Private when your trouble comes knocking

☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼

and you run from it then
now you can't escape

“Yes.”

She fixes him with a long, hard stare, her mismatched eyes narrowing fractionally. Acton is explosive, – a ticking time bomb, always ready to go off at the slightest whiff of flame – but Seraphina isn’t especially frightened of him, especially not like this. “You say that you love your nation,” She says, then, her voice still low and quiet, “but you make no effort to fight for it. It does not cease to be your nation just because you’re angry with your leaders.” Seraphina has seen tyrannical rulers; worse, perhaps, she has lived under one, a little girl fed to a war machine driven by a bloated and monstrous gilded king. She has lived with the legacy of a tyrant, with the reputation of cruelty and corruption – one that Denocte now desperately wishes to shed. She knows enough of Denocte’s Regime to know that they are not Zolin, and she knows enough of the situation to know that it was a deadly misstep on their part – a black stain on their reputation, and perhaps a prelude to more vile things, but nothing compared to the tyranny that her people had suffered for years. “I’ve never taken you for someone who lacks conviction, Acton.” She’d taken him for many things – rash, naïve, self-righteous, an angry youth with something to prove. But never lacking in conviction, or the rage to go through with it.

She listens to him speak, then, without further comment; as he continues, however, and speaks of dragons and freedom and choice her expression seems to glaze over and harden, and her eyes narrow fractionally. Finally, she pauses, and she tilts her head at him, just as he moves to leave. “What everyone wants? All actions are a choice?” There is something cold and bitter in her tone, the soft chill of winter. “I see that you misunderstood my comment,” She says, and her voice is a low, low hiss. “I make choices, but my loyalty to Solterra is something manufactured. I can’t choose anything else. Nothing else matters to me, and nothing else ever will. Not my life, not the lives of individuals, not even the will of the gods themselves - for me, there is only Day.” This is said with a cold, hard conviction, and a slight raise of her chin – enough to make the collar catch in the flame of the torches that border them on either side. Perhaps he did not know what she was, or perhaps he did, but she knows that he doesn’t understand what it means. The Solterrans that stared her down like a passing ghost, or an object of pity, or a monster – none of them knew what it meant. None of that mattered, though. She knows herself, and she knows what she has become, and she knows what she will be - she knows, and they don’t need to. “I know what a tyrant looks like, Acton. I know a tyrant who collared children, tortured them and drugged them and warped their minds and their memories with magic and stuffed nationalism down their throats until they could no longer fight back or feel anything but mindless devotion to their cause and sent them off to fight his war. I know a tyrant who starved his people to death in the streets, who slaughtered entire families for minor insults, who enslaved anyone who caught his eye. And I know how easy it is to fall into line and hope that someone else will fix his mistakes or to run away from them.” Her eyes come to linger on him, cold and impassive. Oh, she made choices, but they weren’t constrained by the passions and the conflicts that plagued so many leaders – and did that really make her better? Knowing the reason why, could she ever say that it was better? No. The noble thing was to be torn and to make the right choice, not to have so little free will remaining that choice was an obstacle at all.

“You are a Crow; you have always known how your King loves, and you have always known how his heart flickers like a flame. You aided him in attacking Lysander, you followed him when he provoked the Queen of another nation, and now you are startled by his actions? All of those decisions endangered Denocte, even if they caused no direct harm to any of your people.” In her eyes are the judge, the jury, and the executioner – and they find his with something like disappointment. Reichenbach’s reckless behavior was nothing new; all that had changed was those that were hurt by it. “Leaders will always be fallible, and they will always make poor choices, and people will always suffer for them...if their decisions are truly unforgivable, there are far worse things in this world than dragons.” But none of the Denoctions were willing to be Avdotya; none of them would slip in like thieves in the night and drive a spear through his chest, and none of them would fight the dragons. (But, then, Seraphina was a woman who tangled with the possibility of Sandwyrms and Teryrs on the daily.) They claimed that Denocte’s Regime would not listen, but she wondered how loudly they had really been screaming – all that their silence and rage told her was that they hadn’t suffered enough. “You had a choice to make, and you have made it. Perhaps it was the right one, and it saved those that you care for. Perhaps it wasn’t. Drink yourself to death, if you wish – but it won’t change a thing, and, when you wake up in the morning, you’ll feel exactly the same.” With that, she turns, tossing him a glance over her shoulder. “Have a lovely evening, Acton.”

With that, she’s gone – a shadow of silver in the crowd.

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tags | @Acton
notes | wtf is this post