Chương 235: Day Two Hundred And Thirty-Three

Dear Diary, It's weird how for all that my friends and I back in Camden made 'we don't know nothing' such an integral part of our personalities, most of us spent a ridiculous amount of time wiki-surfing and soaking up information like sponges. Most of it would have been useless back there, and even more of it is meaningless in the here and now, but now and then something jumps up and grabs my attention. So at dinner, where I sat next to Bonnie and across from Raven, I brought up Liam's uniform wants.

"Apparently Isnomi's starting a trend; your nephew Liam wants a uniform." Larry got a bit of a constipated look at that, at least until Bonnie leaned over and laid her hand on his.

"It means he wants to be a Hero, love. It's not a bad thing, really." In response, Larry heaved a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. The one that wasn't currently held in one of Bonnie's, of course.

"I suppose you're right. I just don't want to..." He trailed off, obviously getting lost inside his own head.

"On the one hand, I kinda get you, Larry. You don't want him thinking he's up to throwing down with a dragon. You sure as shit don't want someone else thinking that and hiding behind him when there's a Dragon in the room trying to eat people. But if you don't nurture that Hero thing, along with, y'know, explaining to him what being a Hero really means, he's likely to wind up like Charlie and the other pieces of shit formerly known as Lancaster." Lachlan barked out, "hey, my kid wouldn't do that kind of thing!"

I shook my head, looked him right in the eyes, and said, "Lachlan, before they did what they did to Bonnie, would you have thought they could do something like that?" He looked a little thoughtful, a weird look on Lachlan. Apparently becoming an official Hero really does make somebody smarter.

"No. I guess not."

"And why's that?" He thought a little more, then got a wry smile as he shook his head.

"Because they were Lancasters." I nodded.

"Yeah. That whole nature versus nurture debate is as old as parents and kids. Thing is, neither side's entirely right. Every kid is born with tendencies, stuff they're prone to, stuff they like and dislike, stuff they have trouble with. The nurture part comes in when you, as a parent, tell them what's acceptable and what's not, what's desirable and what's not. Like..." I paused.

"No offense, but at a guess I'd say one thing every Lancaster has? Ambition." Both Lachlan and Larry opened their mouths, worked them a bit like they wanted to disagree, but neither of them could come up with a good argument against it. Finally Bonnie said, "it's not a bad thing, love." I nodded to her.

"She's right. Ambition is just a kind of drive. Something that pushes you. If you've got a shit ton of ambition, and I think any kid who is trying to learn Shaping to become a Hero when they're barely out of diapers qualifies, you're gonna find some way to express that.

If nobody gives you any guidance, you're gonna pick easy ways to express it, and a lot of those easy ways wind up in tears, whether it's the kid's when they get hurt, their parents when they get dead, or somebody else's when the butcher's bill lands on somebody else."

"You say that like you've got some personal experience with it." I shrugged.

"Not a huge amount, I guess. But some. Until I got into the Academy, power was just a pipe dream, a fantasy to distract me from a shitty life. But yeah, once I realized I wanted it, I started pushing myself for it, and..." I laid my right hand on the table where they all could see it. It still had the stripes from where I'd burned my fingers with a Mana Blade the day of my Court Martial.

"In a way? I've gotten lucky."

"How the fuck can you say you've gotten lucky?" blurted Raven. When I shot her a look she shrugged and explained, "I've been the one to do immediate First Aid a couple of the times you passed out. Like, before Saffron got here. Other times I've helped her haul your ass around when Marie didn't come with her. I've seen your scars." When the others looked at her, she said, "she's got more scars all over her than the Map... I mean Scrying Room has roads." When the others looked at me, I nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, that's about right. Most of them from the Battles of the Walls. But not all of them. I've picked up others here and there. Some small pinprick ones in the backs of my hands from the Moon Temple. I didn't even notice getting them. Some from saving Bill. A shit ton from the Walls, like I said. Some from dealing with that Dragon. But, and this is why I count myself lucky, almost every scar that can be traced back to me is either on me or somebody who really deserved it."

"Almost?" Lachlan's question wasn't loud, but I could tell he really wanted to know, or I'd have told him to fuck off. Shit, I almost did anyway, but then I reminded myself that this whole conversation started out talking about nature versus nurture, and how that nurture could turn innate traits positive or negative. Fuck, now I was momming Lachlan. Again, I think. How the fuck did I wind up Team Mom? I heaved a sigh and said, "Angel. Bill. Any of the Levies who survived me at the Walls.

I could go on, but I try not to think about it too much, just try to remember to watch where I'm pointed when I go off, y'know?" Lachlan smiled.

"You make yourself sound like a weapon." I didn't say anything. After a few moments, I slid a single carefully controlled Mana Blade out of the back of my hand. Then another pointing upward out of each shoulder. Little ones out the backs of my elbows. Right about then Larry cut in.

"Maybe you are." I pulled them back in.

"We all are." Bonnie's face fell.

"I never wanted to be a weapon." I laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey there, don't get down about it. We all are, yeah, but it's not like the world is such a kind and gentle place that weapons aren't needed. Shit, I'd love it if I never had to pop a Mana Blade again, if I never had to kill somebody again, if I never had to make someone piss themselves in terror. But..." I let that hang until Raven, probably the least patient person at the table, said, "but what?" I tried to resist, but I couldn't.

"Chicken butt." I snickered a little, then shook my head when everybody gave me weird looks.

"Sorry, Raven. Old in-joke, you hadda be there. But seriously? Being able to do all that? Means that one of those wyverns didn't get to fuck with the rest of my friends. That the Dragon spent so much time trying to kill my sorry ass that he didn't have much left over to kill you guys or our Volunteers. That Oliver and Octavio Orange learned not to fuck with Phileo and the Yards. Ever. Again. That my adorable little rugrat left the Temple of the Moon alive and Artemis' High Priestess didn't."

I paused, looked each of the others in the eyes.

"Being a weapon means that I can protect the people I care about." If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. I watched as Bonnie and Larry both curled their fingers, then intertwined them. Before anybody else could say anything, I finished with, "Being a weapon, everyone knowing you're a weapon, means that nobody with half a brain will ever fuck with your kids." Lachlan nodded, and I focused on him for a moment.

"And you? Your kid wants to become a weapon. At least in part because he has no idea what that means, the prices that somebody will eventually have to pay. You need to be there for that little man, showing and telling him what it means, how not to be a despicable piece of shit like your cousins when he finally gets to the top of that hill and becomes the weapon he wants to be." I almost didn't hear Bonnie's whisper.

"What if becoming a weapon means I can't have kids?" I heaved a sigh.

"Shit. I dunno. Part of me is thinking 'we all pay some kinda price', but most of me? Is just thinking 'why the fuck would it mean that'? Sometimes I feel like every time I do it it chips something away from me, like I get a little more reckless, a little more arrogant, a little less... I dunno. Human? But if my humanity is the price for helping my friends? Fuck it. Probably overrated anyhow."

"But..."

"But nothing, Bonnie. You want to have kids?" She nodded.

"You want more than just adoptees and nieces and nephews?" She looked down at her plate. The discussion had come up shortly after we'd started eating, and most of our pork chops had already started to go cold.

"When you say it like that, it makes me sound... greedy." I shrugged.

"You gonna turn away kids who need a family?" She looked at me, horror in her eyes, shaking her head.

"NO!"

"Then fuck it. You're not greedy, you just want to see a crotch goblin running around with Larry's eyes and your hair or some shit like that. Nothing greedy about that. Greedy would be stealing kids from their parents, or making other people's kids go hungry just so you could have them." I slapped my hands on the table and stood.

"Larry, you mind if I steal Bonnie from you for a bit?" He got this stupid mulish look in his eyes, and before he could see if he could fit his whole fuckin' leg in his mouth I cut him off saying, "I promise she'll come back no worse for wear than she is now." Larry's mulish look got a little less mulish, but he still asked, "How long?"

"I dunno. Maybe just a couple hours, maybe for the night, maybe a day or two."

"Why, exactly, do you want to steal my bride away for 'a day or two'?" I shook my head and chuckled.

"Larry, you are such a doofus. What, you think I'm gonna steal her away and turn her to the dark side? Or get her pregnant while she's away?" I remembered Sister Siobhan's first words to Saffron and I, and my chuckles moved closer to outright laughter.

"Remember, Larry, despite everything, I'm not a guy. No trouser snake in my trousers. Same for Saffron, and the only long dangly bit Marie has is her tail. If she comes back pregnant, it's because she already is, and I'm one hundred percent sure that if she is, it's yours." He worked his mouth for a bit, looking for words, shaking his head. Finally he set one elbow on the table and lowered his face into his palm.

"Now I feel greedy. For wanting my wife to have our child."

"Shit, Larry, if her mom's anything to go by, you'll need to pluralize that within a year or two." I turned to Bonnie.

"You want his kids specifically, right?"

"How can you even ask that?" I shook my head again.

"I'm not the one who needs to hear it, Bonnie." She stopped with her mouth open, then closed it with an audible snap. Then she turned to Larry, took his face between her palms, and pulled him into a relatively chaste kiss.

"Yes, Laurence Lancaster, I want to bear your children, and no others." With a wry glance at me she said, "as many as I can, as Tabitha has so rightly deduced." I shrugged.

"Hey, some people like going through the motions, others want their partners firing for effect. I don't judge. Okay, maybe just a little, because you'd have to be just a little bit cray cray to want one, let alone a whole herd of them." Lachlan interrupted.

"But, you've got one, and you always seem like you like spending time with her." I looked him straight in the eye and said, "at what point did anyone with a working brain and sensory organs call me sane?"

"Point."

"Okay. You ready to go see if the Lady Parts are working, and what we need to do if they're not?" Bonnie pulled Larry into another kiss, then took a deep breath, standing straight and squaring her shoulders as she did.

"I'm ready, Let's go before I lose my nerve." I nodded, took her hand, and stepped back to the Academy. The moment we arrived in our outer room, Saffron squeaked from behind me. I turned to see her lying in our bed, shoulders bare, the sheets pulled up to cover her.

"Tabitha!"

"Yes, Kitten?" I tried, but couldn't quite keep the laughter out of my voice.

"Warn a body when you're bringing guests home." She paused, looking back and forth between Bonnie and I, then at our hands.

"Or did you Just Happen to someone again?" I let go of Bonnie's hand, laughter erupting as I did. That only got worse when the adjoining door opened and Isnomi rushed out hollering, "Mama'th home!" I think Bonnie wanted to sink into the floor, but even in Intermediate Heroic Skills we hadn't gotten a lesson on how to do that, so she just had to stand there looking overwhelmed, even moreso when Marie came in and helped Saffron into her comfy civvies.

Eventually I got enough control over myself to say, "Bonnie's got some medical questions, and I figure between you and Sister Siobhan you could find an answer." She looked at me, a bit of a sour look on her face as she said, "why do I think that if I were to invite Doctor DeLeon to consult, Bonnie might object?"

"Because you're the smartest person I know, and that includes at least three Deities?" She rolled her eyes as Bonnie mouthed the words 'three Deities' with a look of disbelief.

"Yeah, Loki has shown me off a couple times. Apparently I'm some kind of hot commodity. Isnomi wanting me to play with her, Loki showing me off, Maenads having their way with me, the Imperator herself using me like her own personal love doll. It's exhausting."

"You love it, all of it, and you know it." Saffron shook her head, and stepped over to Bonnie, then waved her hands through motions that looked almost like an Assess Health. Before I could reply, Marie cut in saying, "Yes." I barked out a laugh, then said, "Yeah. I do. I really, really do." Then I looked at Bonnie and said, "all that? Kinda what makes the scars worth it." She laughed nervously, trying to ignore Saffron obviously tossing more detection spells around her.

"Are they really all that bad?" I shrugged.

"Just us girls here." I pulled off my jacket and threw it on the bed, then did the same with my blouse. Bonnie gasped.

"I had no idea. I thought Raven was exaggerating."

"Was she?" She shook her head.

"If anything she downplayed it." She looked me in the eye.

"Do they hurt?"

"Only when I overuse Mana. Otherwise they just look... pretty intense." She looked down, obviously glancing at her right hand.

"How did you... what did..." She trailed off, looking at Saffron kinda helplessly. Saffron glanced at her, then spoke as she went back to moving things I couldn't see around in front of herself.

"When I look at Tabitha, I don't see those, or any of the others she'd have to strip further to show off, or the ones that would require an in depth medical exam to find. I see Tabitha. My wife, mother to my daughter, my partner and my love. Just like when Larry looks at you? He doesn't see your hand or your teeth. He sees you. Not as a brood mare, either."

"But I want to have his children!" Saffron finally smiled.

"That's fine. If that's what you want, I've yet to meet a man worth shit who would deny his wife that. But he doesn't see you as some kind of Heir producing device, I'm sure."

"But... I want to," she repeated, kind of winding down. Saffron made a few gestures, by the way she stopped glancing around everywhere putting her diagnostic tools away.

"So let's make sure you can have them." Two steps toward the door she turned to me and facepalmed.

"As soon as my Goof puts her shirt back on, unless she intends on flashing her scars and tits to everyone in the dorm." Up until that moment I hadn't really intended to, but once she said it? You know I couldn't back down. I picked up my jacket, tossed it over one shoulder with two fingers holding the collar, and said, "Let's do this!" Probably not my best decision ever, but how was I supposed to know Sister Siobhan would faint and faceplant right after we walked into the Infirmary?