Post by devilinthedetails on Mar 8, 2018 4:36:43 GMT 10
Title: Powerless over Addiction
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Addiction
Summary: Raoul is powerless over his addiction, and Douglass knows it.
Author's Note; Warning for alcoholism.
Powerless over Addiction
I Partying Hard
“I hate parties.” Raoul stumbled over his syllables as he tripped over an invisible crack in the passageway’s flagstones. In his inebriated state, he considered that exceptional coordination.
“Could have fooled me, sir.” Douglass managed to catch him and offer this borderline impertinent remark at the same time.
“You think I enjoyed the party?” Raoul glowered at his squire. It should have been obvious even to a bumbling boy that he only drank to dull his nerves. Being around the court made his tongue tie, but wine sliced through the knots and let his words flow like a fountain. Wine made the cruel jokes of the courtiers funny and spurred him to make some of his own. His wine was his valor at parties.
“Rather too much if you’ll pardon my saying so, sir.” Douglass made his disgust at having to haul Raoul back to their quarters after another party plain by gripping Raoul’s elbow so tightly his lower arm went numb.
“I won’t pardon you, and I’ll have you scrubbing chamber pots for a week if I hear another word out of you.” Raoul’s voice was too loud in the otherwise deserted corridor, the echo in his ears made his head throb, and it was all Douglass’s fault for being an insubordinate cur.
Douglass clamped his mouth shut—his lips thin with a disapproval Raoul was certain a squire should never show his knightmaster—and continued to drag a wobbling Raoul back to their rooms, but Raoul’s head didn’t cease pounding like a war drum though Douglass had been cowed into silence.
II Insults to Honor
“I’d thrash those Tusaine dogs if I could.” Raoul smashed his fist into his palm and scowled when Douglass flinched almost imperceptibly. The lad would never pass his Ordeal if he cringed every time Raoul took a testy tone. Mithros bless, it wasn’t as if he beat the boy. “I’d hit them until they fled back to Tusaine with their tails between their legs.”
“His Majesty doesn’t want any fights with the Tusaine delegation.” Douglass poured a glass of water that was probably meant to calm him or maybe take the edge off the drinks he had needed to give Raoul to prevent Raoul from punching the horde of arrogant Tusaine knights into next year for daring to insult King Roald when he was hosting them. “He desires peace, not war.”
“We took the River Drell from Tusaine last war. Maybe this time we’ll seize all of Tusaine and cleanse the miserable country of the insolent whelps they call knights.” Raoul jerked his head in refusal of the water, which wasn’t whine, Douglass offered him and added tersely, “Fetch me a bottle of wine from the kitchens, Douglass. There’s a good squire.”
“Is more wine wise for you, sir?” Douglass’s arched eyebrow conveyed that he doubted it was when Raoul was drunk to the gills.
“It’d be wise if you obeyed me.” Raoul’s frayed temper snapped like a too-taut bowstring as he jabbed a trembling finger at the door. “If you’re half so clever as you think you are, you’ll bring me my wine now.”
Douglass shot Raoul a reproachful look—as if he were the knightmaster instead of the saucy squire—but scampered off to the kitchens to fetch the wine Raoul had demanded. As the door closed behind Douglass, Raoul massaged his aching temples. A squire shouldn’t be allowed to question his knightmaster the way Douglass did. That was more proof, as though it were needed, that Raoul was too lax with his squire’s discipline. Perhaps he should start giving Douglass a clout on the ears when he didn’t follow commands quickly enough, but that was fury, not reason talking.
“Curse it all.” Raoul buried his face in his hands and waited for Douglass to return with the wine he craved. The wine would soothe him and level out his thinking as it always did, bringing a blissful blackness to end his night.
III Thrown down Glove
“I hope you’re happy, sir.” The baleful glare his squire fixed on Raoul was undermined by the sniffle that punctuated his sentence and the crimson of abraded skin under his nose.
“Do I look happy, squire?” Raoul would’ve felt sorry about getting them both exiled to the Gallan border where Douglass had developed a nasty cold because of his fight with Gary over Lady Delia’s perfumed glove if his head wasn’t constantly complaining about the absence of alcohol along this lonely stretch of the border between Tortall and Galla. His only consolation was that Gary had been been dispatched to the forever frozen hinterland that was the Scanran border. “I haven’t had a decent tankard of ale in weeks. The swill they serve at this wretched fort in the hind end of nowhere is too weak.”
“You deserve it.” Douglass’s chin lifted but the rebelliousness of the gesture was undercut by another sniffle stifled into a sleeve. “You were drunk when you dueled with Gary over Lady Delia’s glove.”
“I might’ve been drunk, but Gary wasn’t.” Raoul was convinced that made Gary the one responsible for his and Douglass’s plight. Sobriety imparted a sense of accountability that intoxication didn’t. “He’s to blame for this mess we’re in, Douglass.”
“I’m going to find a different knightmaster.” Douglass was obviously not mollified. “One who doesn’t get us exiled to the Gallan border because of a stupid squabble over some tart’s glove.”
“You can polish my armor to clean out your dirty mouth.” Raoul tilted his chin at the pile of armor in the corner of his quarters. Douglass had cleaned it yesterday, but he could tidy it again today until he learned to be properly respectful of Raoul and the honor of the woman whose glove he had battled over. “Until this paragon arrives to rescue you from my cruel clutches, you can focus on making my armor spotless and shiny.”
“Yes, sir.” Douglass sniffled again but settled down to attend to Raoul’s armor, his features as resigned as if he were kneeling before an executioner’s axe.
While his squire tended to his gear, Raoul decided he would attempt to abate his headache with some of the weak swill served in the fort’s mess hall.
IV A Toast
“To the memory of the fair Queen Lianne. May her beauty ever glow in our hearts.” Raoul, rather proud of this toast, raised his goblet to his lips. As he drank, he didn’t appreciate Douglass staring at him across the table as if he’d had too much too drink when the evening was still young as a pup. He had lost count of how many glasses of wine he had tipped back but that didn’t mean he had drunk too much.
“Won’t you drink to Queen Lianne’s memory with me?” Raoul poured another goblet of wine.
“I don’t drink.” Douglass crossed his arms over his chest. Raoul knew that his former squire never indulged in a glass of wine or a tankard of ale but he was prone to forgetting. Wine made everything recede into a comforting cloud.
“You’ve no sense of fun.” Raoul swirled the wine around in his glass and grinned at the intoxicating scent. “I marvel you were ever my squire.”
“I don’t drink because I was your squire.” Douglass was so withering that Raoul was tempted to flip the table. Only the realization that this would waste fine wine kept him from doing so.
“I shall drink to her honor for you.” Raoul was pleased with his own magnanimity as he filled a second goblet with wine on Douglass’s behalf. The death of Jon’s beloved mother made him feel as bad as King Roald looked these days, but drinking eased the pain of her loss that he felt whenever he gazed into Jon’s heartbroken, baffled eyes.
“Getting drunk doesn’t honor her.” Douglass pushed back his chair with a resounding scrape. “It insults her memory.”
Raoul ignored this as he raised two glasses in a salute to the dearly departed Queen Lianne.
V Breaking Point
Raoul woke to a wave washing over him. Water dripping from his forehead like sweat, he glared up at Douglass, who was standing over his bed with an upturned basin. It was always Douglass who roused him on the mornings when he couldn’t wake himself, just as it was always Douglass who mopped up his sick since it would’ve been too embarrassing to summon palace servants to clean such a mess, who ensured that he got to Duke Baird’s when he needed a hangover cure, and who picked up the pieces of whatever precious object Raoul smashed when the rage in the bottle drowned him. Those were all duties Douglas had assumed when he was Raoul’s squire and had never dropped. When Raoul was sober, he understood that Douglass should never have been forced to take on such responsibilities, but when he was drunk or hungover, that shame would be funneled into blame directed against the very person trying to help him.
“How did you get in here?” Raoul grunted as his tongue struggled to form words in his mouth. It was too early for speaking.
“Your door wasn’t locked.” Douglass put the basin on Raoul’s nightstand, the noise a clap of thunder that sent flashes of lightning tearing through his skull. Raoul thought he had locked his door before he stumbled into bed last night, but he must have forgotten. That wasn’t so surprising. After all, these nights he drank to forget the battered, bloody bodies of those he couldn’t save in the rubble of a coronation turned into disaster and the treason Alex had committed. Raoul could have lived with Alex’s death if he hadn’t come to a traitor’s end, a friend transfigured eternally into a foe. It was the betrayal that cut him to the core and made him mourn the boy he had known as well as the mysterious man he clearly hadn’t. “In the future, you might consider locking it. The past few days should’ve taught you that there are enemies in this palace, and nobody is safe here.”
“Even if my door isn’t locked, you should knock before entering.” Raoul tried to sit up but discovered that the world swayed too much when he did and collapsed into his pillows. “You were my squire. I know you were taught how to knock.”
“I knocked seven times before I came in.” It was too early in the morning for Douglass to be so matter-of-fact. “Eventually I had to break in or you’d never see Duke Baird.”
“Duke Baird is too busy to give me a hangover cure.” One of the few things Raoul remembered in his current condition was the healers were swamped with those who had been injured in the battle and earthquake that had overshadowed Jon’s coronation.
“You don’t need a hangover cure. That would just be healing the symptoms and not addressing the root problem.” Douglass’s words were an arrow fired into Raoul’s heart. “You need treatment for your addiction, Raoul, because you can’t go on living like this, and neither can I.”
“I’m doing fine.” Raoul believed that he was apart from the hangover. His life might have fallen about his ears on coronation day, but the same could be said of everyone else in Tortall. It had been a tragedy for the entire realm. “Relax. You’re making my headache worse with your worrying.”
“I can’t do this any more.” Douglass ripped at hair blond as the faint sunlight filtering through Raoul’s shutters. “Either you get help from Duke Baird or I’m cutting you out of my life since I’m sick to the bone of trying to solve your problem when you won’t even admit that it exists.”
“You’re the one with the problem.” Raoul’s fists clenched around his blankets. “You can’t tolerate me seeking some solace in wine after a cursed catastrophe.”
“Your words and actions can’t hurt me any longer. I refuse to grant them that power. I’m done with you. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what you do.” The fervor with which Douglass slammed the door suggested that he he did care too much, but the thought wasn’t as triumphant as Raoul had intended it to be.
VI Amends
The easy part was tracking Douglass down in the training yards. The difficult part was making the amends that Duke Baird said were essential not only to curing his addiction but healing the pain he had put those close to him through with his drinking.
“Douglass.” Raoul had rehearsed what he wanted to say but as he stared into Douglass’s face—wary from being hurt too many times by Raoul—he forgot them. “You were right to worry that I was drinking too much and to tell me to see Duke Baird.”
“I know.” Douglass had raised his chin as if preparing for battle. Raoul’s thumb itched to tap it down but Douglass wasn’t his squire any more.
“I went to Duke Baird, and I’m treating my addiction.” Raoul’s palms were sweating so he wiped them in the pockets of his breeches.
“I’m glad.” Douglass gave a short nod that indicated he was bracing himself for the next disappointment Raoul would inevitably provide.
“I thank you for urging me to go.” Raoul thought that words could never describe how grateful he was to his former squire for prodding him into treatment. He was regaining a self he hadn’t noticed he had lost. He clasped Douglass’s shoulder even if Douglass wasn’t his squire any longer. “I also apologize for everything I said and did when I was drunk. I was a lout, and I wouldn’t blame you if you never forgave me.”
It was surprisingly simple to say he was sorry. What was impossible was believing that his apology would even being to atone for what he had done.
“I forgive you.” Douglass’s smile was small but hopeful as a spring robin. “Just don’t ever drink again.”
“The addiction will always be with me.” Raoul could feel it clinging to him tight as a glove. “I can swear that I’ll keep fighting it, but I can’t promise that I’ll win. I’m sorry, but I’m powerless over it.”
“I’ve had front row seats to that drama for years, so you aren’t telling me anything I don’t know.” Douglass sounded more sad than angry. “You don’t need to apologize for me about that. I don’t need your pity. I can keep my life together. It’s yours that always a mess.”
Douglass’s words were knives in Raoul’s chest, and, because he was a coward who had been forced to drink to discover a feeble imitation of courage, he walked away, wondering if he would ever truly be able to make the amends Duke Baird recommended.
VII Among the Wolves
“You never chose another squire,” Douglass commented as they sat in Raoul’s tent. Douglass had ridden into the King’s Own encampment with Lady Maura and the pack of wolves that guarded her as much as Douglass did. One of Lady Maura’s fearsome four-legged protectors napped with his snout on Douglass’s knee, drooling onto Douglass’s breeches.
“No.” Raoul shifted to find a comfortable spot that didn’t exist on his uncushioned wooden chair. “I wasn’t a good knightmaster to you, was I?”
“You were good to me when you weren’t drunk or hungover.” Douglass didn’t mention that Raoul had been drunk or hungover too much because he was a better knight that Raoul would ever be.
“I can’t blame the drink for the things I did when it was inside me.” If there was one thing Raoul had learned during the rugged road of his recovery, it was that he was responsible for everything he did when he was drunk. He put the drink inside him and then surrendered to its impulses since they were his own dark desires.
“The men of the Own are devoted to you.” Douglass scratched behind the wolf’s ears. “You’ve done well with them.”
“There’s a difference between men of the Own and squires.” Something in Raoul’s tone persuaded Douglass to drop the debate.
VIII Better Knight
“You said you were going to take Keladry of Mindelan as your squire.” Douglass had apparently materialized in Raoul’s office with the sole objective of hounding him. It figured that Raoul had spent weeks tackling ogres, and now he had to fend off his former square. On a balance, he deemed the ogres less threatening. At least ogres could be fought with conventional weaponry, unlike former squires who demanded more creativity and delicacy to defeat.
“I regret telling you that.” Raoul didn’t enjoy being nagged by his former squire even if Douglass only badgered him with the best intentions. “Now you’ll never stop bothering me about it.”
“I’ll stop bothering you once you ask her to be your squire.” Douglass was vexingly serene.
“That’s not fair.” Raoul shook his head. “She deserves a better knightmaster. One who was never a drunkard.”
“You aren’t a drunkard any more,” pointed out Douglass.
“I could become one at any moment,” Raoul reminded him with a weary sigh. “I never never shake off this addiction. There’s always the risk it will overcome me again.”
“You can’t live in fear of that.” Douglass’s eyes pierced into Raoul’s like a lance. “She needs a knightmaster, and I remember even if you don’t how much you enjoyed having a squire.”
“I do remember.” Raoul’s face cracked into a lopsided smile. There had been laughter, jokes, teasing, and meaning in teaching somebody to be a better knight that he was. There had been a legacy built in flesh and blood. “We had some fun together, didn’t we, Douglass?”
“The most fun of any knight and squire pairing in the realm.” Douglass chuckled. “We drove one another crazy.”
“She won’t drive me crazy as you did.” Raoul found a way to make it sound as if he had won the argument even as he gave into Douglass’s persistence. “I hear that Lord Wyldon trains his pages to be extremely respectful.’
“If you’re implying that Duke Gareth didn’t instruct us in politeness, I can relay that message to His Grace so he can address any deficiencies in your manners education.” Douglass’s gaze was alight with mischief.
“That won’t be necessary, thank you.” Raoul glared at Douglass, who merely snickered, uncowed.
Despite his glare, Raoul hoped that one day Keladry would believe as Douglass did: that he was more than the sum of his past mistakes, that he wasn’t just a man who created problem after problem, that he could feel remorse and make amends, and that he was stronger than the addiction that he fought tooth and nail.
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Addiction
Summary: Raoul is powerless over his addiction, and Douglass knows it.
Author's Note; Warning for alcoholism.
Powerless over Addiction
I Partying Hard
“I hate parties.” Raoul stumbled over his syllables as he tripped over an invisible crack in the passageway’s flagstones. In his inebriated state, he considered that exceptional coordination.
“Could have fooled me, sir.” Douglass managed to catch him and offer this borderline impertinent remark at the same time.
“You think I enjoyed the party?” Raoul glowered at his squire. It should have been obvious even to a bumbling boy that he only drank to dull his nerves. Being around the court made his tongue tie, but wine sliced through the knots and let his words flow like a fountain. Wine made the cruel jokes of the courtiers funny and spurred him to make some of his own. His wine was his valor at parties.
“Rather too much if you’ll pardon my saying so, sir.” Douglass made his disgust at having to haul Raoul back to their quarters after another party plain by gripping Raoul’s elbow so tightly his lower arm went numb.
“I won’t pardon you, and I’ll have you scrubbing chamber pots for a week if I hear another word out of you.” Raoul’s voice was too loud in the otherwise deserted corridor, the echo in his ears made his head throb, and it was all Douglass’s fault for being an insubordinate cur.
Douglass clamped his mouth shut—his lips thin with a disapproval Raoul was certain a squire should never show his knightmaster—and continued to drag a wobbling Raoul back to their rooms, but Raoul’s head didn’t cease pounding like a war drum though Douglass had been cowed into silence.
II Insults to Honor
“I’d thrash those Tusaine dogs if I could.” Raoul smashed his fist into his palm and scowled when Douglass flinched almost imperceptibly. The lad would never pass his Ordeal if he cringed every time Raoul took a testy tone. Mithros bless, it wasn’t as if he beat the boy. “I’d hit them until they fled back to Tusaine with their tails between their legs.”
“His Majesty doesn’t want any fights with the Tusaine delegation.” Douglass poured a glass of water that was probably meant to calm him or maybe take the edge off the drinks he had needed to give Raoul to prevent Raoul from punching the horde of arrogant Tusaine knights into next year for daring to insult King Roald when he was hosting them. “He desires peace, not war.”
“We took the River Drell from Tusaine last war. Maybe this time we’ll seize all of Tusaine and cleanse the miserable country of the insolent whelps they call knights.” Raoul jerked his head in refusal of the water, which wasn’t whine, Douglass offered him and added tersely, “Fetch me a bottle of wine from the kitchens, Douglass. There’s a good squire.”
“Is more wine wise for you, sir?” Douglass’s arched eyebrow conveyed that he doubted it was when Raoul was drunk to the gills.
“It’d be wise if you obeyed me.” Raoul’s frayed temper snapped like a too-taut bowstring as he jabbed a trembling finger at the door. “If you’re half so clever as you think you are, you’ll bring me my wine now.”
Douglass shot Raoul a reproachful look—as if he were the knightmaster instead of the saucy squire—but scampered off to the kitchens to fetch the wine Raoul had demanded. As the door closed behind Douglass, Raoul massaged his aching temples. A squire shouldn’t be allowed to question his knightmaster the way Douglass did. That was more proof, as though it were needed, that Raoul was too lax with his squire’s discipline. Perhaps he should start giving Douglass a clout on the ears when he didn’t follow commands quickly enough, but that was fury, not reason talking.
“Curse it all.” Raoul buried his face in his hands and waited for Douglass to return with the wine he craved. The wine would soothe him and level out his thinking as it always did, bringing a blissful blackness to end his night.
III Thrown down Glove
“I hope you’re happy, sir.” The baleful glare his squire fixed on Raoul was undermined by the sniffle that punctuated his sentence and the crimson of abraded skin under his nose.
“Do I look happy, squire?” Raoul would’ve felt sorry about getting them both exiled to the Gallan border where Douglass had developed a nasty cold because of his fight with Gary over Lady Delia’s perfumed glove if his head wasn’t constantly complaining about the absence of alcohol along this lonely stretch of the border between Tortall and Galla. His only consolation was that Gary had been been dispatched to the forever frozen hinterland that was the Scanran border. “I haven’t had a decent tankard of ale in weeks. The swill they serve at this wretched fort in the hind end of nowhere is too weak.”
“You deserve it.” Douglass’s chin lifted but the rebelliousness of the gesture was undercut by another sniffle stifled into a sleeve. “You were drunk when you dueled with Gary over Lady Delia’s glove.”
“I might’ve been drunk, but Gary wasn’t.” Raoul was convinced that made Gary the one responsible for his and Douglass’s plight. Sobriety imparted a sense of accountability that intoxication didn’t. “He’s to blame for this mess we’re in, Douglass.”
“I’m going to find a different knightmaster.” Douglass was obviously not mollified. “One who doesn’t get us exiled to the Gallan border because of a stupid squabble over some tart’s glove.”
“You can polish my armor to clean out your dirty mouth.” Raoul tilted his chin at the pile of armor in the corner of his quarters. Douglass had cleaned it yesterday, but he could tidy it again today until he learned to be properly respectful of Raoul and the honor of the woman whose glove he had battled over. “Until this paragon arrives to rescue you from my cruel clutches, you can focus on making my armor spotless and shiny.”
“Yes, sir.” Douglass sniffled again but settled down to attend to Raoul’s armor, his features as resigned as if he were kneeling before an executioner’s axe.
While his squire tended to his gear, Raoul decided he would attempt to abate his headache with some of the weak swill served in the fort’s mess hall.
IV A Toast
“To the memory of the fair Queen Lianne. May her beauty ever glow in our hearts.” Raoul, rather proud of this toast, raised his goblet to his lips. As he drank, he didn’t appreciate Douglass staring at him across the table as if he’d had too much too drink when the evening was still young as a pup. He had lost count of how many glasses of wine he had tipped back but that didn’t mean he had drunk too much.
“Won’t you drink to Queen Lianne’s memory with me?” Raoul poured another goblet of wine.
“I don’t drink.” Douglass crossed his arms over his chest. Raoul knew that his former squire never indulged in a glass of wine or a tankard of ale but he was prone to forgetting. Wine made everything recede into a comforting cloud.
“You’ve no sense of fun.” Raoul swirled the wine around in his glass and grinned at the intoxicating scent. “I marvel you were ever my squire.”
“I don’t drink because I was your squire.” Douglass was so withering that Raoul was tempted to flip the table. Only the realization that this would waste fine wine kept him from doing so.
“I shall drink to her honor for you.” Raoul was pleased with his own magnanimity as he filled a second goblet with wine on Douglass’s behalf. The death of Jon’s beloved mother made him feel as bad as King Roald looked these days, but drinking eased the pain of her loss that he felt whenever he gazed into Jon’s heartbroken, baffled eyes.
“Getting drunk doesn’t honor her.” Douglass pushed back his chair with a resounding scrape. “It insults her memory.”
Raoul ignored this as he raised two glasses in a salute to the dearly departed Queen Lianne.
V Breaking Point
Raoul woke to a wave washing over him. Water dripping from his forehead like sweat, he glared up at Douglass, who was standing over his bed with an upturned basin. It was always Douglass who roused him on the mornings when he couldn’t wake himself, just as it was always Douglass who mopped up his sick since it would’ve been too embarrassing to summon palace servants to clean such a mess, who ensured that he got to Duke Baird’s when he needed a hangover cure, and who picked up the pieces of whatever precious object Raoul smashed when the rage in the bottle drowned him. Those were all duties Douglas had assumed when he was Raoul’s squire and had never dropped. When Raoul was sober, he understood that Douglass should never have been forced to take on such responsibilities, but when he was drunk or hungover, that shame would be funneled into blame directed against the very person trying to help him.
“How did you get in here?” Raoul grunted as his tongue struggled to form words in his mouth. It was too early for speaking.
“Your door wasn’t locked.” Douglass put the basin on Raoul’s nightstand, the noise a clap of thunder that sent flashes of lightning tearing through his skull. Raoul thought he had locked his door before he stumbled into bed last night, but he must have forgotten. That wasn’t so surprising. After all, these nights he drank to forget the battered, bloody bodies of those he couldn’t save in the rubble of a coronation turned into disaster and the treason Alex had committed. Raoul could have lived with Alex’s death if he hadn’t come to a traitor’s end, a friend transfigured eternally into a foe. It was the betrayal that cut him to the core and made him mourn the boy he had known as well as the mysterious man he clearly hadn’t. “In the future, you might consider locking it. The past few days should’ve taught you that there are enemies in this palace, and nobody is safe here.”
“Even if my door isn’t locked, you should knock before entering.” Raoul tried to sit up but discovered that the world swayed too much when he did and collapsed into his pillows. “You were my squire. I know you were taught how to knock.”
“I knocked seven times before I came in.” It was too early in the morning for Douglass to be so matter-of-fact. “Eventually I had to break in or you’d never see Duke Baird.”
“Duke Baird is too busy to give me a hangover cure.” One of the few things Raoul remembered in his current condition was the healers were swamped with those who had been injured in the battle and earthquake that had overshadowed Jon’s coronation.
“You don’t need a hangover cure. That would just be healing the symptoms and not addressing the root problem.” Douglass’s words were an arrow fired into Raoul’s heart. “You need treatment for your addiction, Raoul, because you can’t go on living like this, and neither can I.”
“I’m doing fine.” Raoul believed that he was apart from the hangover. His life might have fallen about his ears on coronation day, but the same could be said of everyone else in Tortall. It had been a tragedy for the entire realm. “Relax. You’re making my headache worse with your worrying.”
“I can’t do this any more.” Douglass ripped at hair blond as the faint sunlight filtering through Raoul’s shutters. “Either you get help from Duke Baird or I’m cutting you out of my life since I’m sick to the bone of trying to solve your problem when you won’t even admit that it exists.”
“You’re the one with the problem.” Raoul’s fists clenched around his blankets. “You can’t tolerate me seeking some solace in wine after a cursed catastrophe.”
“Your words and actions can’t hurt me any longer. I refuse to grant them that power. I’m done with you. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what you do.” The fervor with which Douglass slammed the door suggested that he he did care too much, but the thought wasn’t as triumphant as Raoul had intended it to be.
VI Amends
The easy part was tracking Douglass down in the training yards. The difficult part was making the amends that Duke Baird said were essential not only to curing his addiction but healing the pain he had put those close to him through with his drinking.
“Douglass.” Raoul had rehearsed what he wanted to say but as he stared into Douglass’s face—wary from being hurt too many times by Raoul—he forgot them. “You were right to worry that I was drinking too much and to tell me to see Duke Baird.”
“I know.” Douglass had raised his chin as if preparing for battle. Raoul’s thumb itched to tap it down but Douglass wasn’t his squire any more.
“I went to Duke Baird, and I’m treating my addiction.” Raoul’s palms were sweating so he wiped them in the pockets of his breeches.
“I’m glad.” Douglass gave a short nod that indicated he was bracing himself for the next disappointment Raoul would inevitably provide.
“I thank you for urging me to go.” Raoul thought that words could never describe how grateful he was to his former squire for prodding him into treatment. He was regaining a self he hadn’t noticed he had lost. He clasped Douglass’s shoulder even if Douglass wasn’t his squire any longer. “I also apologize for everything I said and did when I was drunk. I was a lout, and I wouldn’t blame you if you never forgave me.”
It was surprisingly simple to say he was sorry. What was impossible was believing that his apology would even being to atone for what he had done.
“I forgive you.” Douglass’s smile was small but hopeful as a spring robin. “Just don’t ever drink again.”
“The addiction will always be with me.” Raoul could feel it clinging to him tight as a glove. “I can swear that I’ll keep fighting it, but I can’t promise that I’ll win. I’m sorry, but I’m powerless over it.”
“I’ve had front row seats to that drama for years, so you aren’t telling me anything I don’t know.” Douglass sounded more sad than angry. “You don’t need to apologize for me about that. I don’t need your pity. I can keep my life together. It’s yours that always a mess.”
Douglass’s words were knives in Raoul’s chest, and, because he was a coward who had been forced to drink to discover a feeble imitation of courage, he walked away, wondering if he would ever truly be able to make the amends Duke Baird recommended.
VII Among the Wolves
“You never chose another squire,” Douglass commented as they sat in Raoul’s tent. Douglass had ridden into the King’s Own encampment with Lady Maura and the pack of wolves that guarded her as much as Douglass did. One of Lady Maura’s fearsome four-legged protectors napped with his snout on Douglass’s knee, drooling onto Douglass’s breeches.
“No.” Raoul shifted to find a comfortable spot that didn’t exist on his uncushioned wooden chair. “I wasn’t a good knightmaster to you, was I?”
“You were good to me when you weren’t drunk or hungover.” Douglass didn’t mention that Raoul had been drunk or hungover too much because he was a better knight that Raoul would ever be.
“I can’t blame the drink for the things I did when it was inside me.” If there was one thing Raoul had learned during the rugged road of his recovery, it was that he was responsible for everything he did when he was drunk. He put the drink inside him and then surrendered to its impulses since they were his own dark desires.
“The men of the Own are devoted to you.” Douglass scratched behind the wolf’s ears. “You’ve done well with them.”
“There’s a difference between men of the Own and squires.” Something in Raoul’s tone persuaded Douglass to drop the debate.
VIII Better Knight
“You said you were going to take Keladry of Mindelan as your squire.” Douglass had apparently materialized in Raoul’s office with the sole objective of hounding him. It figured that Raoul had spent weeks tackling ogres, and now he had to fend off his former square. On a balance, he deemed the ogres less threatening. At least ogres could be fought with conventional weaponry, unlike former squires who demanded more creativity and delicacy to defeat.
“I regret telling you that.” Raoul didn’t enjoy being nagged by his former squire even if Douglass only badgered him with the best intentions. “Now you’ll never stop bothering me about it.”
“I’ll stop bothering you once you ask her to be your squire.” Douglass was vexingly serene.
“That’s not fair.” Raoul shook his head. “She deserves a better knightmaster. One who was never a drunkard.”
“You aren’t a drunkard any more,” pointed out Douglass.
“I could become one at any moment,” Raoul reminded him with a weary sigh. “I never never shake off this addiction. There’s always the risk it will overcome me again.”
“You can’t live in fear of that.” Douglass’s eyes pierced into Raoul’s like a lance. “She needs a knightmaster, and I remember even if you don’t how much you enjoyed having a squire.”
“I do remember.” Raoul’s face cracked into a lopsided smile. There had been laughter, jokes, teasing, and meaning in teaching somebody to be a better knight that he was. There had been a legacy built in flesh and blood. “We had some fun together, didn’t we, Douglass?”
“The most fun of any knight and squire pairing in the realm.” Douglass chuckled. “We drove one another crazy.”
“She won’t drive me crazy as you did.” Raoul found a way to make it sound as if he had won the argument even as he gave into Douglass’s persistence. “I hear that Lord Wyldon trains his pages to be extremely respectful.’
“If you’re implying that Duke Gareth didn’t instruct us in politeness, I can relay that message to His Grace so he can address any deficiencies in your manners education.” Douglass’s gaze was alight with mischief.
“That won’t be necessary, thank you.” Raoul glared at Douglass, who merely snickered, uncowed.
Despite his glare, Raoul hoped that one day Keladry would believe as Douglass did: that he was more than the sum of his past mistakes, that he wasn’t just a man who created problem after problem, that he could feel remorse and make amends, and that he was stronger than the addiction that he fought tooth and nail.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!