character narrative: My Brother's Keeper, Part 2 Who: Viara Tremaine; Darek Tremaine (her twin brother, NPC), random pirates aboard The Siren's Call (NPCs) Where: The Docks of Denerim When: 9:37 Dragon, Funalis (All Soul's Day) Summary: The bond between twins is made before they are born; it's only fitting that it's severed on a Day for the Dead. Rating: A for Angst, S for very Sad, V for Violence (Overall: T)
Viara couldn't believe her ears. Nor her eyes.
She was crouched on top of a pile of crates on the deck of The Siren's Call. Stark shadows were cast over the deck - the fires of Funalis were lit even on the dingiest part of Denerim's docks, causing flickering in the air made all the more somber and dramatic due to the heavy, dense fog that had enveloped the dockside portion of the city. It happened often in Ferelden, which tended to have extremes of temperature - hot summers, cold winters, and autumns that wrestled between the two extremes. When the nights got longer, the surface of the land and especially of the water, warmed all summer long, evaporated that heated moisture into the cool nights. It was through the smoke, and the fog, and mostly through the veil of disbelief that the tiny woman stared now at the form of three men concealing themselves behind the tall, tipsy columns of stacked crates while they plotted. They looked like ghosts in the ether - spectres drawn forth on the Day of the Dead to kill her, and drag her with them into the never-ending hole of the Fade.
"I'm telling you both, I know her routines now. How she wakes, how she sleeps. When she goes to take a piss. I could do it easy-like, and no one would know 'til I held her high."
Viara quaked in place, closing her eyes against the cold unfurling that took place in her stomach with every syllable that her twin spoke.
Darek.
The two pirates he was with growled their disbelief, but her brother's face remained completely confident. The smooth tan lines of his jaw melded in the moist air to the upwards tick of his lips, the straight line of his patrician nose, the flash of his brown eyes - they appeared like black holes to her in the darkest part of the night.
"I'm sick of 'er as you are, lieutenan' - but ye can't jus-"
"I can." Darek interjected smoothly, his well-accented voice a clear delineation between himself and the other two pirates. She and Darek had never taken to dropping their consonants nor speaking in too much vernacular - maybe because they spoke to each other, or more likely because Isabela also did not speak in such a way, but instead made sure to keep her voice calm and clear -- an easy line that distinguished her as a Captain as much as anything she did from day-to-day. "In fact, it is the best way to go about it. Quickly. Quietly. Without alerting the crew. Without anyone having time to warn her or position themselves to come out on top, no matter the winner. Easier to root out anyone who might oppose my taking over this delightful little boat."
"Ain' no one gonna be impressed what you kill the Cap'n in 'er sleep."
"Well, they should be. Who wouldn't want that in a Captain? Subtlety. Isabela is all excess. Surely you know that. She spends her money like water. I am a thinker, gentleman. I will make you ten times the money she does with her brash fighting and her sudden attacks, her poor planning. Spending money as if it were water. That is the past. She is getting old. I am the future. I am in my prime. And a man."
Viara felt sick to her stomach. She silently wretched upon hearing the words flow from Darek's mouth like silk - honey and cream, poured down the gullets of idiots who knew only how to follow. He'd wormed his way into Isabela's bed months ago - Isabela was smart, very smart, but she was also a creature of passion and impulse. Darek was too ambitious, and Isabela had known it. But it hadn't prevented her from opening her door and her legs to a snake in the grass. To hear her twin speak so about the woman in power was devastating to Viara. She was practically the first mate now - certainly the first lieutenant, with her brother directly beneath her in the chain of boat command. When he spoke about the boat's future as being with men... he had to know that he was cutting her legs out from under her.
And he was talking about killing Isa. Isabela, the woman who'd saved their lives. Who'd taught Viara everything useful that she'd known in her adult life. Who'd taken them both beneath her wing in separate ways, who had laughed and cried with them, and been a far sight better of a mother than the woman who'd given them birth. She felt herself shaking on top of the crate. It couldn't be possible.
"I could do it now, boys. Slip into her bed, slip between her legs, slip a knife along her throat. Clean as you please, men. And you...and you..."
The vague figure in the fog, taller and broader than the other two, made a sweeping gesture to the pirates.
"You will be number one and two in the new regime. All I need is for you to watch my back while I'm in there. What do you say? No time like the present for men of fortune, aye?"
The pirates grumbled their assent, one making a comment of 'sure you ain't gonna miss that cun-', - the crude thought wasn't finished in Vi's mind; she heard herself make a keening sound of despair and anger before she actually felt her vocal cords reverberate with the cry. She jumped - pitched herself forward into the fog. The drop was ten feet or so, but the small woman landed easily on her legs and crouched to absorb the impact of the fall.
She stood, slowly. Viara felt hopelessly small; tiny, insignificant in the face of the men who stared at her now as if she were some pest to be brushed aside. That included the look from her twin, who curled up one corner of his mouth in near-disgust as he observed her. The expression shot to her gut worse than any punch, and Viara gathered her anger - her rage, her disbelief, her fear and her horror. She curled them into her fists as she grabbed Darek's billowy tunic at the level of his chest, shaking him fiercely as she could. "Darek, what in the name of the Maker are you doing?" When had it come to this? When did he become this...thing? This man. This...pirate.
He seemed to move not at all under the weight and push of her muscles. Instead, he continued to stare, his voice containing a malicious chuckle that dripped with distaste and annoyance.
"Well. Viara. Going to tattle to Isa, are you?"
Viara gasped and reared back away from him, lifting her fists away from his tunic as though she'd just dipped her skin in acid.
"...What?"
"Come on, little sister." He threw the old endearment in her face, mocking her with the moniker. "You know how this story goes. It's either her, or it's me."
"Darek, you're mad. You'll never get away with it, you know that. There are too many loyals on board, too many... variables! You underestimate her, too. You'll be killed either way, mark my words. Please, D..." The speech tumbled forth from Vi, choked and forced from her throat. He had to see it was madness. The crew was large, and though there had been discontent in the past few months, the vast majority were cleanly loyal to Isabela. There were very few pirates, let alone pirate Captains, who had had as long and successful a run as she was able to manufacture time and time again. Methods didn't matter - results did. That was one of the many lessons she'd learned from the dark-eyed Isabela - the mixture of friend and mother she'd found in the least likely of places.
Her affection for both him and the Captain was plain on her face - she knew Darek saw it when his jaw straightened. He'd seemed almost ready to break, but of a sudden his face was like stone, his eyes black in the mist.
His hand was in her hair before she could think - she hissed and twisted in her brother's grip, before Darek gathered his strength and threw his much smaller twin beyond the piling of crates and out onto the main expanse of the quarter deck. She landed sprawled, her scalp tingling painfully where he'd gripped at her head. As she looked up, it seemed nearly half of the crew was staring at her in a mixture of confusion, disbelief, and amusement.
Viara scrambled to her feet, the mist thick enough to swirl about all of her limbs as she made every movement, seeming to add an eerie meaning to each small motion through the air.
"So that's how it's to be, then." His voice carried well through the fog, loving every moment of his time with the sudden audience as he sauntered out, hands in the pockets of his loose trousers, his shirt seeming to billow even without wind. Darek was exceptionally handsome, but there was a cruelty to him in the past year or so that seemed to twist his features into a mockery of beauty - he was cold and distant, not having the live vitality of a sensual creature.
"I didn't say anything!" She backed up a few paces, hating herself for it. Pirates slowly closed in a ring; the scraping sound of masculine whispers carried through the fog and seemed to coalesce in her ears - like the humming of insects.
"Ah, little sister, but you were going to. Run right up to Isa, tell her lies about me, when clearly you are the one who would gain most from her demise."
The lies were out of his mouth with a completely even tone; a quiet whisper that he was able to somehow pitch with the gravity of absolute truth. Vi's blood ran cold with it; he was an extremely good liar. Had she been hearing it without knowledge of the truth for herself, she would have believed every syllable. The insect-buzzing in her ears grew louder and started to mix with dogs growling, the sound of metal sliding against leather as the crew pulled their blades.
"You- you liar! You are the one who-!"
"I heard every word, don't attempt to deny it, Vi. You were going to wait until she got up in the middle of the night, slit her throat, show the body to the crew - they could join you or die. A poor plan, little sister, lacking in flair. Don't you see how cowardly you are?" Darek's voice started to raise now, drawing out every word. One arm came up smoothly to cut through the fog as he emphasized each word, pronouncing it slowly for the crowd. His face dripped malice and hurt, even betrayal - but his eyes, they were calculating coals, lit with the inner fire of hatred.
Directed solely at her.
Viara felt her fists clench at her side. Her heart seemed to break over and over - her pain was a tangible burn that was eating at her middle. She had no lungs, no gut, no organs; they were being burned through. Anger. Shame at his actions. Fear for her life. The emotions churned powerfully in her tiny body, and she felt it shake in the suddenly cold-feeling fog.
"I would never kill the Captain!"
"Pah! We've all seen you, Viara. Hanging on her every word, learning what you could. Fawning over her like she was the second coming of Andraste herself. I knew it for what it was. Not love, not loyalty. Ambition." Darek spat the word as if it were foul-tasting, his tongue moving cruelly between his lips. As if ambition were not in every pirate that ever lived. As if it were not how their entire world moved. As if it did not come from the very depths of his own soul. "And now, not only do you plan to kill Isabela, but you call me a liar too, and would say it was my plan." He laughed, once, drawing his rapier smoothly from his side before Viara could think. It was not a normal pirate weapon - only he, Isabela, and Viara herself tended to use the short, thin sword. The weapon of a duelist - they'd both learned from the master herself. "I love Isabela. I would fight to the death for her!"
A grunting, echoing chorus of male assent rose around Viara's ears. Without thinking, her own sword was out. Her arm was flashing steel against the man who was once the brother she loved. Tears swam, her voice choked in rage as she shakily lifted the weapon. "You go too far, brother."
"Do I? I propose a duel, sister mine. You and me. Here. Now. The winner is granted the virtue of truth, the loser...well, we all know what happens to mutinous liars on board the Call." Amidst the growling of assent and the noise of cutlasses tapping on the deck of the boat, Darek looked at Viara carefully, measured. Without warning, he took a few harsh steps forward, boots clicking on the deck of the ship. His voice pitched low, his words ringing loud and clear as his black eyes bored into the soft brown orbs of his twin sister.
"You are either with us, Viara, or against us. Fight me or walk away from it."
Choose me or lose me. The words that he really meant whispered in Viara's soul. Her world spun and then stood still as he stared. She lost sight of all else - the fog, the men, the boat on which they stood. The Funalis fires faded, the stars extinguished. Viara stood with her twin in a void, each staring at the other. She saw his face, the well-loved lines. She knew it like the back of her hand; better than her own features. There was a tiny scar at the corner of his mouth where he'd fish-hooked himself on a branch when they were about seven. They had laughed about it for hours after it healed up; about the comical way that his mouth had gotten wider. He'd gotten tan; his hair had darkened with age, whereas her had gotten golden sun-drenched highlights. He was beautiful and, in that moment, absolutely frightening. The face she loved seemed to change before her eyes, twisting into that of a stranger. She didn't know those eyes - coals with no inner light. She didn't know that self-confident smirk - once it had had a warmth, a teasing quality. Now, it held only contempt for everyone around him. She didn't know the arm holding the sword that he'd brandished at her only moments before, and she certainly didn't know that tense silhouette.
This man, whoever he was...he was not her brother. The realization was not harsh nor painful. She felt part of her insides suddenly recede - her lungs tightened, as if one no longer worked. Her heart tripped sporadically and then regained a beat, slower than what it had been. It resounded a dirge instead of a panicking staccato; it mourned the death of Darek, the twin she would love forever. The light that had once surrounded his face in her mind went out.
I have no brother. Not anymore.
"I can't let you do it." She heard the words before she felt her lips say them.
The face before her stilled; broke - hate, fear, remorse, pain, and decision flashed in a blink Darek raised his right arm and with all his might slammed the hilt of his sword towards the crown of Viara's skull, a short, harsh cry of rage escaping him.
She saw the move a moment too late - she couldn't avoid the full force of it, but she was able to dart to one side; the blow hit the hard, rounded part of her shoulder. The nerves that trod the path from that limb up the side of her neck exploded with pain and she knew she must have cried out, falling down to one knee even as she knew she had to move. Vi decided to fall and roll to one side, working on instinct and adrenaline. She couldn't see him - she could only hear his boots as he came up behind her. Viara herself wasn't wearing shoes; she never did on the boat, a habit Darek had not taken up. Such a simple thing probably saved her life in the moment; it allowed her to anticipate a kick to her back and Viara was just able to squirm away.
Get up. Get. UP.
Her body took over, urging her to move. Darek had height and strength on her, but Viara was always fast. The mist swirled between their bodies as she sat up quickly on her knees, lifting her sword to block a sweep that was aimed to the side of her ribs. The metal-on-metal clang reverberated in her mind. He'd...actually taken the first move. Had that cut connected, it would have buried in her lung. Bitter vile rose in her throat at the realization - two tears that had been swimming fell, one hot on each cheek. The crew was slowly gathering and closing in, yelling obscenities as the twins dueled, but she heard nearly none of it. Her hatred and anger was focused on him, the man who wore her brother's skin so well.
Shaking, she pushed back on the blow, taking the opportunity to jump from her knees to her feet fluidly with a flex of her thighs. He gave her no quarter, attacking with a series of quick advancing thrusts; a remise - an endless assault. He was making small sounds with the moves - they were like whining growls, muttered beneath his breath. He was in a rage, a fury. Viara set herself to parrying. His blows were heavy and sloppy, but relentless. It was all she could do to flick her wrist one way or another in anticipation of the maneuvers.
Suddenly, her back hit squarely against the main mast, nearly knocking out her wind. Vi's eyes widened and Darek's narrowed; he jumped forward, flinging himself at her with his sword arm extended, meaning to strike and then propel past her. She couldn't back away, and so she rolled to the other side of the mast. For a brief moment, his back was exposed to her. She took the chance to plant her foot squarely at the small of his back; combined with his forward motion, it made him stumble to a knee. Vi felt her breath coming in ragged bursts of hot air - she was shaking, and had an unnatural strength surging through her limbs. She kept kicking, somehow watching everything from her own mind, as if she were both looking down on the scene and living within it. Her bare foot connected with the muscle over his kidneys - without a boot, the blows didn't do much, but she felt she had to keep attacking, press every advantage.
Her sword arm kept raising and lowering, disobeying her commands to strike as her heart burned.
Darek lashed out with a sloppy cut, twisting around to one side and heaving the sword after in a wide, clear arc aimed at Viara's knees - she easily jumped over it, but it gave him time to find his feet and advance again, flashing quarte moves, continually attacking with overtop strikes designed to make her raise her sword arm and expose her torso. To prevent the quick downward feint and then upward stroke towards her heart that she was sure he intended, Viara had to continually back up across the widest part of the quarter deck; she made him lunge at her, extending himself - forced exertion. Both of them were panting wildly with emotion. She took a deep breath and then spun to the side, but Darek caught the motion and stuck out his leg.
He tripped her. Viara fell hard forward, forced to put out an arm to catch her from hitting her head. He kicked her, just as she had, except Darek's booted foot connected hard with Viara's kidney, and she groaned with the deep pain. He kicked again, and again, calling obscenities into the thick fog. Vi heard herself whimper, and desperately tried to roll out of the way, flailing her legs. She heard him muffle a curse and the onslaught of his boot ceased in the moment. Vi forced herself back to her knees, her back screaming with pain, muscles clenching tightly.
As if from the Fade, she saw the jumping form of her brother. He was in the air, eyes locked on her exposed torso. It was a foolhardy move; full of arrogance and perhaps desperation. He looked like some sort of reaper to her, hell-bent on rending her in half.
She'd always been faster than him, however. Her sword arm reacted as it had been trained to do for years, lifting up to point the tip of her rapier, aiming it between his ribs. She heard herself scream, guttural and deep. It was the sound of her heart dying - of suffering, grieving for years lost within the tight contraction of a second. He was going to, literally, fall on her sword.
Except something happened. She didn't know what - if her mind corrected the sword, or her arm betrayed her; if some vestige of her soul still found the face of her brother in the murderer leaping at her from above. All she processed was her sword tilting upwards - just a few degrees, but enough to make the difference between life and death. Up and up it went, until she saw the tip of the steel, glistening with orbs of moisture, slice into Darek's left eye. It didn't sink in but rather scraped across the hard bone inside the socket, as though she were scooping out the gelatinous mass within to be served up in a bowl. White and red goop dripped out from the hole in his head and Viara felt her mouth slacken, her sword drooping to her side at the sight of what she had done.
Darek screamed his agony, free hand coming up over the bubbling blood in the socket. The thick red of it oozed between his fingers as he fell to his knees with the pain. Somehow he found his voice, cursing out a refrain. "You bitch! Bitch!! Look what you did you filthy-!" On and on it went, an endless diatribe of hate and misery.
Viara choked, somehow rising on shaking knees to stare down at the screaming husk of her brother. The crew, at some point, had stopped their jeering. There was dead silence in the fog. Her heart seemed to beat in time with the pulsing of blood between Darek's squeezed fingers.
Vi dropped her sword, the sound loud and cold, echoing her triumph. First blood was spilled. She had won.
"Listen to me, Darek Tremaine. You were going to kill Captain Isabela of The Siren's Call, along with those two men." Without looking, Viara pointed at his co-conspirators in the crowd. Her voice was dead and perfectly calm, belying everything she felt inside. Her organs churned; she was operating on the last spurts of adrenaline. The men of the crew immediately seized the ones she pointed out, and she gave an order in the same flat tone. "They will be questioned; if they do not confess, they will be submitted to punishment as set out by the charter of this crew. You are stripped of your title and shall immediately leave this vessel. If I see you again, I will kill you. Mark my words; they are the last I speak to you."
Vi took a breath and suddenly could stand there over his quivering body not a moment longer. She needed to scream. She needed to cry. She needed to die. Without ado, she turned crisply on her heel and started to take heavy steps back onto the boat, not even aware of her destination - only knowing she needed to get away from the dozens of eyes boring holes into her from head to toe.
Someone took in breath. Hard. She heard the sharp inhalation crisp and clean, as though the sound had been amplified a thousand times over.
It was the last thing she was aware of other than Darek's gurgling scream, and the twisting, sucking pressure of a knife being buried to the hilt, square between her shoulder blades.
~*~
It would be nigh on a week before she was aware of anything again; and then it was only pain and delirium. Darek had taken a hidden dirk and leapt at her as her back was turned. Her life had been spared by the slimmest of margins - less than an inch, probably owed to her short height. He'd had to strike down at a hard angle, and the tip of the blade had slipped too low to strike her heart cleanly. She had bouts of paralysis in her arms and legs that eventually cleared, and shooting pain in her limbs and torso that lasted for months. She gathered details when she could from the various healers that visited. Eventually, she healed entirely - she still had full motion, and she could feel over most of her skin, only now and again feeling dull tingles on the inner edge of her right arm to remind her of the betrayal of her twin.