Drystan is in jail and Toby, kind lad, comes to bring comfort and cheer.

Dusk within, and without. Damp, dark, the constant tapping of rainy fingers overhead. Stone whispers with the echoed voices of rushes rustling under a slow tread. They are trampled flat, torn, in a narrow swath - six paces forward and back.

In the sole rectangle of torchlight, shivering against the door, the figure of a man paces; the sharp plane of a cheekbone; the tangled spill of raven hair; a hunched shoulder, pricked out of the darkness like a nightmare's forming.


Light footsteps in the hallway. The light is dimmed, brightens, and dims again, as someone pauses outside each cell door and peers inside. Curly brown hair flares into a halo as Toby comes to a halt. His face in shadow, his thin figure unmoving - there is little to tell of the boy's mood save his voice. And, if one were to look, they might notice clothing that is for once untorn.

"So. They caught you." Flat, forcibly neutral, Toby doesn't sound exactly happy.


The slow, prowling step - taut and fluid as a hunting cat caged - pauses. From the dim, there is no reply but a heavy sense of waiting.


Silence is met with silence. Brown eyes, flat and hard, peer through the slotted door. But Toby is younger, more volatile... his grievances burst forth as water from behind a dam. "I'm glad! I hope you rot in there!" And the carefully held evenness cracks. "How come you never asked me? I might's well've got beat for doin' something as not. I said I'd help! Think I ain't good enough? And he took my knife!" Fury builds, hurt hidden far beneath it.


Silence, dark and thick as pitch. A sliver of tattooed flesh gathers the torchlight, a slash of color and detail meaningless in the dim. The man listens, waiting out the storm.


It is like an blanket, this quietness. Smothering and dark and stifling. Toby's words, inflamed with anger and hurt feelings, fizzle into nothingness and he mumbles to a halt.


The quiet expands, deafening as the deep sea. The man called Thorn steps softly nearer the door, a patchwork of shadows and firelit lines. "...Who beat you?"


Toby ducks his chin and stares at the floor, lost as it is in shadows. "Him at the stables. Says I ain't got a job no more." He looks up then. "Why?" It is demand as much as plea. "I'd've helped..."


"I know," the man says, his hoarse voice flat. He stands very still in the darkness, hands curled loosely at his sides. "Why did the stablemaster beat you?" He hesitates slightly. "...Because of me?"


Toby shrugs a little. "He said, if I din't steal the horse m'self, I never stopped it either. 'Cause I know you, see, and he seen me talking to you before." Blood, red in the flickering torchlight, darkens his cheeks and he looks away again. "An' he said, 'cause he knew I stole stuff before."


There is a little silence, underscored by the flowing chatter of torches. Then, "I am sorry, Toby," he mutters, his quiet voice bled of nuance. "I did not wish trouble for you."


The boy's fury seems to have been leeched away by the man's quiet voice. "That's what 'Lias said," he replies and digs at the stone floor with one bare toe. "I... wisht you'd asked /me/, that's all. So's I'd least get a whipping fer doing something." If anything, his face has turned redder - perhaps some words spoken during that beating twist in his ears. "Weren't yer fault," he mutters at last. "Not all..."


"He should not have put a hand to you," says the emotionless voice, pressed against the dim. And softly, softly twisted in it is a promise. The shadows fall between them again for a brief time. Then, "... What would become of Tathar, should you step in too deeply?"


The boy's head comes up and he stares into the dark recesses of the cell. Plainly he has not thought of this at all. "Tath..? What... she..." He falls silent, wrestling with the thought. "You mean," he asks at last, tentatively, "Like she'd not stay in Bree if I left?"


The firelight touches the tangled edge of a braid, as the man gives a nod - gentle sarcasm radiating from the shadows. "For one."


"What else could happen t'her?" Toby asks, in honest bewilderment. "Lost m'job same as if I had helped you," Strangely, his eyes shift away from Drystan's, "I mean.. din't lose m'job because of you," he fumbles with words. "I don't feed her or nothing, what more could happen t'her than ain't already?"


Coolly, alien in the gloom, Drystan tilts his raven head. "Do you truly wish to find out?"


"Well... I want you to tell me." Toby takes a step nearer the door and its small window. The thin fingers of firelight that reach the interior of the cell are smothered by his shadow. "If it's bad, I don't want to find out by it happening. Had enough of that." Unthinkingly, his young face hardens and his hand drops to his scabbard... empty. Fingers curl around air and fall away.


The soft voice sounds, nearer than before and profoundly dispassionate. "What evils might befall the child, without a watchful eye upon her...? Your twin would go where she ought not, take what she ought not, to protect you." Hard fingers press gently against the wood at either side of the small window. "And did you draw the anger of the wrong man, who is to say he would punish you for it. Should harm befall her - all, all would be upon your head."


Toby's eyes widen a little, then narrow. "No," he says. "They won't." And in its turn it is a promise. "I won't do nothing, not ever, that'd hurt her... But she's safe, in't she? In Bree?" He has seen little of the world, but it is a little too much to be completely sanguine about the unthinking confidence his fellows have in the sanctity of their small town, and worry turns in his voice. "'Sides, you take care of her too."


"Your actions have already hurt her," rejoin the shadows, cuttingly calm. "Have they not?"

Drystan leans down to the window, black eyes glimmering animal-bright in a feral, black-bearded face. "And do tell me, lad, what care I am currently taking of the girl."


Blood drains from the boy's face, turning it a sickly yellow in the dancing flames. "I..." he manages. "Yes." It is a whisper, drowned out by a raging shout. "I know, I /know/! I see it all the time, them as whispers about her and makes her cry and how she don't go out no more without waiting all the time for somebody to be in the bushes... you think I don't know?" Rage and pale anguish and tears of frustrated helpless hatred roll down his cheeks. A fist smashes through the gloom and collides with the rough stony wall. "Yer there," Toby chokes out after a minute. "She thinks she's safe because yer there. Makes her happier."


Immovable as the stone the boy so furiously assaults, Drystan stands in patient silence. Only with the last, tear-strained words does a thaw twist fleeting through his shadow-rid expression.

"I am not there," he says coolly, at length. "I am here. Which leaves you."

The man steps away in weary dismissal, swallowed again by darkness. "Go home, Toby."


Toby glares into the darkness. "It's you she looks for, you she listens to. You don't got to be /there/ in th' house, you just got to exist. If I got to watch what I do so she don't get hurt, you better not never do nothing to let her get hurt neither." One hand scrubs the tears from his face and he pivots on bare heels. From the end of the hall, over one shoulder, come back the words: "An' you won't be in there f'rever neither. They get tired of having to feed you all the time, make you pay a fine and let you out. Weren't no horse of our'n." A door slams and the boy is gone.