Fic: Spin Recovery, Part Twelve

[jeriendhal]

Half an hour later he was clean, dressed in his House uniform and reasonably steady on his feet after an infusion of tea and anti-nausea pills. He managed to negotiate his way down the hallway to his mother’s suite without either falling over onto his face or throwing up into a potted plant, which Rufus supposed was an accomplishment.

Knocking on the door to his mother’s study, he was greeted with a businesslike “Enter!” and he stepped inside. His mother was seated behind her desk, not in the more informal conversation pit on the other side of the room, which didn’t exactly bode well, especially given there was no chair for him to sit down on and face her. So he stood, swaying a little as she shut down a spreadsheet on her comconsole and turned to face him.

“Ru Ofanius,” she said, considering him with a sigh.

She looks tired, he thought. Well, that was no surprise, if she waited until nearly morning until he had returned home. The work of managing House Brushtail’s myriad of interests would not stop so she could take a nap. “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said. “I should have called to let you know where I was. You needn’t have stayed up to wait for me.”

“Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have. You are an adult, Ru Ofanius. The time is long past when I could grab your ear to keep you from wandering somewhere foolish.”

“The circumstances were decidedly not normal,” Rufus said. He lowered his head, pinching his nose, trying to gather his muzzy thoughts. “I knew perfectly well what I was doing was stupid, I admit that.”

“Then why in the name of the Den Mother’s holy Rose of Peace did you do it, Ru Ofanius?” she said with exasperation.

“Because… because…” Holy Den Mother bless, how could he expect to explain things to her in a way that wouldn’t make him look like an utter fool? “Someone stuck a drink in my hand. I drank it. It tasted good, so I had another. After that, things got a bit fuzzy. It’s easier to deal with the world when things are… fuzzy… sometimes.” He trailed off and stared at his toes.

“Fuzzy,” she said. “Oh, Rufus.”

If she says, “What am I going to do with you?” I really am going to kill myself.

“Do you have any idea how much you are scaring me?” she asked instead.

He looked up at her in surprise. “Scaring you, Mother? I don’t understand. I mean, I understand why you might have been scared for me before, but I’m home now. Honestly, I’m all right.”

She shook her head. “All right? Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately, Ru Ofanius? By the Holy Den Mother, I’m so glad that Whitebrow gave me some warning, it was all I could not to break down and weep when you finally walked through the door last week. One arm missing, your fur so thin I could nearly see your skin underneath, eyes like you’d seen Death. You looked like a walking corpse! I want to believe you’re doing your best to get better, but you go off riding that damned carnivorous beast of yours and then go wandering off at all hours…”

“I told you the first day that things were going to be difficult for me, Mother, that I would be difficult.”

She sighed again, a little more ruefully this time. “Yes, you did. It’s just that… that day you came home, you looked like your father. You remember him, when he was so thin and sick, Ru Ofanius?”

“I’m unlikely to forget, Mother,” his voice growing stiff. That had been sore point between them for some time. Rufus had been away at boarding school during that period. Mother had informed him that his father was ill, but she hadn’t bothered to tell him how mortal the circumstances really were. Until of course, that he had received the message to come home immediately, just before his father had died.

“’Just a few aches and pains,’ he had said, ‘I’m not as young as I once was,’ he said,” Rufus’ mother repeated bitterly. “When he finally admitted he was sick, it was too late to do anything about it. To late for me to do anything except watch over him in his sick bed and weep at his damned stubborn pride.”

“Oh, I know all about pride, Mother,” Rufus said softly.

“I buried your father, Ru Ofanius, decades before it should have been his time. Don’t curse me doubly by making me bury my son as well. No mother should have to face that.”

And how many mothers had to bury their sons because of me and Mavra Chan? he wondered, but kept the thought to himself. There was little enough he could do for those souls now, except to keep on living and face the Holy Den Mother willingly when his time finally came. “Mother,” he said, “if you love me then, I must beg you not to treat me as a child. I don’t want to be a drag on the House’s resources anymore. I want to pay off the debt that I owe to it and you. Give me something to do, so I can prove my worth to you!”

“Ah,” she said, looking pained. “And what could I trust you with unsupervised, after your performance last night?”

That stopped him cold. “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “Well, I suppose when I get my new arm, you could always send me to muck out the stables. Believe me, wallowing in sh-- offal is something I’m familiar with, even if it was usually my own.”

She nodded in understanding. “I’ll try and find something for you, Ru Ofanius. For now… for now…”

“I’ll do my best not to frighten you further, in the meantime,” he said. "I promise."

She nodded. “Thank you, my son.”

TBC

Comments

[lilfluff.livejournal.com]

Hmm. You know, if he actually said some of that stuff out loud they could actually talk about it and start working through things. But I suspect he has much experience holding things inside by now.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. He's already ashamed enough of his actions during his years in the wilderness. He's not ready yet to be pouring out his heart to the people who are mostly likely to be shocked by his behavior