Kincaid microfiction "Goodbye"

[g33k]

Alternate reading:

"Your services are no longer required" = "I can fire you at any moment."

I mean... I know that phrase is OFTEN a "you are fired," but that's an implied/conventional usage, not explicit.  In the same piece, she admits Harry is her only other friend.  I presume Kinkaid himself is the other half of that other.

Ivy may just have been threatening Kinkaid:  I no longer need you, so I can afford to fire you; so follow these directions, or else (fired, and she'll kill him).

I admit... the implication is that he IS fired.  But it's possible -- though unlikely -- that he isn't.

She doesn't try to stop Kinkaid from going; she knows she can't stop him short of killing him, because his own personal code doesn't permit that.  Since she can manage what she does, in this piece... it seems like she would be able to find a way through the emotional storm (presuming Harry lives (eventually)), to keep Kinkaid in her life.

And imagine the fallout for Ivy:  friend1 kills friend2 so she kills friend1 and has 0 friends, and THAT would be...

...

pretty unimaginable, actually.
 
Still, just the act of telling Kinkaid that he could be fired for this, would change things.

And he's probably fired, despite my alterna-reading.

[morriswalters]

This story is fan service.  If the Archive is the sum total of human knowledge, then she had to know what Harry did the minute he used the phone. VOIP is all digital.  We have a WOJ that the Oblivion War won't end up in the Dresden Files.  So unless he backs away from that, Ivy isn't going all Dark Side. Did anybody really consider that Kincaid and Ivy were going to maintain a good working relationship after that bullet was fired? And it was always questionable about why Kincaid shot at the chest.  Even Harry was smart enough to shoot Corpsetaker in the back of the head.  When Eb wanted to be sure he dropped a satellite on Ortega.

@Yuillegan
Sorry, I flashed back to Changes.  Jim wrote Ghost Story to point this out with a sledgehammer.  He just forgot to include Ivy.

[magnuskn]

I guess I am saying, is it fair to measure him this way? He has more than unusual and difficult challenges. He absolutely could improve and do better, and have made better choices. But he isn't perfect or infallible and he doesn't know the future. If you want to judge him so, perhaps reread the passage in Skin Games where Harry first talks to Michael after the first encounter with Tessa and reexamine the question in your thoughts. Michael says it best.

I don't know. The point is, there's normally a year between books. Now, I think we can cut Harry at least some slack for the last years, given that Jim has very carefully locked him away from the outside world after Changes and only with Skin Game he has had a chance for a few months to be in human civilization again. And I presume that much of that time, until Peace Talks, will have been spent hunting down Fomori and shutting down their operations in Chicago and the surrounding area (I wonder how many buildings have gone up in flame during that time), so we probaby should cut him some slack there, too. With so much to catch up on and not knowing what has happened between Ivy and Kincaid, it's easy to see why he wouldn't call, although he really owes Ivy one for what she did for him in Changes to save Maggie.

But over the course of the years before, Harry has shown signs of not keeping in contact with people who care about him. I think Peace Talks will be another point of change for him (obviously) and I hope he gets better about it.

[Mira]

  My impressions,  at best when it came to killing Harry, Kincaid was a reluctant assassin.  He understood why Harry wanted him to assist his suicide, he respected it, so he agreed. 

Of course Ivy also knew and understood, she loves Harry as a friend, but the Archive sees the big
picture.  The Archive knows where Harry fits in the big picture and the lessons he has to learn.  So
it came up with the compromise, head kill, instant death or disability beyond even Harry's ability to heal from.  Chest wound, if he falls right [which somehow was managed] he'd come very close to death, but survive.

Ivy also understands that Kincaid has paternal feelings for her, and in her own way she does see him as a father..  However the Archive knows it must distance itself and her from humanity now, least she go mad, so she sent Kincaid away, she and it must be on her/it's own now.  But it wasn't easy, I bet it is the last tears we ever hear of Ivy ever shedding for anyone.

[Dina]

Not matter how busy you are, it only takes a minute to write a note as he did before.

[Regenbogen]

He might still be ashamed about the whole Winter Knight business and his failed suicide. Most other friends he didn't really contact by choice but more out of necessity or they contacted him. He didn't call Ebenezar either, for example.

[Dina]

Yes, and that only make things worse.

[magnuskn]

Precisely my point when I say that Harry has a problem keeping in touch with his friends who are not in his immediate vicinity. Ivy, Eb, Elaine, Ramirez... it's mostly when they turn up in Chicago that Harry has contact with them.

[Dina]

Yes, I'm agreeing with you.

[magnuskn]

Yes, I'm agreeing with you.

I know, I just wanted to expand a bit on it.

[Mira]

He might still be ashamed about the whole Winter Knight business and his failed suicide. Most other friends he didn't really contact by choice but more out of necessity or they contacted him. He didn't call Ebenezar either, for example.

  He was ashamed, still is to a degree, though I wouldn't say ashamed so much as tainted morally in his mind.

[Con]

I mean Dresden discusses his estrangement with Butters, Murphy and Michael. It was a key feature of Skin Game. Uriel was fighting for Harry's soul as much as Nicky and the Squires.

[Dina]

It is different. I am not discussing "keeping in touch", but "letting them know I am not dead after all". Not telling Ivy and Kinkaid and perhaps not even Eb is bad.

[noblehunter]

I think it'd be in character for Harry to avoid talking to them and justifying it because they almost certainly knew by the time he had the time to call. His return in Cold Days wasn't exactly low-key.

[Mira]

I think it'd be in character for Harry to avoid talking to them and justifying it because they almost certainly knew by the time he had the time to call. His return in Cold Days wasn't exactly low-key.

  I get the feeling that the Archive knew all along what was going down, and it and Mab, perhaps with some help from Uriel set it all up.  That is why Ivy insisted on a chest shot knowing that Mab would be waiting in the icy water to catch Harry and wisk him away to the island before he expired beyond retrieval..  Uriel may have made the wind blow just enough to throw the bullet off a couple of critical millimeters so the shot didn't cause instant death, perhaps even giving Harry a bit of a push so he'd land in the water as opposed to on the deck where he would have bled out in seconds and became all dead.

So no doubt, Ivy knew he wasn't dead..  Kincaid may not know, nor Eb, but think of the events of Cold Days, Harry was pretty busy at the time with more important things than letting his friends know that he was alive.