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This year, it falls on a Saturday.
Kim holds office hours that morning, of course. She knows she could probably have cancelled them, if only this once. It's not as though most of her patients don't know what day this is; indeed, many of them will have their own ceremonies to enact, at home or in pubs or on the Tor itself. But Kim is a healer--her power, her penance--and injuries don't take holidays, even on the holy days.
And indeed, it turns out to be a good thing she's there. First Caradog Pritchard shoos in his latest hapless helper, hand dripping blood, for a bit of emergency stitching. ("Told me he'd served under one of London's top knife men and next minute he's set the dullest blade in my kitchen right into his palm, well I ask you, makes you wonder what sort of services he performed under that man!" he complains breathlessly as Kim works, stifling helpless laughter.) Then it's a gaggle of young American tourists half-carrying one of their own, white as a sheet and retching to boot. Where are they staying, Kim asks, and when one of them names the town's newest inn, she gives the sick boy a bottle of her bellyache tisane and advises him to steer clear of the seafood next time--and maybe cut back his breakfast intake to a pint or three. There's a brief break--always good for catching up on paperwork, though Kim opts for a quick cup of coffee this morning instead--and then Elise Miller stops in, toddler in tow, for her weekly vitamin shot.
Elise is on her third try for another child since Colin was born four years ago, and the worried love for the one she carries pulses so strongly under her skin that it's a wonder to Kim eyes other than her own don't see it. Kim moves steadily through the necessary prep--push up the sleeve, wipe the arm with alcohol, hand Colin a lolly, ready the hypo--and all the time she tries not to imagine what that might be like, either the having one or the wanting more. Ungovernable joy, unbelievable pain, inextricable and unknowable--for her, anyway...
"Dr Ford?"
...and she's standing, time forgotten, needle's tip hovering at Elise's shoulder, Elise's curiosity ringing in her ears. "Wool-gathering, Elise. Sorry. Late night last night." She rubs the injection site twice with the pad of her thumb to numb it and presses the needle carefully in.
"Work?" Elise arches a brow. "Or that husband of yours? Tom told me this morning Dave left the pub well before last call. The two of you doing some early celebrating?"
Kim turns away to the medical wastebin, hiding the light colour rising in her cheeks behind doctorly busywork. "Perhaps. So. How's the baby, then?" A single question with a sharp point, aimed at distracting Elise but striking Kim's own heart instead. It works on the other woman like a charm, though--the sort Kim refuses to make for Tor pilgrims and the unaware: vesting power in a pocket idol wastes and profanes it, and Kim's had enough of both.
*****
Early afternoon in the garden brightness, rooted glory blooming and creeping and--in a few key cases--towering higher even than its mistress's mate. The leylines pulse like Elise's skin, already swollen with the power of the day. Kim can feel the itch of them under her feet as she walks the garden, telling over its contents in her mind. Lavender for sleeping oil; chamomile for burns and scrapes; comfrey for broken bones and peppermint for sore muscles (and for morning sickness, but Kim pushes that thought aside before it can even fully form). There's enough feverfew for a whole season of the greengrocer's migraines with a bit left over for anyone else who walks through the clinic's door, and the rosemary bush could revive every memory in Glastonbury and still flavour the nuts Dave roasts at the winter solstice.
And oh, the sunflowers, kings of the garden. Dave's favourite, to Kim's amusement and entire lack of surprise. They're taller than ever this year, already heavy-topped enough to need winding together so that the many can help support the weight of each one. Kim has to lean right through the midst of them to weave the tall plants into their tent-like tapestry, the heads nodding gratefully at her and the hairy stalks rough under her palms as she turns and guides them in and around the others. Flowers of fire, plants of the sun: these, more than anything else here today, feel to Kim like the gift of Midsummer.
Which itself is Kevin's gift, that ultimate gift of life, Kim thinks--and then stands frozen on the rough gravel path, breath caught short, grief like a tearing in her heart. When Dave's hands close about her shoulders from behind, wrapping her warmly back against him, it's entirely unsurprising and a welcome relief.
"I almost-- I want-- I feel as if he's-- Here. With us", she tells him incoherently, and through her body where it's pressed against his she feels the shake of his head. Not puzzled or dazed, but as though he's almost got it down--as though he nearly sees what she does.
"Yeah? Okay."
Kim knows he doesn't yet fully understand--and she knows, too, that he does not care, that he has accepted being in the midst of things without always having to understand why.
A blessing, that. And a kind of peace that Kim envies from her heart.
His hands slide down her arms and pull her own hands away from the sunflower tent, turning her to face him, and whatever he sees in her face makes his own contort briefly in a spasm of sympathetic grief. Then it's gone like a cloud clearing and he's looking down at her, unsmiling but far from somber, twining one hand through her careful Saturday-morning-clinic braid and gathering her in to lean against his big, beloved body.
"Happy anniversary," he says into her hair. "And a merry Midsummer Day, as well. Here's to the next ten years of both."
She winds her arms around him, keeping her garden-dirty hands clear of his shirt until its texture under her cheek reminds her he had a match this morning and she gives up, making fists in the jersey to pull herself even closer. "The same to you," she says into his chest. "Oh, Dave. 'I have never been so happy to see anyone--'"
"'--in all my life'," he says back, voice rumbling through her bones in that way she craves. "Still remember that, eh?"
"Of course." She pushes back within the circle of his arms to look up at him, knowing she'll find a teasing grin on his face but unable to leave the bait untaken. "Dave, of course. In the middle of everything that happened that day--denying the Baelrath at Calor Diman, Matt killing Blöd and returning as King of the Dwarves, learning who Dalreidan really was--finding you again was the best thing that had happened to me in longer than I could remember. It still is."
His smile is blinding, and his fingers against her face send shivers down her spine. "Remember the Mars, then? Remember that day, do you, love?"
The smile is growing now, slow and sweet and deliberate, weakening her knees and entirely undoing her resolve to get some gardening done under the Midsummer sun before the pleasure takes them over. And of course, of course she does.
~~~~~~~~~~
Nothing about this has ever been simple. So it should come as no surprise, really, that between Kim's ward rotation shifting suddenly to weekend nights and the Aboriginal Law intensive Dave's stuck in three evenings a week, it's more than a month from the time they return before they manage to see one another again. Finally, in desperation, Kim suggests the Mars on a Sunday, earlyish brunch before the undergrads mob the place. Dave agrees, placid on the phone, and Kim hangs up uncertain. When they meet that weekend, she's half expecting a stranger.
She should have known better. "Figured out when Friday night was, eh?" He's met her out front, clearly seen among the few others waiting, tall and dark as always, looking down at her with that wry smile she remembers so well from before. But it's not the same, really--it's different, somehow. Well, of course it is, Dave is different, she's different herself, how could they not be, given what they have seen and done, and if one more person asks her where she got her hair bleached the scream that's been building up behind her eyes might just wrench its way out--
--and oh, thank the gods, she's sidetracked, blissfully, by contact, the first she's had since Teyrnon laid his warm farmer's hands on their shoulders to send them back over. This time, though, it's she who's thrown her arms around Dave, though picking him up is beyond her strength in the world to which they've returned. "Funny man", she says, voice muffled against his body. Then, uncontrollably, "I have never been so glad to see anyone in my life."
His arms, already close about her body, tighten almost impossibly around her. "Believe that's my line." Oh, God, Kim thinks, he gets it, he gets it. Tangibility--the power of touch--amid echoes of a battlefield reunion. It's such a blessing not to have to explain. Because how can they--and yet how can they not?
"Exactly the way I feel." It rumbles through him, deep voice shaking her bones with precisely the words she needs, and only then does she realize she's spoken her thoughts out loud. But it's Dave who heard them, so it's all right. More than all right, perhaps.
Once inside, they order quickly--the plan to duck the crowd seems to have worked a treat--and then sit across the tiny table from one another, trading surface anecdotes about what it's been like coming back. Before long, Kim realizes they're both avoiding one hard, painful area: whether, after Fionavar, a return to their old lives is even truly possible. She tries to keep her focus on Dave's voice after that, but the hum of uncertainty in her head is even worse with him there than it's been when she's tried desperately to quiet it alone at night: if he doesn't understand why every minute here feels foreign, there is no one else in any world who will. In the midst of a story about his Evidence professor--a man whom even Kim can see is in dire need of a new career--she interrupts him.
"Are you going to stay? Here in Toronto, I mean?"
"--um." It takes him a moment to follow the abrupt change in subject, but then he's with her. Classic Dave, Kim thinks: give him a chance to process the information and he'll track you every time. Then: "No."
"Where? When?" She has to know, to brace herself for this new loss.
"The UK. Leicester. The university there has a program that'll accept my U of T credits, so I won't have wasted my time. I'll go in June, after Convocation, to find housing and get a head start on learning the system. It's going to take me another year to finish, but I'm all right with that." He's silent for a moment, watching her. So much of his height lies in his legs that, sitting, they're nearly eye to eye. Then: "Come with me."
She makes a noise--one she doesn't remember making before, doesn't even know how to categorize, an unconscious reaction from the place deep inside her where Ysanne still looks out at the world. Dave doesn't blink.
"Leicester's three hours from Glastonbury, give or a take a little. Mostly main roads. Doable on weekends, provided you can learn the whole driving-on-the-wrong-side thing." He smiles at her, suddenly, a deep and quiet joy filling his eyes. It's startling, familiar, necessary. "It has a med school as well. Leicester, I mean. I wrote them and asked."
He asked. Kim looks at him, speechless for one of very few times in her life thus far. He asked. She-- What does he-- How can they--
And then the look becomes a seeking, her mind ranging as it's never done here before, echoes of Fionavar in this city of earthly dreams. In Toronto, she decided what she was meant to do and set her feet on the expected path. And in Toronto, Loren Silvercloak and Matt Sören helped the Weaver twist that path beyond recognition. So that, walking it, she wielded power outside her imagining, hands filled with a ring of red fire instead of a surgeon's instruments, a whole world of lives depending on her decisions.
In Toronto, everything changed.
And now, in this city of her birth, Dave Martyniuk is the only thing that looks familiar to her. So she says the only thing she can imagine saying.
"Yes. Of course I'll come."
~~~~~~~~~~
It's easy. As it always has been, with her, even when the uneasy fire they both carry drives their union far harder and faster than this slow afternoon's loving. From the beginning it's been right, a confirmation of belonging. Like swinging a Dalrei axe; like grinning at Torc as Liane danced, firelit and shadowed; like Plains riding in the night, even that first time, with his muscles already knowing what to do, every move smooth and wild and right.
Family, Dave thinks, with what little thought remains to him, looking up at Kim's face as she takes them both over the edge. And I have married her.
*****
"Where in the world did you get this?" Kim sits up against the headboard and reaches for her glasses, the better to examine the dark glass bottle she's taken from where Dave set it on the bedside table just before he... well. She blushes--ridiculous, after so many years, so much time--and he, seeing it, grins at her again, turning towards her and propping himself on one elbow.
"Ukraine trip last month. Picked it up in a corner shop right as we left for the airport and lifted a duty-free sticker for it while Stephen was poking around looking for that cheap Russian crap he swears by."
"Ugh." Kim shudders. "I can't think how he drinks that. An Amnesty International section chief ought to have better taste, if only to honor his 'exalted position'." She flutes her voice pretentiously on the last two words, purely for the reward of Dave's warm glance. "Whereas this..." She uncaps the bottle again, and the scent of peppered honey rises into the air of their bedroom. "Mmmm. Smells almost like mead. It suits the day." She angles the neck away from her and reads the label, then looks up at her husband over the tops of her glasses. "Dave, isn't this...this is what your father drank, isn't it? Z pertsem--I can't pronounce it properly, but I remember that name from--"
"From that last visit. Yeah." His grin changes, sharper-edged and more intent. "Never forget a thing, do you." Astonishment without awe in his eyes, as so often when he looks at her. Another blessing: that he should have found in Fionavar so solid a center that he can live alongside others' power uncoloured by either envy or abasement.
"Hah. Not much. Sometimes it helps to have Ysanne's memories at the back of my brain--gives me an unfair advantage. Anyway. Don't change the subject."
He sighs, reaching out and twining one long finger into her hair where it lies against her breast. Against his dark skin, the white of the strands glows like sunlight. "I'm not. I bought it because of him. I never really forgave him, Kim. Even after Fionavar--maybe especially then. I learned things from Ivor about being a father, being a son, being a family. And I never stopped wanting that from my fa-- from Josef, even though I knew..." He's silent for a moment then. Kim waits for the rest, knowing he'll find a way to give it to her, knowing him. He stirs and sighs again. "And then he died. And I stood there at his funeral, watching all those tearless faces, looking down into that gaping hole in the ground with a box at the bottom holding a man who'd been a stranger to me all my life. And I realized I'd been...wasting time. Time and energy both. Wanting him to accept me, to be the family I thought he was supposed to be. When I already had the family I wanted. When I'd already chosen my family. Chosen you."
Kim doesn't realize she's crying until the hand at her breast moves to her face and, stroking gently, comes away wet. But Dave knows her, too, and he keeps going. "So, yeah. I bought this because of--well, I said because of him, but it's really for me. It's my Midsummer libation. Offered up to...whoever. Apollo. Kevin, maybe." He raises a brow at her, and Kim has to smile at that; classic Dave, taking his time but tracking her just the same. "Figure I'll pour it out at sunset, near the sunflowers. Say goodbye, say I'm sorry if I can manage it, put it behind me. And say thank you for the family I'm lucky enough to have."
She turns so she's over him and looks down at him through her tears, laying her hand on his face to trace lines she knows better than she knows her own. Chosen family. Yes. "I'll come with you."
*****
Kim floats just under the surface of sleep, feeling the slide of Dave's skin against hers as he sinks into deep-breathed slumber against her back. Her thighs ache, and her knees, a bit, and there's a bruise on the top of her left breast just above her heart.
And she is happy.
It's the most joyful, least complicated feeling she's had since the moment when, tapping into power she did not yet know she possessed, she groped desperately for Dave's hand and dragged him with the rest of them into Fionavar, so many years ago.
She is Kimberly Ford, once the Seer of Brennin. She is Dr Ford, MD, smalltown doctor to mystics and tourists and neighbours and friends. She is Kim Ysanne Ford, Dave Martyniuk's family--wife, partner, love.
She is.
And for the first time in a very long time--since the moment the Baelrath began to blaze, Macha's scarlet and the crimson of Nemain, on her finger--Kim is wholly at peace with that.
With all of that.
**FIN**
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