Antihero Worship // By Roach

Tim had never especially liked children, but having nightmares about them seemed a bit much. Nightmares were seldom sensible things and he despised insensibility. That couldn't stop the dreams, though.

He would be perfectly fine for weeks and then he'd fall asleep one night and find himself back in the children's room at Pax Tharkas. Sixteen and small for his age, Tim had been sent to stay with the children instead of working the mines with the men. He'd had perhaps five minutes to be thankful, then he had realized that at least the prisoners in the mines received breaks. Minding the children was a never-ending chore.

Erik would catch one cold before he'd even recovered from the last three. Dougl could not stay out of trouble and delighted in trying to climb up the dragon's back. At least Flamestrike hadn't minded. She had liked children, when she was awake and lucid enough to notice them.

To make matters worse, the oldest children had decided that Tim didn't warrant their obedience. If he'd really been worth anything, they'd said, he'd have been down in the mines with the men and the other big boys. That had lasted a few days, until Maritta had come to serve their breakfast and had convinced them that Tim would turn them all into toads if they annoyed him. He couldn't, of course, but he'd wanted to.

In the dreams, he's back in the children's room and he knows he'll never leave. Raistlin and Tanis and the others will never come to free the prisoners. Tim will spend the rest of his life taking care of whiny, mulish little brats and a half-mad, half-blind red dragon. It's a nightmare like no other and it's one of the worst for reasons Tim doesn't want to think about.

It's worse than the dreams about being lost. Those dreams have a good ending, at least. Raistlin shows up to save him, just like he always has. Raistlin...

It's possible that Tim is fixated, but he doesn't mind. It's a pleasant obsession, no matter what the others think.

Raistlin really had found him when he was lost, too. Three years old and separated from his parents at the Red Moon Fair, Timothy Drake had sat down and attempted to cry himself sick. The Majere twins had found him. Caramon had gone to look for Tim's parents and Raistlin had sat with him and shown him magic tricks until he calmed down. Just for you, Raistlin had said and had even smiled at him. Raistlin never smiled at anyone. He still smiles at Tim, though.

His parents hadn't even noticed he was missing. That's another dream based in fact, his parents leaving him all alone. The plague came to Solace and, when it left, it took the Drakes with it. Raistlin had been a skilled herbalist by that time and he'd done everything he could. He had held Tim when he cried.

The babysitting nightmare really ended with Raistlin, too. Raistlin and Caramon Majere and their friends had freed the prisoners and killed Verminaard, the bastard responsible for their imprisonment. It was Raistlin and Tanis who got the children past Flamestrike when the old dragon went mad.

It was Raistlin who convinced the others to let Tim join them instead of leaving him in Thorbadin with the other refugees. Tim would rather have died than stayed in the dwarves' kingdom and listened to the taunts from the others his age. Only the women and children hadn't been sent to the mines, which was he?

But Raistlin didn't treat him like a woman or a child. He treated him like a student and taught him new spells. It wasn't what Tim had hoped for, but it was more than he'd expected.

The others thought Raistlin and Tim were sleeping together. They did sometimes, but not in the sense the others meant. If Tim was too cold or had a bad night, he could crawl into Raistlin's bedroll and sleep soundly. Raistlin said he didn't mind. He understood about nightmares, even the ones that were too stupid to try to explain.

Raistlin was always warm, too. He radiated heat as if he was feverish, but he never complained. When Tim had asked, Raistlin had said he never noticed and that he wasn't bothered by it. If Raistlin found Tim's touch--much cooler by comparison--to be uncomfortable, he never said.

The farther south they traveled, the colder it became and Tim was thankful for Raistlin's strange warmth. When the snow fell thick and everyone else seemed frozen to the very marrow of their bones, Raistlin was still warm and just as willing as ever to let Tim share his bedroll at night. They were always the first to wake, trapped in a tangle of their own limbs. During the night, Tim would always clutch Raistlin as close as he could and, in the morning, Raistlin would pet his hair until they had to rise. Tim was never cold.

He thought the heat was probably related to the magic. Master Theobald had been an ungifted teacher--a petty tyrant, in fact--but he had taught his pupils the fundamentals of magic. Only a finite amount of magical energy could be stored in one space. That was why most wands and rings had only a few charges; they couldn’t handle the strain of containing any more magic. Too much magic in one place tended to become very dangerous very quickly.

Staves, for instance, reacted to excess magic by becoming hazily sentient and developing their own personalities. The Staff of Magius was the worst and could be quite dangerous if it didn't like you. The Staff like Raistlin, or at least respected him. On the few occasions that Tim had held the Staff, he'd felt a sense of tolerant amusement that was utterly alien in origin. Maybe the Staff liked him, too.

Staves might have reacted well to excess magic, but mages did not. Raistlin had so much talent that it seemed his body couldn't contain it all, the strain leaving him weak and ill. He was often surrounded by an almost palpable aura of power, as if his magic had developed its own personality and sometimes demanded to be used immediately. If so, Raistlin hadn't given in yet and Tim prayed to Lunitari that he never would. Raistlin's level of sheer, unadulterated power was worrying. If he ever let the magic run wild and simply became a conduit for it, well, Tim hoped everyone in the area would die painlessly.

It never occurred to Tim not to pray to Lunitari. After all, Raistlin was a red-robed mage in her service, and Tim intended to swear allegiance to the goddess after his own Test. Maybe then Raistlin could take him on as an official apprentice. And maybe he'd see Tim as an adult, instead of just an apprentice. Tim couldn't wait.

End

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