But, it’s wrong.
Yes, but there is no right way for us at the moment, so move on.
Accept doing something so wrong?
No, it is not acceptable...not to you anyway...but it still must be done. So, do it and move forward.
Move forward…
It is shitty, but so were a thousand other things we did...
Move forward.
-----------
Beholden sat on the bench in the center of an immense garden and watched helplessly as he picked through what he wanted and trampled what he didn’t. Some of the most beautiful, fragrant blooms he passed by, oblivious. Others he had ripped off and crushed in his palm. Those had disappeared...or...something had happened to them...she wasn’t sure what had happened to them, but they were gone. She couldn’t quite remember which they were now...she just knew that something was supposed to be there, in that empty place.
She had shouted at him and cursed and pleaded, but he hadn’t heard or hadn’t cared. He hadn’t reacted at all, until a moment ago, when he stopped and looked down at the blood on his hands. She smiled, thrilled that the thorns had cut him.
“That sting, asshole?” Good.
Halfblood trash. A living obscenity. An offense to everything she had been taught to revere. If she had hedged about what should be done about them before, she was filled with conviction now. He was too perverse to be permitted anywhere near decent people. The thought of her children seeing him, getting comfortable with the idea of him, tolerating him like so many others did...She held her arms tightly to ward off a sudden chill. Horrible.
He looked up from his hands and turned his head slowly until he gazed at her for the first time. She began to breathe faster, her fingers digging into her skin.
He moved forward, making his way to her.
One step, and he became brighter. She looked up to see if a cloud had moved out of the way of the sun, but the sky was a clear, cloudless blue.
Two steps and he grew bigger...or closer. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t move.
Three steps and he stopped right in front of her.
Without moving, he stepped again until he was right where she was. Now, she was really terrified, because she didn’t want him there with her, she didn’t want to inhale the intense smell of him until it tingled at the back of her throat, to feel his warmth steal the chill from her. Couldn’t he see that what she wanted was for him to not be?
She definitely didn’t want to see him, but he took that choice from her, too.
He spread himself before her, slowly and shakily at first, and she knew, because she was learning everything about him, that he was bungling it because he had never done it before. She had done it: a special friend of his...Lena. He had learned it from her, though he didn’t know at the time that he could do it too. He had never tried, or thought to try. He had never thought to try many things.
She looked at the map of him and didn’t just see, but knew, felt, understood, as if those were her own fears huddling in the corner, swiping at anything that came close, and as if that there was the place where her father had held her tightly and guided her. She knew that it wasn’t her mother who had left without going, but instead had stayed, for years, to remind her child that she was gone, but it hurt her just as badly.
One minute, or less, it took for her to know it all. The worry, the hidden pride, the wonder in all there was to learn, the frustration with everyone’s distrust and hate, the acceptance of that same hate, because he was what they hated, after all. He had always been something to hate, and had no way to be otherwise.
There, just there, was the flame that always burned, sometimes low enough that he could forget about it for an hour or two, sometimes very hot...too hot to stop. Around it, there were pools of water and sand and empty syringes and evidence of the other things he had tried to use over the years to put it out. She knew that none had ever worked and that it had never once blown out since the day it was carefully lit by a team of doctors in a small Human laboratory. She smelled blood in the smoke that rose above the flame, and saw that the way it flickered threw images of the violence it fed itself on. In the jumping shadows cast by it, Scythe danced, sharp and quick, with beautiful, flowing movements...slicing, punching, grabbing, ripping, kicking, stabbing, shooting, killing. Laughing. Crying.
Shuddering, she was careful to back away from it.
Not far from there was the hungry mouth that had to be fed with sights or sounds or numbers or something interesting or else it began to whine, and then cry and then scream and kick and then it really, really got pissed off and things went badly.
Here, the way he honored his parents. Here, his friends. Here, the King who he had protected without reservation and who had thanked him with a curved blade and a throat to apply it to.
Here, the few children he had been allowed to hold. The songs he had sung so they would sleep. The mothers who smiled at him gratefully, which warmed him but also painfully reminded him of a smile he had lost.
One special child who he used to hold, but who now held him.
She tarried in the place that should have been a mirror of the center of her own garden, a place where she spent most of her life. Here the seeds had been planted and his family had grown strong and healthy for ten years. The garden stretched out in all directions. Then, in one night, every living thing had died but the gardener. The glorious trees with fragrant blossoms wilted, browned, rotted and turned into hard, dry shells. Then the withered branches broke under their own weight. Just below them was the shallow depression in the dust where the gardener without a garden often sat. Cruel, cruel Kin, to teach him what to need.
Kind, kind Humans to show him that he only needed himself. See how well it worked for them?
Poor Scythe, who had tried to believe it.
Human children knew it from the beginning, from the first time they were left to cry so they wouldn’t get spoiled, through the “You’re not a baby anymore. Do it yourself,” to the time when they could finally get away, and were glad to be gone. Behind them, proud parents smiled, happy to have raised such independent, self sufficient adults. The Human child was prepared for it, embraced it. Not so a ten year old halfblood raised by the Kin.
She stopped under the branches of the two largest corpses and looked down to where the sun shone on new growth, just barely sprouting. A pathetic, tiny spot with just a few fragile stems that had pushed their way out of the crusted ground. That precious little patch warmed the whole place. Then she looked over at the man who sat next to her on the bench in the flourishing garden of her soul.
“I’m very sorry about what I did to you,” he said.
“I know.” It was strange how his words seemed so small, mere shadows of the feelings that inspired them. It was a wonder they worked at all, as inadequate as they were.
Nearly everything she had believed about him was a lie. And the Kin hated lies.
-----------
Scythe waited to see what would happen. A deep calm had filled him, as well as the same type of surety he had felt when he had told Mercy that he wouldn’t let anything happen to them. He had been wrong about that, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all that he hadn’t been able to change a thing. What mattered was this feeling that was spreading through him. The purpose. Moving forward. Entering with the desire to see, and be seen.
It was odd that the calm made him feel better than any happiness he had ever experienced. The calm felt right, a settling sensation that made him realize that he wasn’t just standing on the earth, but extending into it with a thousand roots that wound their way into the soil and the rock and tied him to it.
Beholden swayed and then reached out to catch herself. Although the wall was closer, she instinctively stretched her arm toward him and he easily caught her with one hand. The wrist restraints she held clanked together and brushed against him. She looked down at them and then back at Scythe.
“Halfblood.” She said it like it was a
foreign word, or a new one, and she wanted to try it out.
He nodded.
“It’s your turn.” With the ease that came from years of practice, she snapped the handcuffs on him; she took the key from his palm and hung it onto her key ring. Then, she led him out of the cell. Temper followed him and he could feel her agitation like a prickling sensation at his back. He wondered if he only felt it now because she had become more agitated in the last few minutes or because he had become so calm.
They strode down the hall, turning twice before stopping in front of a door. Beholden flipped through the keys, selected the newest addition and used it to unlock the door. Then she waited. Temper shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the next.
Scythe went inside and used the short gap between his hands to trap the throat of a surprised Cord as he rose from the side of his bed. He turned him and pushed him up against the wall.
“Don’t,” Scythe warned, pressing on his throat harder when Cord raised his fists.
He had to know for sure. He gathered his power again, and began to peel open Cord. Was there anything redeemable there?
Unable to resist the force that bound him, Cord sucked in a noisy breath and held it unconsciously. The room silently watched and waited while two statues faced each other across the infinite distance of a few inches. With his power, Scythe wiped away the space between them and stood in Cord’s place. He looked, not at what Cord had done, but at what he was. When he had his answer, Scythe released his mind and focused on the face in front of him.
Cord’s breath burst out of him, “Sh...holy sh..”
Scythe interrupted him, “You are dead. If not today, then sometime soon. You can choose, if you like, to stay dead, or you can give yourself and the rest of your life to me. What do you choose?”
Cord choked out, “What? How did you do that?” Scythe could see that he was still trying to figure out what was happening. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time for that. Behind him, Temper had heard and had followed him into the cell.
“What are you doing?” She asked, her voice pitched low and serious.
Scythe kept his eyes on Cord’s. The man frowned, “My life…”
“Mine. Yours ended when the door opened.” They both knew that if Scythe had wanted it, Cord would already be dead. “Actually, it ended days ago when the Blood Dragon gave the order.”
The eyes across from him grew wide and Scythe nodded. There was no doubt what an order like that meant.
“You’re going to defy him?” She couldn’t, after all, believe it.
“Okay,” Cord agreed, after a stunned pause. They both knew he was lying, but Scythe had a plan for that. He narrowed his eyes and he let Cord see that he had no intention of letting the man break his promise, one way or another.
Cord swallowed fearfully and nodded. Then he pledged more formally, “My life is yours.”
Scythe stepped back, pushed Cord ahead of him and turned to Temper, bowing, “I thank you, for your many courtesies and the honor of your comradeship.”
“You’ll be killed. Your...your family…” She shook her head in disbelief.
“Please stand against the wall.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she moved aside and they strode to the door.
“Fare well,” she said.
“Fare well, Mistress Temper,” he said and nodded for Cord to close the door. They turned to Beholden, who still waited in the hall.
“Did you do her?” Cord asked, staring with his brows pinched at the woman.
“Yes. And no,” Scythe answered, putting his hands out. “I need to use these.” The woman placed the key to the cuffs on his palm.
Scythe stepped back and held out the key. “Take these off.” Cord quickly removed the cuffs. Scythe took them and put them on Cord, their crisp clicks echoing in the corridor.
“Hey! I may need…”
“No, you won’t.” He pocketed the key and said to Beholden. “Let’s go.”
She turned and led them down to the end of the hall, where Scythe motioned Cord to wait. The two of them turned the corner and walked to the heavy door that led out of the detention area. Scythe stood behind her, his hands in front of him but hidden by her body. She pushed the button and looked at the security camera above the door. The door opened almost immediately.
They stepped through the doorway. The guard at the desk said casually, his eyes on the paperwork in front of him, “It took you long enough.” When Cord followed them through the door, the guard’s head snapped up and he looked straight into the nose of Beholden’s gun.
“Step back and come around to this side.” Just behind him, Beholden’s heart began to pound in her chest. Scythe kept his eyes on the second guard, whose name tag clearly spelled out ‘Mureng.’ He moved forward, and maneuvered himself until he was in front of them all, facing back toward the door they had just come out of. Cord had taken Beholden’s arm and was gathering his power. “Let her go,” Scythe said very quietly, his pitch dipping dangerously. When Cord obeyed, he said, “You follow. That is all.” He waited until the man nodded, then he ushered Mureng into the detention area and closed the door.
He said to Beholden, “Surveillance room?”
She nodded and walked forward, down the hall, “He’s not like you.”
“No.”
“I think it might be a mistake.”
Cord spurted out, “Isn’t she…Don’t you have her controlled?”
“No.” Then he answered her, “You could be right.”
She nodded.
Cord asked, “Then...why? Is she a friend of yours?”
“Not really.” A few moments later, they passed two people, a guard and what looked like a counselor. Neither gave them a second glance. Calculating how long it would take them to reach the detention area and discover the missing guard, he said, “Let’s move.”
“It’s just down here.” She stopped in front of the door to another corridor, just as two guards were just coming through it. They nodded at Beholden and started to pass by, when one of them looked more closely at them. He stopped and his friend, who was ahead of him, paused as well.
“What’s this, Beholden, both halfbloods? Where you taking them?”
“Vid room.”
He frowned at the strange choice of destinations, at the same time noticing that Scythe’s hands were hidden by her body. “Why?” His eyes wandered to her empty holster.
“Oh, they’re escaping,” She explained.
Both guards hesitated a second too long before reaching for their weapons. Scythe rushed them, cracking the diligent one’s head hard on the wall on his way to the second man. He crashed into him, throwing him back against the wall, and knocked the half withdrawn gun out of his hand with a sharp downward strike. On the backswing, he cracked the man in the jaw and kneed him in the solar plexus. Scythe turned around while he fell and pointed the gun at the man who was hunched over and wobbly, his hand cradling his head.
“Move back to the door,” he commanded, bending down without turning or looking away and taking the gun from beside the gasping man on the floor. He said in a low but firm voice to the downed man, “Stay down or I will shoot you.”
The tall man, slightly disoriented, used the wall to guide him back the way he had come, following Beholden and Cord who were waiting on the other side. Scythe walked behind him, one gun trained on his chest, the other at his side. When he heard a shuffle behind him, he pointed his second weapon behind him at the man on the floor without looking. Four seconds he left it there to be clear, and when there was no other movement, he pointed it down again. Things were so much safer when people were sensible.
He followed the guard through the heavy door, shutting it behind him.
Beholden stopped at the fourth room on the right, which had a counter and a window next to it.
“Get out,” Scythe barked at the two men monitoring the videos in the small room. Seeing the gun pointed at one of theirs, they jumped up from their seats and scurried
out of the room with their hands up.
Beholden entered the room first with Cord, who went to the service window and yanked the metal door closed over it. Angling the hostage between himself and the two men, Scythe slid into the room, pulled the man in with him, and, before shutting the door, called, “I want to negotiate the exchange of this man and the woman for our freedom. Get me the judge from my case. He is the only one I trust to speak with. If you try to come in, I’ll kill him and the first one through immediately. Then, we’ll try again, with her.” He shut and locked the door.
“What the hell? Now we’re trapped here!” Cord yelled, looking around the windowless room.
Scythe pushed the man into the corner and Beholden went to stand there next to him.
“They’re never going to let us out of here alive. You know that, right?” Cord complained, moving closer when it looked like Scythe wouldn’t answer him.
Scythe said, his eyes scanning the monitors, “Your job is...what?”
Cord grit his teeth, “Follow.”
Scythe nodded, locating the correct storage device for the video data he wanted: the outside monitors. He pulled it out of its slot and tucked it in his jacket. Then he ripped off a piece of the metal casing from the side of the console and used the sharp edge to slice through the drywall.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” a voice muttered from behind them.
“You shut up!” Cord threatened the man.
Beholden answered calmly, “Why didn’t you, Pierch?”
“The gun.”
“Shut it!”
“Cord,” Scythe warned without turning when the man moved toward them. Cord returned to the wall, grumbling. Scythe pried out the rectangular piece of wall and tossed it on the ground. Then he started on the only slightly harder job of cutting a box in the exterior fiberboard and adobe.
“Just the gun?”
Halfblood Journey Page 53