stand upon the threshold
Dec. 19th, 2022 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysTitle: Stand Upon the Threshold
AO3: Link
Rating: G
Series: Widdershins (Jack O'Malley, Heinrich Wolfe)
Wordcount: 3,472
Summary: Mal brings Wolfe to the Place Between Worlds.
Remarks: Whoops, decided not to take that Widdershins WIP into the new year after all! One day I will figure out how to write fics that aren't just two people yak yak yakkety-yakking at each other, haha.
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The place between worlds reminded Wolfe of nothing so much as a theatre, if one without stage dressings or an audience to speak of. There was a silent expectancy to the room that ill-suited its plain appearance, as if it knew very well the dramatics it had hosted not so long ago, and only waited patiently for a cue to open the curtains once more.
"Verwunderlich," he murmured. Words didn't echo the way they should in such a wide and empty arena, the same way his footsteps didn't ring from the plain floor. Wolfe's fingers itched for bow and string, just to see how the sound would travel. "Mal, you cannot call a place such as this 'boring'."
When he turned to share his delight, though, Mal did not meet it. The other man stood in the centre of the room where he had been busying himself in striking a light; cupped hands now hovered with a spent match pinched between the fingers, face uncommonly open above them, a wide-eyed stare fixed on the air somewhere above Wolfe. The newly-lit cigarette dangled dangerously slack on the edge of his lip.
Wolfe's smile faltered.
"Mal?" he said cautiously. "Is everything alright?"
Mal blinked, then scrubbed a wrist across his eyes, quick and rough. "S'fine," he said, rescuing the cigarette on his next pass, the match disappearing in a trick as fine as any magician’s. "Just… forgot things get sharper in here, sorta."
"Ah." Automatically Wolfe took a step back, relaxing his shoulders. Seeking the quieter calm. "I am being - too much?"
Immediately Mal was shaking his head, flapping a hand. "Nah, nah," he said, and when he looked up again - over Wolfe's head, that familiar glance - it was with a gentler wonderment. "‘Course not."
Embarrassment had been left at the wayside many years ago. It was that, or be embarrassed forever. Wolfe folded his arms, and tilted a smile to the ceiling.
Mal coughed out a smoky breath and dragged his gaze down, tucking his hands loosely in the pockets of his rumpled trousers. "Don't know what you're on about, anyhow." The expression with which he regarded the rest of the space was much more sceptical wariness than any measure of awe - he scuffed a boot against the ground like he was testing old timber for rot, still with that odd soundlessness. "S'just like I told you - great load of nothing 'cept a bunch of doors."
It was, in fact, one of the more charitable ways Mal had put it during the many interrogations of their unsteady settling in after the great storm of Deadlies. The long string of well-I-dunnos had been punctuated occasionally by short and colourless reference to an empty room, vague voids, and 'itchiness' - classically Mal clarifications, the sort that drove Ben to fits of academic anguish and did little to secure what Mal truly wished for, which was space enough to sort through his feelings.
It was why it had come as such a surprise when, in the comfortable quiet of evening after supper, Mal had tilted his head back over the arm of the chair he'd been lounging in and asked if Wolfe wished to see the Between Place for himself. Had Ben been present to huff and make at jealousy there would have been a certain sense to it; Wolfe had otherwise every expectation of keeping his own small curiosity to himself in respect of Mal's hesitance. But though the casual nature of the offering had been feigned, the offer itself was apparently sincere, and so Wolfe had set surprise aside along with his book and accepted.
Perhaps it meant another step closer to Mal finding peace with his new life. If so, Wolfe was determined to be glad for it.
"But these are not simply doors," he said, spreading his arms wide as he joined the other man at the centre. "These are passage to strange lands, across all the seas! To walk to the other side of the world in a moment… ach, it's a marvel in any language." He nudged a slim shoulder, gently. "It would have made our journeys much easier, no?"
"Pff." Mal's eye-roll was eloquent. "And taken all the fun out."
The warm nostalgia of memory was not an uncomplicated thing, these days, but it still pulled a smile to Wolfe's lips. "Well. There is something to be said for the travel itself, I suppose."
"The travel's most of the point. You en't seen how it is on the other side." Mal flicked his cigarette, and wrinkled a repulsed nose at the great carved doors leading to Tapu Motu. "Thought Germany had too many trees, but it's a right jungle through there. Can't hardly see two feet ahead of your nose, and it's soggier’n Ben in a barrel.”
"If you are trying to make it less of an appeal," Wolfe said, amused, "you should know I very much enjoyed the books of explorers, as a boy," and accepted the dig of a pointy elbow with a good-natured oof.
"Hot as an oven. Bugs the length of me arm," Mal insisted.
"Very well! I shall take your word for it."
And that was as much as would be taken, for all the jesting. There was an unspoken but stern pact among their fellowship in Widdershins - no further disappearances until the grey hairs from the last two had been plucked. Of course, the witches of island and mountain both assured such a thing was most unlikely to happen again, the peculiar circumstances being not so easily repeated… but the last few months could not be forgotten at speed. Even Mal had not ventured far, as far as Wolfe knew; his observations doubtless came mostly from suspicious peering from the safety of the doorway.
"Cho-thingummy’s just winter, permanent like," Mal muttered darkly. "Prob'ly best that last door's sealed up, else it'd dump a body to starve in the desert. Or worse."
"The Americans hoped for an anchor of their own," Wolfe mused.
"Said worse, didn't I?"
"I suppose it is fortunate, then." At Mal's questioning look, Wolfe said, "That you are witch of Widdershins, and not a place you would find it displeasing to live."
He regretted the words when disagreeable feeling twisted fleetingly across Mal's face - a push too far, it was clear, when pushing was the very last thing he sought. Ben still worried, Wolfe knew, that Mal might yet baulk and shy away from a choice that had not been easily made; worried even more he might be driven into the old habit of retreat by the populace of a town whose reactions to the reappearance of a witch in their midst could only be described as mixed.
But Mal did not hunker down into the shelter of his own resentful slouch, did not bristle like an angered cat or draw forward the shield of bitter cynicism. Just thinned his lips a little, and shrugged.
Wolfe rested a hand on the bony shoulder all the same, squeezing silent apology. A moment later a gloved hand patted the top of it, there and gone.
"Eh," Mal said. "Better eating here than fried bugs, at least."
"I have not heard Ms Nyree claiming to miss those with her breakfast," Wolfe said lightly.
"Heard her making a fuss about the fish, though, right?" Mal chewed the stubby end of his cigarette with an air of vague offense. "Dunno what's the problem, s'good enough food."
"Er - certainly." Wolfe, who had found steamed whitefish and limp potatoes something of a downgrade from Bismarckhering in fresh brötchen himself, chose tactful disengagement from that old conflict. "I would think the weather a greater change. Though it is cooler still in here, did you notice?"
Mal glanced back at the door through which they'd come. The last of the cigarette was plucked from between his teeth and ground into a scrap of paper, and then - to Wolfe's resigned amusement - tucked in a pocket. Littering was reserved only for the streets of his own city, it seemed. "Yeah. Spring and all, so…"
"A change with the season?"
"Nah. Felt the same as this every other time I've been. Don't figure it changes much." Mal's gaze slid around the boundaries of the space, brow furrowing. "Except for when it goes… different."
“Different?” Wolfe canted his head. "What is 'different'?"
The shoulder hunched under his hand, then forcibly relaxed on a low exhale. "Swirly." He squinted out into some middle distance, the bright blue of his eyes briefly shaded. "Don't think there's actual walls here, y'know."
A theatre, Wolfe thought again. A theatre, and a sweeping curtain, and a spotlight that shone so brightly you could not see the thousand eyes watching in calculated anticipation beyond the ring of light.
Wolfe looked at the place where the pale circle of the floor abruptly ended, veiled in shifting darkness, and felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck.
Mal made a short noise through his nose suddenly, and shot the space above Wolfe a quick, uncertain look. "Look, I'm not trying to be... There's just not words for it, alright?"
"Mal. It is no trouble." He shook the unsettled feeling away, patted the shoulder again reassuringly before dropping his hand to his side. "I cannot imagine I would find it easier to speak on, in your place. This is new for all of us, no? There are no rules to how the path is walked, save the ones that have always been true."
Mal's choice when to talk. Mal's choice on how things are to be shared. The very same ones they had created for themselves, by roadside and firelight.
The low grunt sounded less than convinced, so Wolfe continued, "It is more than I expected, to have an account of my own." He rubbed a thumb along his chin, gaze drifting to the elegant, ornate swirls of the door framed in yellow, with its artful etchings of solemn faces and layered flower petals, a comfortingly solid presence. It would be quite a feat to keep dusted, were dust a concern. "Do you think it would be rude to take a sketch, sometime?"
"You're the one claiming there’s no rules," Mal said without heat, but he glanced aside, scratching at the back of his head. “Dunno. Best to ask, mebbe.”
It was as clear an indication as any there was a sense of privacy at stake. “Then ask I shall,” Wolfe said firmly. “It is only that I think Ben would like a chance to see, even in just this small way.”
"Your drawings en’t a small anything," Mal said, and then swatted him backhanded, sounding much more like himself as he added, "And don't encourage him, there'll be no stopping the asking for words then." He lifted his hands, a pantomimed monster that spoke in a poor approximation of Ben's sharp and curious tone. "'What's the mystical meaning of no walls, O'Malley? How come there's not spirits running everywhere, O'Malley? Why's your bleedin' door not fancy like the rest, O'Malley?'"
"That is a fair question," Wolfe said thoughtfully, turning to eye the offending article with interest. Next to the other, solid frames set into the space it looked a pale and ephemeral thing. Newborn. "Do you suppose it will change on its own?"
"Oh, fer-" Wolfe had heard that shade of barked exasperation before; the one that carried in it the dark depths of uncertainty. Sure enough, there followed a huff beside him, quieter. "Don't know. Not like I’m some sort've… spirit-y door builder type, am I."
"Hmm. Another thing to ask Ms Nyree, then," Wolfe said, sidestepping the point that as far as any of them knew that was exactly what it was to be a witch, and tilted a reassuring smile at his companion. "I am sure she would say if it was a thing to be worried over. She is not, ah… shy of sharing her knowings."
Mal snorted a broody sort of agreement. He had taken to tutelage with a less resentful heart than Wolfe had feared, but the subdued obedience of the first few days had slowly given way to more argumentative habits, and the occupants of the House had grown accustomed to the occasional squabblings that arose when the two witches were in session. It might have been concerning, had Wolfe not felt so privately relieved to see a reviving spark of the old fire in his friend, and had Nyree not seemed to genuinely thrive on the challenge.
Ben, Wolfe thought, just seemed gratified to find Mal a universally difficult student. He had caught the wizard smiling quite peaceably over the sound of raised voices.
Mal's frown, meanwhile, had slipped to a full scowl, eyeing his own door like it was letting them all down with its flighty refusal to take form.
"Perhaps it will grow to look like the rest of the building," Wolfe suggested gently. "It is a lovely architecture-"
"Urgh," was Mal's judgement on that. "Better not. Not feeling 'concrete wedding cake with poncey ribbons' as me grand entrance for the rest of… whatever."
Wolfe masked the smile behind one hand in a practised move. "Then what would you choose?"
"Something..." Mal sighed through his teeth, scruffing a hand through the thick curls at his hairline. "Guh. What's it matter? Be lucky not to end up with a pile of flippin' matchsticks if I have to make it m’self."
"You forget I've seen you with hammer and nail. You are not nearly so bad as that." A little self-consciously, aware of the absurdity in the offering even as it came to him, he added, "And… if there is any way of helping, of course, I..."
Unexpectedly Mal's face split in a grin, wide and a little wicked at the edges. "Har. Seen you with a hammer and nail too, remember? Going to do as good a job as you did on ol' whatsit's barn roof? Out in Luxembourg?"
As soon as Wolfe placed the memory he laughed, for all that it was not a favourite. The long road through Luxembourg, an exchange of labour for shelter, and a windy afternoon... "Oh, really, Mal!"
"Hoy timber, look out below." Mal's arm toppled dramatically through the air, complete with explosive sound effects upon landing. "Down you come like a sack of turnips. That leg of yours - thought we was going to be stuck living with them blummin' goats forever."
"Now there is a destiny I cannot see for you, my friend." Wolfe folded his arms, self-consciousness soundly smothered by the fondness filling his chest. "For one, a shepherd should not argue quite so much with his flock, I think."
"Aye, well, if they didn't get into everything-"
"I admit the manners were lacking, but it was their home before ours."
"And since when's rent a full pouch of tobacco and me good shirt!"
Chuckling, Wolfe closed his eyes on the image: Mal, thinner in face but with more colour at his temples, bellowing obscenities as he wrestled with the last shreds of a grey tunic to the profound disinterest of the nanny goat gulping it down at impressive speed. It had not eased the pain of his mending leg (merely fractured, in the end; and wasn't it always the way, that luck smiled at them sidelong) but it had been a very welcome distraction.
"Good times," Mal's voice said beside him, softer and wistful in a way that stripped the years back, and the fullness in Wolfe's chest ached.
When he looked to his friend, Mal's face was upturned as if towards sun or stars, hands returned to his pockets. No doubt Wolfe should say some helpful thing, like how there would surely be many good times ahead, how the start of a new journey did not mean the loss of what had been gained on the old, how he had always hoped to reach a destination to suit them both and still, sometimes, worried it could not be found.
All that left his lips was, "Very much so."
Mal blew out a breath, equally a quieter sound and soon out-competed by the rustle of fabric and scratch of cardboard as another roll-up was dug out of the recesses of his clothing. Light flared, briefly, followed by the pungency of fresh tobacco. Was it a thinner scent than usual also, in this place that made some things sharp and faded others like paper left too long in the sun? More questions to be answered by those better knowing, no doubt.
"She said it'd be lonely, y'know."
Wolfe blinked, stirred from his own gentle melancholy. "Who did?"
"Harry."
"I- Miss Barber said this to you?" Wolfe had great admiration for the forthrightness of Harriet Barber, but there were some things that were a step too far, and he was quite relieved when Mal glanced at his spirit and immediately grimaced.
"Nah, not like that - and it wasn't her said it first neither." He snorted, looking away. "Green britches had to get its dig in, didn't it."
Wolfe pulled a face of his own, tasting sour memory - a different stage, and a crueller audience. "Envy. Ah, natürlich, that sounds far more to its liking."
"That's the thing about envy, innit? Great big liar, but it uses the truth to do it. Didn't half know how to talk about this," a wave of a hand towards his face, the blue eyes downcast, "and it's worse now. Spirit business, swirly places… Can't even get Ben through the bloody door in the first place."
"Ben understands," Wolfe assured; then amended it to, "Well, he is trying. Perhaps most hard of us all, in his own way."
"Them books and all." Mal's lips twitched, not quite a smile. "Gonna end up with spectacles on top've his spectacles." He looked up to Wolfe again, dark brows pinching together, hands fidgeting inside his pockets. "Would've made sense you not wanting to come here, y'know. Weren't - weren’t good the last time you were here."
Wolfe had never been here - not as the being that called itself Heinrich Wolfe, at least, body and mind and spirit in one. What he recalled could not even be named memory as such, only strange sensation: a sense all at once of both terrible loss and equally terrible freedom, a coming apart and joining together that frayed the edges of the very notion of self. It was not a pleasant thing to dwell upon. But nor was it wholly displeasing either. He had found himself sketching notes out on his violin some nights, for a song that did not exist, that perhaps could not; trying to find a shape for it in his own language.
So there was no struggle in finding honesty when he said, "Not an experience I am hurried to repeat, I admit, but I have told you it doesn't much trouble me. And it is not as though there is such a great risk.”
“Can’t know that for sure,” Mal said, lips twisting.
“No,” Wolfe conceded, as he often had to on this foreign ground. “But you would not have brought me here if there was, yes? This I am sure in.”
Mal was quiet a moment, smoke-wreathed and gaze cast somewhere beyond the walls that weren’t. “Just like that, eh.”
A little surprised to have it called into question, Wolfe said, “Of course.”
"Yeah," Mal said, flicking ash from the end of his cigarette, and with a similar thoughtlessness of movement sagged casually sideways into Wolfe. "That’s about what Harry figured too." Almost as if an afterthought, he added, "Sod the door. We'll figure it out."
Wolfe caught the weight easily, shoulder to shoulder (or at least shoulder to upper arm). Laughing under his breath, he settled an arm over the skinny shelf of Mal’s shoulders; the correct way, not too heavily or enclosing, able to be swatted off at will. This, at least, he still knew like few others.
"Yes," Wolfe said, warm as a cat's belly in a sunbeam. As a friend in the light of another's trust. "And without any breaking of limbs this time, I think."
"No promises," Mal said. And then, "Oi, Wolfe." His tone drew Wolfe’s gaze down, eyebrows lifting in curious anticipation. “Won’t be nothing special, mind, I’m no wizard.” The glint in his eye was a known one: conspirator to confidant, the glimmer of uncertainty stifled under the defiant chin-kick of a dare levelled to both parties. “But, since we're here and all - you want to see some proper magic?”
As always, Wolfe had no way of knowing what his spirit did when his heart leapt in this way; only that Mal looked up at it, and grinned.
AO3: Link
Rating: G
Series: Widdershins (Jack O'Malley, Heinrich Wolfe)
Wordcount: 3,472
Summary: Mal brings Wolfe to the Place Between Worlds.
Remarks: Whoops, decided not to take that Widdershins WIP into the new year after all! One day I will figure out how to write fics that aren't just two people yak yak yakkety-yakking at each other, haha.
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The place between worlds reminded Wolfe of nothing so much as a theatre, if one without stage dressings or an audience to speak of. There was a silent expectancy to the room that ill-suited its plain appearance, as if it knew very well the dramatics it had hosted not so long ago, and only waited patiently for a cue to open the curtains once more.
"Verwunderlich," he murmured. Words didn't echo the way they should in such a wide and empty arena, the same way his footsteps didn't ring from the plain floor. Wolfe's fingers itched for bow and string, just to see how the sound would travel. "Mal, you cannot call a place such as this 'boring'."
When he turned to share his delight, though, Mal did not meet it. The other man stood in the centre of the room where he had been busying himself in striking a light; cupped hands now hovered with a spent match pinched between the fingers, face uncommonly open above them, a wide-eyed stare fixed on the air somewhere above Wolfe. The newly-lit cigarette dangled dangerously slack on the edge of his lip.
Wolfe's smile faltered.
"Mal?" he said cautiously. "Is everything alright?"
Mal blinked, then scrubbed a wrist across his eyes, quick and rough. "S'fine," he said, rescuing the cigarette on his next pass, the match disappearing in a trick as fine as any magician’s. "Just… forgot things get sharper in here, sorta."
"Ah." Automatically Wolfe took a step back, relaxing his shoulders. Seeking the quieter calm. "I am being - too much?"
Immediately Mal was shaking his head, flapping a hand. "Nah, nah," he said, and when he looked up again - over Wolfe's head, that familiar glance - it was with a gentler wonderment. "‘Course not."
Embarrassment had been left at the wayside many years ago. It was that, or be embarrassed forever. Wolfe folded his arms, and tilted a smile to the ceiling.
Mal coughed out a smoky breath and dragged his gaze down, tucking his hands loosely in the pockets of his rumpled trousers. "Don't know what you're on about, anyhow." The expression with which he regarded the rest of the space was much more sceptical wariness than any measure of awe - he scuffed a boot against the ground like he was testing old timber for rot, still with that odd soundlessness. "S'just like I told you - great load of nothing 'cept a bunch of doors."
It was, in fact, one of the more charitable ways Mal had put it during the many interrogations of their unsteady settling in after the great storm of Deadlies. The long string of well-I-dunnos had been punctuated occasionally by short and colourless reference to an empty room, vague voids, and 'itchiness' - classically Mal clarifications, the sort that drove Ben to fits of academic anguish and did little to secure what Mal truly wished for, which was space enough to sort through his feelings.
It was why it had come as such a surprise when, in the comfortable quiet of evening after supper, Mal had tilted his head back over the arm of the chair he'd been lounging in and asked if Wolfe wished to see the Between Place for himself. Had Ben been present to huff and make at jealousy there would have been a certain sense to it; Wolfe had otherwise every expectation of keeping his own small curiosity to himself in respect of Mal's hesitance. But though the casual nature of the offering had been feigned, the offer itself was apparently sincere, and so Wolfe had set surprise aside along with his book and accepted.
Perhaps it meant another step closer to Mal finding peace with his new life. If so, Wolfe was determined to be glad for it.
"But these are not simply doors," he said, spreading his arms wide as he joined the other man at the centre. "These are passage to strange lands, across all the seas! To walk to the other side of the world in a moment… ach, it's a marvel in any language." He nudged a slim shoulder, gently. "It would have made our journeys much easier, no?"
"Pff." Mal's eye-roll was eloquent. "And taken all the fun out."
The warm nostalgia of memory was not an uncomplicated thing, these days, but it still pulled a smile to Wolfe's lips. "Well. There is something to be said for the travel itself, I suppose."
"The travel's most of the point. You en't seen how it is on the other side." Mal flicked his cigarette, and wrinkled a repulsed nose at the great carved doors leading to Tapu Motu. "Thought Germany had too many trees, but it's a right jungle through there. Can't hardly see two feet ahead of your nose, and it's soggier’n Ben in a barrel.”
"If you are trying to make it less of an appeal," Wolfe said, amused, "you should know I very much enjoyed the books of explorers, as a boy," and accepted the dig of a pointy elbow with a good-natured oof.
"Hot as an oven. Bugs the length of me arm," Mal insisted.
"Very well! I shall take your word for it."
And that was as much as would be taken, for all the jesting. There was an unspoken but stern pact among their fellowship in Widdershins - no further disappearances until the grey hairs from the last two had been plucked. Of course, the witches of island and mountain both assured such a thing was most unlikely to happen again, the peculiar circumstances being not so easily repeated… but the last few months could not be forgotten at speed. Even Mal had not ventured far, as far as Wolfe knew; his observations doubtless came mostly from suspicious peering from the safety of the doorway.
"Cho-thingummy’s just winter, permanent like," Mal muttered darkly. "Prob'ly best that last door's sealed up, else it'd dump a body to starve in the desert. Or worse."
"The Americans hoped for an anchor of their own," Wolfe mused.
"Said worse, didn't I?"
"I suppose it is fortunate, then." At Mal's questioning look, Wolfe said, "That you are witch of Widdershins, and not a place you would find it displeasing to live."
He regretted the words when disagreeable feeling twisted fleetingly across Mal's face - a push too far, it was clear, when pushing was the very last thing he sought. Ben still worried, Wolfe knew, that Mal might yet baulk and shy away from a choice that had not been easily made; worried even more he might be driven into the old habit of retreat by the populace of a town whose reactions to the reappearance of a witch in their midst could only be described as mixed.
But Mal did not hunker down into the shelter of his own resentful slouch, did not bristle like an angered cat or draw forward the shield of bitter cynicism. Just thinned his lips a little, and shrugged.
Wolfe rested a hand on the bony shoulder all the same, squeezing silent apology. A moment later a gloved hand patted the top of it, there and gone.
"Eh," Mal said. "Better eating here than fried bugs, at least."
"I have not heard Ms Nyree claiming to miss those with her breakfast," Wolfe said lightly.
"Heard her making a fuss about the fish, though, right?" Mal chewed the stubby end of his cigarette with an air of vague offense. "Dunno what's the problem, s'good enough food."
"Er - certainly." Wolfe, who had found steamed whitefish and limp potatoes something of a downgrade from Bismarckhering in fresh brötchen himself, chose tactful disengagement from that old conflict. "I would think the weather a greater change. Though it is cooler still in here, did you notice?"
Mal glanced back at the door through which they'd come. The last of the cigarette was plucked from between his teeth and ground into a scrap of paper, and then - to Wolfe's resigned amusement - tucked in a pocket. Littering was reserved only for the streets of his own city, it seemed. "Yeah. Spring and all, so…"
"A change with the season?"
"Nah. Felt the same as this every other time I've been. Don't figure it changes much." Mal's gaze slid around the boundaries of the space, brow furrowing. "Except for when it goes… different."
“Different?” Wolfe canted his head. "What is 'different'?"
The shoulder hunched under his hand, then forcibly relaxed on a low exhale. "Swirly." He squinted out into some middle distance, the bright blue of his eyes briefly shaded. "Don't think there's actual walls here, y'know."
A theatre, Wolfe thought again. A theatre, and a sweeping curtain, and a spotlight that shone so brightly you could not see the thousand eyes watching in calculated anticipation beyond the ring of light.
Wolfe looked at the place where the pale circle of the floor abruptly ended, veiled in shifting darkness, and felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck.
Mal made a short noise through his nose suddenly, and shot the space above Wolfe a quick, uncertain look. "Look, I'm not trying to be... There's just not words for it, alright?"
"Mal. It is no trouble." He shook the unsettled feeling away, patted the shoulder again reassuringly before dropping his hand to his side. "I cannot imagine I would find it easier to speak on, in your place. This is new for all of us, no? There are no rules to how the path is walked, save the ones that have always been true."
Mal's choice when to talk. Mal's choice on how things are to be shared. The very same ones they had created for themselves, by roadside and firelight.
The low grunt sounded less than convinced, so Wolfe continued, "It is more than I expected, to have an account of my own." He rubbed a thumb along his chin, gaze drifting to the elegant, ornate swirls of the door framed in yellow, with its artful etchings of solemn faces and layered flower petals, a comfortingly solid presence. It would be quite a feat to keep dusted, were dust a concern. "Do you think it would be rude to take a sketch, sometime?"
"You're the one claiming there’s no rules," Mal said without heat, but he glanced aside, scratching at the back of his head. “Dunno. Best to ask, mebbe.”
It was as clear an indication as any there was a sense of privacy at stake. “Then ask I shall,” Wolfe said firmly. “It is only that I think Ben would like a chance to see, even in just this small way.”
"Your drawings en’t a small anything," Mal said, and then swatted him backhanded, sounding much more like himself as he added, "And don't encourage him, there'll be no stopping the asking for words then." He lifted his hands, a pantomimed monster that spoke in a poor approximation of Ben's sharp and curious tone. "'What's the mystical meaning of no walls, O'Malley? How come there's not spirits running everywhere, O'Malley? Why's your bleedin' door not fancy like the rest, O'Malley?'"
"That is a fair question," Wolfe said thoughtfully, turning to eye the offending article with interest. Next to the other, solid frames set into the space it looked a pale and ephemeral thing. Newborn. "Do you suppose it will change on its own?"
"Oh, fer-" Wolfe had heard that shade of barked exasperation before; the one that carried in it the dark depths of uncertainty. Sure enough, there followed a huff beside him, quieter. "Don't know. Not like I’m some sort've… spirit-y door builder type, am I."
"Hmm. Another thing to ask Ms Nyree, then," Wolfe said, sidestepping the point that as far as any of them knew that was exactly what it was to be a witch, and tilted a reassuring smile at his companion. "I am sure she would say if it was a thing to be worried over. She is not, ah… shy of sharing her knowings."
Mal snorted a broody sort of agreement. He had taken to tutelage with a less resentful heart than Wolfe had feared, but the subdued obedience of the first few days had slowly given way to more argumentative habits, and the occupants of the House had grown accustomed to the occasional squabblings that arose when the two witches were in session. It might have been concerning, had Wolfe not felt so privately relieved to see a reviving spark of the old fire in his friend, and had Nyree not seemed to genuinely thrive on the challenge.
Ben, Wolfe thought, just seemed gratified to find Mal a universally difficult student. He had caught the wizard smiling quite peaceably over the sound of raised voices.
Mal's frown, meanwhile, had slipped to a full scowl, eyeing his own door like it was letting them all down with its flighty refusal to take form.
"Perhaps it will grow to look like the rest of the building," Wolfe suggested gently. "It is a lovely architecture-"
"Urgh," was Mal's judgement on that. "Better not. Not feeling 'concrete wedding cake with poncey ribbons' as me grand entrance for the rest of… whatever."
Wolfe masked the smile behind one hand in a practised move. "Then what would you choose?"
"Something..." Mal sighed through his teeth, scruffing a hand through the thick curls at his hairline. "Guh. What's it matter? Be lucky not to end up with a pile of flippin' matchsticks if I have to make it m’self."
"You forget I've seen you with hammer and nail. You are not nearly so bad as that." A little self-consciously, aware of the absurdity in the offering even as it came to him, he added, "And… if there is any way of helping, of course, I..."
Unexpectedly Mal's face split in a grin, wide and a little wicked at the edges. "Har. Seen you with a hammer and nail too, remember? Going to do as good a job as you did on ol' whatsit's barn roof? Out in Luxembourg?"
As soon as Wolfe placed the memory he laughed, for all that it was not a favourite. The long road through Luxembourg, an exchange of labour for shelter, and a windy afternoon... "Oh, really, Mal!"
"Hoy timber, look out below." Mal's arm toppled dramatically through the air, complete with explosive sound effects upon landing. "Down you come like a sack of turnips. That leg of yours - thought we was going to be stuck living with them blummin' goats forever."
"Now there is a destiny I cannot see for you, my friend." Wolfe folded his arms, self-consciousness soundly smothered by the fondness filling his chest. "For one, a shepherd should not argue quite so much with his flock, I think."
"Aye, well, if they didn't get into everything-"
"I admit the manners were lacking, but it was their home before ours."
"And since when's rent a full pouch of tobacco and me good shirt!"
Chuckling, Wolfe closed his eyes on the image: Mal, thinner in face but with more colour at his temples, bellowing obscenities as he wrestled with the last shreds of a grey tunic to the profound disinterest of the nanny goat gulping it down at impressive speed. It had not eased the pain of his mending leg (merely fractured, in the end; and wasn't it always the way, that luck smiled at them sidelong) but it had been a very welcome distraction.
"Good times," Mal's voice said beside him, softer and wistful in a way that stripped the years back, and the fullness in Wolfe's chest ached.
When he looked to his friend, Mal's face was upturned as if towards sun or stars, hands returned to his pockets. No doubt Wolfe should say some helpful thing, like how there would surely be many good times ahead, how the start of a new journey did not mean the loss of what had been gained on the old, how he had always hoped to reach a destination to suit them both and still, sometimes, worried it could not be found.
All that left his lips was, "Very much so."
Mal blew out a breath, equally a quieter sound and soon out-competed by the rustle of fabric and scratch of cardboard as another roll-up was dug out of the recesses of his clothing. Light flared, briefly, followed by the pungency of fresh tobacco. Was it a thinner scent than usual also, in this place that made some things sharp and faded others like paper left too long in the sun? More questions to be answered by those better knowing, no doubt.
"She said it'd be lonely, y'know."
Wolfe blinked, stirred from his own gentle melancholy. "Who did?"
"Harry."
"I- Miss Barber said this to you?" Wolfe had great admiration for the forthrightness of Harriet Barber, but there were some things that were a step too far, and he was quite relieved when Mal glanced at his spirit and immediately grimaced.
"Nah, not like that - and it wasn't her said it first neither." He snorted, looking away. "Green britches had to get its dig in, didn't it."
Wolfe pulled a face of his own, tasting sour memory - a different stage, and a crueller audience. "Envy. Ah, natürlich, that sounds far more to its liking."
"That's the thing about envy, innit? Great big liar, but it uses the truth to do it. Didn't half know how to talk about this," a wave of a hand towards his face, the blue eyes downcast, "and it's worse now. Spirit business, swirly places… Can't even get Ben through the bloody door in the first place."
"Ben understands," Wolfe assured; then amended it to, "Well, he is trying. Perhaps most hard of us all, in his own way."
"Them books and all." Mal's lips twitched, not quite a smile. "Gonna end up with spectacles on top've his spectacles." He looked up to Wolfe again, dark brows pinching together, hands fidgeting inside his pockets. "Would've made sense you not wanting to come here, y'know. Weren't - weren’t good the last time you were here."
Wolfe had never been here - not as the being that called itself Heinrich Wolfe, at least, body and mind and spirit in one. What he recalled could not even be named memory as such, only strange sensation: a sense all at once of both terrible loss and equally terrible freedom, a coming apart and joining together that frayed the edges of the very notion of self. It was not a pleasant thing to dwell upon. But nor was it wholly displeasing either. He had found himself sketching notes out on his violin some nights, for a song that did not exist, that perhaps could not; trying to find a shape for it in his own language.
So there was no struggle in finding honesty when he said, "Not an experience I am hurried to repeat, I admit, but I have told you it doesn't much trouble me. And it is not as though there is such a great risk.”
“Can’t know that for sure,” Mal said, lips twisting.
“No,” Wolfe conceded, as he often had to on this foreign ground. “But you would not have brought me here if there was, yes? This I am sure in.”
Mal was quiet a moment, smoke-wreathed and gaze cast somewhere beyond the walls that weren’t. “Just like that, eh.”
A little surprised to have it called into question, Wolfe said, “Of course.”
"Yeah," Mal said, flicking ash from the end of his cigarette, and with a similar thoughtlessness of movement sagged casually sideways into Wolfe. "That’s about what Harry figured too." Almost as if an afterthought, he added, "Sod the door. We'll figure it out."
Wolfe caught the weight easily, shoulder to shoulder (or at least shoulder to upper arm). Laughing under his breath, he settled an arm over the skinny shelf of Mal’s shoulders; the correct way, not too heavily or enclosing, able to be swatted off at will. This, at least, he still knew like few others.
"Yes," Wolfe said, warm as a cat's belly in a sunbeam. As a friend in the light of another's trust. "And without any breaking of limbs this time, I think."
"No promises," Mal said. And then, "Oi, Wolfe." His tone drew Wolfe’s gaze down, eyebrows lifting in curious anticipation. “Won’t be nothing special, mind, I’m no wizard.” The glint in his eye was a known one: conspirator to confidant, the glimmer of uncertainty stifled under the defiant chin-kick of a dare levelled to both parties. “But, since we're here and all - you want to see some proper magic?”
As always, Wolfe had no way of knowing what his spirit did when his heart leapt in this way; only that Mal looked up at it, and grinned.
