Work Text:
"We're a strange pair, aren't we?"
Alexandria did not answer. She simply lay there and let her eyes drift closed as the corners of her mouth pulled upward ever so slightly. It was not much of a smile, only the ghost of one really, half hidden by pain. Still, it was the happiest she had looked since Roy had told her that the Masked Bandit was going to marry Sister Evelyn, which now felt like it had happened a lifetime ago.
Roy wanted to reach out and smooth what little of Alexandria's hair was visible beneath the bandages swaddling her head but stopped himself before making contact. She looked so peaceful and he would hate to hurt her by unnecessarily jostling her injured skull. He had hurt her enough already. Instead, Roy pushed himself somewhat straighter in his seat and, with a sigh, contemplated how sore he might be in the morning if he were to just lean forward and go to sleep on the spot with his head resting on the operating table right next to Alexandria's for the remainder of the night. However, the orderly on duty must have been watching and waiting for such a moment, because almost immediately beginning to waver, Roy heard soft footsteps approaching from behind.
"I think that's enough for now, Mr. Walker," said the orderly. The man briefly put a hand on Roy's shoulder, then drew the wheelchair several steps backwards before turning it around and pushing it out of the room. "Let's get you back to bed. I'm sure you need your rest just as much as the girl does." Roy made no protest as the orderly wheeled him down the hall, away from Alexandria and away from the half full bottle of whiskey left sitting on the floor by her bedside.
It was a week before the doctors allowed Roy to see Alexandria again. For the first three days, she was not allowed any visitors aside from her mother while she was carefully watched by the hospital staff until they finally deemed her to be truly out of danger. Then, in the days that followed, others were once again allowed to visit with her, but Roy remained persona non grata in the doctors' eyes while everyone, even the other patients, continually gave him sidelong glances and far too obviously tried to calculate exactly how much of a risk to himself or others he might be whenever they thought he was not looking.
During that long and lonely week, even if no one had come right out and said it in so many words, Roy felt very much like some overgrown child who had been told to sit in the corner and think about what he had done wrong, and he did not complain, because he knew that he had earned such treatment. The hustle and bustle of daily life (and occasionally death) in the hospital continued all around Roy while he sat in his small island of solitude. Unless he called for someone's attention, which he rarely did, his only interaction with anyone came during mealtimes, cleanings, and his daily check-ups. To an external observer, there was little or no change at all from how he had been before meeting Alexandria. Internally, Roy had undergone a very major change indeed, namely the fact that his list of things which had broken and he feared might not ever heal properly had grown longer to include anatomical parts located in a body other than his own and semi-abstract concepts such as a child's innocence.
And so it was that Roy sat alone while surrounded by people and passed his time deep in thought. He did not constantly think about Alexandria, but she was certainly a topic which his mind revisited again and again. When he was honest with himself, as he had been trying to force himself to be more often these days, he had to admit that he missed her and the companionship she had so effortlessly provided. Sadly, his longing for her cheerful company was always overshadowed by his conviction that the manner in which he had abused such a young girl's trust had more than proved that she would be better off if she never saw him again.
This pattern continued until one bright afternoon when one of the orderlies was arranging Roy in bed after his return from the main block where he had had yet another x-ray taken. Roy had barely been paying attention to the routine manhandling until the orderly apologized for bending his leg into what should have been an uncomfortable position. Roy had not been able to feel it, of course, just like he had not been able to feel which of his toes Alexandria had been touching when he had asked her to help him with his little test, and thinking back to that incident triggered a fragment of another memory, this one of Alexandria sobbing something about his feet.
The orderly finished his task and asked if Roy needed anything else. Roy wordlessly waved him away, too caught up in following this new loose thread of thought to consciously register the other man's departure. Why would Alexandria have been crying about something like that? Had he just merely dreamed it? Then the rest of the memory fell into place and Roy wished that it really had been a dream, that he had not awakened to hear her saying those words, that he did not remember them so clearly now when by all rights he should not have been able to hear them at all, first through the lingering mental fog of the opiates he had taken and then over the sound of his own wild shouting. And for once, such a wish had nothing to do with the fact that, at the time, he had not planned to awaken ever again. Instead, as he now looked back on it with the horror of hindsight, Roy wished most of all that he did not understand what those words meant for Alexandria herself, or maybe that he had understood sooner, so that he might not have said the things that he did when next he had seen her lying flat on her back and looking for comfort when all he could offer was devastation.
"Roy, I thought you were dead," she had said. "I saw two men, and they were carrying the body away," she had said. "And then I tried to pinch your toe. I run after you, and after that one of the doctors told me, 'shoo,' and I had to go away," and Roy wasn't quite sure what to make of that last part, but he understood the first part well enough, understood just how much of a selfish idiot he had been when he had opened his mouth to her and, in his anger at yet another failure, thought that he needed to introduce her to the cruelty of the world and the concept of death. He had never considered until now the possibility that, at such a young age, she was already acquainted with death and the cruelty of the world and would readily recognize them for the rest of her life. Angry people had burned down her house, and her father was dead, and she had probably witnessed everything.
With that moment of realization, Roy decided that never speaking to Alexandria again was not the answer. Instead, he heeded to go to her and try to make amends for his behavior. Considering how they had last parted, he knew exactly where he should begin. He called to a passing nurse and asked her to send for his doctor. Before he would be allowed to see Alexandria, he needed to convince the staff that he was worthy of such a privilege.
The next morning, one week after doing everything in his power to destroy her happy fantasyland, Roy Walker slunk into the children's ward and up to Alexandria's bedside, at least as much as it was possible for a man to slink while sitting in a wheelchair which was being propelled by someone else. Mostly, he just slouched and looked guilty. Alexandria, in turn, was sitting in her bed hunched over one of the raised trays which the hospital used during mealtimes and she had apparently commandeered for use as a desk. At the sound of his approach, she stilled the crayon which she had been working vigorously against a sheet of paper, looked up, saw him, and smiled. Her head was still wrapped in bandages, but her eyes were bright and alert, and the color had returned to her face, almost as if layers of gauze were only there as part of a game of dress-up instead of a necessary part of the recovery process.
"Roy!" she exclaimed as her eyes met his. "You come to see me!"
"Of course I did," he replied. "Remember when I told you that we were getting to the best part of the story and that I would hate for you to spend your whole life wondering how it turned out if you had to leave before the end? Well, right now, I think that if you left without hearing the rest of the story, then I would hate having to spend the rest of my life knowing that I never got to tell you how it turned out."
Alexandria's smile faltered into something dangerously close to a pout. "But you already tell me the end," she said. "You told the end and killed all our friends."
"No, I didn't."
"You did."
"I didn't," he insisted. Alexandria opened her mouth to argue again, but Roy held up his hand to stop her as he pleaded his case in the most soothing tones he could manage. "Alexandria, please, I said the Masked Bandit saw his friends die, but did you ever hear me say, 'the end'?"
Alexandria shook her head. Her expression was not entirely trusting, but she looked like she might be experiencing faint stirrings of hope, which was good, because the orderly who was still standing over Roy's shoulder had informed him on the way there of having orders to end the visit as soon as the child showed any sign of becoming too agitated.
Roy leaned forward and continued, "When you're telling a story, it isn't over until you say, 'the end,' which I never did. You never know what might happen between the last part that you heard and the real ending. So, do you want to hear the rest of the story?"
"I..." Alexandria looked down at her drawing and then back at Roy, and then she repeated the process. She set aside the crayon she had been using and selected another color. "Yes," she finally said, looking a tiny bit more hopeful than before.
"Wonderful," Roy said with a smile. "Now, do you remember where we left off?"
She scrunched up her face in concentration before answering, "You called us strange."
"That's right," Roy said and then began spinning the tale which he had spent half the night concocting. "The Masked Bandit turned to his adopted daughter and said, 'We're a strange pair, aren't we?' and then began to lead her back along the tangled hallways, terraces, stairways, courtyards, and tunnels which they had so recently run through. The sound of bells rose up from the Blue City in the valley down below, and with those bells came the cries of voices announcing that the city was finally free because Governor Odious had fallen on his own sword. Despite all the distant noise, the two bandits did not see a single other living soul as they made their way out of the palace, not until they heard a single heavy, dragging set of footsteps echoing up the passageway ahead of them. 'I promised there would be no more killing today,' said the Masked Bandit. 'Our Mystic friend once spoke of an incantation which would banish all bad things before they had the chance to so harm. If only I could remember what it was...'"
"Googly!" supplied Alexandria.
"Are you sure?"
"Googly, googly, googly, go away!"
"Say it with me then. 'Googly, googly, googly, go away!' The Masked Bandit and the Little Bandit both chanted the incantation which the Little Bandit had learned from the Mystic. 'Googly, googly, googly, go away!' They chanted it over and over again, but the ominous footsteps continued getting closer."
"What is 'ominous?'" Alexandria interrupted. "Is he Governor Odious's brother?"
"Ominous means scary, and just wait and see. The bandits continued their chanting, but the footsteps got closer and finally turned the corner. It was a single one of Governor Odious's henchmen. His black armor was dented, and he dragged one foot as he walked, leaving a trail of blood behind him. The dark figure continued toward the chanting bandits, only to stop a few steps away from them.
"'Googly, googly, googly, go away!,' shouted the Little Bandit.
"'You want me to go away?' said the henchman, 'after all those miles I carried you in my bag?' And he took off his helmet, revealing not one of the Governor's thugs, but Luigi.
"'Luigi!' exclaimed the Black Bandit. 'What are you doing here? We thought you were dead, blown to bits with that mob of palace guards.'
"'Me, dead? From an explosion?' said Luigi, and he sounded rather offended. "Please, I am an explosives expert. Do you really think I could not control-a the direction of my blast? I made sure that it all went away from me.'
"'But why are you dressed like that?' said the Black Bandit. 'If I had not promised to kill no more this day. I might have tried to hurt you.'
"'My clothes were ruined in the blast,' Luigi explained, 'and while it may be acceptable to wear very little when swimming from a remote island, a man should never walk around like that in a city were ladies might see him. But that is not important right now,' he continued. 'It is good that I found you, because I have found the Indian. He fell from a great height, breaking both of his legs, and I cannot help him alone.'
"'He is still alive?' asked the Little Bandit.
"'He was when last I left him,' said Luigi. 'Come, let us go and make sure that he stays that way.' And so the bandits followed the limping Italian to where the Indian lay atop the pile of henchmen who had broken most of his fall. Together, they were able carry him with them and they continued on their way."
And so Roy continued his story, telling how the Little Bandit was able to teach the Masked Bandit how to swim in order to save the grievously wounded Darwin when they found the Englishman floating near death in the palace cistern. He told of how the scars on Otta Benga's back from being whipped throughout all his years as a slave had grown so thick and tough that arrows could not pierce through them deeply enough to seriously harm him. He told of how the badly beaten Mystic was found near death, clinging without strength to a tree, and how he would have died if the equally near death Wallace had not agreed let the Mystic borrow the power of his teeth while the Mystic let the young monkey recuperate safely in his belly. He even told of how the birds who had lived for so long in the Mystic's belly found new homes all around the Blue City and filled it with such beautiful music that the grateful people of the city gladly allowed the adventurers to stay and heal from their wounds for as long as they needed.
At first, as he narrated, Roy worked to try to restore one young girl's faith in the ability of good people to triumph over adversity, which he had previously helped to tarnish, and maybe restore a little bit of his faith in himself along the way. As the story went along though, he forgot about all his motives, altruistic though they may be, and instead became caught up in the thrill of entrancing an audience simply for the joy of watching them be entranced. Not until he ended his tale and saw Alexandria grinning wider than he had ever seen before did Roy recognize the feeling that had been gnawing at his heart for the past hour or so. It was hope. He knew that 'fixing' his story for Alexandria was very not much in the grand scheme of things, but it was a start. He could figure out the rest later, because for the first time in a very long time, Roy Walker was genuinely interested in living to see that 'later' arrive.