Spin Recovery, Part 16C
Jan. 21st, 2008 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalI'm not satisfied with the way this whole chapter turned out. As always with me there's too much angst and not enough genuine emotion (or plot for that matter) going on. It didn't help that this was written over a period of about three weeks and is extremely choppy as a result.
He limped back to the dining room, where everyone else was waiting awkwardly. Aunt Dottie was filling the silence by telling the Softpaws about the finds she and her band of student-minions had found at her latest dig site. Fortunately either the couple had strong stomachs or she’d hadn’t managed to dig up anything suitable gruesome, judging by their interested expressions.
“What happened, Ru Ofanius?” his mother demanded as they entered the room.
“Hazel had to leave suddenly. Sgt. Swiftfoot expressed his sincere apologies and opined it was related to her injury,” Rufus said with perfect truth and complete inaccuracy. Bethany raised her eyebrows at this bit of misdirection but didn’t choose to contradict him publicly.
His mother sniffed. “No sense of propriety, some people. If she was that ill, she shouldn’t have agreed to come in the first place.”
There was a pause in conversation as the doors opened and the cook finally presented the evening meal, roasted Kin Goose, presented on a platter with small red Terran potatoes guarding the perimeter, their encircling line supported a by a variety of native Vulpine vegetables. After his mother led the table in a brief prayer of thanks to the Holy Den Mother for the bounty, they tore into the meal.
After serving himself, Rufus speared a potato with his fork, managing to keep it from skidding off his plate and onto the floor. As he ate it, he spared a glance at Lady Melika, who was looking back at him with that same confused look on her face, as if he was a puzzle she hadn’t yet figured out. Finally she seemed to reach a decision and asked, “Were you in an accident recently, Lord Ru Ofanius?”
He swallowed down hard on the potato and managed to avoid either glancing at his empty shoulder socket or answering with What, did you think this was elective surgery? Instead he replied politely, “Yes I was. Bit of an argument with a pressure door.”
“Oh,” she said, then bit her lip and added, “how long ago, if I may ask?”
He counted backwards in his head, trying to remember how much time he had spent unconscious from his wound and surgery, then traveling on a Terran warship, a Galapagos diplomatic cruiser and then ultimately a Vulpine liner, before he had come home to roost. “About, er, four or five weeks ago.”
Lady Melika shared another confused glance with her husband, before turning back to Rufus and saying, “But I spoke to you on the transfer station above Vulpine Secundus not a fortnight ago, with a human Marine lieutenant, looking, er…”
Oh, fragg. She had run into his twin from that other, more pleasant universe, the one where he hadn’t made such a horrific mess of his health and life. “Looking a bit more intact?” he finished wryly.
“Well, yes.”
He smiled with as much charm and calm as he was able to muster on such short notice. “I understand your confusion, Lady Softpaw. The individual you met does indeed resemble me greatly, but that was not me that you met on the transfer station. However, I assure you that his intentions in presenting himself as me weren’t at all malicious in any way. Though I would consider it helpful if you and your husband could keep your encounter with him private, as a favor to House Brushtail.”
The appeal to her loyalty as his mother’s subject seemed to work, for she nodded and allowed him to divert the conversation back towards Aunt Dottie, who began to regale everyone at the table with a description of the floor plan of the servant quarters she was currently excavating. Dinner proceeded more or less normally after that, with everyone retiring back to the sitting room for drinks (Rufus accepting a glass of sparkling water) and more conversation. It was nearly midnight before the Softpaws retired, and Rufus found himself yawning as he turned towards Bethany to bid her good night outside their rooms.
“Rufus,” she said, looking troubled, “I’m still confused as to what’s going on. What were you doing out there in the disputed territories, before you came home?”
“Nothing good, Bethany,” he replied, rubbing his eyes and yawning again. “Being a drunk, an addict and a generally useless blot on the universe, for the most part.”
“All right, so if that’s true, who was that remarkably well groomed fellow whom I spoke with, who convinced me to part with the funds to repair your fighter and then charmed Lady Softpaw?”
“As I said…”
“No, you haven’t said, Rufus,” Bethany replied with a frown. “Actually you’ve been remarkably circumspect about telling me who this person was.”
“Beth… ah, Holy Den Mother bless, it’s complicated.”
“Rufus, I am Brushtail’s heir. I’m going to have to deal with ‘complicated’ every day of my life eventually, though I pray not soon. I need to know what’s going on, to what purpose the money I gave you went. Did you really sell your fighter to pay off your debt to me, or did you get the money from some illegal scheme that’s going to bite both you and I in the tail later?”
Her annoyance with him was real and Rufus realized he was not going to be able to blow her off with any more glib reassurances. Once upon a time she used to worship the ground I walked on. What happened to that? He blew out a breath, trying to get his muddled thoughts in order. “I am not, no longer rather, involved in any illegal schemes, Bethany. You got your money back because I sold the White Knight as I told you. If you wish to confirm that fact, I can show you the hard copies of the receipt.”
“That’s good to know. Now what about the fellow I and Lady Softpaw spoke to, who is he?”
“Bethany, I can’t, I really can’t discuss that.”
Her ears turned back and her eyes narrowed. “Why not?”
“For one thing, it would reveal some information that I have been entrusted with by others. Information that, if it became common knowledge in the Council of Farmer Lords, might provoke our government into doing something xenophobically rash.” By the Holy Den Mother, he could just see the panic that might ensue if it were revealed that the Varn Dominion, through its surrogates the Galapagos, was about to reappear on the Galactic scene. The price his people had paid for defying them during the Dominion War had been close to catastrophic after the Bloody Plagues had been released. He could hardly blame them if they wished to choose paranoia over peaceful negotiation.
She stared at him, still looking disturbed. “So I am to believe you’re in possession of some deep and deadly secret that is of such urgency that you can’t even trust a member of your own family with it?”
“Yes, Bethany. It’s the truth.”
“If it’s that important, why don’t you want to bring it before the Council?”
“If I bring it up before the Council, they would only believe what they would want to hear. I don’t think I could present the evidence in a way that would keep them from acting on their first impulse.”
“You’re a viscount of House Brushtail, Ru Ofanius. They’d have to listen to you.”
He opened his palm to her in supplication, “Bethany, look at me. Could you imagine me coming before the Council in the state I’m in, expecting to be believed?”
Her irritated expressed softened and she nodded in sad agreement. “Well do you have anyone who could back up whatever claims you would be making? Any evidence you could point to?”
“Evidence? None whatsoever. Witnesses… well there’s at least one that I could reach, but as I mentioned to Mother it’s highly doubtful she’d wish to give me the time of day, much less coobborate any story I have to tell. The fellow who looks me, for example, is long gone.”
Bethany sighed. “And now we’re back to him. Rufus, for the love of the Holy Den Mother, who was he?”
He rubbed his muzzle, feeling the pain of opportunities lost like a knife through his heart. “Bethany, could you imagine what I might be, what I might have accomplished, had I not taken the Blue Horizon escort run? Had I not had those hundreds of souls on my conscience?”
“I’ve thought about,” she admitted. “I can’t imagine what it was like for you.”
“I wanted the pain to go away so badly. I wanted to be blind, deaf and invisible, so that I would not have to see the stares and hear the whispers whenever I entered a bar where my fellow pilots gathered. Barring that ability I wanted to be unconscious, or at least numb, to them. So I drank, and shot up garbage into my veins. Anything for a little bit of paradise that would make the world go away for a few hours. I honestly believe that in perhaps a year or less I would have been dead.”
“What does that have to do with your mysterious double?”
“Bethany, that male you spoke to was the Viscount Ru Ofanius Brushtail. Or Captain Rufus Brushtail, fighter pilot extraordinaire, more likely. That’s how I fancied myself when I started that little game. He was me, down to the last ladder in his DNA he was me. He was me, in all experiences right up until the Blue Horizon’s destruction, he was me. He was me, except that he was from a brighter universe, one where I made better decisions, one where I didn’t choose to break.”
“You’re talking about alternate universes?”
Rufus nodded. “That’s it exactly. My twin brother from another universe. My better half. That is who you spoke with over the com that night.”
Bethany’s face grew closed. “That’s your explanation? Something from a fairy tale?”
“Well, I’ll admit it sounds fantastic. Especially given I think I’m the Evil Twin.”
“Rufus,” she said with growing anger, “I’m not a child anymore, with a head that’s willing to be filled with whatever fancies you can come up with. You can’t expect me to believe such nonsense.”
“It is not nonsense, Bethany, it’s the truth. My word as…”
“Stop!” she growled, her voice cracking. “Don’t you swear to that tale. Don’t you dare swear to it!”
“Why not?”
“Because,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, “I still wouldn’t believe you.” She turned and walked quickly into her suite, the door slamming behind her, leaving Rufus alone in the hallway.
He mentally picked up the shards of his shattered honor, and slunk back into his own room.
TBC
He limped back to the dining room, where everyone else was waiting awkwardly. Aunt Dottie was filling the silence by telling the Softpaws about the finds she and her band of student-minions had found at her latest dig site. Fortunately either the couple had strong stomachs or she’d hadn’t managed to dig up anything suitable gruesome, judging by their interested expressions.
“What happened, Ru Ofanius?” his mother demanded as they entered the room.
“Hazel had to leave suddenly. Sgt. Swiftfoot expressed his sincere apologies and opined it was related to her injury,” Rufus said with perfect truth and complete inaccuracy. Bethany raised her eyebrows at this bit of misdirection but didn’t choose to contradict him publicly.
His mother sniffed. “No sense of propriety, some people. If she was that ill, she shouldn’t have agreed to come in the first place.”
There was a pause in conversation as the doors opened and the cook finally presented the evening meal, roasted Kin Goose, presented on a platter with small red Terran potatoes guarding the perimeter, their encircling line supported a by a variety of native Vulpine vegetables. After his mother led the table in a brief prayer of thanks to the Holy Den Mother for the bounty, they tore into the meal.
After serving himself, Rufus speared a potato with his fork, managing to keep it from skidding off his plate and onto the floor. As he ate it, he spared a glance at Lady Melika, who was looking back at him with that same confused look on her face, as if he was a puzzle she hadn’t yet figured out. Finally she seemed to reach a decision and asked, “Were you in an accident recently, Lord Ru Ofanius?”
He swallowed down hard on the potato and managed to avoid either glancing at his empty shoulder socket or answering with What, did you think this was elective surgery? Instead he replied politely, “Yes I was. Bit of an argument with a pressure door.”
“Oh,” she said, then bit her lip and added, “how long ago, if I may ask?”
He counted backwards in his head, trying to remember how much time he had spent unconscious from his wound and surgery, then traveling on a Terran warship, a Galapagos diplomatic cruiser and then ultimately a Vulpine liner, before he had come home to roost. “About, er, four or five weeks ago.”
Lady Melika shared another confused glance with her husband, before turning back to Rufus and saying, “But I spoke to you on the transfer station above Vulpine Secundus not a fortnight ago, with a human Marine lieutenant, looking, er…”
Oh, fragg. She had run into his twin from that other, more pleasant universe, the one where he hadn’t made such a horrific mess of his health and life. “Looking a bit more intact?” he finished wryly.
“Well, yes.”
He smiled with as much charm and calm as he was able to muster on such short notice. “I understand your confusion, Lady Softpaw. The individual you met does indeed resemble me greatly, but that was not me that you met on the transfer station. However, I assure you that his intentions in presenting himself as me weren’t at all malicious in any way. Though I would consider it helpful if you and your husband could keep your encounter with him private, as a favor to House Brushtail.”
The appeal to her loyalty as his mother’s subject seemed to work, for she nodded and allowed him to divert the conversation back towards Aunt Dottie, who began to regale everyone at the table with a description of the floor plan of the servant quarters she was currently excavating. Dinner proceeded more or less normally after that, with everyone retiring back to the sitting room for drinks (Rufus accepting a glass of sparkling water) and more conversation. It was nearly midnight before the Softpaws retired, and Rufus found himself yawning as he turned towards Bethany to bid her good night outside their rooms.
“Rufus,” she said, looking troubled, “I’m still confused as to what’s going on. What were you doing out there in the disputed territories, before you came home?”
“Nothing good, Bethany,” he replied, rubbing his eyes and yawning again. “Being a drunk, an addict and a generally useless blot on the universe, for the most part.”
“All right, so if that’s true, who was that remarkably well groomed fellow whom I spoke with, who convinced me to part with the funds to repair your fighter and then charmed Lady Softpaw?”
“As I said…”
“No, you haven’t said, Rufus,” Bethany replied with a frown. “Actually you’ve been remarkably circumspect about telling me who this person was.”
“Beth… ah, Holy Den Mother bless, it’s complicated.”
“Rufus, I am Brushtail’s heir. I’m going to have to deal with ‘complicated’ every day of my life eventually, though I pray not soon. I need to know what’s going on, to what purpose the money I gave you went. Did you really sell your fighter to pay off your debt to me, or did you get the money from some illegal scheme that’s going to bite both you and I in the tail later?”
Her annoyance with him was real and Rufus realized he was not going to be able to blow her off with any more glib reassurances. Once upon a time she used to worship the ground I walked on. What happened to that? He blew out a breath, trying to get his muddled thoughts in order. “I am not, no longer rather, involved in any illegal schemes, Bethany. You got your money back because I sold the White Knight as I told you. If you wish to confirm that fact, I can show you the hard copies of the receipt.”
“That’s good to know. Now what about the fellow I and Lady Softpaw spoke to, who is he?”
“Bethany, I can’t, I really can’t discuss that.”
Her ears turned back and her eyes narrowed. “Why not?”
“For one thing, it would reveal some information that I have been entrusted with by others. Information that, if it became common knowledge in the Council of Farmer Lords, might provoke our government into doing something xenophobically rash.” By the Holy Den Mother, he could just see the panic that might ensue if it were revealed that the Varn Dominion, through its surrogates the Galapagos, was about to reappear on the Galactic scene. The price his people had paid for defying them during the Dominion War had been close to catastrophic after the Bloody Plagues had been released. He could hardly blame them if they wished to choose paranoia over peaceful negotiation.
She stared at him, still looking disturbed. “So I am to believe you’re in possession of some deep and deadly secret that is of such urgency that you can’t even trust a member of your own family with it?”
“Yes, Bethany. It’s the truth.”
“If it’s that important, why don’t you want to bring it before the Council?”
“If I bring it up before the Council, they would only believe what they would want to hear. I don’t think I could present the evidence in a way that would keep them from acting on their first impulse.”
“You’re a viscount of House Brushtail, Ru Ofanius. They’d have to listen to you.”
He opened his palm to her in supplication, “Bethany, look at me. Could you imagine me coming before the Council in the state I’m in, expecting to be believed?”
Her irritated expressed softened and she nodded in sad agreement. “Well do you have anyone who could back up whatever claims you would be making? Any evidence you could point to?”
“Evidence? None whatsoever. Witnesses… well there’s at least one that I could reach, but as I mentioned to Mother it’s highly doubtful she’d wish to give me the time of day, much less coobborate any story I have to tell. The fellow who looks me, for example, is long gone.”
Bethany sighed. “And now we’re back to him. Rufus, for the love of the Holy Den Mother, who was he?”
He rubbed his muzzle, feeling the pain of opportunities lost like a knife through his heart. “Bethany, could you imagine what I might be, what I might have accomplished, had I not taken the Blue Horizon escort run? Had I not had those hundreds of souls on my conscience?”
“I’ve thought about,” she admitted. “I can’t imagine what it was like for you.”
“I wanted the pain to go away so badly. I wanted to be blind, deaf and invisible, so that I would not have to see the stares and hear the whispers whenever I entered a bar where my fellow pilots gathered. Barring that ability I wanted to be unconscious, or at least numb, to them. So I drank, and shot up garbage into my veins. Anything for a little bit of paradise that would make the world go away for a few hours. I honestly believe that in perhaps a year or less I would have been dead.”
“What does that have to do with your mysterious double?”
“Bethany, that male you spoke to was the Viscount Ru Ofanius Brushtail. Or Captain Rufus Brushtail, fighter pilot extraordinaire, more likely. That’s how I fancied myself when I started that little game. He was me, down to the last ladder in his DNA he was me. He was me, in all experiences right up until the Blue Horizon’s destruction, he was me. He was me, except that he was from a brighter universe, one where I made better decisions, one where I didn’t choose to break.”
“You’re talking about alternate universes?”
Rufus nodded. “That’s it exactly. My twin brother from another universe. My better half. That is who you spoke with over the com that night.”
Bethany’s face grew closed. “That’s your explanation? Something from a fairy tale?”
“Well, I’ll admit it sounds fantastic. Especially given I think I’m the Evil Twin.”
“Rufus,” she said with growing anger, “I’m not a child anymore, with a head that’s willing to be filled with whatever fancies you can come up with. You can’t expect me to believe such nonsense.”
“It is not nonsense, Bethany, it’s the truth. My word as…”
“Stop!” she growled, her voice cracking. “Don’t you swear to that tale. Don’t you dare swear to it!”
“Why not?”
“Because,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, “I still wouldn’t believe you.” She turned and walked quickly into her suite, the door slamming behind her, leaving Rufus alone in the hallway.
He mentally picked up the shards of his shattered honor, and slunk back into his own room.
TBC
