InsaneJournal

aleatoricist (aeotha, leironuoth)
He knew this hill. It was just south of Trone, close to the water, and riddled with wild wheat that no one bothered to harvest. He recalled lying here, on his back, looking up at the stars and imagining an adventure at each one. A beautiful girl awaited him there, and swords, and derring-do. He would snatch a kiss and doff his cap, and he would be the king of those distant places. He would roam however he saw fit. His people would love him, for he would be just. A child's fancy was never captured so perfectly as it was in his own mind. That he could no longer picture an adult self having adventures such as those spoke more to his mood than his general state of childish wonder. He'd been stabbed by a lady with whom he believed he'd fallen in love. Now that love, much like these childish fantasies he only just recalled, seemed to be fading away. His adult self was cradling someone else when he checked. It was a vicious sort of thing. Not one that Skandra imagined ever felt good. To see all of your protective fantasies, all the small things that guarded your fragile heart, evaporating before your eyes.

Things made even less sense than they used to.

"I could bring her back."

Skandra's head rolled to one side. His toothy grin led the way, followed by eyes too bright for the evening, impossibly blue against the orange and purple and black of the sun's death throes. She had dark hair. Where his eyes were bright, full of life, she had only darkness in hers. A sort of emptiness that still seemed to shine with wit. And terror. Terror promised and delivered. He wondered which was worse, then. That he could not imagine anyone looking into her eyes without weeping. Or that he managed the trick, with that grin fixed on his face, as though nothing in the world was wrong. She'd been stalking his sleep. Now she'd come to have things out, as it were. One final attempt. She'd not said it, but that was the impression he received from her. One last attempt before she gave up on him altogether.

"Is that what you promised her?" Skandra asked quietly. "Love lost?"

"Not lost, but found," the sinister beauty had such full lips, and they too promised pleasure and pain. "I follow a design, Skandra, but that design does not say that you must be alone."

"We'd live in Ashara, I suppose," Skandra turned his head again - there was a touch of laughter in his voice. "I would tend the land and she would fix the soldiers that passed through. Charm them with that smile of hers and scold them for failing to write their lady loves. When the hills were taken, I'd go off to war again, the general who served reluctantly. She would clutch my hands in hers and beg me to come home alive. It would be a near thing, but I'd manage, and my boy would be up to my waist when I returned. Does that sound about right?"

She didn't answer. Perhaps because there was no answer. She could tell from the silent, mocking smile on his face that Skandra believed not one word of what he was saying. She could tell that this play would not work, just as the others had not worked. So it became a last chance for true. They were done discussing the possibility of his conversion. Now they were on to something else, entirely unpleasant. The robes that draped so fine and sleek against every inch of her curves shifted when she did. Impatient to begin. Wondering if she could best him inside his own mind. There was a time when that thought might have frightened him. But he was showing all of his teeth in that smile of his, and Skandra had never felt more at home than he did now.

She was losing, and she knew it.

"Children strike out in this way, not adults," she sounded bitter. "I would give you up, to see you accept the truth. Yet I see now truth is not in your nature."

"I like the truth," Skandra returned lazily. "I'd never settle for something else. You're not talking about truth, though, you're talking about fate. I believe you mean to destroy this place. I just don't think it's your destiny. I think the actions I take, the opposition I make, affect the outcome of this particular quarrel."

"I used to find this adorable?" she asked herself, in exasperation; now she was sitting up. "I found such dim-witted musings to be full of charm? Listen to yourself! You are saying the force that made everything possible - the force that created us - is incapable of determining what we can and cannot do! Do you realize how ridiculous the very thought is?"

"I didn't say he was incapable," Skandra laughed gently. "I just said that isn't what's happening. Besides, aren't you always telling me how it's your plan? This is all your design, and your purpose? You've accounted for all possibilities - if that's true, why are you trying to bargain with me? Why do you come to me and offer me an illusion, knowing I don't believe in that sort of thing? If you know what I'm going to do next-"

She made a vexed sound. Her elbow dug into the earth, flung dirt onto his face. Skandra laughed again as he scrubbed with the back of one hand. She accused him of being a child, but she behaved as one herself. He couldn't believe she was remotely close to having the strength she claimed. Every argument seemed superfluous. Every notion that escaped her mouth seemed-

"You feel it," her lips were at his ear. "You sense it in every step you take. As though there are eyes on you. As though you're being nudged in one direction or the other. That you are just now aware of it does not mean it has just begun. Your whole life, lived as a puppet on strings, accepting what was given to you without question. You see the world as it is, as it has always been to you, never knowing that an entire universe of lives and deaths was just beyond your grasp."

"You're talking about the other worlds you've destroyed?" Skandra's smile had faded.

"No, no. I'm talking about the control that you willingly surrendered. If it were possible to save your wife - or your mother - why didn't you do it? Your sister? Elemmire?"

Skandra swung his arm viciously across his body as he rolled. The knife in his fist was a wisp of smoke. She was gone, gone away, and he was left staring at the sun through high stalks of wheat. At nothing. At everything. He could see Guyther, with his traitorous thoughts. He could see Elemmire, hugging her knees to her chest, weeping. Skandra knew why he'd tried to kill the black-eyed woman so quickly. If she was right, and there was a fate for every creature - including himself - then nothing he did would make a damned bit of difference. If he was right - if his actions determined outcomes - then he'd failed because he wasn't strong enough, or intelligent enough, to save a life. How was he to save an entire world? For that was what they'd discussed, at the end. The fate not of a woman or a city. A world hung in the balance.

There were Aeotha's eyes, pale and distant, staring at him as though he'd gone mad. Skandra tried to picture how he looked. His coat and hood hung on the bars of his cell. His shirt was clean, he was well-bandaged, and the wound was healing nicely. Yet his hair was unkempt and long, wild as the man himself. Trousers and boots were scuffed. He must have been a sight to see. He'd need a new coat. Elemmire had stabbed him through the one which hung in his cell. Skandra hummed a few bars of Her Father Taught Her How To Throw, and tried to think of Elemmire in the yellow dress, flinging knives at him with abandon. Each stab of pain in his chest reminded him of who he was facing, here, and probably why as well.

Leironuoth was there, but not stern, as though he'd already decided this and something else was eating away at him. The hard wood bench, just outside the iron, was far enough away that a prisoner could not seize his questioner. Skandra remained on his cot, then. His legs stretched out. His boot heels rested on the cobbled stone, and his shoulders leaned against it, and his head was tilted down. He studied Aeotha with sleepless, bloodshot eyes. Despite all of the dreaming he'd managed to do, he'd not felt rested since the square.

"I'm glad you're all right," Skandra finally smiled, even if his voice was rough. "And that I am, too. Come on. We have a lot to talk about, but first thing is to-"

Skandra was halfway off the cot before he realized that neither Aeotha nor Leironuoth had moved. It was rushing in, a terrible sound of wind between his ears, memories and thoughts colliding until he fully understood the present. Elemmire turning against him, trying to kill Fiaethe. Elemmire turning against Aeotha. Elemmire stabbing Skandra and fleeing with a black, malevolent entity. The Drow in the square. Skandra's new weaponry. He hadn't seen Aeotha since he'd gone off to Ceranarad. He hadn't seen Leironuoth since he'd returned. A great deal had happened since then, and not all of it was so easily explained away. Skandra sank back onto the cot, and his arms folded against his chest.

"Question time first," he acknowledged with a wider grin.