When Darien Grey Met Death Part 5 <RegretfulHalo>

When Darien Grey Met Death Part 5

15 years later…

Darien looked up from the bar and smiled at the traveler’s coming through the door. Myria was singing on the small, rickety stage set in the corner of the inn; her voice was sad and lovely. She sang an old ballad the Irish cook had taught her, and Darien saw that more than one eye was misted with tears. The traveler’s came to the bar and Darien fixed his full attention to them and studied them the way Hagarty had taught him, before he died. Hagarty had taught him to look at a man’s manner and judge him by his ways before he had ever opened his mouth. It was a trick that had kept The Maid standing even during the grimmest of times. The strangers had rumpled coats and an odd, swaying walk. They smelled of brine and the sea, and of alcohol. One had a particularly nasty looking scar on his cheek; it was almost as nasty as Darien’s own scar. Sailor’s then, or perhaps pirates looking for harsh liquor and a few fights. Darien decided he didn’t want them to stay the night. Myria wouldn’t want them to bed down in the inn, with his oldest being fifteen and another one on the way, he thought the best thing would be to avoid the hassle of having the men in the inn, whether the name was The Shivering Maid or not.

“Sorry lads, we are full up.” He said amiably, smiling broadly. ” You are welcome to enjoy the wine and ale, but I am afraid we’ve got none of what you’re used to.”

One of the men snorted and fixed a watery blue on Darien. “And just what do you think you know about what we are used to?” he said pugnaciously. The one with the scar laughed stupidly at his comrade’s joke and stared at Darien defiantly. Darien took a deep breath and forced his smile to stay fixed to his face, despite the rolling in his stomach.

“What I meant, lads is that we only serve wine and ale here. That’s it. If you are looking for grog, or company, if you catch my meaning, you’ll have to go to an inn closer to the wharf.” Darien kept his tone light and pleasant but he noticed that the scarred one’s eyes grew dark at the mention of going closer to the wharf. Just my luck, Darien thought bitterly. Deserters. Men jumping ship at port weren’t look highly on by their captains, and often innkeepers would be woken in the middle of the night to captains claiming their wastrel crews.

The one with the watery blue eyes fixed Darien a baleful stare and spat on the floor. He teeth were broken and crooked, and he smelled none to clean. There was a bitter, acidic miasma around him, like garbage. Darien could feel his heart thundering in his ears, he absolutely did not want these men staying at The Maid. He couldn’t explain his wild anxiety, but it was gripping him tightly. He could hear Myria still singing, she had switched to a livelier tune and he dimly heard the clapping of hands. Darien blinked slowly and waited.

“Well,” Blue-Eyes said, “ if ya ain’t got room, and you ain’t got grog then I guess we’ll be movin’ on.” He looked at Darien with eyes full of poison, eyes full of watery blue hate and vengeance. Darien almost shivered, he would make sure to bolt the doors tonight. Darien forced himself to stay calm and he returned the man’s gaze coolly but with the promise anger. It lingered there like a hint of a fever in his cheeks. Darien had met many men like the sailors. He knew the dull angst was like a disease in the men’s minds, a wretched hate and an unspeakable malice for anyone who was not as vile and homeless as they were. Likely they were thieves sentenced to *Transportation by the magistrate. They had the look of hard men used up by harder years. Darien wasn’t going to sacrifice his family on some hard men or their hard years. Darien wouldn’t sacrifice his family for anything.

Scar-face looked at Blue Eyes almost incredulously but the other grabbed him the back of his neck and shoved him towards the door. They left quietly and Darien let out an explosive breath he didn’t know he had been holding. He tried to shake the queasy feeling the men left in his stomach, but he couldn’t. It left him feeling like he had eaten something mildly poisonous. He turned back to patrons at the end of the long bar and saw them watching him curiously. They were older men and remembered a Darien Grey that would have thrown the men out, rather than convincing them to leave. Ruefully, Darien rubbed at the deep scar on his cheek, the one that had narrowly missed his eye and ran almost all the way to the corner of his mouth. One of the old men nodded sagely and his expression seemed to speak of lessons well learned. The rest of the evening passed uneventfully.

Later, after the patrons were stumbling their way home and all the lodgers were safely inside, Darien bolted the inn door. He lay the crossbar in the slots with a grunt and immediately felt safer. He had that odd feeling the entire night, that mild, nauseated feeling that something bad was going to happen. He put out all the candles in the common room except for one, which he used to carry upstairs to his own bed where Myria was waiting. Bemused he remembered the night he had been shot by the Frenchman, the night his mother died. He rubbed the scar on his face irritably. He passed by Lyanna’s room and stopped briefly. He heard the sound of her deep breaths and knew she was sleeping soundly. The thought comforted him immensely.

His mother’s death had made Darien painfully aware of his own meaningless pursuits and it served to motivate him to change his childish behaviors. He had begun working at the inn to pay Hagarty back for his mother’s services. As time went on, he became more interested in settling down further and he Myria wed before the end of his first year at the inn. It was a welcome wedding and almost all of their community came to the inn to celebrate with them. Darien and Myria were endlessly devoted to one another and Darien felt that, at long last, he had found the thing he lacked.

Hagarty passed on five years later and left The Maid in Darien’s care. Darien vowed to himself to never let his own desires obscure the needs of his beautiful new family. He was a changed man and he never once regretted the scar on his face that traveled from just below his left eye to the corner of his mouth on the left-hand side. It was an ugly thing, jagged and dark. Myria said she loved the scar, because it is what brought them together. Darien didn’t love the scar, but he loved Myria and so he never mentioned the fact that he knew she could have done better than him.

Darien dwelled on his good fortune as he climbed, exhausted, into bed and put out the light of the candle. He kissed Myria lightly on the cheek and thought happily about his daughter, Lyanna and his new child that would be born sometime in the fall. He went to sleep happy and safe, but a little queasy. He slept somewhat fitfully.

When he woke next, there was a knife to his throat and the rank smell of filth in the room.

Authors note: *Transportation is a punishment popular in England during and before colonial times in which the offender was sentenced to travel abroad upon a ship for a certain amount of time. They were essentially “sold” to ship captains as cheap labor for however long their sentence was. There are more details, but this will suffice.

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