Adestria - The Odyssey

I groaned inwardly as I saw with dismay that I still had Prey and Parish to go to before I could collapse in my room. I wasn't tired, not sleepy at least, but I was worn out. My headache was worse than ever, my body felt shaky and weak. My Shift felt as though it had shredded whatever part of me it resided in, and my mood was so dark I wouldn't have been surprised if I killed Parish or his brother half on purpose during our session. I hoped beyond hope that Ailech wouldn't try to pick a fight with me, wouldn't try to anger me as we walked to the gym. I didn't like the feeling of not trusting myself, but I didn't right then.

Ember was waiting outside the gym's doors and I had to try and soften the glower from my face as we approached. It wasn't for her, it wasn't for anyone really.

"H-how did it go?"

She stammered as she spoke, and I almost couldn't tell her question had been directed at me, since she kept her eyes on the ground.

"Lovely."

My voice sounded about as dark as I felt, and I saw her neck begin to flush.

"You missed seeing the great Mask whimper on the floor like a puppy. It was priceless."

I wanted to cave Ailech's head into the pillar next to him as he spoke, but even his ridicule sounded half-hearted. He hadn't enjoyed Cordelia's lesson anymore than I had. After the third trial I had woken to find him by my side, my hand in his. He said he was checking my pulse, but his eyes had still held a shadow of concern in them, even though he knew I was fine and finished with the lesson.

"Um, Abby wants to see you. The brother's can't meet tonight anyway. He said they're 'grounded for a stunt they pulled'."

Ember's voice was hard to hear as she still refused to pull her face up from staring at my shoes, but I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn't have to train anymore that day. The brother's would have demolished me anyway, with how weak I felt. Unless I just said 'screw it' and Shifted, I doubted I could have blocked even half of their hits in my current state. Ailech would have had a lot of my bruises to train Ember with if Prey and Parish's mischief hadn't been so well-timed. I turned towards Abby's office without acknowledging Ember's message, too fed up to even feign good manners. Ailech stayed back with Ember, apparently not feeling the need to join me.

Abby's office was warm, as usual, a fire roaring under the mantle across from his large desk. He had tried to bring up 'Mr. Darke' as usual, and I had shut him down as usual, and then there was silence, as usual. This was one of the rare meetings in which Ailech wasn't with me though and I didn't want to waste the opportunity to ask about him, along with some other subjects in which I felt deserving of answers.

"You could have at least told me what you meant by 'tolerance'."

My voice sounded more sour than I had meant, but my feelings were still fresh. I didn't dislike Cordelia like I did Grayson, but I certainly didn't have fond feelings for her either. She scared me, and I hated to admit that.

"Would you have gone if I had told you what I meant?"

"Yes, and thank you for the vouch of my bravery."

Abby watched me with his watery, pale blue eyes as if I hadn't spoken for a minute, ignoring my sarcastic tone as well.

"Telling someone they're being sent to a torture session and having them prance there is more a vouch for lunacy than bravery, dear child."

"Gee, thanks for the vouch of my mental state too then."

He leaned back in his chair and shook his head before speaking to himself in a low voice.

"Sometimes you are as difficult to talk with as your Pair."

I sighed before leaning forward, feeling slightly at fault for my attitude.

"All I mean is that I would have gone no matter what you had scheduled for me and it would be nice if you gave me a little information occasionally. I'm here to learn and I'm not afraid of getting hurt. I'm quite used to it actually. Besides, there's a certain beauty in it, an elegance to pain, a draw, wouldn't you say, for my kind at least?"

I spoke quietly by the end, wondering if I only saw it that way because I craved the dark and twisted of the world. Or maybe because I thought I deserved it. When Abby replied, his voice was sad.

"Oh, my dear, you are far too similar to him. It will destroy you."

"It hasn't destroyed him." I answered too quickly, not thinking before I spoke.

Abby stared back, his eyes now matching his voice.

"Hasn't it?"

I didn't like it when Abby used little tricks like that to make me think differently, to make me take my pair's side without meaning to. Usually the old Mage defended Gabriel's every action, so when he didn't, I jumped into the vacancy without realizing it. Or maybe I was just so used to arguing with Abby that when he took up my stance I automatically took up his. I felt like I should bring up all the reasons he wasn't destroyed. All the examples of him being good, doing good, but I caught myself, reminding myself who I was about to defend. Instead I sat in silence. I almost considered getting up and leaving, but my curiosity got the better of me.

"You've got to know it's cruel, how you make Ailech live like he's some kind of porcelain doll. Training a kid, following me to my lessons like a therapy dog, doing absolutely nothing because you're worried he'll twist his ankle. What's his story anyways? Why is he so...difficult?"

"Why haven't you asked him about his own past? Why would you ask me?"

Abby always seemed to answer my questions with his own. It used to annoy me, now I expected it.

"Because we don't talk much, and usually when we do it results in him having a broken bone or black eye."

Abby let out a breath at that, his 'I'm disappointed in you' face settling onto his wrinkled features. He looked at me like that often, though usually he looked closer to crying than yelling. Maybe it was just how his eye color made him look, but he always seemed like he could begin a slow leaking cry whenever he wished it. Maybe I should have asked what was in his past, not Ailech's.

"Ailech has not always been how he is now. He came to us young and damaged and none of us expected him to become what he has, I didn't even expect him to survive to adulthood. I decided on this path for him because I thought it was the only way he would thrive. He is not as strong as he would have you believe, even now."

"He's strong enough to keep up with me. And I don't think it should be your choice what he can and can't do. He's an adult, a fairly intelligent one, I think he should be able to make his own decisions."

I had no idea why I was advocating for him, why I felt like he was being done a great disservice by how Abby cosseted him, but I didn't like seeing the same look in his eyes every morning. He always had a look of trouble on his face and he was constantly looking for a way to play one of his games. But beneath the glint it was easy to see his dissatisfaction with life, with the system he had been brought up in.

"Just because you think you know, does not mean you actually do, child. I believe you are simply trying to deal with this perceived external wrong so you don't have to look inward at the wrongs you yourself are still holding to."

Abby's voice was soft, gentle, despite his words. This was about the time I usually got up and left, when I knew he was trying to circle back to my Clan, my past, but today I felt like fighting, like arguing, so I made the mistake of staying in his office.

"These are completely different issues. You're coddling a man who hates his life because you're afraid he might get battered around a bit if you let him out into the real world. And you're trying to somehow compare that to me hating someone who betrayed me, left me and tore up every little last bit of trust and happiness and family I had? Really, explain that connection to me?"

I was glad Ailech wasn't there, sure he would have said some snide remark that would make me want to break his nose.

"I'm not comparing the issues, Miss Kay, I'm saying you are deflecting your own emotions into a different situation. You are fighting for Ailech because you don't want to have to deal with your own short comings, your own battles. You know as well as I do that you have no logical reason to hate James. You know you don't hate him because he's a Half, you know you don't hate him because you believe that he is evil and always has been. You know the real reason you are angry with him is because he left you, because he lied to you. He didn't trust you with his secret and that hurt you. He didn't stay by your side when the rest of your Clan left and that hurt you. You don't hate him, you've been hurt by him, but anger and injury are not the same emotion."

I stayed silent, my second mistake, as Abby took that as consent for him to continue talking at me.

"I know you would have preferred to have known the truth about him, about his father, but do you really think he would have never told you? Never entrusted you with his secret? He confided in you in other ways I imagine, if he had not, I can't believe you would have been so shocked by his deception. He must have told you things that no one else knew, that his Clan didn't know, and yet you doubt he would have told you this eventually? You only had a short time with him. It's amazing he opened to you at all. Beyond amazing, if you asked for my opinion."

Abby held his hand up to halt me as my mouth opened, though I didn't even know what I had wanted to say. He continued in his soft voice.

"But let's view the other side of the coin, even if he never planned to tell you, if he wished for no soul to ever know of his greatest shame in life, could you fault him? He grew up in a way in which you cannot even fathom. You told me you knew of his childhood, so you must know the torments he went through as a boy, a child. He saw more evil in his youth than most hardened criminals ever do. He was forced to do more evil than most can even imagine, and it was all normal to him, expected, he didn't even know it was evil because he didn't know the converse existed. He was so deeply conditioned, so groomed, the evil he did was merely play to him."

His voice held a note of anger now, something so rare I almost couldn't peg it. It was deeply embedded, hidden, but the calm he usually radiated was fully absent from the room, a chill replacing it. As if his mood could change the very air.

"Trust is not something he was ever taught. Quite the opposite actually, a good lie was rewarded. Being skilled at deceiving others was desirable, not transparency. I don't believe he had a single relationship in his childhood that didn't end in deceit and lies or betrayal. He never had a friend, never felt love or knew the good that life could hold. He never saw honesty as anything more than a weak point, a target, an emotion to be manipulated."

I wanted to silence him, to make him stop telling me of all the things my Pair had been through. I already knew, but I couldn't make myself interrupt him. Abby's anger had quickly melted as he spoke until his watery blue eyes looked more and more like they would spill over, and when he continued I understood why.

"Even myself, even I betrayed him in the end. I left him to his father. I left a child to suffer horrendous acts alone because I thought I had to do something else, be somewhere else. I should have saved him, but I thought this was more important, more important than the life of a child."

Abby motioned to the room around him, telling me he had left the Darkes to further his own vision of a safe haven for his kind, for the Vault.

"Even before I knew who James would one day become, I felt guilt for what I had done, for leaving that poor child to a being of pure evil. But I thought this was the greater good. I told myself I couldn't have saved him anyway, that he was already so broken and used that he was lost. That it didn't matter what I did because he was already damned, too twisted and damaged to ever be anything but a monster. But he wasn't. God knows he should have been. Even Heaven couldn't have blamed him if he had become exactly what his father tried so hard to carve him into, but he didn't. He spent years fighting back and finally...he became a man, someone with a soul, a heart.

I watched it happen, I kept track of him as best I could. You cannot imagine my joy at learning he was with a Clan, leading a Clan, and a great one at that, one of the best I've ever been witness to. And you cannot imagine my sorrow when that fell apart, when he lost the only thing he had ever had, ever loved. When he lost the thing that had both shown him love and taught him how to."

Abby stared at me now, his fingers interlaced tightly on the desk, turning white from his grasp.

"You can say he has no heart, and if you are right I never want to know it, because I will always believe in that boy. I will always forgive him, always care for him, and always help him, because I didn't when I should have and he became a good man despite that, despite me."

He appeared to be done talking, and I hated the feeling climbing my throat, the tightness, as if tears were just waiting for me to give them permission. Abby had tears on his cheeks, but I was used to seeing him cry, he had a soft heart, he felt things deeply. Today had just been too much, too hard, every part of me was weak and I suddenly wished I hadn't come to see Abby, hadn't been called for a meeting. I was saved from having to speak as a knock resounded through the room and Ailech's muffled voice followed.

"Hey Miss Mask, you okay in there? I was expecting you to storm out a solid ten minutes ago."

I quickly left Abby's office, trying to avoid his eyes as I went. Ailech met me in the hallway with a particularly devious look on his face.

"Is he breaking you down yet? Making you feel again? Don't get me wrong, I love my little mute, mannequin friend, but I guess it would be alright with me if you were a real person, not just look like one."

I ignored him as we walked down one of the labyrinth hallways, still trying to wrap my mind around how I felt.

"Dear lord, don't sulk, Mors, it makes you look weak. So what, your boyfriend hasn't come for you yet, is that it? You want him around so when you wake up screaming in the middle of the night he's the one that comes running, not me?"

I felt my Shift roll in its cage again, wanting so badly to make Ailech pay for his words, to make someone pay for the hell of a day I had had. But I'd promised Abby on my second day to never use my Shift unless I was alone, training, or in my room or anywhere, as long as I was alone.

I hated that Ailech knew my buttons so well. I had only been around him for a week and yet he already knew my triggers. Weakness, Gabriel, my nightmares. I wanted to punch the smug look off his face. Instead, I tripped him, timing it as he stepped so he fell face first into the corner we were passing. He muttered a quick word and his nose stopped its crimson drip as I bit back a grin.

"You're kind of a dick, you know?"