Robbie wants to talk about Meuse-Argonne. Ben does not.
“Do you ever think about it?”
Ben looks at him sidelong, sitting in the chair opposite, a glass in his hand. Whisky, watered down. They’re not princes. “Think about what?” he asks, though he knows.
“About the war. About everything that happened then. Everything that happened to you.”
He hasn’t drunk enough to have this conversation. If he had, he wouldn’t be here. He turns his head away. “No.”
Robbie scoffs and lapses into silence for a moment, nodding his head to a question that hasn’t been asked. “Yeah,” he says, after a while. “My brothers didn’t want to talk about it either.”
“Who would?”
Robbie looks at him the way he’s looked at countless others--the way he looked at Ben, once, the first time. The reporter look. “Someone who’s seen things other people never will. Who can’t talk about that kind of thing with anyone else. Someone who thinks about it all the time, no matter how much he doesn’t want to. Someone like a friend.”
Ben sighs and shakes his head. “Yeah, well some things are better left not talked about,” he tells him. “Some things you don’t want to carry.”
“I wouldn’t want to carry them alone, either.” When Ben doesn’t speak, he takes a long swig of his drink, letting the silence run its course. “I remember what you said, you know.”
Ben lights a cigarette. “I have a big mouth. You’re gonna have to be more specific.”
“More than once, actually. I’m sure Janet can think of a fair number of occasions, too.”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“About not carrying on.”
“Yeah, well, I think we can safely say that that ship has well and truly sailed--”
“No, I don’t mean the Spider. You. You say it a lot. You say it like it’s a joke, but I don’t think it is. That’s why you take these cases, isn’t it? You don’t go looking, but you don’t back down. Because you know if something happens--”
He turns in his chair to face him fully. “Just where exactly are you going with this, Robbie?”
Robbie presses his lips together. “I don’t like the idea of you hanging around, putting yourself in danger hoping to be in the wrong place at the wrong time--”
“Listen, you got the wrong idea--”
He doesn’t often get that look. Serious, unyielding. “I don’t think I do,” he says. “I get it, man. Maybe not personally, but I understand. You went to war and you came back a different person. A different man. And you don’t trust anyone anymore. When you met Ruby--”
Ben grunts.
“--you trusted her, and she’s gone now, I know. You never got over it. But the rest of us are still here. Still pretty darn attentive, even. I don’t know if you know this, but I am a reporter.”
Ben tilts a hand. “You might have mentioned it,” he says. “Once or twice.”
“Ben.”
“You have two brothers, don’t you?”
Robbie’s expression changes incrementally. “Just one now,” he says. “Carl came back different too. Didn’t talk much. Wouldn’t do much. Mostly he just sat on the back porch staring at the trees, like he was waiting for something to come in. Maybe he was.” He presses his lips together. “He never answered my questions either.”
“Touché.”
“The Germans kept him locked up all that time. He never told us what happened there. What they did to him.”
“They didn’t do anything to me either, if you recall. I wasn’t in a POW camp.”
“No,” Robbie replies, ever patient. “You didn’t need to be. They still locked you up.”
Ben blows out a breath and stands up, digging another cigarette out of his pocket. He goes to the window so he doesn’t have to look Robbie in the eye. “Persistent, aren’t you?”
“Maybe I decided I want to hear this story,” Robbie replies easily. “To ease the conscience of my good friend.”
“I’m not lying.”
“No, and I think that’s the hardest part,” he says. “You think you’re alright, and maybe you’ve convinced yourself that you are. But I hear you talk about yourself, man. I know how hard it’s been. And me and Janet, we don’t expect you to pretend.”
“And if I never stopped?”
He must be slightly drunk, or he wouldn’t have said it at all. The words slip out without his meaning to, and Robbie looks at him. It’s dark in here, and he’s pretty sure Robbie can’t see his face, not properly--he’s too far away and the heavy curtains block most of the light from the street.
When Robbie speaks, he speaks very quietly.
“I think that would be alright.”
Ben says nothing for a long moment. “I’m sorry about your brother.”
He hears rather than sees Robbie swallow. “Yeah. Me too.”
“Much older than you?”
Robbie tilts a hand. “About your age,” he says, lips quirked. “Back then.”
“Well, thanks very much.”
“He looked older,” he adds. “When he came back.”
“That happens.”
“And like I said, he was different.”
Ben nods. “Nobody wanted to believe what they saw, at Meuse-Argonne. The generals especially. They burned the whole thing down to the ground.”
Robbie says nothing.
“Some of them--my ranking officer included, by the way--never even set foot inside. They said they knew what was wrong with me. They’d seen it before, in other places. Said they knew how to fix it.” He looks up, lifting a hand to the curtains and parting them a little, looking down into the street below. “How to fix me.” He turns to look at Robbie. “I don’t know what it was like for all those other people,” he adds, “But I’m willing to bet if it was bad for me, it must have been hell for them.”
“And it didn’t work.”
“I don’t think electrocuting somebody has ever worked on anyone. My body was different, sure, but this was worse. I woke up and I wasn’t myself anymore. For a long while it was like I couldn’t even remember my name. Naturally, because it didn’t work, they tried it some more. I was amazingly resilient, they said. I couldn’t speak. They reckoned that was a good sign.
“Shellshock, they called it. They almost fried my brain trying to convince me that I was mad, that this would make me better. I wasn’t mad. My body was dying. None of them had seen the experiments the Germans were playing with. None of them believed me.”
“Ben…”
He points a finger. “You wanted to hear this story, you have to put up with me telling it my way. I’m not saying it because I want your pity. This is what happened. I was dying in a hospital bed and I was terrified. Hasn’t got anything to do with trying to spare your feelings. This is just what it was. And there was nothing I could do.”
Robbie doesn’t speak, which is a relief. Anything he says would be the wrong thing to say, and he still doesn’t really want to talk about this, would hate for it to come to blows, verbal or otherwise. But he has to admit--it’s like turning on a tap. Once he starts, the rest of it comes easily.
“They didn’t help me. Maybe that was their intention, but if so it was a goddamn funny way of going about it. The first step would have been to admit there was actually something wrong beyond what was wrong with everybody else--you know they weren’t a whole lot of help curing that either,” he adds, gesturing with a hand that is deliberately casual, despite the kindling anger in his chest. “I mean, your brother--”
He stops, biting his lip, but Robbie just nods, mercifully letting him off the hook. “I know.”
“This was later. This was later, but it’s the part I remember the most clearly, I mean go figure. The first doctor who went at me--he knew, he’d seen it, the hell the Germans had left behind. But I don’t have any record of what he did. They burned the files, before I was transferred out of the field hospital to a real place, somewhere in Verdun. I only know that because I read about the fire later. It was Verdun where they tried to convince me I was crazy.”
Robbie’s silence is different this time--the calculated silence of a reporter, taking in the facts of the case, turning it over in his mind. “But before that,” he says slowly, “in the camp, there was another doctor?”
“Yeah,” Ben says shortly. “Like I said, they burned everything.”
“But you remember.”
He needs another cigarette, so he lights one, turning away from the window. “Yeah, I remember.” He takes a long drag of the cigarette, hoping secretly that it might calm him down, but he knows it won’t. He’s had too many ups and downs tonight already, and he’s drunk more than his fair share of watered-down whisky. “Think he enjoyed it, the son of a bitch. Never did find out what his name was.”
“Ben.”
“You. Asked.” He opens the window a crack to tamp the ashes, a habit he developed after he started seeing Ruby. It makes no difference anymore, but he does it anyway. It beats off the fury a little, forces him to take a breath. “It was like--” His lip twists. He has to take another breath. “What’s the point, exactly, in asking me all this now?”
“Well. After Faber--”
“She wasn’t that crazy.” He doesn’t mean to speak so bluntly, for once, but he does. Robbie blinks at him and he throws up his hands. “I mean, okay, obviously she was crazy, she tried to kill me. But she had a plan. She knew what she wanted from me, and it worked. I can accept that. Sometimes our jobs take us to unpleasant places.”
Robbie makes a face, but nods. “No denying that, I suppose.” He meets Ben’s eyes across the room. “This doctor -- this other doctor -- he wasn’t like that.”
Nearly a question, but not quite. It doesn’t need to be. He’s grateful for that.
“Oh, he knew what he wanted, all right. It just wasn’t anything so endearing as a cure for his prematurely-aged son.” He shuts the window with a sudden bang that makes Robbie jump. “He’d seen what the Germans were up to in that place and he wasn’t worried. He was fascinated. I only have snatches… but I remember the way he spoke to me, whenever I was conscious. All their cruel ideas--they’d try them here if they could, and they’d do them very patriotically, you know? You do know,” he adds, brusquely, “You know what this country is. You think about it every time they make you use the back door, for God’s sake. Anyone who can’t see it is a damn fool.”
Robbie chews on his lip. “Lot of people don’t see that,” he says at last, “because they’re not the ones using the back doors.”
“Well, they should try being a PI, it’s one hell of a shortcut to the dirty underbelly of the human race,” Ben mutters. “Either way, he didn’t care if he hurt me or not. And he did hurt me. A lot. They cut me open and they took my blood and half of my kidneys, by the way, that’s not a joke, I’m damn surprised he was generous enough to leave me with both my lungs as well.” At Robbie’s disbelieving look, he laughs. “What? Are you thinking that I drink too much? Maybe I do, but I think I’ve earned it.”
“Who was he working for? The Army?”
“Maybe, maybe not. I reckon he probably was. Unfortunately for both of us, morphine doesn’t really work on me so well. S’how I know about… all of that,” he says, waving. “And he got a kick out of it too, so, good for him, right? I got Spanish flu at some point in between there and the fever nearly knocked me out, but that was a pretty good thing in my case. Not so much for all the blood loss and the shoddy stitches but I did okay.
“Then they zapped me around and I forgot who I was for a bit and when I remembered I still wasn’t really me, because I got bitten by a guy with a black widow for a thorax. Got an honourable discharge out of it and plenty of nightmares, and then I became a PI. The end,” he says, rolling his eyes and waving his other hand as he drags the curtains closed. “There was this other guy in a stupid hat called the Spider, but you know all about him already. Interviewed that crumb for a pretty shoddy rag I’ve heard Janet uses to line her budgie’s cage, in fact. Probably not that exact article, though, that was pretty decent.”
Robbie levels a look at him. “Janet doesn’t have a budgie,” he says flatly.
“Sure she does, she talks about it all the time. It’s got some stupid name like Flipper or Dipper or Peter, something ridiculous like that.”
“Does it make it easier, talking about this kind of stuff while you’re cracking jokes?”
Ben shrugs a shoulder. “Well, the whisky helps,” he says modestly, reaching for the bottle on the table. Robbie slaps his hand away.
“Ben. That’s twice in your life someone’s strapped you to a table and had a poke around in your insides. You’re allowed to be upset about it.”
“Upset? Who said I’m upset?” He reaches around Robbie with expert dexterity (courtesy of the alcoholism, not the Spider, thank you very much) to pick up the bottle of whisky and tops up his glass, then Robbie’s too for good measure. “You’re a writer. If it’s not the story you wanted, go ahead and spin it whichever way you want.”
“I’m not asking because I want to write it down, Ben. I’m asking because I worry about you. What they did wasn’t right.”
“Damn straight. How’s a man supposed to get on in life without his second kidney?”
Robbie sighs and shakes his head. “I know it upsets you too,” he says. “You just… gotta come to terms with it somehow.” Ben is not quick enough to prevent him snatching the bottle out of his hands a second time. “You saved the city, man. You know this isn’t the way you should be celebrating that.”
“I’m not celebrating anything.” He leans forward to grab the whisky, but Robbie leans back, out of his reach. The sudden movement makes his head spin and he leans back for a second. “Oh, Christ.”
“See? You’re still not okay.”
“Drunk. I’m a little drunk, that’s all.”
Robbie raises a merciless eyebrow. “Even spiders need their sleep.” Ben huffs out a laugh.
“Yeah, so they do. And you wonder why I hate it so much,” he adds, sinking down onto the other end of the couch. “You wanted to know why I wanted to be an ordinary person so badly. Maybe--maybe Ben Reilly isn’t worth knowing all that much, but he lives a damn quieter life.”
“A stone that leaves no ripples isn’t all that much of a stone, Ben.”
He lifts his head up from where he’s been resting it on his chest. He’s so tired. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Robbie stands up. “It means I think old Ben Reilly is pretty alright,” he says, picking up a blanket from the couch and shaking it out. “Even if he is a curmudgeonly old man sometimes.”
“Hey, watch it you.”
Robbie ignores him, throwing the blanket out over his legs. “And maybe his friend was a little harsh before in saying he wouldn’t be worth knowing,” he says, stepping back, having somehow extracted Ben’s glass from his hand without him noticing, “but it’s only because deep down he knows he has it in him to be a good person.”
Ben lays his head back on his chest again. The blanket is nice and warm. “No, I don’t think so.”
“You already proved me right once.”
“I’ll make sure not to make the same mistake again,” Ben grumbles. Robbie smiles at him as he picks up his hat and coat.
“It was a pretty decent article I wrote about you back then, huh?”
Ben lifts a hand--half-lifts it. He’s very tired. “Not me. The Spider.”
“Right, right, right. The Spider. That asshole. Well, sometimes, if you’re lucky good stuff gets born out of the bad, that’s all I’m saying. I’m not saying the H-word. I just think you can be brave, if you try.”
“No-ope.”
“Very hard,” Robbie corrects. “Very, very hard. I’m taking this with me, by the way,” he adds, lifting up the bottle of whisky. “It’s bottom shelf, and I reckon we can get something nicer now.”
“What the hell for?”
Robbie smiles. “To celebrate my best friend,” he says. “And my new newspaper.”
Ben sinks back into the blanket. “Not worth it,” he mumbles, “You only have one employee.”
“Yeah, but he’s real good,” Robbie assures him. He sounds pleased. “Glad you didn’t deny it.”
“Wazzat?”
“Nothing. Go to sleep, old man. I’ll see you in the morning. Bright and early. Janet needs a new desk.”
Ben waves a hand at him. “I’ll agree to anything if you bring me a new bottle of whisky in the morning.”
“Deal,” Robbie says. He lets himself out, as per his usual habit. Ben slumps back on the sofa and closes his eyes.
Glad you didn’t deny it.
Maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world, to have survived all that for this.
“Bacon,” the woman snaps. Wylan looks at her helplessly.
“What?”
“I want bacon. Give me bacon. Where’s your breakfast menu?”
“We don’t have a breakfast menu,” he says helplessly, watching as she slaps down her credit card. “And we don’t take--”
Because he’s apparently a philanthropist these days, Kaz picks this exact moment to take pity on him. “Here,” he says, stepping up to the counter and putting a clipboard down in front of her. “The menu. Take a seat.”
The woman barely spares a glance at it before looking back up at him, lips pursed. “Fine. Give me a matcha.”
Wylan sees Kaz’s eyebrow twitch incrementally. “I’m afraid we don’t serve matcha,” he says. If he didn’t know Kaz, he’d think his tone was perfectly polite. Or perhaps it really is polite -- it’s not like he has any frame of reference for comparison. “We have… caramel.”
Wylan manages to turn his snort into a cough; Kaz shoots a poisonous sideways glance at him as the woman raises her gaze to the blackboard behind them. “I don’t want sugar.”
Aeons pass as Kaz clearly takes the time to process that he and this wretched woman have something in common. “Chai?”
“Fine.” Another painful silence as her eyes rake over the specials. Passing right over Jesper’s neat cursive, she says, “And one of the croissants. Ham and mozzarella.”
This time it’s Kaz who stifles a cough. “Gouda,” he says. “Not mozzarella.”
“Gouda?”
“Oh sweet Ghezen,” Wylan whispers, now hiding his face behind the coffee machine. He should start making the chai, but he can’t move. If he moves, she’ll see him. He’s pretty sure that’s how it works with apex predators. Silently, Kaz reaches over to stamp on his foot.
“Ham and gouda,” he says, and his smile is terrifying, just by virtue of it not trying to be. Is this what he uses his varied skillset for, Wylan thinks? Blackmail and intimidation, a natural, all for selling coffee and pastries? “And a chai latte. No caramel.”
This woman is so lucky she doesn’t know anything about us, Wylan thinks. He’s past the point of saying it out loud.
“Yes,” the woman agrees, and looks at Wylan -- he moved! He mustn’t move. Her glare is enough to wilt even the immortal Marjorie. “And I’m paying--”
“With a different card, yes, I heard. Here you are.”
Oh my god, Wylan thinks again, internally, as Kaz rings up the sale and offers her a loyalty card. Oh my god oh my god oh my god.
“You’re not real,” he wheezes, all in one breath, after the customer steps away from the counter. Kaz looks at him impassively.
“Make the chai,” he says. “Give the ticket to Jesper.”
And then he sits back down again and opens up his laptop, doing Ghezen knows whatever it is that Kaz does, when he isn’t committing daylight robbery.
I know this will probably be a hot take but I think this might be my favorite iteration of Mycroft. He's clearly frustrated with Sherlock's shenanigans but I love that you can see his genuine affection for his brother coming through even when he's trying to keep him in line. You can also tell how much his actions are driven by the fear of losing him the way they lost Beatrice. He can't save his little sister so he will do everything, even bend the rules a bit, to save his little brother. And he's not just doing it because he's scared himself, he also wants to spare their mother the pain of potentially losing another child. This "softer" version of him is just an interesting take on the character imo
Travelling Companions by Augustus Leopold Egg (1862)
The book I’ve been reading
rests on my knee. You sleep.
It’s beautiful out there—
fields, little lakes and winter trees
in February sunlight,
every car park a shining mosaic.
Long radiant minutes,
your hand in my hand,
still warm, still warm.
