And Don't Call Me Lover, It's Not Enough

[Benedict Sterling]

July 4th, 1887
Donegal, Ireland

@'Ari Fisk' / @'Elias Grimstone'

"Ben, watch out!"

Cassie's voice rang out once more and broke through his daydream. Even more were the flames that jumped at him from the stove oven as he stoked the fire. They settled on his clothes but nothing caught fire as he carefully pat them out. Even the curls in his hair remained in tact as he caught a strand between the palms of his hands to tap the flame licking at his hair.

"What's the matter?" The general manager of the restaurant poked his head around the corner. In seeing Ben covered in soot, he let out a bark of laughter. "Ben, do us a favor and don't set fire to the entire kitchen, okay?"

"It wasn't me, I swear!" Ben looked at the fire which was simmering innocently as if it hadn't just randomly flared up at him without any provocation. "D'you have to go and get me into trouble every single day?" He muttered, picking up the stoker again and giving the coals a reproachful prod. "Honestly, you'd think after stoking the fire multiple times a day that it would learn to behave. One more thing and they're going to think I'm purposefully trying to set this establishment on fire." He wasn't, either. Odd things like this just kept happening to him. He'd tried to cut his hair the other day and when he woke up, it was exactly the same length as before he cut it. The fire kept acting up when he stoked it, as if it got offended whenever he was operating it, and on occasions, he'd turn around to reach and get a pot or pan and find it right in front of him instead. Ben let out a huff. "And it's all because of you." he said scornfully to the fire.

There was a slight cough behind him and he turned around. Ben's heart jumped in his chest and he flushed. The maitre'd was standing behind him, awkwardly lacing his fingers together expectantly while a slightly amused expression settled on his face. Great... "....can I help you, Sean?"

"They er - need extra hands out there. Do you think you can manage it? After you're done talking to the fire, of course." The last comment made Ben chuck a dishtowel at the maitre'd. Sean roared with laughter, catching the dish towel and slinging it over his shoulder. "Get out there, crazy." He said, before winking at Ben.

He would have been caught off guard if it hadn't been for the fact that his stomach was fluttering with butterflies. Ben shook off the feeling before throwing the stoker back in its place and moving to follow Sean out.

"Wait, Ben!" Cassie stopped him, catching his elbow. She was a small thing, about 4' 10" with flaming red hair. A real spitfire she was, and for some reason she reminded Ben of someone, though he couldn't place his finger on who. "Can you get that block of ice down for me?"

"Ice – ?" Ben looked up to where she was pointing and the butterflies that were once in his stomach were replaced with a heavy feeling. "...why would someone put that up there?" He demanded, despite already dragging a stool to help him grab it down. They'd gotten an ice block maker, but it was freezing faster than they'd anticipated. So some loon had decided to store the ice blocks up high where they could melt (despite the coldness of the kitchen) and someone could slip.

"Because whoever put that up there is a great maggot who didn't think about the difference of heights in this place." She responded, lacing her arms across her chest. Ben knew by her expression that she would find out who was responsible for putting the ice block up there and make them pay for it.

"I don't doubt it," Ben muttered before heaving the ice block down into his arms.

He knew what was going to happen before it did. It was deja vu all over again as he felt himself get off center and pitch backwards. He crashed onto the table behind him and the ice block fell on top of him. Cassie shrieked. Ben roared in pain as the ice block slid off of him and crashed into pieces on the floor. He was cold all over again, and he couldn't breathe. Stars were dancing in front of his vision as he gasped for air.

He could vaguely hear people shouting for help in the distance. At least there was that this time. Someone to call for help for him, since he wasn't able to.

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   Elias Grimstone, Ophelia Dippet

[Ari Fisk]

It was during the graveyard shift into Friday morning that Ari had made his decision to go. He'd stopped in at the Auror office at the Ministry just yesterday. Not for the first time. And not for the first time, they'd been cryptic, with nothing much to report, only that they were still looking.

It had been more than two months. He'd been supposed to be back at the end of April. On a mission or not, Head Aurors did not just up and disappear. There had to be people still working on whatever case Ben had been. There was a new Head Auror now, too, someone to direct them all in Ben's absence. And still, there was absolutely nothing of use that they could tell him.

Ari had been doing what he could, he'd thought. Beyond pestering the Ministry, gleaning what he could from the others who had been working the same case, he'd tried to retrace Ben's steps in theory himself, but since no one was quite sure when, where or why Ben had gone off the map before his scheduled check-in, there hadn't been much to piece together. They had no trace of him casting any spells, at least not with his own wand, since then, but he couldn't bring himself to suppose that a sign of the worst potential outcome. And then June had brought reconciliation with the muggle crown, and with it, an influx of muggle relatives and visitors. It had been sheer coincidence, that he'd overheard a conversation in Diagon Alley, a muggle couple peering at the old Missing Person poster pasted to the bricks of the alleyway, receiving it with impossible recognition. He'd - well, he'd accosted them, really - and mined them for as much as they knew. It wasn't a lot, but they could have sworn they had seen him not far from where they were from, themselves. It... it made enough sense with the rest of the information he knew to be theoretically possible, at least. But it was a long shot.

A long shot was better than nothing, and so as the sun was coming up at the end of his shift, Ari had decided he had to do something, had to at least try. Before he could sleep on it - talk himself out of it, or something - he had already rearranged the shifts in the ward, signed off the holiday days he was well-practised at collecting but less so at ever using, and had set off to the northwest coast of Ireland.

He'd owled Baxter and Garrett, packed the sparest of travelling cases, and gotten the Knight Bus out to the Scottish coast, where there were regular Portkeys to Ireland, faster than any muggle ferry. After that, he had mostly travelled by muggle means and carefully apparating where he could, starting from the village where the visitors of Diagon Alley had been from and slowly working his way up along Donegal Bay, in the hopes of being thorough.

After the first couple of days had passed, without much sleep and even less to show for it, it had begun to dawn on Ari just how stupid an idea this had been. What did he honestly expect to achieve from this, trekking around on a wild goose chase, following little more than vague recollections of seeing someone that had looked a little like Ben? It was a fool's errand if ever he'd heard one. Ben could be long gone from Ireland now. He dealt with bad people in his line of work, after all: he could have been captured, could have gone into hiding, could be in too terrible a situation for Ari to find him, let alone help him back to Hogsmeade. But if he could, then he could at least alert the Aurors -

He'd always thought himself to be a sensible person. He thought most everyone did. This was sheer lunacy. Back at work, he'd have to play it off as though he'd just taken a relaxing coastal break to clear his head, gone hiking or something, so that they didn't think him mad. This was mad.

That said... it was the sort of thing Ben would do. For any of his friends, even if it hadn't been his job to. Ari knew that maybe they weren't quite friends in the same way they had always used to be - remember when it had used to be so, so easy - but that didn't negate the need to act like a friend now. To try and act like his friend, too - Benedict Sterling wasn't the sort of person who would sit around and wait and do nothing.

(Merlin, he was really losing it.)

And then - he'd found out that there had been a mysterious newcomer people were talking about in Donegal. A recent newcomer. With every next person he talked to, the possibility flared up further that there was a chance, that this could be him.

Today had dampened his hopes, a little, having had no real luck of finding this mysterious newcomer. A few more people had heard of him, had told a story here and there, but Ari couldn't make much sense of the accounts, and weariness was starting to set in his limbs again. He'd picked a restaurant at random - it was a rather remote town, as places went - with the intent of speaking to some locals, planning his next move, and to ask about for a place to stay the night - but before he had gathered the energy to strike up a conversation with anyone, he had sunk into a chair and supposed he might have a meal first.

The food hadn't made it to his table when Ari heard the sudden crash, registering where the shouts were coming from and watching some of the restaurant staff spilling out between the restaurant floor and where the kitchen must be. Scanning the room, Ari staggered to his feet and dashed over to the brewing commotion, worried that someone had been injured. Pushing forwards, he answered bewildered eyes with a calm, "I'm a - doctor,"; never mind the fact that the usual sort of healing he specialised in was not what muggles tended to be used to.

Never mind: if he could help, he would; he ducked through the doorway to the kitchen, eyes catching on the shattered ice and tracing the fall first. It was only as he turned his attentions to the man, leaning over, his hands already reaching for his ribs to check that none had been broken, mouth already in the midst of urging words - "You're alright; can you hear m- ?" - when it hit him properly. His jaw remained slack and his eyebrows knitted, but at the same time he felt as though he could burst into a soul-splitting smile, in brilliant, blinding relief.

Because it was Ben. Here, sprawled out, impossibly, in the middle of a restaurant kitchen in an Irish town - and in a bad way, but not nearly any of the horrifying possibilities he'd had lurking in his head for months - Ben was here.

The following 4 users Like Ari Fisk's post:4 users Like Ari Fisk's post
   Elsie Beauregard, Micajah Vablatsky, Ophelia Dippet, Queenie

[Benedict Sterling]

His breaths came out in gasps as he struggled to keep calm and get oxygen to his lungs. Surprisingly, it wasn't an easy feat to say the least. Odd, he thought, that such a simple, second-nature act could become so difficult within the span of 30 seconds.

"You're alright; can you hear m - ?"

It was the voice that caused him to look up at the same time that it stopped. And suddenly there were those eyes again. Those grey, stormy eyes that wouldn't stop leaving him alone since before he lost everything. Ben had struggled to come to terms that he wouldn't remember anything from before they found him on the beach. He had no link whatsoever to his previous life; except those eyes. And here they were right in front of him. A link to his past that he fought every night to remember.

"You." he gasped, searching the man's eyes as if his life depended on it. The shock with having this man in front of him mixed with the pain in his ribs rendered him speechless. But aside from the recognition of the eyes, everything else was like trying to see through the morning fog that plagued Donegal's mornings.

In a stupid act of not thinking, Ben attempted to get up; if not to just get closer to the man. His ribs protested most vehemently and he crumpled again under his own weight. Groaning in pain, he could see that the rest of the staff were hovering closely. "I know you. Who are you?" he demanded, still fighting to grasp onto something that would give him a clue to his past. A name, a scent, a bloody building. Nothing. Just thick fog.

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   Ophelia Dippet

[Ari Fisk]

He had never felt the phrase, could not believe his eyes, more keenly than now. Was he mistaken? No, surely not. Hallucinating? Perhaps more likely. But Ari had a hand on his chest, he could feel the shuddering of those attempted breaths grounding him. He wasn't just some - lookalike, some stranger who happened to resemble his friend. Those were Ben's eyes. Undoubtedly.

Ben was gazing at him with such intensity that Ari's plan to assess the medical situation had fallen away from him for a moment, his heart pounding at the realisation he had escaped the nightmares that had been plaguing, those insidious fears that it had been the end, that he would never be able to see Ben again.

You threw him off, though. He could only imagine Ben was as shocked as he was at this reunion, at its circumstances and the fact that it was happening at all, but his expelled word was almost a paradox in itself: hazy with confusion and startling clear, as much a question as it was a statement. Before Ari had recalled his faculties of speech, Ben was lurching upwards. Towards him, Ari could tell that much. The smile had nearly made it to his face - everything about this was so familiar, of course he'd be trying to get to his feet, the rest of the people here likely wouldn't understand - when Ben spoke again.

Ari, still leaning over him, froze. Of course he - If he knew him, why on earth was he asking? Was this - was this some kind of ruse. Was he trying to be funny? Because it wasn't, it just made no sense. "It's me," he answered uselessly, wondering whether the accident with the ice just now had disoriented him more than he'd assumed. He glanced swiftly around at the staff, now bystanders to this scene, bewildered. "It's Ari." He murmured, brow furrowed in concern as he returned searching eyes to Ben. "Your friend, Ari." Friend might be a simplified expression, the decades they'd known each other condensed into something that was too lacklustre a word, did not account for the turbulent feelings that had ensnared them in recent years, but it was the most natural start. He could still call himself that, couldn't he?

First things first, though. He felt Ben's ribs with careful fingers, trying to feel out if any were broken, how many were bruised. He was having trouble with his breaths, and it was going to be painful if he'd broken any, but as long as he wasn't coughing up blood, his lungs should be in the clear. One hand moved up to support Ben's head, slipping underneath it as he looked for further injury. Ben didn't know him, why else would that be? This fall hadn't looked bad enough for this, but... "Did you hit your head, just now?"

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   Ophelia Dippet

[Benedict Sterling]

The sinking feeling in Ben's chest sunk even lower as he studied the man's faltered expression. His confused response told him he definitely should know who this man was. And yet, nothing except those eyes. With the sinking feeling came a sharp stab of disappointment and panic. If he couldn't remember what purpose the man's eyes served, how could he have ever hung onto the hope that – if he saw those eyes in person – his memories would come swinging back?

"Ari..." Repeating the man's name didn't do any good either.

He surveyed the staff milling about them. Some were going back to their duties – they still had a restaurant to serve after all – while some still hovered. As if they would be able to help him remember anything. Looking down in disappointment, Ben went still so the man could examine his injuries. Hopefully they weren't extensive. Though....call him dramatic, but Ben couldn't help but feel this would be one of his last days in this town.

Was it being dramatic? The man's smile when he'd seen Ben had startled him to say the least. It was as if a color blind man could see the world in color. It was filled with more emotions than he could have identified in that split second. The man's – Ari's – voice caused Ben to refocus his attention on present. The constant prodding at his side brought slight annoyance with each poke. That hurt. He attempted to bite back a growl. Reaching up to rub his head, Ben chuckles mirthlessly. "Not just now," he said, attempting to find the words. "It was –" he broke off, looking up at his co-workers for help.

"We found 'im on the beach," Sean offered, being the one who was hovering the most, looking at Ben with concern. "About...three months ago, we found 'im at the bottom o the cliffs. Was all banged up and couldn't remember a thing except his name."

"We also –" Cassie interjected, looking at Sean with uncertainty. After following his encouragement, the small redhead went to the junk cupboard in the pantry and pulled out the thinest fragments – splinters, really – of pale wood. Intricate carvings could be seen on what was left of it. "We also found this. Sean only reminded me of it just yesterday."

Ben furrowed his brows. As broken as it was, he could make out that it had once been something narrow and long. Nearly a foot. "What...is that?" His eyes shifted to the man at his side. "A-ari?" Ari. The name felt both weird and comfortable exiting his lips. Ben's mind was still running at about 100 miles per hour trying to sort through the compounding questions crossing his mind. Who was this man? How did he know him? Was he important in his life? The smile told him as much, at least. But what was their relationship like? Did he have a family? What did he do for luck? Did he like certain foods that he disliked now? A grimace flashed across Ben's face – really, it was impossible for him to imagine that before his memory loss he harbored had any sort of affection anyone to brussel sprouts.

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   Elias Grimstone

[Ari Fisk]

Nothing. Still nothing. I know you, he'd said, but evidently he did not. It was a crushing feeling, really, to think that all that could be gone and forgotten in the blink of an eye, to think that Ari had come all this way in search of him only to find... a Ben who wasn't quite Ben. He pushed down the feeling. Even if Ben couldn't remember anything, it wasn't his fault that he couldn't.

That only made the situation more worrying, sending Ari's gut twisting in anxiety about what might have happened to cause this, if, as he was saying, it hadn't been now. No, it couldn't have been this little scrape; Ben had been in far, far worse than this before and come out just fine (and he'd know, since he was usually the one have to patch him up). Patching together memories was not, however, exactly a skill in his wheelhouse. He'd barely know where to begin.

What on earth had happened to him? Ben, for the moment, could hardly answer a single question. Ari could only pray that it was a temporary deficit. Reluctantly - loath as he was to glance away from his friend, especially when his mind was reeling like this - Ari turned to the couple of people still looking on as they picked up the story, listening intently. The first to do so was the man, who explained that Ben had been here for three whole months (...working at this restaurant? what?), and where they'd found him. "It's - it's lucky you did," Ari forced out, supposing he ought to be grateful that someone had. Relief was still radiating out from him, thought it was dimmed by the glaring issue of Ben's amnesia.

Had it been a head injury caused by that fall, then? At the bottom of a cliff; it sounded severe enough to have done such damage. That said, the possibility only raised more questions. What had he even been doing, wandering up on these Irish cliffs? What if he'd already been in a dangerous situation up there? He might have been pushed, for all any of them knew. Had it been terrible misfortune, or the work of a dark wizard he'd been after, perhaps? That also raised the possibility of magically-inflicted memory loss - had his mind been meddled with before the fall?

At least, Ari reminded himself, he was alive and safe. But these people were muggles, which meant Ari was still uneasy about being here - about Ben being here - and the alarm only jolted further up his throat when the redheaded woman pulled out something from the pantry. Ben's splintered wand. He winced at the sight of it - wands were so integral to daily life in Hogsmeade that to see one damaged, even not his own, induced a very real pang of dismay.

Dismay continued to be the feeling fluttering in Ari's stomach as Ben questioned the piece of wood's purpose, in front of these other muggles. Merlin. Reconciliation with the Queen had been all well and good, but even that wasn't excuse to run around giving unfamiliar muggles a rundown of the basics of bloody magic, was it? Keeping a composed expression as best he could, Ari wracked his brain for some way to explain it away, thankful that his own wand was safely stowed out of sight in his jacket pocket. "Oh, that," Ari feigned casually. "You've been carrying it around for years, some kind of lucky charm," he said, flashing Ben a wry smile. He cringed internally at that feeble explanation, but it was as close to the truth as he could keep it. "His stepfather's quite talented at woodworking," Ari elaborated; that bit was a brazen lie, as far as he knew, but he had directed it to Ben's muggle co-workers as further affirmation that he did truly know Ben, and a lot better than they could. Not wanting to just leave a wand in a muggle's possession - even a broken one, in case it shot out sparks out of nowhere one day - Ari stretched out a hand towards the woman with an expectant smile, prompting her to pass over the remains of it.

Desperately curious though he was about what else they could tell him of that day they'd found Ben at the cliffs, in fear of facing more difficult questions, Ari hastily steered the subject back to something less contentious. "Ben, I don't think any of your ribs are fractured, just bruised. They'll probably be painful for a while yet, though," he warned, gazing over at Ben again. He ought to rest, really. Ari could take him somewhere, and get out of the way of these muggles, and maybe, just maybe, he'd discover that Ben remembered more than he was letting on.

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