Chapter Text
Prologue
The earliest annals of history, the earliest epics of heroism all relate the same repeating theme; anyone could be a warrior. Anyone could train, anyone could fight, anyone could be brave in the face of their own fear. And yet to reach the highest echelons of warriors, one needed something else entirely; one needed to be born a Ranger.
Stronger, faster, with keener senses, Rangers were found in every tribe, in every gender, with the coming of adulthood. And yet, for as superior as Rangers have always been, if they are not balanced out by the one who Guards them, they all without fail died early deaths.
Rangers were always warriors; sometimes infantry, sometimes generals. Sometimes the Ranger of legend was on the conquering side of history, sometimes the Ranger was the terror in the mist laid low.
Guardians were more often healers, the holy, or the wise. Unseen on the battlefield, the Guardians were behind the lines, in the secret places, hidden from harm and supplying their own with all that was needed to conquer.
This is true, even to this day.
-A Guardian’s Introduction to Ranger Bonding
1: It’s sort of his hometown.
Rangers are humans with far above average senses of hearing, smell, sight, touch, and taste, as well as the capacity to heal quickly. This makes them ideal for police, military, and national guard duty, as well as various other heroic contract work. For a Ranger to be balanced and grounded, they must be fully bonded with their Guardian.
There is but one Ranger for a Guardian, and but one Guardian for a Ranger. A bond never forms unless the pair are perfectly compatible in every respect. Never fear a bond that has formed, and never doubt that the other half of your bond is anything other than the other half of your own true self.
- A Guardian’s Introduction to Ranger Bonding
Marcus Aurelian Cantor was going home, and was mildly terrified by the prospect. At twenty-six, he’d faced down more of his demons than he’d ever wanted to, but then again, at twenty-six he’d also hoped he was done with all that.
He had a new life, now, and he liked it. He was just beginning his doctoral dissertation in a field he enjoyed, he lived with family who loved him, he was mostly comfortable and wanted for nothing.
Except he’d already accepted he’d never find love. And he’d already said goodbye to both parents, in their different ways. And he’d never really have any of his childhood dreams again. All this he knew and most days it didn’t hurt.
But most days were not this day.
He would meet his best friend in their hometown, which meant a mostly comfortable train ride for him with a tiny branch transfer at the end, and a shorter, likely less comfortable plane ride with possibly the same tiny branch train transfer at the end for her, if there were no delays. But Marcus didn’t mind. He was doing the prep reading for his dissertation at the University of California at Los Angeles, and a long train ride back to his hometown in Oklahoma was perfect for reading, thinking, and taking copious notes.
Well, it was sort of his hometown.
Marcus was actually from Florida, and Catherine was from Ohio. But that was a complicated bit of history on both sides, and they had, at the least, gone to high school together in rural Oklahoma and had been best friends ever since. Not that others saw it that way.
To all appearances they’d been dating, high school sweethearts, except that Marcus was as gay as the day was long, and Catherine had embraced that she was, in fact, a lesbian, after the fourth time they tried to make out with disastrous results. Marcus had considered more than once that the heart-to-heart that came after that cemented their friendship for the rest of their lives.
And after that, they kept ‘dating’. Because no one would understand their friendship otherwise, and the small town of Fuentes, Oklahoma, really wasn’t ready for their star quarterback and team captain to prefer beefcake to cheesecake, at least not back in 1967, when they’d graduated.
Marcus was not sure much had changed in the last eight years, either.
He’d brought Catherine’s last letter with him on the train. He hadn’t had a chance to write her back, and he was going to see her anyway, but there were one or two bombshells she’d dropped that they definitely needed to find some quiet time to discuss, and preferably sooner than later.
…I never told you, did I (she says, rhetorically, knowing perfectly well she’s never mentioned it, and on purpose) that I outed you to your mother before she died? I outed both of us, really. I think the upcoming trip and Aunt Janet and Uncle Tim’s anniversary had got me thinking and regretting. I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you. I think I was afraid of your reaction.
So, it went down like this: One day in junior year, your mom calls me up, invites me over to ‘test out a new recipe she’d been working on for you’ and then plies me with pie. Really good pecan pie, I’d like to point out. And then essentially tells me I need to dump you. Because, well, yeah, you know that history better than anyone. And I get it, you know? You had already told me all about that, but I was so full of indignation and teenage rage I was ready to fight her for you, just on principle. I told her that I loved you totally and completely. (True, I’d like to point out, just not romantically speaking.) And I was going to toe the line vis-á-vis sexuality, which I like to think is a completely reasonable point to lie outright about, because people get so stupid with the truth. And then she starts crying, and starts begging me.
So, yeah. Then I said something like, “Ma’am, I love him like the brother I don’t have. And he knows that. And we both know that when his Ranger comes along, that person is going to be unequivocally male. Not a fifty-fifty chance, or a really effeminate man, he’s going to be 100% beef and Marcus will be thrilled.”
Possibly I was a little less eloquent and a little more teenage-rage than that. I don’t perfectly recall, which I think is just as well in my late twenties. I shouldn’t be able to perfectly recall the follies of my youth.
And then, because I didn’t want to just out you and not me - not fair, said 16 year old Cat - I said, “And really, I envy him. Because he’s in a protected class, and no one will look twice at him when he bonds to a male Ranger. They’ll be able to cohabitate and be next of kin without people being nosy and intrusive about what happens in their bedroom. If I were a Guardian, my Ranger would be a woman, but I’m not, so when I find the girl I want to marry, that’ll be illegal, because the government is allowed to say who I can and can’t love.”
And you know, she cried again, but I think they were tears of relief, you know? Which just shows you won the coin toss concerning mothers; I’m pretty sure mine wouldn’t have had that reaction if she’d still been alive at that point. Honestly, I’m not sure most parents would be relieved in 1966 to discover their only child is gay, but the sword hanging over her head was a lot sharper, I think, than that of homosexuality.
Anyway, after that she hugged me and gave me more pie and apologized and thanked me for my honesty, and so far as I can tell, she never said anything about it to you. She certainly never loved you less, or tried to change you, or any of that bullshit. I know you would have told me, and I was paying close attention for several months to see if something changed because of our pie-based talk.
She loved you, Marcus. You as you, no matter who you ended up being. As we go back to Fuentes and face the ghosts of our past, just… please hold on to that knowledge, okay?
I love you, and I’ll see you soon,
Always,
Cat
Marcus loved trains, he loved the soothing nature of the rhythms involved with train travel, and he loved being able to get up and walk around so easily. He was a big man - tall, broad, with long legs - and ever since the accident in high school, if he didn’t move his leg regularly or just keep it straight, it tended to cramp a bit. His uncle was urging him to try a new kind of therapy, but he was resistant.
He worked out. He kept fit. He walked five miles a day. He was in the hot tub every night he was at home with his uncle. And he was just… he was so done with physical therapy. Maybe it would help, and maybe it would be like all the rest; Marcus had been helped as much as possible, and forty percent use of his right leg was the best he was going to get.
At least he still had the leg.
It didn’t matter, anyway. People worse off than him lived perfectly happy lives, even if they hadn’t gone from the shining star of a high school athlete looking to go professional to bedridden for six months overnight, and needing to shift to Life Trajectory: Plan B.
That was a long time ago, but going back to Fuentes, the little ranch town his mother had grown up in and that they’d returned to after the divorce so he could have some stability for high school… it brought it all back.
Fuentes was a small town. Everyone knew everyone. This was very different from Los Angeles, where he lived with his uncle, or New York City, where Cat had settled down after college. It would be good to be back, he knew. It would also be painful to be back.
Marcus had been prepared to be remembered as the golden child, the high school athlete tragedy story. The fact that he was a gay man was of course still a well-kept secret here in Fuentes. But there was the other aspect of himself that he’d spent the last eight years trying to forget. He was also a Guardian, and that was very much a publically known thing in Fuentes.
Marcus hadn’t realized that his status as a still unbonded Guardian would be the most remarked upon thing, but in hindsight… of course it would be.
And for every old familiar face he met, it went like this:
Oh! Marcus! Marcus Cantor! It’s so good to see you! How you doing, boy? Why didn’t you bring your Ranger with you, honey? …Unbonded? …Still?
And then they’d look at his right leg. They’d remember, despite the fact that it had been eight years, despite the fact that his leg was covered in denim and no one could see the scar, despite the fact that it was a good day over flat ground and he wasn’t limping at all. They’d look at his leg, and remember. And then it would finish the same way, over and over, with very little variation:
…Right. No, that makes sense. Nevermind, nevermind. You’re a good boy, it’s their loss.
It’s their loss.
It’s their loss - it was a nice sentiment, a kind sentiment, and a totally incorrect sentiment. As if Guardians and Rangers had a huge range of choice in who they bonded to, as if it weren’t (depending on how you liked to look at it) either entirely up to fate, or entirely a matter of chemical compatibility.
It was his own loss, and he knew it. His, and his theoretical Ranger out there, who for all Marcus knew might already be dead, or not yet born. The one and only Ranger he could ever bond with.
Unbonded Rangers tended not to live as long as bonded ones (especially all the unbonded ones in the US who went off to Vietnam, almost none of whom came home again), and it had always seemed like there were vastly more Guardians than Rangers anyway at those mixers Marcus wasn’t invited to anymore, even if the IRC said such an imbalance wasn’t true.
Though there was a drug, of course, that could nullify the bond. For a while after the accident he carried a dose with him just in case, because as much as he wanted to find his Ranger, there was no way it was a good idea for an active, useful Ranger to be bonded to someone who couldn’t break out into a run when necessary. Probably better for them to stay unbonded than bonded to a dud.
That would just be cruel, on both sides.
Not that it really mattered anymore. More than likely, Marcus’ mythical Ranger had died in Vietnam, or some other war, and that was just the end of it. It’s what he told himself, anyway.
But just as he was the best quarterback to come out of Fuentes in fifty years, he was also the only Guardian as well.
Funny how he’d managed to fail the town in both ways that mattered to them.
Marcus just swallowed back the familiar shame and smiled anyway. It wasn’t a fake smile. He genuinely liked these people. They were kind, and good, they meant well and would go a long way out of their way for him or anyone else. It just hurt to have so many fairly reasonable expectations put on him and have somehow managed to fail every one of them.
At least he didn’t have to feel their disappointment in him. It was written on their faces plainly enough, of course, he didn’t have to wonder about it. But if it was one thing he’d learned fast in a big city as an unbonded Guardian: mental-emotional shielding.
Besides, other people’s emotions weren’t any of his business, as his mother had often reminded him when she was alive. It was rude to go around reading people for no particular reason, or for anything other than a very, very good one. (It might be rude even then, but it was what Guardians did, and Marcus wasn’t ready to throw everything like that away.)
Beyond the pale was trying to manipulate others by pushing emotion on them, which apparently Guardians could also do, though Marcus refused the classes on it, when he had the chance. If he ever bonded to a Ranger, and if that Ranger required that skill of him, then he’d think about it.
But really, people should be able to emote the way they wanted to, and not feel something because Marcus thought it was a good idea.
Warring with such beautiful thoughts of free will was the pain of loss; he did crave to be seen as he once had been. To be admired for his ability to win football games had caused him embarrassment at the time, but better to be looked at with admiration, than pity.
Because Marcus didn’t need to be a hyper aware, emotionally sensitive Guardian to see what was so plainly written on everyone’s face.
Pity.
Poor Marcus Cantor. Probably doesn’t dare take a partner - we all know what happened to his mama. Can’t find his Ranger. Won’t ever play ball again. Lives in a big city with a distant relation. It’s a shadow of a happy life.
Poor Marcus Cantor. He’ll never really be whole again.