Even Roses Have Thorns

Chapter Forty-Six: Transit umbra, lux permanet (Shadows pass, light remains)

A/N1: the tense change here is deliberate, a sort of attempt at an almost onomatopoeic mental quality. It is intended to be a little weird, dissociatiative and confusing.

A/N2: The song here is Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms, and the prayer is Tagore’s “Grasp of Your Hand”.

A/N3: The exact translation of this chapter’s title is actually ‘Shadow passes, light remains’, but I took a little license with it because I think it gets my intended mood across better, and there’s no chance of confusion about a possible pun on Mal’s home world of Shadow. Transit umbra, lux permanet was (apparently) traditionally inscribed on sundials.

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He’s always liked the slightly numb feeling alcohol gave him before; he’d always considered himself just about the right level of drunk when he could no longer feel his face properly. But now is not the time for numb. Now is the time for grab what you can before it’s gone.

Unfortunately, in the infirmary, there really isn’t anything to latch onto. It’s not really even his infirmary anymore in his mind, and he’d never quite won it back after his time in it as a patient. There’s the infirmary non-smell, nothing more than disinfectants, and the silence of the locked room. He wonders briefly if he should have brought music, then speculates on whether that would have been melodramatic. He smirks at the thought, but loses it quickly, an