A Simple Kind Of Man

[Silas Tanner]

When he heard Cage call his father a bastard, Silas snorted and clinked his glass against the other man's. "Oh, you've definitely got a leanin' a'towards yer mum, ya do." He chuckled, softly, behind the rim of his tumbler before setting it down with a resigned sigh. "You've got her features, yanno. Alla'f'em." His words became increasingly incoherent, but this did not seem to curb his mounting excitement, evident in the way he shifted restlessly on his barstool.

The gardener looked uneasy--as though he always had more to say. When Cage spoke, Silas was sure to take a drink, to keep from budding in and offering information that was not asked of him. He would be patient. He needed to be. He owed it to Arabella--and to Cage!--to tread carefully, if his suspicions were to be assuaged one way or another.



"Well, missin' sommun' ya've never met is much better 'an missin' half of the blokes on this here shithole of a planet, lemme tell you." Another swig and he wiped his mouth hastily on his sleeve. "And if there's anyone worth missin', Mister Cage, it'd be your mum. That woman was a saint. But...there was one thing, you know. There was one thing that'd bother me, day and night, working for that angelic woman."

Silas leaned forward conspiratorially, pointing at Cage almost accusingly, his eyes narrowing. "That damn half-brother of yours. He got away with everythin', that one. There's been a stick up his ass since he was born, let me tell you."



It was not until Silas had already leaned back in his barstool that he realized what damage had been done: he had said "half-brother" to a man who was under the impression that he had been living under the umbrella of an un-broken family.

Whoops.

  

[Cage Wakefield]

Cage listened to the drunken man's musings, not nearly as bad off as him, but well on his way. He took another swig of the drink as Silas described his mother so fondly. "You surely seem to have been fond of my mother, Mr. Tanner," Cage mused. "I'm glad sommun' was, as my brother and father surely ne'er made her life easy."

Cage had always laid out the hope that he was like his mother. And if that held true, then Merry and George Wakefield tortured her just as much as they did him. Cage felt a twinge in his heart for the woman he never knew, and no one could have known how desperately he wanted to know. Just to know her. To know her like normal sons knew their mothers. But his birth had killed her, and that was that. IT was waht Cage suspected had cuased all the hatred from his family.

Then Silas let slip the word half brother, and Cage suddenly became much more alert.

"Half brother?" he spoke in a shocked, almost stricken tone of voice. "How is Merry my half-brother, Mr. Tanner?" Cage was out of sorts suddenly in his mind. One the one hand there was a chance that he wasn't of the villainous loins of George Wakefield. On the other, there was that niggling shred of shock and familial duty. If he didn't belong to the Wakfields, where did he belong? And if he wasn't a Wakefield, then why did he have the name and share that house? Cage felt confused in all the drunkeness and had he been sharper, he would have seen the resemblance in himself and the gardener. He would have noticed their names. He would have noticed so many things, but he didn't. Instead, he sat there, wide-eyed and awaiting an answer, like a lost child.

  

[Silas Tanner]

Oops.

You done goofed now, Tanner.



Silas choked on what was left of his drink and slammed his cup down onto the bar with unnecessary force, as though he expected the surface to crumble and serve as a distraction so that he might slip away, unseen into the night.

Such a plan would have seemed ludicrous had he been sober, but Silas was not sober, so when the bar did not crumble, and he found himself and Cage sitting in a tense silence, he cursed beneath his breath and sighed. There was only one thing left to do.



Looking up at Cage with wide, sorrowful eyes, Silas took one last sip from his tumbler, breathed in a huge gulp of air as though it were his last and--



And that sucker bolted.



Silas hopped off the bar with a frenzied "Well, it was nice to meet you, Mister Cage" and forced his arms through the arm holes in his jacket. Stumbling at first, the gardener finally managed to catch his footing and made haste to the nearest exit.

And that was that.