Story Notes:
Written for the Dresden Files ficathon for quick_silver985. "Prompt: Morgan seems a little grumpy. Oh, I wonder if there's some interesting story in his background that made him the way he is today....some tragic love, perhaps. Or the loss of of a dear friend, sibling, or parent. Who knows? Let's see a fic about it!"
Heaps of love to my betas, Kat (TigerKat) and Taylor (AWanderingMinstrel), and great thanks to FeatherJean for organizing the Ficathon!
The Dresden Files belongs to Jim Butcher and his ferocious guard dog, Frostbite Doomreaver McBane. (Yes, that is the dog's actual name. He's a bichon frise.)
“Behold the Lord High Executioner
A personage of noble rank and title--
A dignified and potent officer,
Whose functions are particularly vital!
Defer, defer,
To the Lord High Executioner!”
--Gilbert and Sullivan, The Mikado
Age: 118 / Year: 2002
Donald Morgan made a deliberate fist with his right hand, then his left. Fingers, check, all present and in working order. He methodically went through every joint in his body, finding everything accounted for. So why did he feel as hollow and lifeless as the corpse before him?
One hundred eighteen years.
Sometimes he felt so old he marveled that his bones hadn’t ground to powder, his muscles hadn’t atrophied into useless ropes of grizzled sinew. Yet here he remained, idly wondering how someone celebrates a sesquicentennial and how he continued to inhabit the broad-shouldered body of a man a fraction of his age.
Humans aren’t meant to live this long. Not by a long shot.