t weeps

Shit, deb.

What Rebecca Said.

Cool. Means I did my job, dangnabbit....

Will have to do the epilogue done tomorrow morning and get it to Dana for an upload, unless anyone out there wants to read it top to vottom when it's done before I beg Dana to send it to shrift's site - and Rebecca, did you want Needfire? You have Pensioner, after all, and I suspect this is going to be a trilogy, eventually.

I suspect this is going to be a trilogy, eventually.

(bouncing)

Rebecca, did you want Needfire?

Hey! Erm, that is, ::ahem::

Hey! Erm, that is, ::ahem::

I think she meant, in a hosting sense, not a beta sense; and yes, ma'am. I'll rename Pensioner from the index document of the /deborah directory, add Needfire, and write a proper index page.

ANd much freshly baked pastry for Rebecca and for Bev, too.

tomorrow? Will do the epilogue.

Shiny!

OK, I was needing some validation. Just checked my website stats. I posted the full version of Desperate Times late last night and it's already got 12 hits, and sometime in the last few days the total hits passed 5000.

You craft a big rock, polish it nice, toss it in the big pool, watch the ripples go out, but sometimes it's a damned long time before the ripples come back. I like the ripples coming back.

Yup. Validation, she is our friend....

Hokay. Today has been a complete fucking movie from hell, but here's the rest of it:

• * *

Sun, falling on my eyelid. The touch of warmth. I opened my left eye, and saw that I was still alive.

Within the field of my immediate vision, I saw my own legs and feet, their shape moulded under a light cotton coverlet. I was in bed, then, a comfortable bed, if a bit no-nonsense, with its metal frame. I saw sunlight in dancey shafts, fluttering as a pair of gauze curtains fluttered. Something in my left arm: an IV tube, attached to a bag on a wheeled stand. A telly, mounted high on the wall opposite.

I remembered. I had died. What in hell was I doing here, then? And where, precisely, was 'here'? I was in hospital, obviously, but why did I remember nothing of how I'd come here? How was I alive?

My right eye didn't work. I turned my head - it went slowly, but painlessly, with nothing more than a numbness and a tingling in my neck. I let my left eye focus on the window, doing the work of both eyes, gritting my teeth as it blurred and protested. After a long moment, the smear of blue and indistinct shapes framed by the sill and sashes cleared. I saw a bit of skyline, a silhouette that had nothing to do with the golden stone and dreaming spires of Oxford.

London. I was in London. Somewhere south of the Thames, from the look of it. How....?

I moved my head again, to take in my right arm. Both arms were lying on the coverlet; the right was bandaged, from bicep to fingertips. I let my vision move down the blanket, looking again and more closely at the covered humps that were my legs; the right was larger than the left. Most likely bandaged as well.

"You're awake! Oh, that's lovely!"

Had I been able to jump, I would certainly have done so. My right ear, facing the door, had registered neither the door itself opening nor the ward sister in her blue cap and pinny, coming up close beside me. If I could hear nothing on this side, I was in trouble.

The sister fussed over me, busy important little motions that accomplished nothing. I watched her as she checked the IV level, adjusted my coverlet, looked meaninglessly at the chart at the foot of my bed, all the while clucking and smiling encouragingly at me. I watched her and I gathered my patience, even as I tested my legs for mobility. My head was remarkably clear. There were things I needed to know. "Sister? Please, sit and talk to me for a minute. I'm - I'm awfully fuzzy." My voice was blurry, that much was true, but the blur was physical: the muscles around the right side of my mouth weren't in synch with the rest of my face. " Where am I? And, I'm sorry - I don't know your name."

"I'm Sister Anne." She pulled up a chair and sat. "This is St. Stephen's, dear, in the Fulham Road."

I was right, then; that bit of skyline was London. How, how in sweet hell, had I come here? Had Rupert come back for me after all? But why all the way to London?

"What - can you tell me what day this is?" How long had my spirit, my consciousness, been out in some pain-free hinterland, while my body wrestled with itself?

"It's the second of July, dear. 1971." She had a comfortable West London accent, bringing back the years before the Carolan for a sharp, poignant moment. "You've been here ten days."

Ten days past my birthday, my attainment of the magical eighteen. Rite of passage, trial by fire. I shuddered.

"How - I don't remember how I got here. I don't remember anything at all. What happened?"

It was true, at least the first part was. I was not going to tell anyone anything, if I could avoid it. I wasn't going to trust anyone, not now. I was going to trust myself, take care of myself; an idea, half-formulated, was adding to itself as I lay in bed. Unless my witchcraft had been taken, burned out of me by the ruined spell....

"A gentleman brought you in," the sister said conversationally, and I felt my heart leap. Rupert. It had to have been Rupert; there was no one else. He hadn't abandoned me then, he hadn't broken his oath.... "An older gentleman, French. Very handsome he was, too. Had half the casualty ward sisters in a regular flutter, he did. He left us your things, and by the time we checked you into the burn unit, he'd gone off. Never came back. Thing is, he left your clothes and your money, and we put it away for you, but there's no papers in there, no identification. We don't even know your name." She beamed at me, a smile of genuine warmth, and touched my left hand gently. "But we're all going to be awfully pleased you've come out of it. Can you tell me your name?"

"I wish I could." The lie came easily, through my astonishment. My father? My father had come for me, and brought me here, and seen that I lived? I would have to think about this, to understand it, to somehow process and make sense of it. But for now....trust only myself. "I don't remember. Is there - can I talk to the surgeon, please? I want to know things."

She was disappointed, but she went. First, though, I requested and was given a glass of water. I sipped, experimentally, while she watched me. It took a few swallows, before I realised that nothing in my throat had been damaged. The feeding tube was only because I hadn't been awake to eat naturally. Good. It was a beginning.