Work Text:
In the prep room of the Flintofts Funeral Home, Jowan is hard at work among the dead.
His work is all about preservation, of stopping decay in its tracks, at least for as long as he can manage. The bodies have to be presentable for the funeral, especially the open casket ones; even the closed casket funerals, when the body is in no condition to be viewed, there is work that has to be done to keep the varied smells and sounds of death from interrupting the memorial.
The dead don’t mind, fortunately.
He likes their company. They’re done; anything they left undone is no longer their problem. They are no longer in pain. They will never be confused about anything, ever again.
Jowan likes the dead, likes their certainty. He lifts out internal organs, rests them gently in a tub of embalming fluid. “Just for a little while,” he tells the man on the table. “Then I’ll give them back.”
The dead man, of course, doesn’t respond.
#
Tranquility Mountain Reform School. You would think it was a peaceful place.
Nothing could have been farther from the truth.
Jowan knew how to survive. He was an elf; his whole life had been a long lesson in keeping his head down and being quiet. They couldn’t keep you much past eighteen, so he had only ten months before they had to release him out into the world.
Ten months, he told himself. I can do ten months.
For a place that called itself a school, there was very little actual schoolwork happening. He had known the place would be a lie from the beginning, but he was surprised at the depth of that lie. Tranquility Mountain was a place they sent minors to be punished. Prison, paid for by families.
Jowan steadily refused to think about his own family, and what had happened just before two grim humans had shown up at his front door and taken him away.
It hadn’t been so bad, in the beginning. There had been things to study, and pre-dawn runs. There were group times where you were supposed to talk about the choices that had landed you at Tranquility.
Then Jowan’s roommate, who had been more and more scarce, came in late from some sort of punishment one night. When the bell rang in the morning, his roommate didn’t wake.
He’d been dead for hours. His skin was cold.
Jowan had stood by the narrow, sagging bed and looked at his roommate’s corpse.
He doesn’t hurt.
His roommate had been named Pete, and he’d radiated pain, constantly. Jowan could feel it in him, like he could feel almost everyone’s pain, coiled up inside of them like a snake or a rope or barbed wire. And now it was gone.
The day after they took Pete away and stripped the bed, they gave him a new roommate. The new kid was a lanky blond with an unpronounceable name. “Call me Anders,” he said. “Everyone else does.”
Jowan didn’t tell him that Pete had died in the bed he was about to be sleeping in. He figured Anders didn’t need to know.
The day after that, Jowan didn’t move quite fast enough when one of the “instructors” told him to get out of the way. The punishment was ten strokes with the cane and ten hours in a cage in the sun.
It only got worse from there.
#
Bodies are funny things. They sag, they dry out, they shrink. The internal work on this one is done now, internal organs replaced, midsection sewn up. Now Jowan’s doing the cosmetic work—eyes and mouth, shaving bits of fluff. Already the dead man looks better.
“You’re going to look nice for the funeral,” he says. “Your family will be proud.”
There’s music drifting down from upstairs, reverberating through the floor. Kahrin is in already, then, and warming up at the piano. There’s a Rivaini wake scheduled for this morning. That body is done already, and in the front room.
He wishes Kahrin were more comfortable in the funeral home. It seems like it would make life easier for her, since she works here. But he has no idea how to set her at her ease.
He massages the corners of the dead man’s mouth, sets them into a bit more of a smile.
#
Unexpectedly, he and Anders became friends.
Anders didn’t seem to mind the things that most people didn’t like about Jowan, and he didn’t seem to find him creepy, which was a nice change. The last person who hadn’t thought he was creepy had been Katje, and that…hadn’t ended well.
Anders was smart, and probably less funny than he thought he was but pretty funny anyway. And he hated being at Tranquility Mountain. He wasn’t interested in keeping his head down and waiting to be released. He kept trying to escape.
And Jowan, being his roommate, got punished right along with Anders. It was supposed to encourage him to keep Anders in line, but it just made him more stubborn. If Jowan was going to get punished anyway, it might as well be for something real. On Anders’ fifth escape attempt, Jowan had tried to get out along with him. It hadn’t worked.
Which is how they ended up on a qunari meditation walk at high noon in the middle of summer.
He strongly suspected that the “meditation walk” was a perversion of the real thing, and the word ‘appropriation’ kept on drifting across his mind. It was just like humans playing at being Dalish, except worse because the qunari still lived and Dalish culture had been extinct for Ages.
He thought about these things because it was easier than thinking about how thirsty he was.
They had been walking for six hours. The “counselors” with them had canteens, but neither Anders nor Jowan had had a drop of water or anything to eat today. Nor had they been allowed to stop and rest. Jowan’s legs were leaden and he was stumbling every other step. Once he’d fallen, and one of the men with him had kicked him until he’d gotten up.
There was nothing meditative about this walk. He was supposed to be thinking about how his choices has brought him here, but all he could think was that death might be preferable to staying on his feet.
At least they couldn’t hurt me anymore.
Anders’ head was hanging low as he walked beside Jowan. He…felt weird. Just like Jowan could feel the pain radiating from their guards, he could feel Anders’ pain. It was somehow bigger than Anders’ frame could possibly contain, burning against Jowan like a small sun.
Jowan wasn’t afraid of it. He wasn’t afraid of anything, right now. He was too thirsty to be afraid.
He didn’t remember stumbling. Only suddenly being on the ground. Hot copper flooded his mouth. He’d bitten his lip, he realized. He was pressed into the dirt.
“Oy, Surenne, get up!” Something hard slammed into his ribs, and he tried to curl away from it with a whimper. Get up, something whispered in his mind. You have to get up.
The hard thing slammed into him again as he tried to obey, and this time he felt something in his side give, heard a crack and the next breath hurt. He was lying on his side now. Get up.
I can’t.
Please, young one. Get up.
“Eh, did you hear me, Surenne? On your feet!”
He pushed himself to his hands and knees, swallowing blood. “Stop!” another voice yelled. “Can’t you see he’s trying? He can’t get up if you keep kicking him!” Anders, Jowan realized. Anders, don’t.
Anders couldn’t hear him, he realized. Nobody could hear him.
I can hear you.
There was movement, and he flinched away, a wave of dizziness washing over him. “No!” Anders screamed, and there was suddenly more to his voice, another voice laid over top of his. “I will not let you hurt him.”
And Anders was there, between him and the man who had kicked him, and he was glowing, tendrils of blue fire radiating out from him, snaking over his skin.Anders, don’t!
He can’t hear you, young one. The voice was…regretful. Ancient.
The man flinched away, and Anders lashed out, sending the man sprawling. Jowan gasped, the pain of breathing overridden by the bright pain he could feel from the counselor. Something inside him reached out. Blood. It grasped. Blood in my mouth.
His hands were glowing red. Fix it. He tried to stop it, but—how? Fix it. Pain ripped through him, choking him. He could feel the other man, his pain, his dying, things were failing—
Anders moved, there was a crack, and Jowan was back in his body, the bond between him and the other man snapped. Anders turned, and his eyes were blazing blue, his body almost obscured by the tendrils of light.
Jowan never knew how he managed to get to his feet. But he was up, and wobbling, and the voice was now a presence. Anders’ attention was swinging to the left, and Jowan saw the other counselor, standing stock-still and staring.
He will kill him. The voice was regretful.
“No,” Jowan whispered. He took a hobbling step. “Anders. No.” Help me.Another step, and he was between Anders and the other man. “Anders. Don’t.”
And on the last word, the floodgates opened.
There was no pain. Just a sound like a crackling wind rushing in his ears and a red film washed over his vision. He stood still, meeting Anders’ blazing eyes.
And whatever was riding Anders saw.
There was an eternity, then, when Jowan thought that he was about to die.
Then the blue light faded from his friend’s eyes, draining away to reveal iris and pupil, and he slumped a little. The red retreated from Jowan’s vision. Pain returned.
Anders looked down at his hands, blood spattered to his elbows, and then he looked over his shoulder at the body lying crumpled there, the man who no longer hurt. The living man behind Jowan made a strangled sound. His radio crackled.
When the silence broke, so did the force that was keeping them trapped in that moment. The world lurched, and Anders whirled and ran.
Jowan took a step, and fell.
He curled up, wringing his fingers together. He sobbed, but there were no tears. He was too dehydrated to cry. Even when the truck came for him and the counselor and the body, all he could do was rock and twist his fingers against each other.
It was only later, in the darkness of the infirmary, strapped to a bed and an IV in his arm, that tears came.
#
He dresses the dead man and lays him out in the coffin, putting a few stitches into the pants and shirt to keep them looking neat and natural. The other morticians like to have someone help them heft the bodies around, but Jowan likes working alone, and he’s stronger than people expect he is.
He puts a bit of gel into the dead man’s sparse hair and combs it. Sometimes he needs a picture for reference for the hair, especially for women, but a lot of the time the hair just falls naturally into the patterns it’s been combed into for years.
He looks good, the dead man. From upstairs, the music changes to a slow adagio, something Jowan almost recognizes.
#
“Did you hear about Radoyev?” one of the instructors said. He was standing and chatting to another instructor while Jowan stood facing a corner. Both of them ignored him. Everyone did, even now, a couple of days after he had been brought back from the meditation walk. Jowan was still wobbly, but he’d been declared fit to return to school life, and punishment.
“What about him?” the other human asked. There was a soft tearing sound and a crackle; a packet of crisps opening. Jowan closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the corner. His stomach growled, and his side throbbed. The counselor had broken one of his ribs, the nurse had said.
Crackling and crunching. “Found him,” the instructor said, a cruel glee in his voice. “Out in the desert. They’re running some fluids into him now, and once they’re done he’s going into solitary for the rest of his natural life.”
Jowan’s breath caught. Anders was the last person who would deal well with being alone for a long time. Jowan was perfectly content with his own thoughts, but Anders’ restless mind never stopped working. He needed people to talk to, to keep from getting lost in the rabbit warren of his brilliance.
But there was something else. He was in the infirmary. He was there right nowand if Jowan could get there, he could maybe talk to him.
Jowan squeezed his eyes closed and held his breath.
Three, two, one—
There was a blank, dizzy feeling, and the world went away.
He woke up when the instructors hauled him up, but kept his body limp, feigning a faint still. They dragged him to the infirmary, none too gently, and tossed him onto one of the beds. Jowan “woke” when the nurse came by to check him over. “The things they do to you boys,” the nurse muttered, pressing a stethoscope to Jowan’s chest. He frowned. “Your heartbeat is a little irregular. I’m going to keep you here for a few hours, get some more fluids into you.” Jowan grimaced, and the nurse chuckled. “No IV this time, as long as you promise to drink everything I give you. All right?”
Jowan smiled tentatively back at the man. “Okay,” he said in a small voice. “Okay.”
It turned out that the rehydrating drink the nurse brought actually tasted really really good (“that’s how you know you need it,” the nurse told him) and so did the pudding that followed the drink. “Have a nap,” the nurse told him. “I can’t keep you here forever, kid, but I can buy you some time to recover.”
Jowan closed his eyes obediently, and the nurse went to tend to his other charges. After a few minutes, when he was sure he’d been forgotten, he slipped out of his bed and out from behind the curtain around it, and went looking for Anders.
He found him at the end of a long hallway, in a darkened room. He was alone, leather straps securing him to the bed, an IV dripping a clear liquid into his arm. Jowan closed the door. “Anders,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”
Anders opened his eyes. His lips were peeling and bloody, his eyes sunken. “I’m never going to sleep again,” he said. “Never.”
Jowan pulled a rickety wooden chair up to the side of the bed and sat down. “They’re going to put you in solitary,” he said softly. “One of the instructors said.”
“I know.” Anders’ voice cracked, and he looked over at Jowan. There was terror in his eyes. “I can’t. There are things. In the dark. They’re going to leave me alone in the dark with them.”
“You’re strong, Anders.” He wrapped one hand around Anders’ fingers, and squeezed a little. “You can do this. I know you can.”
“Going to go mad in the dark. Maybe I’m mad already.” Anders’ hand closed convulsively on Jowan’s. “What happened? All I remember is yelling at the guy and the next thing I know he’s dead and there’s blood on my hands.”
“You were glowing,” Jowan whispered. “And you told him you wouldn’t let him hurt me.”
Anders closed his eyes, took a sobbing breath. “There’s something paying attention in the dark. Talk to me, Jowan. About anything. Just talk to me.”
Jowan searched for words. “There…there’s only six months until we’re both eighteen, Anders. We’re going to get out of here. Get away. They can’t keep us here longer than that.”
Anders nodded and swallowed. “I want to get my high school certificate, and apply for med school. Be a doctor. Help people.”
“That’s a good idea,” Jowan said. “I bet you could get scholarships and everything.”
“I hope so. How about you, Jowan? Going to go home?”
“I can’t. Not welcome there anymore.” He swallowed. “I need to get my high school certificate too. Then…maybe get a job? If I can find one.”
“My birthday is before yours,” Anders said. He opened his eyes and looked over at Jowan. “I’ll find us a place to stay, find a certificate program. We’ll figure things out. Okay, Jowan? We can both just…hang on. Until then.”
“Okay,” Jowan whispered. “I’ll try to come see you. If they let me.”
Anders nodded, and lapsed into silence. Jowan stayed, talking quietly about not much at all, until there were footsteps in the hall and the nurse came in to take him back to his own bed.
#
Jowan pushes the cart carrying the closed coffin onto the elevator and pulls the grating closed behind him. The machinery hums as the metal box jerks and then begins to rise.
He checks his watch as the music gets louder. Almost eight. He has fifteen minutes to get the coffin placed before people start arriving for the Rivaini wake.
#
“Muscles of the hand.”
Anders frowned in concentration. “Intrinsic: thenar, hypothenar, four dorsal interossei and three volarly, lumbrical. Extrinsic: Abductor pollicis longus, extensor carpi radialis longus, extensor pollicis longus, extensor indicis, extensor digiti minimi, extensor carpi ulnaris, extensor carpi radialis brevis, extensor digitorum communis.”
“You forgot one,” Jowan said. They were sitting on the bare floor of their apartment, a cold water flat two blocks from the university. He’s holding one of the flash cards Anders made to help him drill for anatomy. “Extensor pollicis brevis.”
“Fuck, I always forget that one.” Anders sighed gustily. “Are you coming to anatomy lab tomorrow? We’re in the theater again.”
“If your professor will let me,” Jowan said. “Considering I’m not a student.”
“Nobody minds. I’m not even sure the prof knows you’re not actually enrolled.” He nudged Jowan’s shin with his toe. “You should be, though. I’m serious, you’re smart enough.”
Jowan shifted uncomfortably. “People,” he said. “People are a problem.”
Anders gave him a sympathetic look and scratched his beard. The beard made him look older, but he was always scratching and pulling at it. “Yeah. I guess they are.”
They were three years out from Tranquility Mountain, and there had been some times when Jowan had lost his composure, forgotten all of his hard-learned rules. I’m sorry, my friend’s autistic and he gets scared sometimes, Anders would say to people as he ushered Jowan away. He was good at calming Jowan down, though, and he understood. Just like Jowan understood that when there were blue lights swimming in Anders’ pupils, he needed to get him away from whatever situation they were in, and fast.
They didn’t talk about it, though. Just took care of each other.
Anders had gotten through his bachelor’s degree in less than two years, once he’d talked the university into accepting him. His med school program was proving less amenable to tearing through it, but he was doing his level best. Jowan, for his part, cobbled together the sorts of odd jobs that elves usually did—janitorial work, data entry, grocery stockroom. Anything he could do that didn’t involve a lot of people.
“I actually…here.” Jowan dug into his pocket, and handed Anders a folded piece of paper. “I’m thinking of applying to this.”
Anders unfolded the paper, looked at it. “Mortuary sciences?” he said, tilting his head. “Actually, Jowan, that’s not a bad idea.”
“I think I can get financial aid, too. And it’s not hard to find a job, supposedly, especially if you’re licensed.” He looked down at the flash cards in his hands. “I think I’d be suited to it.”
“You’re not bothered by anatomy lab, that’s for sure.” Anders handed the paper back to him.
“Dead people don’t bug me.” He flipped a flash card over. “Okay, muscles of the thigh.”
Anders closed his eyes. “Central rectus femoris, vastus intermedius, vastus medialis, vastus lateralis…”
#
The coffin is in place, the cart hidden by heavy draperies. The schedule on this one has him down for an afternoon service, and Jowan signs the sheet that certifies that the body has been prepared according to code.
He leaves the sheet behind and takes the old elevator down, passing by the viewing room where Kahrin plays, shifting into a Rivaini time signature and key. His work is done, for the moment. Tonight, there will be more bodies to prepare.
That’s the nice thing about being a mortician in New Kirkwall. He never lacks for work.
#
Anders finished a year and a half of med school before getting into trouble—something to do with his friend Finn—and vanishing. The police had questions for Jowan, but Jowan didn’t have anything like answers. I don’t know, he repeated again and again. He’s just my roommate. He didn’t talk to me about his patients.
Someone had died, he gathered. A girl. That was all he knew. Finn came over and got a few things from the apartment. “Anders went into a…program,” Finn said. “He’ll be okay.”
Jowan was in school, and it was surprisingly easy to let himself disappear into his work—the jobs he kept to make ends meet now that Anders was no longer paying his half of the rent, studying for his mortician license. When he had free time, he read the medical books Anders had left behind. They were soothing. Reading them was almost like having Anders there, talking excitedly about whatever he was learning in school.
He occasionally talked to Finn, who had stayed in school. And eventually Anders came back. He’d shaved the beard, cut his hair. He wasn’t the same as he had been before. There was a new, hard edge to him.
It took a little while for Jowan to get used to this new Anders. They moved to a nicer apartment, this one with a water heater and everything. And one day Jowan looked up and he could see the old Anders in the new, and it was all right.
Jowan knew Anders was in the Grey Berets, an organization that investigated what Anders termed “weird shit nobody else wants to look at”. They were paying for him to finish med school and go through an emergency medicine residency. Anders took to the long hours of residency well; he rarely slept anyway, so 24-hour shifts weren’t a problem.
Then Anders finished his residency, and promptly vanished.
Again.
Jowan was working at his first real mortician job at a low-rent mortuary in a bad Denerim neighborhood, getting a lot of practice fixing up gunshot victims. He came home one day to find an envelope with a significant amount of cash in it sitting on the kitchen table.
There was a note on the outside in Anders’ sprawling script.
J,
Bad shit coming. Get out of Ferelden. Meet you in New Kirkwall. This should be enough to get you there.
Thanks,
A
The hairs prickled on the back of Jowan’s neck, and he heard a whisper, too soft to be understood.
He thought it said, Go.
#
The music follows Jowan down into the prep room. He puts the instruments and chemicals away, everything occupying its exact correct place. He’ll have to do this again tonight, when he starts his shift tonight; day shift isn’t so careful about putting things away.
He listens to the muffled melody coming through the ceiling. And behind the music, there are whispers. Whisper. One voice.
It’s almost like company.
Jowan Surenne pulls on his coat and goes up the stairs. He walks past the mourners here for the wake and out into the world, on a temporary visa in the land of the living, just like everyone else.