Chapter 40 - The World I Want

  Aaron seated himself against the Scarlet Reaver's main mast. He lay down Eksa's unconscious form, letting her head rest on his lap and rubbing a thumb over where he'd struck her. Then he buttoned up her shirt and pulled tight the ends of his black coat around her, creating a cocoon for her to rest in.

  He closed his eyes from the scorn of moonlight, and they hid themselves from him in turn, disappearing behind thicker clouds. Aaron began knocking the back of his head against the mast.

  Viper materialised. “I'm sorry,” he said. “It's my fault for turning away from Eksa.”

  Aaron grunted. The shape of that dark haired woman's body was imprinted in his hands. He could almost still feel her pulse in his palms, increasing in speed with her panic, and then dying down when she became but a soulless vessel of flesh. “What am I but a hypocrite, Viper?” Aaron asked. He gazed down at Eksa, at her rising chest with her every breath, and her serene sleeping form. “Do I have any right to hold someone as innocent as her with these bloody hands? Even if that woman is alive now, I'd killed her for a split second.”

  “You're still worrying about that? It's alright now. I told you—”

  “It isn't so easy to forget! You said you've done the same. Did you go all the way?” Aaron asked.

  Viper nodded.

  “And did you bring them back from death like you did today?” This time, there was no response. “The woman might be alive now, but I can't forget what I'd done. It's worse for you, isn't it?”

  Viper still kept silent.

  Aaron sighed and hit his head off the mast again. “Strange, isn't it? How heavily those deaths weigh on our conscience when the numerous lives you and I have taken in battle barely register a memory.”

  Viper seated himself on the opposite side of the mast. “Not all lives are weighed equally,” he said after a long while.

  “No, they're not,” Aaron agreed. “Our judgements are the products of our perceptions.”

  “Then is the solution to change everyone's perception into one?”

  Aaron barked a laugh. He felt terribly old with all his thoughts that weren't truly his own. “That would be the act of a tyrant, dear friend. But perhaps a proper king might create a world with enough agreements in everyone's perception to hold a balance. A balance where things like this aren't entirely eradicated —it would go against human nature to do so— but rather limited to something more… reasonable, if such a word can be applied.”

  That had been the entire purpose of the Flame Bearers. To hold all of Illusterra under the Laws of the Eternal Flame. A rule where a majority lived in harmony. That was what all of Aaron's ancestor's wanted out of him. That was what thousands of years' worth of experience told him. But those memories couldn't crack the shell the boy had enclosed himself in. Nor did Aaron want it to crack. He was content being inside it, away from such a grand responsibility.

  “A proper king, huh? And who do you think would be up to such a task?”

  Aaron buried his face in his hands. “Don't, Viper. I'm not that person. I can't be…” But even as those words escaped his mouth, the pleas of his mother cast doubts over it, as if he'd just lied. The will of his ancestors resonated with Lera's pleas, but the shell, reinforced by Aaron's fears, would not crack.

  “What kind of world do you want?” Viper asked.

  “One where my friends don't have to hide their faces from the rest,” Aaron answered, surprised at how quick he'd said it. “One where you and Jackrin can live without fear of persecution.” He brushed Eksa's hair with his hands. “One where everything and everyone I hold dear isn't under constant threat. And I want this for everyone,” he finished, thinking of what it was all of his other mothers had wanted from him. “Not just for myself.”

  “And who's going to build such a world for us?”

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  “Viper, stop…”

  “Is that an order?”

  “It is,” Aaron sighed. He began dozing off, but some time during the night, the sounds of a harp began to play, growing nearer and nearer. It was a variation of the song from the party. One with higher strings added in for a bit of flare rather than a soft tune to be swayed to. Aaron turned his head to find Jack climbing aboard, playing the same instrument he'd seen being used earlier in the night. “Did you steal that?”

  The masked jester shook his head. He seated himself on deck in a cross legged position. Aaron hadn't paid attention, but Jack was wearing all white again. He pulled off his mask. “I'm borrowing this,” he said. “Indefinitely. Say… should I kill Aki? You know, make it seem an accident.” He grinned wide, showing a full set of teeth like a sheet of ice with four icicles for fangs.

  “Aki isn't the problem,” Viper said. “She's afraid. And she hides it with physical strength or drowns it with alcohol. More than likely, Crow is pulling the strings. I've heard him. He doesn't like Eksa. He's trying to dull her while she's still young and impressionable.”

  Aaron snorted. “She's our age and already hooked on drinking.” Crow. What are the chances someone reminding me of Orion turns out just like him?

  “Then can I kill him instead?” Jack sang, pronouncing each syllable to a string played on the harp. “What's so special about alcohol anyway? Tastes like inferior juice. I drank quite a bit today but don't feel a thing. Aside from having needed to piss, that is.”

  “You can't kill Hawthorne,” Aaron said. “Not yet anyway. Dhorjun seems to like me. And Eksa for that matter. But there's a limit to how much he'll let us get away with. Severing his right hand is not one of them, I'd wager.”

  “I could make an accident,” Jack said. He looked at his mask. “Conjure an image that everyone will have seen and will thus corroborate the same story. So long as they're in my field of vision, the illusions cast effect all.”

  “No,” Aaron said, though actually considering it. Too many high profile deaths would create questions and unnecessary complications, so he ultimately decided against.

  Eksa began to stir in his lap. She groaned and touched the small welt on her temple. Her eyes opened. She blinked a few times then jerked up to a sitting position. “Where?” She looked around wildly before seeing Aaron and scrambling back. “You! What…? No. I remember. You and that woman!”

  “What woman?” Aaron asked, wondering how much Eksa remembered from her drug induced state. Jack began playing the harp again, delicately pulling strings that blended with the ambience of mellow waves.

  “That woman you were kissing!” Eksa accused.

  Aaron folded his arms. She was cute when flustered. He decided to tease her more. “Kissing someone else? When I have you?”

  Eksa frowned. Then blushed. She touched her lips. “You've never kissed me before.”

  “Should I?” he questioned with a tilted head. His captain seemed on the verge of saying yes when she finally noticed Jack and Viper sitting there as well. Her blush deepened, still easily visible at night this close up. “What were you doing, might I ask, with your shirt fully unbuttoned and that scandalous and part see through corset exposed for everyone to see?”

  Eksa flinched. She looked down and ran her hands over the black coat around her. “I…” she muttered. She squeezed the sides of her head as if they still hurt. “Oh heavens. What was I doing? The music… the dance. I wanted to…” She met Aaron's eyes then turned away as if ashamed. “Everyone must have seen it. That was for you only but everyone —everyone?” She rubbed her eyes. “You were with that woman. I wanted to make you jealous.”

  Aaron raised a brow. Eksa was still under the influence, tattling on herself like this.

  “I needed to move. I felt so hot. I was going somewhere dark…” She squeezed her eyes shut and hugged herself. “And then you came at some point I think. Aki was there too. And Crow and his mercenaries?” Eksa swallowed. “Aaron, where did you find me? What happened to me?”

  Aaron ground his teeth and glared and Jack, who'd picked up his playing speed and made Eksa's fragmented recalling of events something dramatic. How the jester had become so proficient at the instrument within a single hour, Aaron couldn't guess. “You were running around and tripped over your own feet and fell unconscious,” Aaron said, glad she didn't remember everything. He leaned closer to her, reinvigorating her fading blush. The black coat fell off her shoulders as she leaned back. Aaron touched the top most button of her shirt. “You said something just now,” he teased. “About something being for me only. What might that have been?”

  “Nothing!” she snapped. She rose to her feet and stumbled.

  Aaron caught her before she fell again. “I warned you about drinking, Eksa. Please don't do it again.”

  She swallowed again, flitting her gaze from his lips to his eyes. Her head bobbed in a nod. “I won't,” she said in a voice that could've been mistaken for the wind.

  Aaron smiled and let her go, knowing she wouldn't keep her word. Addictions weren't easily dispelled. But he'd help her through it. Eksa seemed disappointed at not having received a kiss she was likely expecting. She went below deck with her head hanging low. Aaron turned to Jack, who finished his obnoxious, but somehow fitting nameless song with a thumb flicked across the final four strings of one end of the harp. “I would hope, Jackrin, that that is the last time you do something so insufferable again. Eksa was too distraught and disoriented to comment on it, but she would for sure have chewed you out.”

  The jester shrugged. “It won't happen again,” he said, but the mischievous sparkle in his eyes said otherwise.

  Aaron shook his head and picked up his coat. It was pointless getting upset at Jack for his nature. “Whatever am I going to do with you,” he said, gazing out at the undulating mirror that was the sea. Somewhere, far past the horizon, was Xenaria. I'm not that person, he insisted to himself. He threw on his coat. It smelled like Eksa again.

  Obligatory Map Repost!