A Very Fine Line
More Maelstrom fic, I'm afraid. This one's pretty long. Cross-posted to lrpdrabbles



I am at the place the Sons of Set call Lamentation, it is perhaps two or three in the morning, and I am curled up around Stuart, who seems to be having rather less trouble sleeping in this blighted, stifling place than I am, and generally I am content. But for some reason, tonight is different.

I'm not generally given to this sort of introspection. Perhaps it's the atmosphere here, or having helped around the edges of the biggest fight I've seen at a festival, but there is a thought running through my head that I wonder what proportion of other people here in the New World could say:

I have never killed a person.

But I've let people die, and tried to tell myself I was in no state to do anything else-

The Queen Mary Inn, Nordon, Malathia, October 1652

I've been away from home to study medicine in Nordon for a month now, and as expected, I feel on top of the world, independent, and also invincible. I will learn.

I've nipped down to the Queen Mary for a quick pint; it's not the nicest of taverns, but early in the evening it's still quiet, and I'm talking to a captain about a voyage and an investment. I'm probably flirting with him- he is rather easy on the eye, after all- and I'm definitely irritating him by pointing out the numerical flaws in his grand ideas.

We conclude a deal, and I start to head home. I realise too late that he's following me, the world blurs for a few seconds, and I'm being held to the wall in the mouth of an alley, a knife to the back of my neck.

"Think you can outsmart me?" he snarls. "Think again."

I don't struggle. He wants my body or my money, or both. He's not trying to kill me... yet. I just have to keep my head...

He's fumbling with the buttons on his breeches now, intent on his prize...

...and in the short moment there's less pressure holding me to the wall as he lifts my skirt, I manage to grab the tiny knife I keep in my bodice, spin round and drive it into his thigh. I've been learning basic anatomy and surgery, of course, and I get lucky. There's a spurt of blood from the artery I've hit, and he staggers backwards clutching at the wound.

My screams for help attract a passing watchman, and I'm dimly aware of a crowd starting to form as two well-executed blows to the head drop my attacker to the floor, still bleeding. Someone puts a cloak round me and passes me a hip flask with something strong in it, and I splutter out the story in between sobs and sips of what I only hope was brandy. I'm still gripping the knife.

Occasionally, someone casts a glance at the captain, still out cold, and still bleeding. Nobody moves to help him, though, and I'm in no state to.

Ten minutes later, the watchman looks me in the eye, and then leans over the captain, and feels for a pulse.

"He's dead."

I nod. Nobody could survive a wound like that untreated for that long.

They take me inside, and give me a warm drink, and nobody says anything, but we all know we could have saved him, and we all know we made individual decisions that he hadn't deserved it.

And I cry, but that's all right, because they think it's from the shock.


-or that if I didn't make the decision, someone would do something worse-

Buckleigh Village, Highland Malathia, September 1653

I am twenty-one, and, hopefully, a bit older and wiser now I've been away for a year. I've come home for Jamie's eighteenth birthday, and am looking forward immensely to the party tomorrow. It's getting late, and I'm thinking about going to bed, when there's an urgent knock on the front door.

I light one of the big lanterns, wake Angus, and open the door. The rider turns out to be someone I vaguely recognise as the baker's son, and he peers at me as if he's not quite sure who I am, either.

"Fiona? I heard you were home, and it's Mrs Macleod, she's having the baby and it's all going wrong and we can't find the midwife and..." He trails off, and I swear under my breath. I grab my medical bag and one or two more instruments, trying not to let the poor lad see the scalpels, and motion him out to the stable. Angus has saddled another pair of horses, and we set off.

I push my way past the worried-looking gathering of people in the McLeods' house and head upstairs to find pretty much what I expected: a woman no older than me screaming and writhing in pain, and another- her sister, I thought- holding her hand and trying as best she could to reassure her. I get as much of a dose of vineweed into the poor woman as I can, and when she's calmed down a little, I take a look.

"Can you save the baby?" the other woman asks, out of earshot. The wrong question.

I decide to be honest.

"Yes. Or the mother. Not both."

She turns, saying "I'll put it to her husband, then."

But before she can leave the room, I grab her arm.

"I will force no-one to make that decision," I say. I look her in the eye. "Comfort her, look after her, (I gritted my teeth) nature will take its course, and your sister will live." I wasn't going to go into the specifics, and a well-placed blanket would prevent either woman from seeing them.

I didn't kill that baby. But I let her die, for the sake of her mother. Eighteen months after that, she had a fine, healthy son, and the following year, a daughter.

I've let people die, and I try to tell myself I had no choice-

Amun-Sa Over Ocean, December 1656

The fighting was nearly over, and the cleanup was beginning. I hear the gunshots, come running, and now I'm kneeling by the side of an avian, thankfully unconscious, with a terrible gash across her chest and abdomen. She's lucky; she's lost a lot of blood, but her lungs aren't punctured. I've got to her quickly enough that she should live, though the healing will be long.

I begin to stitch, concentrating on stemming the blood flow as much as I can, Stuart standing guard over me just in case someone decides to have another go at her and misses.

Instead, I'm roughly pulled off her, trailing catgut and bandages, by a Gnoll soldier in heavy chainmail.

I try to argue, but the soldier says she's broken the law. I ask what she did; he mumbles something about politics which I don't hear but don't ask him to repeat. I look at Stuart- he looks back, uncharacteristically tenderly for a public place- and the unspoken agreement is to step back. We do, and he holds me tight as we watch her life bleed out through my half-done stitching.

I have never killed a person. I hope fervently that I never have to, because it worries me that I think I could.

I stop dwelling on the thought as Stuart stirs, and his hand moves across my body...

I am content.