At least, that was the plan, but it got messed up when Ambrose reappeared at my workplace a few days later, a friend in tow.

“Hey.”  His greeting of me was a little subdued as he approached the bar.  He placed his order, then seemed to remember that his friend was there and turned to her.  “What do you want, Cara?  Maddie’s great at bartending, he makes some awesome drinks.”  He smiled faintly at her.

“Maddie?  Wait, like – that Maddie?!”  The girl gave me an incredulous once-over and then almost burst into laughter.  “The way you talked about Maddie, I thought it was some gorgeous lady but this is just a wiry emo weirdo!  And a guy!”  She laughed again, looking really pleased with the situation.  “Of all things, Maddie is a guy!  Just a plain, ordinary, run-of-the-mill weirdo!”

Ambrose winced a little at her words and looked away.

Ah.  She’d heard him talking fondly about me before our last conversation and thought I was competition for what she wanted, Ambrose himself.  Seeing me had at least relieved her concerns on that subject, even if her obvious relief was kind of insulting.

“Ma’am,” Shawna smiled an icy smile from the other side of the bar, “I must ask you to speak nicely about our staff, or we’ll have to ask you to leave.”

Cara gave another little incredulous laugh and then motioned to me.  “But it’s not rude, it’s just an observation!  That’s what he is!”

“I’ll thank you not to speak unkindly about Madden,” one of the other patrons piped up, glaring at her.  Next to that patron were a couple of girls, also in my “fan club,” who were nodding fiercely.

Cara seemed taken aback at the obvious animosity she was receiving.  “I had no idea people were so sensitive here!  Fine, fine, I apologize,” she said, with about as much believability as if she’d just announced she would be bartending for the night.  Then she turned to Ambrose.  “Brody, come on, let’s leave,” she whined.  “This place is no fun.”

Ambrose kind of pulled his arm free as she went to grab it.  “You’re welcome to leave,” he told her, with a touch of coolness there.  “I came to see my friend, so I’m staying.”

She started an obvious pout session, but no one seemed sympathetic with her at all.  For a moment she just shifted uncomfortably, waiting for Ambrose to do something, but when it became obvious that he was just planning to ignore her and sit at the bar and drink, she flipped her hair over her shoulder.

“You know what?  Stay then.  I’m leaving, this place is boring and the staff sucks.”  She gave both me and Shawna a glare.

“Hurry up then,” Shawna told her with a fake smile, “you wouldn’t want to stay too long and catch boring germs from us, would you?”

Cara flounced out, clearly upset at the way her evening had turned out, while some of my “fan club” came up to the counter, eager to inform me that she was wrong about me and then order drinks when Shawna gave them a pointed stare.

That was the upside to the “fan club,” even if they were annoying.  They didn’t care if I just kind of ignored them – for some reason they seemed to like it, actually – and they’d buy drinks just as long as I made them.  Kind of a handy thing, for keeping my job.

When the excitement at the bar kind of died off a bit as people headed back to the dance floor, I turned my attention back to Ambrose, giving him a sharp look.

“Would you prefer I call someone for you?”  When he looked at me blankly, I clarified.  “You’re not looking so great, it doesn’t seem like you’re having fun, either.  Maybe it would be best to go home and get some rest?”

He frowned and shook his head stubbornly.  “I’m hanging out with you tonight,” he informed me.

“Madden’s working,” Shawna slid of glass of water in his direction, giving me a confused glance when he investigated it.  Ambrose had had several drinks since arriving, but he shouldn’t be drunk already, so had he been drinking before showing up here, or was he just out of it?  I was inclined to think tipsy, at least.  Maybe that explained why he’d shown up here when it would have been better for him to just avoid me.

Ambrose frowned as he considered that statement.  “Then I’m hanging out at your place after work,” he decided.

Shawna moved closer.  “Need me to get a bouncer to call him a cab?”  She murmured.

I shook my head slightly.  “I don’t know where he lives.”  We could probably go through his wallet and find out, but I wasn’t sure if that was information he wanted me to know.  Given the stubborn expression on his face as he glared between me and the glass of water, I figured I wasn’t about to talk him out of his impromptu stayover plan, so maybe it was simplest to just go with it.  Maybe in the morning, he’d feel bad about crashing at my place and about showing up in at the club in the first place, when he knew better.

“I can take him home,” I told her.  “It’s not that big of a deal.”

I kind of hoped some of the alcohol in his system would wear off before I finished, but Ambrose was still being broody drunk Ambrose by the time we locked up and headed off, so that was going to be fun.  Thankfully he followed me willingly and didn’t put up a fight when I got him back to my place and ordered him into the bathroom to change into some spare pajamas.  I let him take my bed while I stretched out on the couch, telling myself as I fell asleep that I really was too soft on him.  If I wanted to make sure he stayed away, letting him crash at my place was really not the way to go.  Maybe I should have had Shawna call him a cab after all.

I fell into a fitful sleep, woken abruptly the next morning by Ambrose shaking me awake.

“What is this?”  He demanded, shoving the folder from my doctor at me.

I blinked groggily and sat up a bit, trying to remember why he was in my apartment this early in the morning and why he was yelling at me.  Then the night before came back and I looked over at him, surprised he didn’t seem to have a hangover, but not so pleased that he was now glaring at me, waiting expectantly for an answer.

“My medical records,” I told him grumpily.  “You shouldn’t look at them, that’s really invading my privacy, you know.”

“Explain what they mean.”  He crossed his arms, glaring at me as if I was a misbehaving child.

I frowned at him.  This was not the early-morning conversation I wanted, plus it wasn’t his business.  “It’s my medical records, Ambrose.  You had no right to look at them and you have no right to ask me to explain them.  Just forget you saw them.”

I ran a hand through my hair, trying to wake up a bit more, but he wasn’t done.

“It’s talking about a hip replacement surgery.  Do you have to have one?”

I sighed and gave him an annoyed glance.  “Like I said, none of your business, but yeah.  Hip replacements don’t last forever, and it’s been 75 years.  Do the math.  This isn’t my first one.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it, looking first dismayed, then frustrated.  “You’ve had to have repeat surgeries because of what happened back then?  Big surgeries?”  He asked in a small voice.

Oh bother.  This was exactly why I hadn’t planned to let him know about that.  “It’s not just from back then.”  I pushed myself to my feet, unable to completely avoid the slight limp as I headed towards the kitchen, but it didn’t matter now anyway – he already knew.

“I told you, I did some questionable work over the years.  A couple times, people realized that was a weak spot and would attack it specifically.  Kind of messed things up even more.  Then there’s my naga form.”  I pulled some pancake mix out of the cabinet and started assembling ingredients.  “Like shifters, we kind of have different forms for our magical bodies versus our human ones, but ours function different, more like changing our existing systems to fit our naga form than entirely poofing a new one into existence.  But magic can’t account for artificial bones and joints.  So when I’ve tried switching to naga form, there’s just nothing there.”  It was excruciatingly painful to try that, so switching to naga form was basically not an option anymore.  “It tends to crack the edges of existing bones in that area when I switch back and sometimes makes a mess with the prosthetic implant.  Had to have a couple of surgeries to address that, to be honest.  Point is, it’s not all from that, no.  I’ve added damage to it on top of that, and the system is just screwed up.”

“But it all started with that injury.”  He was hunched over a bit, his hands in fists.  “And – wait – does that mean you don’t shift to naga anymore?  If it causes all that mess?”

Right.  I kept underestimating his shrewdness.  “It’s not ideal to switch,” I admitted reluctantly, “and my vision bothers me more when I do, but it’s not like I used naga form much before that.  It’s just not practical to run around in naga form much.”

Ambrose’s fists tightened a bit.  “I knew you got permanently hurt back then, but I thought it was mostly just your eye and you could work with that,” he mumbled.  “And even when I found you again, you didn’t act like there was all this other stuff.  But there was, wasn’t there?  You’ve had a lot of ongoing issues from what happened.  You’re trying to be nice about it, but they’re there.”

He finally looked up at me again, tears bright in his eyes even if they weren’t falling.  “It’d make more sense to me if you didn’t want to see me because you hated me.  But you don’t.  I don’t know why you don’t, but it feels like it would almost be easier if you did.”

Eh, maybe I took the wrong route, then.  Maybe I should have acted like I was angry at him, but I wasn’t sure I would be any  more effective with that ruse than with the ones I’d tried so far.

“I got injured during a job, which I agreed to, knowing full well the risks of that job,” I stated calmly.  “I don’t blame anyone for what happened.  Pancakes?”

Ambrose nodded automatically and accepted the plate I pushed across the counter in his direction.  “My parents should have given you more.  To help cover your ongoing medical costs.  They knew you were a supernatural, they knew the costs would last longer than they would with a human, and chances are, they understood all that about hip replacements, that it’d be a repeat thing.  I’m sorry – I’m sorry we didn’t do right by you.”

I raised an eyebrow as I poured more batter into the pan.  “Your parents covered my initial expenses, which was more than I could have expected.  There’s not a lot of employers anywhere, in any capacity, that would cover expenses indefinitely for decades on end.  They fulfilled their obligation.”

“Maybe they did,” he muttered, “but I didn’t.  I wanted to make sure you’d never have to suffer because you were protecting me.  I knew Papa and Mama were thinking about firing you, and I was thinking about letting them do it so I could be sure you wouldn’t be in danger because of me anymore – as long as I could figure out a plan to still see you.  I was working on it, when the kidnapping attempt happened.  I ran because you told me to, but you have no idea how much I’ve regretted that since.  I regret just leaving you there, alone, to deal with them.  I might not have had a ton of experience, but you had trained me well enough that I could have at least helped.  And maybe then you wouldn’t have gotten so hurt.”  His fingers gripped the fork hard enough his knuckles were starting to turn white.

“Your job wasn’t to protect me – it was your job to run to safety.  If you’d stayed, they just would have gotten you and I couldn’t have prevented it.”  I wouldn’t have been able to bite the male demon in time and prevent him from being able to really fight anyone else if Ambrose had stayed.  The male demon would definitely have just subdued Ambrose and taken him while I was still trapped dealing with the female demon.  “And it was my job to protect you.  What happened that day, everything went the way it should have, except for the part about you coming back.”

He looked up at me briefly, but just to glare at me.  “I don’t regret that, I never will, because I’m not stupid – I know they would have killed you if we hadn’t come back, or even if they hadn’t done it outright, you would have died if we didn’t get you help almost instantly.  I don’t regret going back.  I just regret leaving.”

“Well, you shouldn’t.”  I flipped off the range and sat down with my own stack of pancakes.  “Like I said, things wouldn’t have gone the way you expected them to if you had.  You’d have just been kidnapped and then everything would have been for naught.”

He considered this for a long time while I ate, seeming to actually process what I was telling him for once.

“So there was no way to avoid you getting injured?”  He asked at last.  “None at all?”

I sighed and turned to face him better, so I could actually see him with my good eye.  “I don’t think there was, but does it even matter?  We can’t change the past.  What’s done is done.  Just figure out how to live with it and move on.”

He was silent again, and I decided not to interrupt his thoughts, while I finished up my food and went to stick my plate and fork in the sink.  I nudged his plate a bit as I did.  “Eat,” I ordered.  “I can warm them up again if you want me to.”

“I don’t believe it,” he mumbled.

I looked at him, confused.  “I’d just put them in the microwave, it’s not that big of a deal.”

“Not that,” he waved his hand a bit.  “The stuff you told me the other day, about how you weren’t a good person.  I don’t believe it.  I’ve been thinking about it ever since then and I just keep wandering around in circles in my head.  I know I knew you back then, despite what you said.  I knew who you were!  I saw the way you’d roll your eyes at my parents behind their backs, or lend a hand to some of the maids, or just listen as I told you all the wild dreams I had in my head.  I knew who you were.  And I don’t think you’ve changed, not that much.  Not as much as you want me to believe.  You’re too nice to me.  You let me push you around, to a point.  You’re cooking me breakfast and offering to warm it up for me and even when people like Cara are jerks to you, you don’t lash out.  I’ve heard naga have anger and aggression issues, but I’ve never seen that with you.  Instead, I’ve seen patience and kindness.  Subtly, usually, but it’s still there.  And strength, of course.  You’re trying to convince me not to blame myself for something that happened to you because of me, because my parents were too greedy and self-absorbed, and – and I don’t believe it.”  He looked up at me, directly meeting my eyes again, his eyes lit on fire, almost.  “I do believe that you’ve done bad stuff, okay?  I get it, you wouldn’t lie about it.  But I don’t think you’re nearly the bad person you want to make yourself out to be.”