Us Against Them (William)

[Harbor]

Beryl heard him abruptly shift and flinched to look behind her. Seeing him stomping quickly toward her she tried to throw herself through the open door but he grabbed and caught her again and dragged her away. Beryl waved the knife at him but couldn't quite swivel it in any useful direction the way he had her arm. So she shrieked again and dug her heels into the ancient wood floors as he pulled.

"I have the right to GO!" she shouted, not mentioning the fact that he was absolutely right, though he seemed to think she'd go straight to a soldier, when in reality the fighting really wasn't a priority of hers. She primarily wanted to hide from all that. So she tried to stomp on the knight's toes to express her vexation, not caring that her bare feet were like water drops against window panes to his boots.

[Nandon]

William sighed as he basicly drug the child back over. A emaciated child against a knight trained for battle? No chance did she have to stop him.

He pushed her down into the chair with abit more force than was probably needed, or meant.

"I can't let you leave, so you may as well make the best of the situation."

[Harbor]

Beryl kicked as best she could when he began pulling her away from the door, but kicking while holding onto the baby and the bread and the cheese and the knife set her terribly off balance. That was what she told herself as he deposited her unceremoniously into a hard chair. "You can let me leave you just don't think you ought to," she snapped, furious all over again. "I'm stuck in a house and stuck defending this poor bastard and you lot come in here all intimidating and convinced of your own authority and what am I supposed to do but let you just knock me around because clearly I'm a threat to you but you insist on not admitting it. Oh yes this is clearly a spot I can find a bit of best in. Best chance is you lock me back in that cupboard before you leave so I don't tell anyone how ugly you all were when you've left."

In truth half her vitriol was covering up her panic. She didn't like men. Most of them hadn't been terribly nice to her, if they even bothered to notice her at all, so she brought her knees up, tucked the scrappy edges of her dress around her legs to hide the burns wrapping around the back, and glowered at him like she'd skewer him in his sleep if he so much as blinked. The burns were nearly healed by now, but she'd always hated them regardless. She'd much rather be cut outright. The nobleman who'd put them there had been riding his fancy horse through the poor side of town with one of his equally stupid friends and had assumed, when he discovered that his purse was gone, that since she was there and walking away that she had taken it. She started to run, and he'd snapped his whip around her legs and burned her. He'd been right disdainful when he found she hadn't touched the purse--she had nothing of value on her, of course. He assumed she'd already traded it away and was forced to let her go.

[Nandon]

"I actually did admit you were a threat." William said with a small ghost of a smile. "And we will not lock you in the cupboard when we leave because that would be cruel." William continued simply.

For the third time he reached for the waterskin on his hip and moved to hand it to her. "Drink." He commanded.

[Harbor]

”Well isn’t that a relief,” she muttered, bouncing the infant, who quite frankly had no idea what was going on in his life, and whether he should wail some more or try sleeping again. She hoped it was the wailing. Maybe it would convince this oddbob to let her leave. She didn’t like situations in which she had no control and she knew it.

Being grabbed and snatched at and generally touched Beryl didn’t like. Being told what to do she was used to, and therefore used to ignoring. But just to vex him, and because the infant probably wanted some, she took the waterskin. Fisting her hand over the opening to let only a dribble through, she held it upended over his mouth for him to suck the finger off one of her knuckles. When he stopped trying to eat her finger she shook the water off her hand, corked the skin and handed it back. ”Please don’t tell me what to do. Everyone tells me it’s a pity I had no good adults in my life because I never learned to listen to them.” She smiled to herself and bounced Infant. ”Really I’m quite happy this way. Except for right now. Now is irritating.”


{I may have made her just a bit too quick to hate on people. I'm trying to think of a way to make her start to like him. She doesn't necessarily trust 'niceness'.}

[Nandon]

William sighed, He was trying to be nice to the child. But so far all she did was rebuke him...Was winning over the rest of the city going to be this hard? He sure hoped not...When he had taken Dras Leona everything went fairly smooth, Sure there had been a couple assassination attempts on him, But those where soldiers not civilians.

William sighed again and walked back over to the counters. Tramping boots upstairs were heard and two men appeared to the bottom steps. "I dont think Jones is going to make it sir, We have tried all we can but he is just losing to much blood..." One of the men rambled and William muttered a curse. "I will go see him now then...After all its my fault he is dying..." William spoke in a almost defeated and weak voice, he then muttered another curse and marched up the steps past the two soldiers.

The soldiers for there part just kind of stood there and watched the girl and the baby, They certainly wouldn't stop her if she tried to leave.

[Harbor]

The soldier didn't take the water back, so she sat it on its side on the table, rocking the baffled infant back and forth. She'd done this sort of thing before--baby-caring, not soldier-arguing--because there were always a few homeless ones that no one wanted to look after for more than a day or two at most, and honestly none of them had the resources to either. But they all shared the effort and the drain and usually the infants grew up all right, if they ended up growing up at all.

At the voice of the soldier who, with his companion, came stomping down the stairs and muttering quietly, Beryl went still. Blood loss was a tricky thing. Just like frostbite was a tricky thing. But she'd watched one of the other girls several times able to slow down the bleeding of one of the other ragamuffins who had gotten slashed somehow, and sometimes she managed to save them, or give them a little more time for what friends they had to sprint there in time just to lose them.

Beryl stood up as the soldier left, leaving her in the company of the other two. They looked as uncomfortable as she was suddenly uncertain. That man dying up there was her enemy. She ought to just let him die. It was the right thing to do. But what people were didn't always matter, did it? The baby had been a stranger before she'd claimed him. Sometimes people changed who other people were just by changing the way they thought about them. And wasn't he a person too, even if he was a persons he had sworn not to like?

Beryl cursed as well, darted between the soldiers and ran up the stairs. "Why've I got to be so damn nice," she growled to herself as she hurried up there, finding the room the men were all huddled in, and tucked Infant up against her shoulder, pushing through the men around the most hurt one--Jones--so she could see what he'd done to himself. Pursing her lips, she said at last, to the man she'd spent the last half hour yelling at, "I might be able to fix him, or hold onto him until the magic fixer people get here. I've got little fingers. I could sew that vein shut. I've seen Mitta do it. It works sometimes."

[Nandon]

William blinked as he stood up from the striken man, His affliction? A deep cut across his thigh.

"You would do that?"

[Harbor]

Beryl stuck her chin firmly up. "Sure why not. If we win we can hang you later. But I'm a terrible person and can't let the enemy bleed out and besides I want to see if I can. Bragging rights."

Although she hated to do it, Beryl handed off Infant to the aggravating knight--William-- since she needed both of her hands for this, and she needed to be fast too, since she'd be taking the tight bandage off the man's thigh before she could sew it shut, and that was only if she could find the vein in the first place. Quick as a lynx Beryl snatched the smallest dagger off a nearby soldier's belt and thumped down onto her knees, working the tip beneath the bandages and sawing it up and through. She tossed the knife off to the side then--she didn't need it anymore. Being a seamstress's assistant, she kept her two precious needles safely pinned through the seam under the open arm of her dress. She plucked out the thinner one, strung it with a strand of hair--Mitta had taught her that; it looked flashy, but hair didn't leave tiny threads behind to fester like string did--and sat so she was straddling the man's leg, looking down toward his feet, her weight slowing the flow of blood. This way she didn't have to look at his face, too. Probing through the wound as fast as she could to find the vein--unlike Mitta, she hadn't learned yet where they were all supposed to be. She could feel the half-conscious man flinching, and could feel heat building under her skin. What if she tied it off so well the magic people couldn't fix it and he lost is leg because they couldn't get the blood back into it?

Well, she decided, that would be their problem. She couldn't be expected to be perfect. She found the vein, pinched it between her fingernails, and began weaving the needle through the little thing. For all the fuss it was making it was narrower than she'd expected. Back and forth she wove it, using no particular stitch, until the curled hair was nearly gone. She couldn't tie hair with her wet fingers now, nor could the men do it with their big ones, so she twisted it together until it twisted back on itself, and decided that she'd done what she could and there was nothing else to do.

Beryl numbly tucked her needle back where she'd taken it from and shakily stood. She hadn't thought she'd feel that worried about it--blood had never bothered her before--but it was different when you were pressed up against the person whose heartbeat depended on you. "I'm all done," she said weakly, and with a single glance to see that Infant wasn't on the verge of death without her to hold onto him, she wobbled out of the room and found the next nearest one, thrust open the door and threw up on the dusty floorboards. She shut the door, sank down against it, and called, suddenly embarrassed, "Can I have some water now?" She brought her knees up to her chest again and put her head into her hands, only to realize her hands were still covered in the stickiness of blood, and now she'd have to wash blood out of her hair, so she wrapped her arms around her legs, dropped her forehead onto her knees and sniffed, absolutely downright refusing to cry outright. She absolutely hated washing her hair. She didn't even know when the next chance she'd get to wash it would be, but she knew the blood would stink soon enough if she didn't.

[Nandon]

Tramping boots suddenly went down the stairs and exited the house, And then in a quick hurry they returned and the front door slammed shut. The tramping boots stopped outside the room she had taken and suddenly a gentle knock came at the door.

Without waiting for a reply william would push it open just enough for a hand to fit in, And three Waterskins were clutched in it.

"Use one to drink out of, And the other two to clean yourself as best you can...And dont worry about us, That water came from those who need it no longer." William said simply.

[Harbor]

Beryl's stomach had baby snakes in it. She tried not to notice them, but having been a street-liver for so long she didn't get sick much anymore, and she wasn't used to having to ignore the feelings. She took the water this time with gratitude--uncharacteristic of her--and this time didn't stop to think about what might be in the skins. This time it could have been sour milk and she would have drunk it. Wouldn't be the first time.

Beryl sucked one of them down, as he'd suggested, and used the other two to scrub her hands off one by one. There was still blood that had rubbed off in her hair but she didn't feel like washing at it now. Once she was clean she set the flasks aside, pushed up to her feet and went to see if Jones was looking any less dead now. She peeked cautiously around the doorway, shy almost, then crept in as if she couldn't be seen because she didn't like having too much attention on her at once. "Gimme him back," she said, stretching out her arms, and took Infant back from the soldier she'd been yelling at before. She was half surprised he hadn't dropped him, to be honest. Settling Infant back into her arms she asked quietly, looking down at the man she'd sat on, "Is he gonna live?"

[Nandon]

Jones certainly seemed no less almost dead, But his condition didnt seem to have worsened since she left. He was extremely pale and it was quite possible he could die just from blood loss.

When Beryl returned the baby was immediatly returned to her, And william turned to her with a small flicker of approval in his eyes. "I'm not sure...He has lost alot of blood..." William said simply, Jones was thankfully sleeping peacefully at that moment, The rising of his chest the only indicator that he was alive.

"But...I think he has a lot better chance to pull through now than before. Thank you...If he had died because of me...It would have weighed heavily on my head."

[Harbor]

Beryl swayed a bit since the baby was fussing. "I guess I'd feel pretty bad," she said in reply. No one had ever been under threat of dying because of her before, so she really couldn't guess at how awful it might feel. If the infant died she might start to understand, but infants died all the time, and healthy adults didn't, and she supposed that made a difference.

Drifting over to one of the shuttered windows, Beryl tried to lift the latch to push one of the shutters open, but somehow it was locked up tight and she couldn't. With a grumble of frustration she pressed her face against them, squinting out the narrow, warped slats. "I think you're winning," she sighed, unhappy. What would happen to the smallfolk like her when all these bigfolk came stomping through and changing things? As quick to adapt as she was, Beryl disliked change, particularly when it was forced onto her, as this was being. She might never see her home again--the bakery she'd slept outside for years might be sparking cinders by now. She'd be lost, for the first time in her life uncertain of what to do.

Looking over her shoulder with worried eyes Beryl asked, "What are you going to do with us, if you keep winning?" She'd heard terrible things about the Varden, the invaders. She wasn't looking forward to finding out which of the rumors were true.

[Nandon]

"Nothing, I assume you will go on living your lives as you did before. Though some of Galbatorix's nobles gold will most likely be distributed amongst the citizens of the city...Thats what I did when I captured Dras Leona." William then shrugged and glanced down at the girl, A sudden thought occured to him but he pushed it away.

[Harbor]

She shook her head. "Folk like me don't get gold, not even silver unless something really lucky happens. Bigger folk and richer folk can smell gold, and they're all too happy to foist it off of little folk like me." She tried to keep it quiet when she had it, tried to keep it hidden. But money was loud no matter how invisible and someone always found out about it, especially if you spent just a little of it but not all.

Beryl rattled the latch on the shutters a second time, scowling. One look over her shoulder at the faces of the conscious soldiers told her all she'd suspected when she couldn't get it open. "You fixed it shut, didn't you!" she accused. She grumbled to herself and thumped onto her bottom on the floor. "I'm too tired and miserable to yell at you anymore," she griped. "And you're a bit bigger than me so you might catch me if I tried to run anyway." There was no one she couldn't escape from eventually but she chalked it up to multiple kinds of exhaustion that she guessed she just wouldn't escape this time.

[Nandon]

At Beryl's accusation all the soldiers tried to adopt innocent expressions. And failed miserably, William being the sole exception because he kept the same look on his face. One of honesty and kindness.

Upon hearing of her plight William frowned. "After the battle your coming with me." William said simply and confidently. "I would pay you now, but I carry no money upon me in battle...unnecessary weight."

[Harbor]

Beryl thumped her head back against the wall. "Do men ever ASK first or do they just assume? I'm a greedy beggar so I'll probably come with you anyway but still." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Manners."

Beryl slumped against the wall and bounced Infant in her lap. She seriously had to find a name for him. Even in her mind she was tired of not being able to refer to him by name. "Whatchu think I should name him?" she asked, being no hand at coming up with names herself. "I feel disrespectful not knowing his."

[Nandon]

"Most do, And most times I do. But asking implies that there is a choice." William said bluntly before he glanced at the baby and shrugged.

"I wouldnt name it, You wont be able to keep him."

[Harbor]

Beryl blinked with a deliberate slowness, expression in a perfect deadpan. "Demanding implies you think you can get me to obey if I decide not to." And he couldn't, not in her mind. She'd make him swallow his damned coins if he tried to force them on her when she didn't want to come with him to get them. Men never bothered to think that other people may in fact want the same things that they did and so they made people hate them by demanding instead of requesting, when she'd have been perfectly happy going along to get his bloody coins if he'd just been nice about it. Now she just wanted to punch him. It's not like she'd hurt him with all that metal he was wearing.

"Because so many other people are willing to take in abandoned babies," she retorted. "He's lucky he's got me--I probably got no job now so I got the time to take care of him when other women don't or won't. I'll name him without you."

[Nandon]

"I am sure there will be people to take care of him...But tell me this, Do you really think you can take care of him? Feed him, Clothe him? Because babies need those things." William said with a shrug then walked across the room to speak to the men, As one they broke out their rations and started to snack and eat and chat.