Merlin really does look terrible.  On an objective scale, he looks a lot healthier than he did when I first arrived on the Wall, but that's not exactly anything to measure against.  He'd been dying then.  Now, he merely looks like he might be horribly ill.  Purple marks under his eyes, a hollowness to his cheeks and a general pallor.  I've helped him up a time or two, so I know that he's lost enough weight to bring him closer to what I'd weighed on arriving in Amber than any man of his size and previous strength ever ought to come.  He's not skeletal by any means, but he has a lot of catching up to do.
         That's probably why his attendants are so glad every time I dropped in.  I, you see, am allowed to bully him.  He's still not eating properly.  Another sign that the damage done by the poison is not healed.  Under usual circumstances, no family member will refuse a good meal.
         Anyway, he looks a bit better each time I visit.  He's also awake more of the time and just as grumpy as most of the invalids I've met.  I'm sure that the people caring for him are looking forward hopefully to the point when he's well enough to be a bit more active.  It's a human trait.    They're looking forward to the benefits without thinking of the drawbacks.  Right now, the fact that he's basically bedridden is what's keeping him from trying to take off and check up on Gen personally or do something else even more strenuous.  It'll be a lot harder to sit on him after he's gotten some strength back.
         I've been stopping by at least once a day, generally more.  He'll eat if I'm there because if he doesn't feed himself I'll feed him.  To tell the truth, I think he kind of likes the attention.  It pleases him that somebody has the desire to care for him.  That that somebody is me rather than some husband hunting court beauty is a definite plus.  (Actually, I don't think any of that type are being allowed in.  People in the Family seem to like Merlin and value him.)
         It's given us more of a chance to talk than we've really had before.  I understand more now than I did and thus can be a less naïve conversationalist.  This time, when he goes on about the histories, I actually have context and can keep from being overwhelmed by the detail.  (The tutor has helped there.)  I still can't follow when he skips into the realm of computers.  I've seen them, but I was never allowed to use one, so I haven't a clue how they work or what they do.
         I've generally asked Tevis to stay outside of the sickroom when I talk to my Father.  I don't think Merlin has yet made up his mind about Tevis.  Besides, the presence of a bodyguard would only remind my Father of things I'd rather he didn't fuss over right now.  That doesn't mean that the subject of Tevis hasn't come up in our conversations, of course.
         I decided a few days ago that I had to have a better picture of just how much trouble Tevis is in over the whole Wall thing.  Also, I think I've miscalculated with Tevis in some way.  I just don't quite understand how, and the Philomena memories aren't helpful because she never wanted anything but control and didn't really use anything but her body.  She was quite good at it, but I'm trying to keep both the control and the body out of this.
         The other consideration was that there's only so much I can say about Brandon, Russell and Rebecca, my combat lessons or artistic techniques without getting boring.  Learning about Pattern from Faulkner took up some discussion time and produced a few laughs.  Just the image of Tevis trying to figure out how to protect me from wordsÖ  My past, except for Amanda, is not something for my Father to think about on his sickbed.
         So I started with Amanda and Tevis.
         "I don't think I ever told you how I met Tevis," I said, settling myself on the edge of Merlin's bed.
         He shook his head but didn't try to speak around the section of orange he'd just stuck into his mouth.
         "Well, I'll start with the bits I understand.  There's a lot of it I don't, but most of that comes before I met him."  I snagged a cherry from his tray, ate it and deposited the pit in his wastebasket.  "There's some stuff about the ending and after that I don't have enough information about yet.  I don't understand, say rather I don't comprehend it.  I know what happened and what the motivations were.  I guess I'm just too different from who I was then for my actions then to make sense."
         Merlin made encouraging noises around another mouthful.
         "I was Amanda then.  I actually had a name that time rather than one of the names I've come up with now.  I don't know how I got to be Amanda."
         He started to speak, but I held up my hand.  "Later, please.  I'm trying to explain Tevis.  Basically, Amanda was a member of a revolutionary group in Evara.  Somehow or another, she found a shadow trail leading out and followed it.  She quickly realized how useful such things could be to her group and set out to try to map them."  I had to smile a little wryly.  "She had no concept of the size of shadow or of the task she'd set herself.  Anyway, that's what she was doing when she ran into Tevis.
         "He was on leave and taking some sort of nature walk or something.  They weren't in a highly inhabited area when they ran into each other."  I had to laugh.  "Almost literally ran into each other.  Amanda was so busy trying to keep track of the path she was following that she nearly ran Tevis over while he was enjoying a picnic lunch.  That sort of constituted an introduction.  Laughter does that."
         Merlin was smiling a little now, almost as if he had some memory of his own called to mind by my words.  I wondered what it was, but I didn't think, somehow, that he'd tell me.
         "Anyway, Amanda explained her quest and a little bit about Evara.  Not much.   She didn't want to scare him off or have him turn out to actually be an enemy.  Tevis returned the favor by giving her a general idea of the nature of shadow and of shadow paths.  He could do that because he came from the Golden Circle and had been raised with the general concepts.  He'd grown up in the figurative shadow of the Wall."  I frowned.  "That thing seems to be deep in the minds of people around here."
         Merlin frowned a little, and I think he might have tried to defend his precious pile of stones and magic if I hadn't plowed on.  "I don't think he took Amanda's goals very seriously, but he volunteered to help her out.  He had a smooth line and made a good case for the usefulness of having someone familiar with the general area to help out.  That's how they became partners in the endeavor.  They hadn't gotten all that much further along before Tevis' leave was up, but they had become very good friends.  I suppose that they couldn't have helped it."
         I paused, groping for a good approach.  We were getting close to the point of revelations that I didn't think he'd like.  "Tevis was a lot different then.  He was a young man full of ideals and hopes and with a deep loyalty to Amber.  That changed after Amanda left him and a few other things happened, but that comes later.  Much later.
         "Amanda returned with him to his duty station on the Wall."  I looked down at my hands, clasping them firmly in my lap.
         Merlin dropped the biscuit he'd been dutifully buttering.
         "Things went on for quite a while.  The two of them mapping when he had leave and living together near the Wall when he had active duty.  That's why I remember Evander and Ygg.  Amanda saw them both."
         I looked up to meet Merlin's eyes.  "This is actually what I've been worried about with him more than about him being a mercenary in service to the wrong people.  Tevis bought a ring."  I hesitated then pulled out the cord on which the ring hung.  I cupped the ring in my hand to show it to my Father, but he was looking at my face.  That's when I realized that I was crying just a little.  If I'd planned it, it would have been a good move.  Philomena'd have approved.  But I hadn't intended it, so the moisture left me feeling more vulnerable than I'd intended.  I grabbed an edge of the sheet and wiped my eyes.
         "It's a very nice ring," Merlin commented tentatively.
         "It's a beautiful ring!" I answered, wrapping my fingers around it.  "The idiot kept it for all those years after I returned it and left him."  I took a deep breath followed by another.  "Tevis was ready to give his life to Amanda.  Amanda on the other hand had not entirely lost her calculation.  She loved him, but she still had a duty to her comrades in the revolution and to those enslaved by the Evaran system.  So she waited until the mapping was done and then returned the ring.  He offered to go with her, and she refused.  They exchanged many bitter, hurtful words that night.  In the morning she was gone.
         "The next bit I don't remember.  It's about Tevis not Amanda.  I suppose it could be checked, but I haven't wanted to, and it makes sense as the how and why he got from who and where Amanda knew him to where and who he was when I met him again."  I stopped and shut my eyes for a moment.  The moisture was still there, and I thought I could stop it.  "He had guard duty that day, but he didn't care.  When he found Amanda gone he started searching for her.  She'd never shown him the path to Evara, and he didn't find her.  While he was gone, there was an attack on the Wall, and several of his comrades died.  For that, he lost his place in the Guard and was exiled.  No Wall Guard and no Amanda.  As far as I can tell, he spent the intervening years dead inside, just not caring about much except having a job and getting it done and getting paid.
         "Until a prisoner who looked nothing like Amanda stared up at him and asked him who she'd been when she knew him near Ygg."  I was sobbing in earnest now, and Merlin pushed the tray aside to take me in his arms.
        I'm not sure how long I cried.  I'm not sure why I cried.  My Father just held me and murmured soothing things until the torrent ended.
        Finally, I was able to sit back and simply sniffle a little.  "I'm sorry," I said just a bit stiffly.
        "For being human?"  Merlin actually smiled at me.  He brushed a wet strand of hair off my cheek.  "So what parts don't you understand?"
        I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.  It took a moment for his words to penetrate.  I'm afraid I rather goggled at him for a moment.  "Well," I hesitated, trying to put my thoughts in order.  "Well, to begin with, I don't understand where Amanda came from.  She doesn't have a trace of conditioning, of programming in her.  I don't remember her childhood at all.  I don't know how she didn't get caught and thrown back for reprogramming.  I've never even heard of her revolutionaries.  I know she did work with them after she got back because that's how she heard about Evara being the staging ground.  I don't understand why she didn't try to get that information out to Tevis.  He'd mentioned Amber at least a time or two.  At least.  Maybe she did try.  I don't know!"  I shook my head.  "Not that she'd have found Tevis at that point.  He was already out wrecking himself."
        I pulled Merlin's breakfast tray back into place and handed him the biscuit.  "Here, eat before they kick me out of here.  Why do you think they send me in?"
        He smiled.  "Maybe because I like talking to you?"
        "Don't be silly.  It's all a conspiracy to make sure you eat something."  I managed a smile of sorts.
        For a moment he was whimsical.  "How do you know that's not a conspiracy to make sure you visit me?"
        "Are you that deceitful, Father?"
        He stared at me.
        "Eat.  The biscuit's already cold."  Then I realized what I'd said.  "Oh."  I looked away for a moment.  When I looked back, he was eating the biscuit.  There was just a hint of a smile in his eyes.
        Then his expression became serious.  "It takes a great deal of work and power to modify the psyche of an Amberite.  I'm not surprised that it broke at least once, in the case of Amanda."  He paused for so long that I thought he wasn't going to say any more.  After a silence, he met my eyes.  "Your Chaos heritage is probably what allowed the continued fragmentation of your base personality.  The mind of a shapeshifter needs to have a certain amount of flexibility that single-forms don't have.  It's just built into the psychological make-up.  One advantage is that it's harder to do them permanent psychological harm.  The downside is that it's easier to find  yourself having to sublet out space in your head to alternate selves.  There's a school of theory that believes that if you spend too much time in a particular form, other than your birth form, you'll eventually lock into the personality of that form.  In the case of humanoid forms, it's not so evident.  But there have been cases of people who have lost themselves to their animal or demon forms.
        "What likely happened to you was something along those lines.  Had you just had the form, you probably wouldn't have had the personality splintering.  But whatever conditioning you were given would have cemented your alters in your psyche."
        He sighed.  "Even with magical assistance, it could take years to fully integrate you into a single you.  But there's another possibilityÖ"
        I looked at him sideways.  He'd quite thoroughly managed to distract me from my earlier upset.  I don't think he'd managed to distract either of us from my slip of the tongue.  Well, that was something we'd have to get to eventually.

[Gap awaiting information from the GM]

        A later visit.  He does look like he's getting better.  I can see him coming back a bit more each day.  He's still bedridden, but that's relative.  I'm told that he managed a bath just yesterday.  What's more important, he knows he's getting better.
        The question of how I want to address him, of how he wants me to address him, still hangs between us.  Am I ready to have a father?  Linette would call him "Papa," but I'm only partly Linette.  The othersÖ  The idea of a parent seems alien, something only other people have.
        But today, I had other questions for him.  "I think I messed up with Tevis."
        Merlin looked up from the potato he was dissecting.  "What makes you think that?"
        "Well, after he brought me back, I told him how things are for me.  That I'm not Amanda even if I've got pieces of her in me.  I knew that there wasn't anywhere he could go after betraying Dara.  The people on our side would hunt him down for what he might even theoretically know.  The people on her sideÖ  Anyway, I told him the options that I saw for him and that I could see how hard he'd worked on wrecking his life.  I offered him space to try to repair it, but I told him that I, as Cordelia, couldn't relate to him as I had as Amanda.  He seemed to understand."
        There was a shadow in Merlin's eyes that didn't have anything to do with my mention of his mother's name.  I'd danced around it, but he has to have guessed some of what I've been through.  That I'm still wounded hurts him more than anything I could do deliberately.  Mariah told me not to let him off too easily.  I don't even have to do anything.
        "So what's wrong?"  Merlin's tone was even, but he stabbed his fork into the potato with unnecessary ferocity.
        "Well, when I made him my bodyguard, I didn't expect him to take it so seriously.  He's absolutely centered on me, and not, I'm afraid, just to the extent of doing his job."  I made a fist with one hand and smacked it against the palm of the other.  "I shouldn't be that important to him!  The whole idea was to let him heal a bit, grow a bit, and show the rest of you that he's not the enemy."  I laughed bitterly.  "He was so angry with me for sending him after Aunt Gen!  I tried to explain that it was important for him to do things that other members of the Family could see.  He said that didn't matter.  All that mattered was protecting me!"
        "That is how bodyguards are supposed to approach their jobs."  A mild voice.
        "We agreed to be friends."  I looked at Merlin to see if he understood.  I wasn't sure, so I tried to explain.  "Just Cordelia and Tevis.  Two people very changed from who they used to be starting over and leaving the baggage behind.  I'd help him.  He deserved it after the way that I manipulated him over the rescue."
        "Did it take much manipulation?"  Merlin had gone suddenly still, and he was watching me very carefully.
        "No.  I felt guilty about it at the time.  Just two conversations and me recognizing the ring.  I'd expected to have to work a lot harder.  I was pretty angry at him when I started; I figured that anything I did to him would be deserved.  After all, he'd hit me on the head a few times, chained me up, stood there while Dara tried to get me to react.  He was everything I hadn't expected him to be when the Pattern gave me his image.  I knew he'd loved some version of me once, and I'd expected to have inspired love in a better man.  I did, apparently, but I didn't know that then."  I sighed.  "The morning he kidnapped me, I was supposed to go to Kashfa because Uncle Luke had some ideas for how to get at the memories about Ygg and the blond man.  I'd had high hopes for that, fantasies even."  I realized that I was clutching part of Merlin's blanket and forced myself to let go.  "The really sad part is that he thought that he deserved whatever happened.  He believed in his own evil and thought I'd abandon him once I was on the correct side of the Wall.  I think he even hoped that he'd manage to get tragically killed while rescuing me.  What utter crap!"
        "It would have solved his problems and simplified a lot of things greatly."  Merlin had stopped moving during my tirade.  Now he took a bite of his potato.
        "Yeah, dying's always a lot simpler than living," I snarled.
        I'm surprised that my attitude didn't kill his appetite, but he went on eating for a few moments before laying down his silverware and reaching out to touch one of my hands.
        "You care a lot about him.  You, I mean, not your memories of being Amanda."
        I pulled my hand away.  "I can't stand to see someone waste themselves by being stupid."
        Merlin actually laughed.  "You mean you can't stand seeing him be stupid."  He waved a hand around in a grand sweeping gesture.  "There are plenty of people out there wasting their lives by being stupid.  Several of them have crossed your path in the time I've known you."
        "You mean like you?"  I hadn't meant to get nasty with him, but I hurt.
        He quieted.  "Perhaps.  Perhaps.  How am I being stupid?"
        I snarled low in my throat.  "Impolite to tell you," I muttered.  "You figure it out."
        "Equally so not to tell me."  He hesitated for the briefest moment.  "Is it about your mother and what happened to you?"
        "No."  I inhaled and found a calm spot in my mind.  "About your guilt about it, perhaps.  It happened.  Deal.  God, I've been around Mythos too much.  I'm starting to sound like her."
        "Not particularly.  So you think I should 'deal' better?"
        "I knew the first time that we talked about it that I could do horrible things to you with that guilt.  You push it out at me like you're trying to atone.  Okay, I forgive you.  Do you forgive you?  Can you?"
        "No."  His response was very quiet and very definite.
        I touched his hand.  "Then it's always going to be between us as a tangle of pain.  It won't recede into the past because you'll be hanging on with all your strength, dragging it with us.  I don't want it."  I took a deep breath.  "This is a hard period because I'm trying to assimilate a lot of experiences that I lived but didn't exactly.  A lot of those memories would make your guilt grow sharper thorns.  I need those memories; I don't need the thorns."
        He pulled his hand away.  "Do you talk about me like this to other people?"
        I found myself with something halfway between a laugh and a snort.  "Of course not.  It's none of their business.  Father," I said, deliberately using the word.  "You asked.  We're bound close by your care for me and mine for you.  Let that be our choice.  You would not have left me if you'd known I existed.  You didn't know.  Enough."
        "So why is Tevis my business?"  It was a deliberate change of subject, but he seemed to have relaxed a little.
        Oh, rightÖ  My problem.  "I don't know what to do about him!"  I managed not to wail, but I think it was a close thing.  "I don't have the experience to deal with this!"
        "Oh, so this is one of those father-daughter things.  You're looking for advice."  There was amusement in his voice.
        "I'm glad somebody gets some fun out of it!  You're older than me.  I trust you.  You're male.  Maybe you can understand Tevis and tell me what I should do!"
        "Let it be.  Eventually, you'll work it out on your own."  Merlin picked up his fork.  "Either that,, or he will.  Right now, you're caught in your own tangle about him.  You care, and you don't.  You want to, and you're afraid.  Give it time.  Stick Amanda in a closet and let Cordelia look things over."  He paused and took a mouthful of chicken.  After he swallowed, he added, "You may find that just plain Cordelia and just plain Tevis are lovable people."
 

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