Work Text:
Duncan Idaho was dead.
Gurney knew it to be the terrible truth, somehow, as he sat in a numb state of loss in the middle of the desert. He knew it stronger than he knew that the Duke and Paul were both gone, along with a majority of his men—how could he fail so many lives in only a few hours?
His eyes scanned over the sparse number of men remaining again and again, counting and recounting and taking in who had survived, who was missing, who needed medical attention. Some were setting up a few rocks in rough cairns for the brothers in arms that they had lost. Three large ones looked over the rest, representing the Duke, Paul, and that witch. Gurney would have spat at the thought of her, were it not a waste of water. She had done this. He wanted to scream and kick the monument down, but he knew the men needed it. Right now, they needed to mourn the symbol of their Lady more than Gurney needed to exact revenge on a pile of stones. Instead, he found himself stumbling towards a pile of loose rocks in a haze, and gathered a few in his arms before redirecting his steps to the makeshift graveyard. His knees gave out and hit the stone beneath him hard, but he didn’t even wince; slowly, he began to stack the rocks. A whisper soon went around the camp that Duncan Idaho truly was dead.
“Well, we don’t know for sure, not yet,” a young soldier said, clinging to what small, impossible hope he could find. Those nearer his age nodded in agreement, but the older ones shook their heads grimly and sighed.
“Gurney would know,” was all they said. Gurney may have been the right hand of Duke Leto, but Duncan Idaho was, without any shadow of doubt, Gurney’s right hand—and a body always is aware when its right hand has been severed from it. “Gurney would know.”
Gurney placed the last rock on the stack, and with it, a terrible sense of finality crashed down around him. The Duke was dead. Duncan was dead. Paul, sweet, young Paul, who he had watched grow into a fine young man and couldn’t have been prouder of if he was blood—he, too, was gone; Gurney still couldn’t quite bring himself to connect the boy with the word dead. His hands shook on the rocks that honored the absence of Duncan, and he craved the steadying presence of his friend. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember everything about Duncan that he could, everything he knew he’d never see again: the sharp twinkle in his eyes whenever he teased Gurney. The short, clipped way of speaking that was the only giveaway that he was angry. His laugh, always too loud and always at the wrong moments, that had irritated Gurney so many times, that he would now give anything to hear again.
“I miss you, my friend,” he murmured to the cold sandstone. “I…”
For all the many quotes that he had memorized, Gurney found himself at a loss to say anything. He swallowed heavily past the lump in his throat and leaned forward to touch his forehead to the mound of rocks.
“I miss you,” he repeated, barely loud enough to even count as a whisper, and the sound snatched away by the wind as soon as it was uttered. A set of tears trailed down his face, and he swiped them away and rose to his feet. There was work to be done.