Keep shutting up

It took me long enough to steel myself to go on that Baggett looked down again to see if I had changed my mind. “Sorry. I’m just bearing up,” I said. “I don’t think it would be good for my career, if other people at the Watch knew.”

There was a flicker of apprehensive interest in his eyes as we came up on the gate to the second ward. Baggett slowed his pace and let a bit of space grow between us and the people ahead of us.

“The first part Mag knows. I turned down an invitation to the College before applying to the academy.”

I saw the incredulity flash over Baggett’s face for just a moment before he said, “Sorry, just to clarify—you’re off-handedly referring to the College of Rava that you declined to attend?”

“Yeah, I know, Bag,” I said. “Just leave it. I mean, I grew up at Blackchapel. Maybe it’s a case of familiarity breeds contempt, or something. I didn’t know what that was worth, then. I was eighteen. Eighteen-year-olds don’t know how to make good decisions for shit.”

“What made you decide not to?” he asked, seriously.

The question made my eyes sting again. “Honestly. How was I supposed to think I could? Their first year class is always full of people already trained—private tutors, fancy families, some other religious order—I figured I’d just flunk out in the end and that it would all be a waste of time that proved I was dumb Mivian trash all along. I figured back then I had a better shot just trying to do my best in the guards.”

Baggett thought about this. “So what’s the part Magnus doesn’t know?”

We were just passing under the second ward gate, and one of the gate guards standing there startled visibly at the involuntary little sob I let out at that question. “Just widowed,” Baggett stage-whispered apologetically by way of explanation, and the man nodded sagely, motioning us through. I held in my laugh about his ridiculous, but also sort of not ridiculous, explanation until we were clear of the gate.

“Gods, do you want… a hug, or something?” Baggett asked, when I had finished **** through my half-assed whimper of a not-quite-laugh.

I stopped in the street and put my arms around him. Baggett made an mmph sound, but obligingly returned the embrace while deftly moving us off to the side.

“Well, you must know I’m gasping to find out,” he said to me when I pulled away a moment later and dragged my sleeve across my runny nose. “What’s this terrible secret you couldn’t tell your beloved Magnus but you’re sharing with me?”

I really ought to stop skirting the big part, but it was hard to make myself actually say my main thing outright. “The part he doesn’t know is I got another letter,” I said instead. “Maybe a year after the academy. From the dean at the College, wanting to know if I would be interested in leaving the Watch to do coursework with them after all. But.”

“Obviously you didn’t take the offer since you went on to become an SCD detective and not an employee of the magicians guild. Are we still moving toward the harbor, by the way?”

“Yeah.” I linked arms with him again and we started walking again. “I threw the letter in the kitchen fire, because I wanted to be partners with Curry, and feel like a family with him and Nan, more than I wanted to hurt his feelings and go feel scared and insecure at a fancy competitive school. And I got another a while after Lamb and Ladd died, and did the same thing.”

“So what brings it all to a head today?” Baggett asked with speculative interest.

“That priest today—he would have trained there. At the College. Maybe the reason I screamed at Mag isn’t just that he hurt my feelings, but that I realized something like—I could have done something else?—and now I’m scared I fucked up, choosing loyalty to a person over an opportunity like that. Because—I mean—he’s right—he’s not my husband—he doesn’t owe me anything! I was fooling myself to think we were choosing each other for some platonic life companion bullshit—I mean, how stupid could I be! He’s just happy to have somebody around who likes him and gets his jokes.” I swiped my hands under my eyes.

“Fuck’s sake, Bersk,” Baggett said, stooping a little as we walked to afford me enough slack to wipe my eyes without unlinking arms. “Are you seriously putting me, the most caustic person you know, in the extremely weird position of defending the practice, choosing love?”

“What’s to defend! And—what are you even talking about, love!” I went on irritably. “He’s going to find some beautiful doe-eyed elf to marry and she’ll turn him against me and then once he’s done bothering with me I’ll have nothing at all because I’m a fucking joke with literally nothing else going on in my whole life except the Watch Guard and the person I made into my surrogate husband without even realizing it!”

“I’m going to let us sit a moment, with that slough of batshit assertions you just spouted,” he replied, “since I understand that under normal circumstances you’d never say something so fucking off-your-tits-stupid as to suggest that Magnus Curry will someday reconcile himself to marrying somebody who isn’t you.”

“That is a ridiculous thing to say,” I told him, some real heat creeping into my voice. “He’s always wanted to get married. Kids, all that shit. Since we’ve known each other he’s wanted that!”

“Sure,” Baggett said easily. “He just hasn’t figured out yet that those things are only happening for him if he can work out some way to do them with you.”

“Well, fuck you too, Bag!” I flared. “You, what, you think I’m some selfish shrew keeping him on the hook and holding him back from what he actually wants out of life?” I might have gone on, except I had to stare with resentful hostility at a severe-looking woman, who apparently disapproved of my language, covering the ears of her small child.

Baggett glanced down at me, unfazed by my outburst. “No. I think he’s a beautiful, sweet-natured optimist who only thinks he wants that stuff as much as he wants to sponge up every little morsel of love he can get off you. I think you’re being willfully ignorant to pretend that one of you has more power to hurt the other, and that it’s him.”

This statement annoyed me tremendously. “I thought you were above all that rumor mill bullshit! And for you of all people to accuse us of that same tired secret lover crap everybody else—”

“—don’t be an asshole, Bersk.” Baggett gave my arm a comforting squeeze. “I didn’t say it was a sex thing, or even a romantic thing, or suggest that it’s destined to become either. Other people think that because they don’t know how to see two people with a mutual devotion that intense and interpret it as platonic. They assume they’re not seeing the whole picture, and because they’re unimaginative they assume the whole picture is something salacious, and not whatever fucking daisy chain cookie baking hard drinking tickle fight nonsense you two actually get up to.”

“What even is your point in all this!” I demanded after a moment, because by now I had entirely lost the plot.

“My point,” Baggett said pleasantly, “is first that you’re completely full of shit—shut up, you can talk after I’m done,” he said when I opened my mouth to object. “You’re completely full of shit,” he resumed, “bemoaning choices you made years ago, acting like it was somehow invalid to pick doing something with a person who matters, over an opportunity you weren’t even sure you wanted at the time. You’re also completely full of shit if you genuinely believe he would ever turn his back on you in any meaningful fashion, or knowingly do anything to hurt you. I guarantee you Yergen tells me later at home that the man was in pieces ever since you stormed out of there—no, no, keep shutting up,” he said, holding up his hand. “While I’ve got you subdued I’m trying to think of whether you’re full of shit in any other ways I want to lecture you about.”

“Great, thanks,” I muttered. “You can skip the remaining insults and get to the actual fucking point any time, you know.”

“The actual fucking point,” Baggett said in a tone that finally belied some vague exasperation, “is it doesn’t matter for shit who either of you goes to for sex, when your emotional commitment is to each other. I cannot believe I actually have to explain this to you. You dense idiot.” When I glared at him he just made an impatient little gesture. “So no, dumbass—he’s not going to get married and forget all about you. Because you’re the one he loves, whether you ever wind up falling on his dick someday or not! And I’m pretty sure,” he added as he led us around the greengrocer delivery cart stopped in the street, “that Curry would grasp all this right away, whether he was willing to admit it or not. You, on the other hand, might actually be stupid enough to think you could marry somebody else without it being a goddamned disaster.”

I shoved him. “Don’t be vulgar. Like I would ever get married.”

“Perish the thought,” he replied cheerfully. “The world doesn’t deserve that. And by the way, it’s going to take me a while to forgive you for compelling me to speak so fervently in support of true love.”

“Oh, well,” I scoffed, “whatever can I do to earn back your goodwill?”

“Get Curry to make Magda’s plum cake for Yergen’s birthday next season,” Baggett said promptly. “With the compote cream filling and the ginger icing.”

I laughed despite not being in a laughing mood. “Joke’s on you, fucker. After how much Yergen liked it last time, Curry will relish the chance to make that cake specially for him!”

“How are you feeling, now?” Baggett asked, instead of commenting on the undeniable accuracy of that statement.

“Insulted.”

“Boo hoo. Poor little rich girl. Mad because the man she loves isn’t the man she’s sleeping with.”

“Fuck you, like anybody would ever believe I sleep with a man, singular!” I tossed off, and Baggett laughed.

“In seriousness…” I said after we’d walked along a little while in silence, “I don’t entirely know what to do with all that stuff you said. Was there some actual advice in there?”

“Oh, fuck no.” He laughed at my expression, then relented. “You had a protracted moment of panic, because you almost lost him, and began obsessing over the notion that you sacrificed some life you maybe could have had, on the altar of a relationship which has arguably made the life you do have worth living. And without acknowledging that he did functionally the exact same thing.” Baggett nudged me. “You know I’m right. And I think if you’re honest with yourself, you know that Curry will go along with next to fucking anything if it’s what you want. So you owe it to him not to make an impulsive, stupid decision, because he will support your impulsive, stupid decision no matter what it costs him or how much it hurts. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said after a moment.

“So you go home, and you forget about dumb shit like moving out first thing tomorrow. You make up with Magnus. You eat something. You sleep through an actual night without waking up terrified he’ll die. And you grow up and tell him the truth about those letters from the College and make a decision together, because he’s the person you decided to share your life with and that’s what you do. If you need a leave of absence because you have to know whether you’re cut out to be the cleverest little wizard, that man will move heaven and earth to make sure that when you’re finished throwing away your half-vested city pension, the captain hires you back as a guild contractor.”

I burst into tears again, because Baggett was right, and I’d undoubtedly made Curry miserable today for completely stupid reasons, and it was very stupid to consider leaving behind a pension that would make for a very comfortable retirement one day.

“Oh, Bersk,” he sighed, pulling me off to the side again and frowning down at me. “You’re so fucking exhausted right now I don’t even know how you’re still upright.”

I put my arms around Baggett, which he took gamely, until I began to giggle hysterically into his chest at the disproportionate show of irritation currently on display from a passerby so annoyed at the nerve of us taking up stationary space in public that he actually stopped walking to deliver his brief scolding, which I missed on account of the laughing.

“Right, well, you’re obviously a joy and all, but how about you trot off on your merry way and avoid hassling any other complete strangers today?” Baggett suggested, curling his arms around me, which was either affectionately protective, or a vain effort to make me stop **** with laughter, or both. “Nope—look, we were in the way, that’s true—I apologize, now I’m clearly busy so get out of here, will you.” This last line was delivered with the careless finality of a speaker who considers their words to have concluded the matter fully, as Baggett turned bodily away from the man.

The man didn’t like that. My new vantage point gave me a good look at the tall, sour-faced elfish man as Baggett pulled away from me enough to reach into his jerkin and show him the guard badge over his shoulder. “Since you’re still standing here, this is an invitation to not waste your fucking time making a petty complaint to the guards for the completely legal event of your inconvenience.”

There was something about Baggett that seemed to draw a certain kind of so-inclined person to initiate pointless antagonism, and I never tired of seeing all the ways people reacted to it when whoever they were just attempting to bully took out a guard badge and politely showed it to them.

“I—er, I’m sorry about my temper,” the man said, immediately losing the belligerence. “I didn’t mean any offense.”

“Thank you,” Baggett said in a much milder tone, then turned back to face him. “Just widowed in the line of duty, you see,” he explained nonsensically in a loud whisper, with a head motion that made me think he was indicating me.

I let out a violent snort.

“Grief takes so many forms,” Baggett remarked to the man as he turned and walked away in apparent confusion, then added quietly to me, “I’m done with this hugging nonsense as soon as that upstanding citizen is gone—you are a terrible fake widow. I swear.”