Through Ages of Weary Fulfillment: Ch. 33

In Land of the Living

Notes:

We're just one chapter away from the end!!! 🥳🥳

And then begins the next story which now has a solid title: "After Times of Tender Agony" (AToTA) Don't the middle three letters (ToT) look like a wailing or screaming person?! 😈

*****

Ilana shifted her position again, this time drawing her legs up to her chest and wrapping one arm around them. She would have preferred the security of both arms, but she needed the other for her right hand, the one she always used to twirl her hair. She would go crazy if she couldn’t do that.

Before casting her gaze to the left, Ilana indulged in a bit of vain hope. Maybe something had changed in the last…five minutes. She looked—nothing. No change. Her father still lay there, unmoving except for the occasional shift, always followed by an unconscious groan of pain.

The thought of it was enough to bring tears to her eyes, and Ilana rubbed them with the heel of her palm instinctively, trying to keep them from coming again. She had cried a lot since they had arrived at Fort Duid two days ago, since Gammon demanded a room from a lookout, she hadn’t registered the face of and sent Maraly racing for a doctor.

There had been a lot of crying that needed to be done, she supposed, since numbness and fear had filled her heart and mind during the agonizing hours they spent in the little boat, staring every second at her father’s face, watching his eyes as they slipped between awareness and listlessness, holding her breath every time he failed to gasp for air, terrified he had stopped breathing.

She had begged the Maker so many times during those hours that He would spare her father, that He wouldn’t take him when they had only just meant, that he wouldn’t fade into precious, grieving memory so soon. 

The begging still hadn’t stopped, especially not since the doctor—Jebsnun or something like it—had failed to give any good news. Gammon had taken the lack of good news or hope to mean he needed to make contact with her father’s family, with her family, but of course he didn’t see a very convenient way of carrying it out. He mentioned something about talking to a Sea Dragon, but that didn’t make any sense, to the point at which Ilana was sure she had heard him wrong.

A knock, a soft one, one rather ironically attached to the person it belonged to, sounded, and Ilana whispered a quiet, “come in,” that shouldn’t have been audible, but somehow it was.

The door opened, and in stepped Maraly, with a bowl in her hand, a chunk of bread poking out of the bowl. “Hey,” she said gently. “Do ye wanna come eat with me and Gammon, or should I leave this with ye?”

“You can leave it,” Ilana replied, wrapping her arms around her knees tighter, feeling a little like a field mouse and wanting to be as small as one. “Thank you,” she added politely as Maraly set the bowl down on the little end table next to her.

Maraly smiled a little. “Yer welcome. Oh, jest so ye know, the Doc’s gonna be here pretty soon, an’ if ye don’t wanna be in here, yer welcome ta join me on a tour o’ Fort Duid. I haven’t been ‘ere much, but enough to give a bit o’ a tour.”

Ilana’s first thought was to decline the offer, since she wanted to stay by her father’s side more than anything else in the moment, but then she relented. She hadn’t been out in days and a stroll couldn’t hurt. Her father might not have been doing any better, but he wasn’t worse, and the chances of him dying when she was gone were probably slim. They were at least as slim as the chances of him waking up any time soon.

“I guess I’ll come with you then,” she conceded, still feeling a bit reluctant and guilty.

“Great!” Maraly exclaimed, heedless of Ilana’s lack of real excitement. “I’ll be gettin’ ye then.”

She hurried out, closing the door softly behind her, which, much like her knock, seemed rather uncharacteristic. Ilana looked at the door where she had been moments before for a few seconds, then slid out of her chair, getting closer to the bed, so she could kneel by it. 

When she had done so, she took hold of her father’s left hand and squeezed it, hoping it would keep the tears from coming. “I love you,” she whispered. “Please, wake up soon.”

The tour through Fort Duid was a rather hasty one, not so much because Ilana wanted it to be, but because Maraly did everything so quickly. And also because Fort Duid was rather diminutive. She noted almost every structure as the passed it, barely mentioning some and going into disturbingly short detail with others—like the comment when they passed a random street that triggered a memory about someplace in Dugtown called Tilling Court: “Thet’s where yer cousin Janner got kidnapped and chased by zombie people,”—but doing it all so hastily that very little was retained. Except for the one comment about her cousin Janner, to which she did ask who he was and what he was like, mostly for distraction purposes.

Maraly told her bits and pieces after that, not going into extreme detail and threading information about Dugtown’s structures in the middle of all of it, which meant Ilana got a physical tour of Duid and a verbal tour of Dugtown all rolled up in one.

By the time they were back at the fort’s outpost where they were staying, Ilana desperately wanted to be with her father again, regardless of whether he was awake or not and regardless of whether the doctor was there. It didn’t matter at that point. He was her father, and she wasn’t going to spend another second away from his side. 

The moment she stepped foot into the inn, she raced upstairs, taking them two at a time. She paused at the door to the room, not wanting to seem rude or terribly flustered or anything of the sort. Amrah had managed to teach her manners, for which she was grateful. 

When she paused, though, she heard something. Voices. Coming from inside. At first she assumed it was only Gammon and the doctor (now she heard his name being spoke, Jebsun. So she had been close!), since they were the only ones she heard but then…then…she held her breath, but that didn’t help much, since she couldn’t hear anything over the wild racing of her heart. Could it be?

Turning the knob and pushing the door open without a second thought, Ilana stepped into the room as quickly and politely as she could, her eyes immediately falling on those of her dear, dear father, who was gloriously, wondrously awake.

“Daddy!” she cried, her hands flying to cover her mouth, tears spilling down her cheeks immediately, but these were good tears. 

He smiled, said something, but it was quiet, and she couldn’t hear it over the hitch in her breathing, he beckoned her with his hand, then, giving her permission to come near. 

Legs trembling, Ilana went forward, telling herself she just had to make it to the side of the bed, and then she could collapse on her knees and hold her father’s hand, or maybe he would cup her cheek in his hand, because anything other than that and she was worried it would hurt him.

She did make it to the bed and she did fall to her knees and she did take his hand in hers and he did cup his cheek, and then…and then he hugged her. Very carefully, very cautiously, very against the Doctor’s better judgment and advice, but he did it anyway. And she was just as careful and just as cautious because she loved him and she didn’t want to hurt him, not at all, never again. 

*****

At first Sara thought it was her imagination, that she didn’t really see Janner’s hand moving of its own accord, that it was just her eyes playing tricks on her, showing her what she wanted to see as she waited beside his bed for a miracle. 

It happened again, though, even after she had blinked several times, and she risked calling Nia. “Mama!” she raised her voice just enough to alert her.

Nia was coming down the stairs in moments, her sleeves still rolled up and her hands dripping from washing the clothes. “Sara, what is it? Is he…” she trailed off, as if too afraid to place hope in something so futile. 

There was a little sound, a sound like a groan or a grunt, but when Janner’s lips moved, Sara was almost certain it was supposed to be a word or a few words. 

“I think so,” she whispered, getting up from the bed so Nia could take her place. “Do you want me to find Leeli?”

Nia didn’t respond, eyes on her son and only on her son, but, as it turned out, Leeli responded for her. “Find me for what?” came her cheery voice from the castle courtyard.

Neither Sara nor Nia replied, both waiting with bated breath for what had before been only a dream, a hope of a miracle. With the hand that did not hold Janner’s, Sara felt Nia grasping hers, as if clinging for support should hopes once again be dashed to pieces. 

They were not, though, for seconds later Janner blinked, slowly, carefully, squinting, closing his eyes again, then opening them, blinking. He smiled a little, a real smile, one that Sara knew for certain was not shadowed by grief in any way, and whispered, “hey.”

Tears flowed down Nia’s cheeks on hearing the one word. “Oh, Janner,” she said softly, choking on her words a little. “Please, don’t do that to us again. Never, please, please, please.”

“Sorry,” he murmured, still smiling. “It was an accident…but I’ll do my best.”

At those words, joyous laughter bubbled inside Sara and it burst out, along with lovely, lovely tears. She wanted to jump and dance and sing, and when she glanced at Leeli, she knew her surrogate sister wished to do the same. Nia, regardless of caution for perhaps the only time in her life, drew Janner into her arms, hugging him fiercely with the love of a mother whose son was dead, and is now alive again. 

*****

Notes:

✨happy✨

Last chapter tomorrow^^

(and let me know if there were any canonical errors, please :D)

(or if there was anything awkward and/or cringy)