lean against him for half a moment and draw an unlaboured breath.
They had to stop, every once in a while, to check the path once more, and those were the worst of times for John. The responsibility for their defence became entirely his in those moments, while Childermass asked the Ace of Swords for direction, and his shears quickly began to seem a very poor weapon indeed. It was not good against branches, though it answered quite well against the brambles, so they perforce took those moments while crouched close to the ground. They both bore bloodied faces and arms before long. After each pause, Childermass took over the main defence to push them forward, allowing John something like a rest. He suspected that the man regretted the broadsword after a while of it. Even in a dream, three feet of steel had to be damned heavy, and most of his targets were at head-height or higher. If this had been England rather than Faerie, they'd both have been very dead of exhaustion quite some time ago.
Was that the test, he wondered giddily. Was this all it was? Sheer endurance and bloodyminded surety of purpose? For god's sake, they could have picked any men in England for that! What was the point of grabbing two magicians if all you wanted was to throw them through a crazed gauntlet of violent trees and see how long before they were beaten to a pulp by it! It was a poorly designed sort of a test, he thought viciously. He'd expected more subtlety of Faerie.
Though there wasn't a lot else they could have done, in truth. The woods were soaked in so much magic and so much hatred that there wasn't really room for any more subtle spells on their part either. Brute force and the hope that they had divined their path correctly were the only weapons they realistically had. Though they might have tried to fly, he supposed. He wasn't sure how one would go about that, even in a dream, but they might have tried it. He wished very dearly that they had. Anything, anything, would be better than these trees. There were no more qualifications to the thought. Hell itself would be welcomed with open arms right now.
So desperate was their exhaustion by the end of it that he almost didn't notice the woods abruptly thinning around them. He had been pared down so far, left with mere leaden reactions to the sensation of moving limbs beside him, that it took him a very long few seconds to notice when no more came. They had walked past a certain point, and suddenly nothing struck at them anymore. When he noticed it, he staggered to a very lost sort of a halt. Childermass staggered next to him, nearly falling against his shoulder, and then they both simply stood there, leaning against each other with their arms dead against their sides, blinking blearing around them. Blinking in the light, John realised slowly. Blinking in the slow, grey light of dawn.
"... Oh," he said again, very very stupidly. Childermass did not chide him for it. Childermass, he rather fancied, was currently rather slow and stupid himself. He watched the sun clear a strange horizon, and was too tired even to be afraid that they had lost. So long as the bit of Faerie they were stuck in forevermore was not that forest, he nearly couldn't have cared.
Something happened, though, as that sun rose. The light did something as it touched them. It healed them, he thought. He watched the blood on Childermass' face vanish, as if radiant hands had wiped it away, and the cuts beneath it vanished as well. His own limbs became less heavy, the burning in his chest became less all-important, and abruptly he could breathe again. It was a startling sensation, and good god, how desperately bad must they have been that being able to draw a clear breath was suddenly such a mercy to him? They had to have died, he thought. Had they still worn the bodies left sleeping in England, they must surely have been killed.
He looked at Childermass, when he had something close to his wits about him again. He looked at the man in the sunlight as though with entirely new eyes. They had sat down together, somewhere in the relief of it. His battered little shears lay next to his hand, with Childermass' sword not far beyond them. He felt a rush of fondness for both items, suddenly. They had served so very well, and in such desperate circumstances. They had survived and even fought through all that Faerie had thrown at them. Childermass looked at them as well, and a very tired sort of smile crossed his face. He laid his hand across his sword, muttered something exhausted to it, and lifted up the fragile card that suddenly took its place. The Ace of Swords, John thought. The card that represented the man's own mind. Childermass tucked it against his chest with aching fondness, and looked up to smile crookedly at John.
"They've not let me down," he said softly, with rasped exhaustion. "Whatever else may happen to me, my cards have never let me down. They led us true. Perhaps not in time, but you will allow that they led us true."
John blinked at him for a second, and then surrendered to a foolish urge. He reached across, took Childermass' hand where it rested against his chest, and brought it card and all across to his own. He lifted it, a little, and pressed the smallest of kisses to the man's knuckles. Then, while Childermass only blinked at him, he turned it over and kissed the card as well where it lay against Childermass' palm. It had served so well. It was the man's magic given shape, and it had served them both so well and so loyally. He would allow that, yes. He would allow a great deal more. He had no more doubts about this man.
"... Oh," someone said. It took John a great deal longer than it ought to realise that it had not been him. Childermass stared at him, something strange and fierce and nameless in his eyes, a revelation that could only be summed up by 'oh', and for some reason John felt a silly little surge of triumph that Childermass had voiced it before him. That he had not said it first, that he had not been the only stupid little idiot running around the woods in his nightclothes and falling in love with ... oh, with ...
With the sort of man who would run through death and despair in his bare feet beside you, he supposed. With the sort of man who would not laugh at you when you expected him to, who would reveal little glimpses of himself to you, who would delight when those revelations were answered in kind. Who would fight beside you, and lean on you for support when he could not fight any longer. The kind of man who would look at you, and the only word for the thing in his eyes would be 'oh'.
John's hand shook around Childermass', suddenly. It shook, and he let the man carefully go, so as not to damage the faithful little card cupped in his palm. He leaned over, across his own faithful little shears, and licked his lips as he met those warm brown eyes.
"May I kiss you, Mr Childermass?" he asked, with what he thought was admirable composure. It nearly shattered, at the dark, wild look that crossed Childermass' features then, but it held better than he might ever have expected. It held right up until Childermass nodded, breathing out a barely audible 'yes', and no-one's composure could honestly be expected to do better in such circumstances. John closed his eyes, abandoning it happily, and leaned all the way in ...
And woke. With a shuddering gasp and a horrified moment of bewilderment, John Segundus woke up in his own bed, in his own room at Starecross, completely and utterly alone. He scrambled upright, staring wildly and furiously about himself, at the vast swathe of empty space in which there was most definitely no Childermass, and in that moment he had never cursed anyone as soundly and viciously as he cursed every godforsaken fairy in this or any other world. Whatever the hell they had wanted from him, he wished savagely that they had choked on it. It was mildly impressive, he would think later. He had never known how much sheer and utter fury he carried inside himself until he was thwarted in that manner, and wished every hell his imagination could suggest on those who had ripped that single moment away from him.
It subsided after a little while. His fury. It ebbed away, and something not unlike terror floated up in its place. Loss, desolate loss, and a terrible fear that he had imagined it all. That he had made a puppet of Childermass in his mind, and only played with it over the course of a dream. That he had imagined every little moment of honesty, that he had made up ... That he had made up that Childermass. That he had done the man that much of a gross disservice, to lay him bare that way, not in flesh but in mind and magic, and only for his own amusement. He could not bear the thought. It was insupportable. He had to know that it was not the case. More than anything in his life, he suddenly had to know that it had not been only his dream, that it had at least in some sense been real for the both of them.
He threw himself out of the bed. On any other morning, he would have made some effort to make himself decent, to put some clothes on, but he had no time now, and he had spent half the night in indecent company already. Dying, for the most part, and falling in love. He could not bring himself to care in the least. He bolted through the corridors of Starecross in his nightshirt, absolutely uncaring for what eyes might be up at the post-dawn hour. He had thought only for Childermass, and the need to know how he fared.
Childermass was not in his room. He did not even have to pound at the door, as he'd somewhat been intending, for it was open and the bed had very visibly not been slept in at all. For a moment, this paralysed him with fear, before he remembered Childermass' state of dress in the dream. Barefoot, but not unclothed. Still in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, with his cards still in his pocket. Childermass had never made it to bed. He must have fallen asleep in a chair somewhere, his shoes toed off for comfort. Somewhere out of the way, then, and warm enough. Somewhere with a fireplace, and no-one to care for the indecency of his naked feet.
The parlour! It had to be! John spun around immediately, almost falling over and nearly braining a shocked Mr Honeyfoot in the process, and bolted away again with only the barest of called apologies. He made his way to the parlour at a dead run.
Which was why, when Childermass came staggering out of it, sleep-bedraggled and more than a little wild-eyed himself, John smashed straight into him at some speed, and promptly brought them both crashing to the floor. Childermass bit off a startled roar, hitting the ground with quite a thud, and John landed atop him in a panicked and rather painful heap. Whatever healing the Faerie dawn had done them, he looked to have neatly undone it now. Those wicked bloody trees could not have done a better job of it. He still didn't care. He waited until Childermass looked up at him, dazed and in pain beneath him, and asked him with ferocious desperation:
"Was it real? Do you remember it? Was it real?"
Childermass went very still. He lay crumpled and badly bruised on the floor, practically pinned beneath John's weight, but suddenly he was nothing but dangerous once again. He was wild, and half-caught, and a very dangerous sort of prey indeed. For a moment, John half expected a sword to appear in his hand. This was not a dream, though. Such conjurings were not for the waking world.
Instead, after a very long, very painful few moments in which Childermass studied him warily and John stared back down at him in blind desperation ... After those moments, Childermass nodded. Once, and very carefully. He remembered. He did remember. John could see it, and he collapsed bonelessly atop the man in response to it. It had not been a gross violation on his part, then, a dream of his own imagining. It had been real, it had been shared between them, and Childermass remembered it too.
"Thank god," he whispered, and kissed the man. He took Childermass' face in his hands, took the permission he had been given in another world, and pressed his lips to Childermass' with nothing but a wild and joyous sort of a relief. Childermass stiffened, struggled briefly beneath his bodyweight, trying to say something into the kiss, but then after a moment he let go again. He melted in his turn, and opened his mouth beneath John's, tasting soft and bitter and still somewhat wary even now. John leaned into him, stroked his hair back from his face, and kissed him with every ounce of exhausted, delighted passion he possessed. He vaguely hoped, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Mr Honeyfoot had not followed him down here. This would be somewhat difficult to explain in the event that he had, although John supposed that 'faerie dream magic' might perhaps cover a sin or two.
It was not the foremost thought in his mind, however. When the kiss broke, when he pulled his head up a little to draw a clear breath once again, the only thing he could think of was how open and how painfully startled Childermass looked. How very fragile, and not like a faerie knight at all. Childermass looked like John could break him if he wanted to, in that moment. He looked like one blow from John would shatter him apart where all a faerie forest had failed.
"... Oh," said John, for hopefully the last time. He said it soft and awed and faint, looking down at the face between his palms, worn and faithful as a pair of garden shears, and whatever the word meant, whatever Childermass heard when he said it, it seemed that it was good enough. It seemed that it was, at least for the moment, close enough to the right answer.
"You're a bloody menace, John Segundus," Childermass said wryly, reaching up to take John's cheek in his own palm. "Worse than any faerie forest. You've half killed me, and it's not even breakfast time yet. Is 'oh' all you have to say for yourself?"
"... Yes," John said, after maybe half a second to think. He smiled, leaning into the hand on his cheek, brushing gently at Childermass' hair. "Yes," he decided, and kissed the man again instead. It was a better sort of conversation than anything else they might manage, after all. John was far too blindly exhausted and relieved right now to manage words.
And it seemed, after a moment, that John Childermass was happily not much better.
John Segundus looked around himself curiously. He was standing outside, in the middle of the night, in what appeared to be an unfamiliar thorny woodland. This was, to say the least, not a usual circumstance, and it was made only more so by the fact that he couldn't quite remember how he'd gotten here. He was almost certain that the last thing he remembered doing was going to bed, and the fact that he was still wearing his nightshirt gave some credence to this memory. So how in blazes had he ended up out here?
Something stirred among the brambles around him. Not a small rustling, such as you might get from a startled nighttime animal. No, something slower and much more deliberate. John swallowed, looking uneasily around, and reflected that perhaps the question of how he'd gotten here might be somewhat less important than the question of how he was going to get back. The sooner the better, perhaps. As soon as possible, even.
He cast around himself but, to the extent there were paths at all through this wood, they all looked rather much the same, and none of them particularly inviting. He could not go wandering about willy nilly, however. He wasn't sure why not, given how thoroughly lost he already was, but some instinct told him it would be a bad idea. He might be lost, but that was no reason to lose his head as well. John Segundus was a sensible man, and had perhaps a few more options open to him than the average bewildered traveller.
He closed his eyes, ignoring with some difficulty the increase in the rustling this caused, and began to turn slowly in place, trying to focus on his ... other senses. Something was wrong here, something magical, and it seemed to him that finding the centre of it would, at the very least, let him know just how much trouble he was really in, and at the most it would hopefully show him the way out of said trouble.
There. He opened his eyes, flinching a bit as something seemed to dart back out of his line of sight, too quickly to be caught. He ignored it, with somewhat strained nerves, and focused instead on the sensation of magic. Well, the concentration of it, at least. There was magic all around him, so thick it was almost syrupy. The whole wood seemed drowned in it. In this direction, though, there was something sharper. Something smaller and bitter and focused, and it seemed to him as good a destination as any at present. He had an idea that if he could only reach it before the ... the rustling things caught up with him, then he might have half a chance of being safe. It was a flimsy sort of hope to cling to, but it was not as though he had much else.
He set out, therefore, walking with what he hoped was a confident stride between dark, twisted trunks and low knots of brambles. They seemed to lean over him. The trees. The path seemed to shrink around him, not because it had always been small, but because the trees didn't like him, and wished very much for him to know about it. John hunched his shoulders apologetically, and picked up his pace a little to hurry past them all the faster. It didn't seem to do much good, but at least they did not swipe at him or try to trip him up, which he had the impression was not beyond the bounds of possibility.
After a moment or two, the path seemed to widen again ahead of him. He saw it, saw a vague glow of pale light up ahead, like moonlight through an open space, and nearly ran the last few yards to the offered clearing. Anything, he thought, would be better than the oppressive dislike of these trees. Or almost anything, but that magic he'd sensed was up ahead as well, and while it was much more bitter than anything else around them, it also didn't seem to hate the sense of him quite so much.
As he broke into the moonlit space, he realised why. A figure spun about in the centre of it, a man in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, feet incongruously bare, and John Segundus came abruptly face to face with an equally bewildered John Childermass. He squeaked, in surprise and no little relief, and made very short work of the intervening space. He pulled up before he actually crashed into the man, he didn't think Childermass would appreciate that, but he was so entirely happy to see familiar features in this dismal place that he found he could not quite maintain the proper distance. He stopped barely more an arm's length from the man, and found himself beaming somewhat inanely at him.
Childermass, for his part, blinked at him in some consternation for a second, before an angry sort of worry settled across his features instead, and he crossed his arms just exactly the way John's old schoolmaster used to. Privately, John thought that Childermass made a better show of it. Certainly old Mr Crofton's disapproval had never wilted him so very thoroughly in so very short a time. Childermass could do withering like no-one else in the world.
"Mr Segundus," the man greeted shortly, looking him up and down with a fierce sort of look, one that reminded John very abruptly that he was standing there with only his nightshirt on. Oh, good god. At least it was long enough to be mostly decent, but of all the times to stumble across Childermass ...
Oh, not the point, John! Worry about your attire some other time, you do have rather more pressing worries at the moment!
"Mr Childermass," he said, nodding back a little before glancing around them warily. The clearing was not so very big, and those dreadful trees still loomed blackly around them, the thorns and brambles creeping out from their bases to threaten the moonlit space. The rustling was back, and in larger volume, and it seemed that Childermass heard it as well. He cast a wary, jaundiced eye around their surroundings himself, before looking back at John grimly.
"... I'm not entirely certain," he said quietly, "but I think we may be dreaming, Mr Segundus. I do not remember how I came here, and unless we were somehow snatched from our beds through all of Starecross Hall's protections, I can think of no better explanation."
John swallowed, nodding. He had begun to suspect as much as well. It did explain a great deal, not least their nightclothes, their lack of memory, and the drowning sense of magic around them. That it could well be a dream was not so much of a comfort as many people might think. He had learned very well from his time with Lady Pole that dreams might be far more dangerous than the waking world, and not least when they were steeped in such thick magic as now surrounded them. In Faerie, and he did think that was where they were, dreams were not at all the same safe things they were at home.
"I ... I had begun to think as much," he agreed, and grimaced faintly. "I confess, I had not yet thought what to do about it. I sensed your magic, and thought it best to come here before anything else."
Childermass raised an eyebrow at that. "My magic?" he asked, and it was not sceptical so much as interested. "You knew it for mine? I'd thought you seemed too surprised to see me for that."
John flushed, and ducked his head a little. "I did not know it for yours," he confirmed. "It only felt so different from what surrounds us that I thought it must be either a solution or at least a better illustration to my problem. Either way, it seemed best to at least investigate it."
He braced himself for some mockery at this, some saying about fools rushing in and so forth, but strangely it did not seem forthcoming. Childermass only looked thoughtfully at him for a moment, before shrugging the concern away.
"No worse a thought than many," he said lightly. "It would seem that you became aware first, then, for I had only ... arrived, shall we say, just a few moments before you came running up here. That is suggestive, perhaps. There may be a reason for the order of our arrival."
John blinked at him. "Perhaps I was simply sleeping longer," he offered absently, and flushed when Childermass looked at him. "Well, I mean. You are rather more dressed than I am still. You do not look as if you had quite made it to bed yet, whereas I have been asleep some time, as my attire rather shows." He gestured down himself, without quite wishing himself to do so, since it drew attention to something he would rather not draw attention to. He felt somewhat compelled to justify his half-thought observation, though. He did not wish to appear ... well. Any sillier than he undoubtedly already did.
Again, though, Childermass did not mock him. Perhaps he simply had larger concerns at the moment, but still. He was being quite civil tonight, as far as such things went when it came to Childermass. He was being quite friendly altogether.
"Fair enough," he said, clipped and short. He was still Childermass, after all. His attention was cast more around them than at John, however. He was watching the brambles with lucid, suspicious eyes, and John had the impression that Childermass was seeing rather more in them than he had earlier. Not, he thought, because Childermass was more sensitive exactly. It was more that Childermass did not dart his eyes around in a panic. He swept them coolly across the darkness, a calm, flat study that seemed to know in advance where danger might lurk. Whereas John had been the hunted, Childermass seemed more the hunter, or at least a calmer, more dangerous sort of prey.
"... Can you see them?" John asked him quietly. Childermass glanced at him, an eyebrow half-raised in question, and John shrugged uneasily. "I do not know what they are. I only sensed them moving around me. I, ah. I think they were hunting me. Forcing me to move, to come here. It was only an impression, though. They did not let me see them."
"Actually, I think they did," Childermass said, though mildly still. His eyes moved back towards the trees and the shadows, an odd little smirk at the corner of his mouth. "You saw them. You just did not see them move. I believe our hunters are standing in plain sight about us."
John blinked, a shiver crawling up his spine as he followed the man's gaze. But of course. Of course, they had not liked him at all, had they? He had sensed that about them.
"... The trees?" he asked softly, just for confirmation, and Childermass nodded shortly.
"Aye. And the brambles. And maybe a few stray beasts as well. We stand on unfriendly ground, John Segundus. We were left stranded in unfriendly territory, I believe."
Which rather begged the question, John thought hysterically, of who exactly had done the stranding. It was not the most important question, however, even still. The question of how they had come here was still far, far lower in importance than the one of how they were getting out again. Childermass' presence, however comforting, did not change that very much.
The thought did prompt another, perhaps more pertinent one, though. They'd been stranded here by someone, a person or entity that had stolen them from their dreams and brought them to these woods. It would have been for a purpose. Even if it had only been meant as a malicious sort of a game, there would still have been a point to it. A set of conditions, a reason to bring them where they had been brought. They were in Faerie, had likely been brought by the inhabitants of same. That meant this would, in all likelihood, follow some of the rules of fairy tales. A test, or a quest. Something of that nature.
"... Sunrise," he said, rather suddenly from the way Childermass looked at him. "Or three sunrises. We've got to find our way out before then. It's a test. They always are in fairy tales. You have to prove your worth before a certain time runs out, or you'll ..."
He trailed off. He did not want to say the words 'be lost forevermore'. Besides, he did not need to. Childermass had very visibly followed his train of thought, if the grimace and the following expression of grim purpose were anything to go by. They had been stolen from their dreams and brought to Faerie. It stood somewhat to reason that they had to find their way out again before those same dreams came to an end, or risk them never doing so. Reasons in the rhyme. That was the sort of logic that magic, and faerie magic in particular, seemed to run on.
"Well then," Childermass said, very softly. His stance had changed, John noticed. Where before it had been wary, now it was purposeful, both feet grounded firmly in spite of their nakedness. His hand had come up, touching lightly at his waistcoat pocket, and for some reason there seemed to be an inherent danger to the gesture, for no particularly articulate reason. There was nothing a man could fit in so small a pocket that could be dangerous, yet the way Childermass touched it, it seemed that it could not hold less than a pistol, in spite of all physical sense.
"I think you may be right, Mr Segundus," the man said, very quietly, and slipped his hand beneath the pocket flap. "We must hurry, then. And if we must be on our way, it seems to me that we should not go unarmed, don't you agree?"
John made some sort of noise of agreement. He must have, however bemused he may have felt, but whatever it was it did not last very long. It cut off, with something of a shocked squeak, as Childermass reached inside his pocket and drew out ...
Well. Drew out a sword. A very big sword, a mediaeval broadsword unless John very much missed his guess, and drawn from quite where he could not tell. Something flat had preceded it, he thought. He'd caught a glimpse of something pale brown and thin, like a bit of old paper, just as Childermass' fingers cleared the pocket flap, but then it had been a pommel instead. Then it had been a hilt, and the rest of the weapon had followed it, quite nonsensically, all the way out of the man's very tiny waistcoat pocket. It was ... good grief. It was quite the most ridiculous bit of conjuring he'd ever seen. It was impossible.
"... What?" he managed, rather stupidly. Childermass turned to him, grinning faintly as he reversed his grip on the hilt to hold it properly, balancing the sword casually in his hand. John stared at it, and honestly could not be bothered to disguise his amazement. "Childermass, that is a sword. Where ... How?!"
He was a magician, you understand, he understood the idea of conjuring, but summoning an object did not work like that. Neither did transmuting one, not by any method he had previously seen, and a shrink-unshrink spell might only work that way if Childermass had for some reason already had a bespelled broadsword tucked away in his waistcoat pocket. Before bedtime. In Starecross Hall. Which, even for Childermass, would be a very odd thing to have occasion for. This was not blind confusion on his part, nor the bewilderment of any dazzled child on the roadside. As a magician, he knew that what Childermass had just done was not how things were supposed to go.
"This is not England, Mr Segundus," Childermass said gently, with that odd little smirk of his, as he moved the weapon almost hypnotically through the air. "This is not only Faerie, either. It is a dream, and in dreams the rules may be bent a little more than normal. A man who needs a weapon might have one, if he can but focus his magic and his imagination to the task."
Oh. Oh, that did make sense. John felt rather foolish for not having thought of it himself, and for his slack-jawed gaping at what was so simple a trick, once one had the correct information. He flushed, and tried to think of something slightly less stupid to say.
"I did not realise you were a swordsman," was what came out, which was not quite what he had been hoping for. Childermass blinked at him, and then dropped his sword arm to his side as he abruptly started laughing. Definitely not what John had hoped for. He bore it stoically, however. As much as he was able. He had some small experience of being laughed at.
Childermass noticed this. The laugh tailed off, though a smile still shaped his lips, and he shook his head in some apology. "Forgive me, sir," he said, still with some amusement. "It is only that I'm not, you see. A swordsman. Particularly not this kind. Where would I have learned how to wield an English broadsword? Even a modern sabre is a weapon for gentlemen, not upstart servants. No. The rest of us must be content with knives and pistols, I think you'll find. It would be a rare thing indeed, for the likes of me to know his way around a sword."
John blinked at him, nonplussed. "Oh," he said, intelligently. "But ... then why?" He waved at the weapon, still very large and very prominent in Childermass' hand. The man looked down at it, and a very strange sort of smile crossed his features. Soft, and sort of wistful.
"Because it is not a sword," he answered quietly, and in defiance of all evidence. "It will answer as one, but only here. Only because this is a dream. This is a card, Mr Segundus. The Ace of Swords, which is the mind in its purest form. It stands for force and intellect, for decisive thought and a means to cut through whatever problems lie ahead. It is the weapon I have always relied on above all others, and the one that I may say has served me quite well at times. If I am to die by magic and illusion this night, there is no other weapon I would have in my hand."
"... Oh," John said again. This was not the same sort of sound, though. It came not from blankness or confusion, but from a sudden and rather deeper understanding than he had anticipated. Childermass had ... He had offered up quite a lot, with that little explanation. He had laid bare a great deal of who and what he was, if only through the smallest of glimpses. A man who would trust his own mind as the first and foremost of his weapons.
That was ... not quite the way he had always seemed to John. Childermass had always seemed so very physical a danger, a dark, looming shape on a massive horse that brought ruin in his wake. He had seemed a ... well. A sort of a thug, Norrell's strong arm. Yet that physical threat had very rarely manifested, now that John thought about it. One could even argue the reverse, that Childermass had far more often been physically threatened by them. They had threatened to shoot him, after all. His own threats had been more political pressure and vague menace than anything, and not even really on his own behalf most of the time. Quite suddenly, John wondered at that. He wondered how much of what he had always thought about the man was really true, and how much lay beneath it that he had never seen.
They had no time for that either, however. The night was not getting any younger, and Childermass was looking at him in some askance. Some wariness, as well, something that might have been ... not worry, exactly, but a challenge towards how he might react. They'd no time for that either, though. They had to leave, and perhaps ... perhaps John might need to arm himself as well, and maybe offer a revelation in turn in the process. Not that he was a particularly secretive or mysterious person, you understand, certainly not compared to Childermass, but reciprocity had always seemed a good value to John.
He closed his eyes, therefore, and focused his magic and his imagination to the task at hand. He ignored the small sound of query Childermass made, ignored the suddenly violent rustling in the trees around them, and simply asked inside himself that his magic might take a shape that would help get them out of this dreadful mess in more or less one piece. He held out his hands, somewhat less dramatically than Childermass' pocket conjuring trick, and willed something to take shape, whatever it might prove to be. After a moment, he felt smooth wood against both his palms, two worn handles that fit his grip as though they had been born there, and he opened his eyes to look somewhat ruefully at his prize. He looked up at Childermass, who was staring at him with something very odd in his eyes, and smiled crookedly as he held up his 'weapon'.
"Well," he said, standing there in the dark woods in his nightshirt, holding up a lovely pair of gardening shears. "It's even less a sword than yours, Mr Childermass, whatever that says about my status as a gentleman. You may feel free to laugh at your leisure."
Childermass looked away briefly, his lips pressed very tightly together. There was laughter there, yes, but for some reason John did not feel that it was cruelly meant. It was not laughing at him, he didn't think. There was a brightness to Childermass' eyes, something closer to startled amusement than mockery, and his tone when he finally spoke was not cruel either. Childermass seemed caught by the whimsy of the moment, more so, and maybe not unhappily.
"... Actually," he said, shaking his head at the pair of them. "It suits you very well, sir, and perhaps it is more suited to the circumstances than my own. We shall have a hard path to tread, and a great deal of thorns in the way of it. It seems to me that a good pair of shears might be just exactly what we need."
He looked back up at John then, his eyes very bright and warm in the moonlight, his sword shining in his hand, and quite suddenly John felt the need to say 'oh' again. Faintly, this time, and from a rather more personal sort of revelation. In the darkness of the wood and the absurdity of the moment, Childermass seemed like such a shining thing all of a sudden. A fairy knight, in his shirtsleeves and his bare feet, with his mind laid bare in his hand for all to see. Something happened inside John at the sight of him, and somehow it could only be summed up by 'oh'.
He did not say it, however. He was already standing there like a silly twit in his nightshirt with his magic in his hand, undressed in half a dozen ways already. He was not about to add that little tidbit to the mix. He should like to get through this night without completely losing his dignity, with thanks to all and sundry.
"Um," he said instead, with rather too much squeak to it for his tastes. "Shall we go, then? I'm not sure when sunrise is, exactly, but I should like to be back in my own bed for it, if possible." He should like to have more than just himself in that bed as well, but for god's sake John, now was not the time to be thinking such things. Nightshirts do not cover such sins very well. Kindly keep that in mind, and focus on the bloodcurdling danger instead, hmm?
Childermass squinted suspiciously at him for a second, catching the edges of something in his tone or his posture, but thankfully he did not seem to make that much of it. He shrugged, instead, and brought his sword up to balance it crossways across his other palm. John blinked at him, startled by both the manoeuvre and the odd showiness of it, but Childermass was back to ignoring him now. Possibly thankfully, though John could not claim that he enjoyed the sensation. The man focused instead on the weapon, holding it out ahead of him at full arm's length and whispering some sort of spell over it. A spell of revelation or pathfinding, he realised, as the sword spun lazily atop Childermass' palm, and came about to face out into the trees.
It did not face the way John had come, he noticed. He wondered if that was a good sign or not. In England, retracing their steps to find the way by which they had been brought here would seem the sensible course. In Faerie, however, and in dreams moreover, the direct route was not always the best. The way forward was sometimes the way back. Or the way sideways. Or the way to nowhere sane at all. Logic was only so useful, here. It seemed they would have to trust to magic, instead, and simply hope for the best.
"It's all right," Childermass said quietly. He was looking back at him, John realised, and maybe seeing more than he let on. There was a small smile on his face, but it was mostly an expression of encouragement. "The Ace of Swords has not much care for mazes. It was the sword that cut the Gordian knot, after all. It will not lead us false. I have trusted these cards at many turns in my life, and they have not yet betrayed me. The path is good, if you will trust me in my turn."
John blinked at him. He could not immediately answer that, and not because he did not trust the man. He could not answer it because he only now realised that he did, and was not entirely certain of the reason why. It seemed an older feeling than just this night, with all its revelations, but it must have snuck up on him if that was the case. It must have been a gradual thing, for he honestly had not noticed it at all.
"... Of course," he stammered, very earnestly, and Childermass oddly straightened a bit at that, as though the words meant more to him than John might have expected them to. The strangest look flickered across his face, too fast for John to get a proper hold of it, and then it was gone again. Then Childermass only shrugged, and acted as though nothing had happened at all.
"Then we should go," he said, rough and uneasy and with a genuine glimmer of impatience. "Sunrise will not wait while we tarry. Stay close, Mr Segundus. There will be trials aplenty yet, I have no doubt of that."
He turned even as he said it, and strode away towards a gap between the trees in what approximated the right direction. John blinked at him for a second, and then recalled himself enough to hurry after the man, perhaps muttering a little impolitely under his breath. For goodness sake, it wasn't as though he'd forgotten! Childermass had been standing around as much as him, and waiting on as many tangential answers. It took more than one man to carry a conversation, as John had had a great many occasions to discover in his life!
The affront did not last him long, however. As they left the clearing, the trees closed back around them with angry mutterings, hissing hatefully at them in the sudden dimness, and only worse the more Childermass cleaved to his chosen path. It came alive, all and once and in far more violent fashion than anything previous. No sooner than they had entered into it, brambles began hissing and snapping at their ankles, the thorny lashes a very real threat to a man who hadn't even got his shoes on. Roots tried their very damnedest to trip them and tie them to the earth, and as they went further black limbs began to sweep down at them from above, making every effort to physically part their heads from their shoulders. John very shortly had little enough time for anything save desperate stumbling and stabbing harriedly with his shears, Childermass only just ahead of him and hewing furiously about him with the broadsword.
It was probably a good sign, he thought desperately to himself. Surely the woods would not fight them so very viciously if they were not on the right path? Please, please let it mean they were on the right path. It was too violent to suffer uselessly.
It lasted for hours, that trek along the bramble path. Longer than hours. John honestly could not say how long they struggled beneath those trees. It was all one long, black nightmare, where soon enough even the word 'sunrise' ceased to have any real meaning. Whatever purpose they might have held when they had first plunged back into the shadows, it very soon began to seem more than a little distant and unreal, lost under repeated and far more immediate concerns. Before very long at all, they were both in a considerable amount of pain. Some wounds, cuts and blows across them where they had not managed to defend themselves in time, but mostly it was sheer exhaustion. It was burning limbs and fire-filled chests, arms too leaden to move, heads too heavy to lift. They staggered together, taking turns to be the one striking out so that the other might lean against him for half a moment and draw an unlaboured breath.
They had to stop, every once in a while, to check the path once more, and those were the worst of times for John. The responsibility for their defence became entirely his in those moments, while Childermass asked the Ace of Swords for direction, and his shears quickly began to seem a very poor weapon indeed. It was not good against branches, though it answered quite well against the brambles, so they perforce took those moments while crouched close to the ground. They both bore bloodied faces and arms before long. After each pause, Childermass took over the main defence to push them forward, allowing John something like a rest. He suspected that the man regretted the broadsword after a while of it. Even in a dream, three feet of steel had to be damned heavy, and most of his targets were at head-height or higher. If this had been England rather than Faerie, they'd both have been very dead of exhaustion quite some time ago.
Was that the test, he wondered giddily. Was this all it was? Sheer endurance and bloodyminded surety of purpose? For god's sake, they could have picked any men in England for that! What was the point of grabbing two magicians if all you wanted was to throw them through a crazed gauntlet of violent trees and see how long before they were beaten to a pulp by it! It was a poorly designed sort of a test, he thought viciously. He'd expected more subtlety of Faerie.
Though there wasn't a lot else they could have done, in truth. The woods were soaked in so much magic and so much hatred that there wasn't really room for any more subtle spells on their part either. Brute force and the hope that they had divined their path correctly were the only weapons they realistically had. Though they might have tried to fly, he supposed. He wasn't sure how one would go about that, even in a dream, but they might have tried it. He wished very dearly that they had. Anything, anything, would be better than these trees. There were no more qualifications to the thought. Hell itself would be welcomed with open arms right now.
So desperate was their exhaustion by the end of it that he almost didn't notice the woods abruptly thinning around them. He had been pared down so far, left with mere leaden reactions to the sensation of moving limbs beside him, that it took him a very long few seconds to notice when no more came. They had walked past a certain point, and suddenly nothing struck at them anymore. When he noticed it, he staggered to a very lost sort of a halt. Childermass staggered next to him, nearly falling against his shoulder, and then they both simply stood there, leaning against each other with their arms dead against their sides, blinking blearing around them. Blinking in the light, John realised slowly. Blinking in the slow, grey light of dawn.
"... Oh," he said again, very very stupidly. Childermass did not chide him for it. Childermass, he rather fancied, was currently rather slow and stupid himself. He watched the sun clear a strange horizon, and was too tired even to be afraid that they had lost. So long as the bit of Faerie they were stuck in forevermore was not that forest, he nearly couldn't have cared.
Something happened, though, as that sun rose. The light did something as it touched them. It healed them, he thought. He watched the blood on Childermass' face vanish, as if radiant hands had wiped it away, and the cuts beneath it vanished as well. His own limbs became less heavy, the burning in his chest became less all-important, and abruptly he could breathe again. It was a startling sensation, and good god, how desperately bad must they have been that being able to draw a clear breath was suddenly such a mercy to him? They had to have died, he thought. Had they still worn the bodies left sleeping in England, they must surely have been killed.
He looked at Childermass, when he had something close to his wits about him again. He looked at the man in the sunlight as though with entirely new eyes. They had sat down together, somewhere in the relief of it. His battered little shears lay next to his hand, with Childermass' sword not far beyond them. He felt a rush of fondness for both items, suddenly. They had served so very well, and in such desperate circumstances. They had survived and even fought through all that Faerie had thrown at them. Childermass looked at them as well, and a very tired sort of smile crossed his face. He laid his hand across his sword, muttered something exhausted to it, and lifted up the fragile card that suddenly took its place. The Ace of Swords, John thought. The card that represented the man's own mind. Childermass tucked it against his chest with aching fondness, and looked up to smile crookedly at John.
"They've not let me down," he said softly, with rasped exhaustion. "Whatever else may happen to me, my cards have never let me down. They led us true. Perhaps not in time, but you will allow that they led us true."
John blinked at him for a second, and then surrendered to a foolish urge. He reached across, took Childermass' hand where it rested against his chest, and brought it card and all across to his own. He lifted it, a little, and pressed the smallest of kisses to the man's knuckles. Then, while Childermass only blinked at him, he turned it over and kissed the card as well where it lay against Childermass' palm. It had served so well. It was the man's magic given shape, and it had served them both so well and so loyally. He would allow that, yes. He would allow a great deal more. He had no more doubts about this man.
"... Oh," someone said. It took John a great deal longer than it ought to realise that it had not been him. Childermass stared at him, something strange and fierce and nameless in his eyes, a revelation that could only be summed up by 'oh', and for some reason John felt a silly little surge of triumph that Childermass had voiced it before him. That he had not said it first, that he had not been the only stupid little idiot running around the woods in his nightclothes and falling in love with ... oh, with ...
With the sort of man who would run through death and despair in his bare feet beside you, he supposed. With the sort of man who would not laugh at you when you expected him to, who would reveal little glimpses of himself to you, who would delight when those revelations were answered in kind. Who would fight beside you, and lean on you for support when he could not fight any longer. The kind of man who would look at you, and the only word for the thing in his eyes would be 'oh'.
John's hand shook around Childermass', suddenly. It shook, and he let the man carefully go, so as not to damage the faithful little card cupped in his palm. He leaned over, across his own faithful little shears, and licked his lips as he met those warm brown eyes.
"May I kiss you, Mr Childermass?" he asked, with what he thought was admirable composure. It nearly shattered, at the dark, wild look that crossed Childermass' features then, but it held better than he might ever have expected. It held right up until Childermass nodded, breathing out a barely audible 'yes', and no-one's composure could honestly be expected to do better in such circumstances. John closed his eyes, abandoning it happily, and leaned all the way in ...
And woke. With a shuddering gasp and a horrified moment of bewilderment, John Segundus woke up in his own bed, in his own room at Starecross, completely and utterly alone. He scrambled upright, staring wildly and furiously about himself, at the vast swathe of empty space in which there was most definitely no Childermass, and in that moment he had never cursed anyone as soundly and viciously as he cursed every godforsaken fairy in this or any other world. Whatever the hell they had wanted from him, he wished savagely that they had choked on it. It was mildly impressive, he would think later. He had never known how much sheer and utter fury he carried inside himself until he was thwarted in that manner, and wished every hell his imagination could suggest on those who had ripped that single moment away from him.
It subsided after a little while. His fury. It ebbed away, and something not unlike terror floated up in its place. Loss, desolate loss, and a terrible fear that he had imagined it all. That he had made a puppet of Childermass in his mind, and only played with it over the course of a dream. That he had imagined every little moment of honesty, that he had made up ... That he had made up that Childermass. That he had done the man that much of a gross disservice, to lay him bare that way, not in flesh but in mind and magic, and only for his own amusement. He could not bear the thought. It was insupportable. He had to know that it was not the case. More than anything in his life, he suddenly had to know that it had not been only his dream, that it had at least in some sense been real for the both of them.
He threw himself out of the bed. On any other morning, he would have made some effort to make himself decent, to put some clothes on, but he had no time now, and he had spent half the night in indecent company already. Dying, for the most part, and falling in love. He could not bring himself to care in the least. He bolted through the corridors of Starecross in his nightshirt, absolutely uncaring for what eyes might be up at the post-dawn hour. He had thought only for Childermass, and the need to know how he fared.
Childermass was not in his room. He did not even have to pound at the door, as he'd somewhat been intending, for it was open and the bed had very visibly not been slept in at all. For a moment, this paralysed him with fear, before he remembered Childermass' state of dress in the dream. Barefoot, but not unclothed. Still in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, with his cards still in his pocket. Childermass had never made it to bed. He must have fallen asleep in a chair somewhere, his shoes toed off for comfort. Somewhere out of the way, then, and warm enough. Somewhere with a fireplace, and no-one to care for the indecency of his naked feet.
The parlour! It had to be! John spun around immediately, almost falling over and nearly braining a shocked Mr Honeyfoot in the process, and bolted away again with only the barest of called apologies. He made his way to the parlour at a dead run.
Which was why, when Childermass came staggering out of it, sleep-bedraggled and more than a little wild-eyed himself, John smashed straight into him at some speed, and promptly brought them both crashing to the floor. Childermass bit off a startled roar, hitting the ground with quite a thud, and John landed atop him in a panicked and rather painful heap. Whatever healing the Faerie dawn had done them, he looked to have neatly undone it now. Those wicked bloody trees could not have done a better job of it. He still didn't care. He waited until Childermass looked up at him, dazed and in pain beneath him, and asked him with ferocious desperation:
"Was it real? Do you remember it? Was it real?"
Childermass went very still. He lay crumpled and badly bruised on the floor, practically pinned beneath John's weight, but suddenly he was nothing but dangerous once again. He was wild, and half-caught, and a very dangerous sort of prey indeed. For a moment, John half expected a sword to appear in his hand. This was not a dream, though. Such conjurings were not for the waking world.
Instead, after a very long, very painful few moments in which Childermass studied him warily and John stared back down at him in blind desperation ... After those moments, Childermass nodded. Once, and very carefully. He remembered. He did remember. John could see it, and he collapsed bonelessly atop the man in response to it. It had not been a gross violation on his part, then, a dream of his own imagining. It had been real, it had been shared between them, and Childermass remembered it too.
"Thank god," he whispered, and kissed the man. He took Childermass' face in his hands, took the permission he had been given in another world, and pressed his lips to Childermass' with nothing but a wild and joyous sort of a relief. Childermass stiffened, struggled briefly beneath his bodyweight, trying to say something into the kiss, but then after a moment he let go again. He melted in his turn, and opened his mouth beneath John's, tasting soft and bitter and still somewhat wary even now. John leaned into him, stroked his hair back from his face, and kissed him with every ounce of exhausted, delighted passion he possessed. He vaguely hoped, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Mr Honeyfoot had not followed him down here. This would be somewhat difficult to explain in the event that he had, although John supposed that 'faerie dream magic' might perhaps cover a sin or two.
It was not the foremost thought in his mind, however. When the kiss broke, when he pulled his head up a little to draw a clear breath once again, the only thing he could think of was how open and how painfully startled Childermass looked. How very fragile, and not like a faerie knight at all. Childermass looked like John could break him if he wanted to, in that moment. He looked like one blow from John would shatter him apart where all a faerie forest had failed.
"... Oh," said John, for hopefully the last time. He said it soft and awed and faint, looking down at the face between his palms, worn and faithful as a pair of garden shears, and whatever the word meant, whatever Childermass heard when he said it, it seemed that it was good enough. It seemed that it was, at least for the moment, close enough to the right answer.
"You're a bloody menace, John Segundus," Childermass said wryly, reaching up to take John's cheek in his own palm. "Worse than any faerie forest. You've half killed me, and it's not even breakfast time yet. Is 'oh' all you have to say for yourself?"
"... Yes," John said, after maybe half a second to think. He smiled, leaning into the hand on his cheek, brushing gently at Childermass' hair. "Yes," he decided, and kissed the man again instead. It was a better sort of conversation than anything else they might manage, after all. John was far too blindly exhausted and relieved right now to manage words.
And it seemed, after a moment, that John Childermass was happily not much better.
