M
ost, if not everyone, realizes at some point they are not who they were meant to become. Something, somewhere, went awry. A decision wrought unforeseen consequences. The truth carries itself away, a leaf down a stream, a fish flashing briefly in the turbulent current. Somewhere, the path becomes overgrown; the brambles thicken, the way no longer clear and easy. We fall to the wayside; we fall astray. We lose who we were meant to become, brief and flitting and bright as dust motes in the sun. This truth pierces Boudika as deftly as a blade.
I do know a man named Tenebrae.
The words should not be enough, but they are, to solidify the suspicion Boudika has founded on nothing aside from a glimpse flitting across Tenebrae’s face. You do not deserve to look at me, she had spat.
No. Instead, Boudika became the base of any woman in the world: chestnuts, grays, blacks. Tenebrae’s face only twisted when she became as gold and bright as the sun, as innocence, as light on water.
Is it you, Elena?
The other woman?
Once, it would have been enough for Boudika to pity her. Once, it would have been enough to evoke anything other than this apathetic, dull numbness.
No, Boudika thinks.
This was not who she was meant to become.
She closes her eyes; the cool air makes her feel light, nearly baseless. She could become anything other than woman, if she wanted. A tigress or a wolf or an eagle or a fish. Anything, to not feel like this. Elena is speaking; the shores of Terrastella; Night Court; words that mean nothing. Nothing. It is her voice. It is the way she says Tenebrae, the way she says his name. The way she hardens to Boudika's presence; the way she changes the subject, begins to assault her with words, questions that could quickly become accusations.
Those are not the reasons Boudika is here.
She opens her eyes. They are not cold.
They are nothing. As placid as glass. As serene as still water.
“Did you know?”
She does not care about politics. She has hardly been Denocte’s Champion of Community for years; since Amaroq; since the sea took her. No. Is that not one of the many brambled paths? Is that not where she was once led astray? Boudika’s soul is clamoring; it rises tumultuous within her, a thousand shapes, a hundred possibilities: all of them say run, run, run. Somehow, she remains steadfast. Somehow, she remains calm. The sea is there, behind her; somehow, that resolves her.
There is no pride to Boudika when she asks, her voice at first steady and then quivering, “Was it worth it?”
When she asks, she does not know if she is asking Elena or herself.
“There is no one who will ever mean as much to me as you do.” Vercingtorix’s voice was soft. It surprised her from her idle dozing; she had thought he had been asleep. It was one of the first days after he had regained consciousness from his fall; he was still hospitalized. It jarred Boudika awake. Her attention snapped to him.
In that moment, she almost told him. Sometimes, she wished she had; it might have spared her the pain of falling for him more deeply, more irrevocably.
Torix’s voice broke when he added, “You are so much more than my companion.”
He would never admit his love; they were brother’s in arms; comrades in the most intimate sense of the words. They had shed blood together; they had saved each other in all the ways men could.
That was before he started the innumerable affairs; that was before Cillian. That was before she told him the truth about the Old Magic, about her father, about her lie.
Boudika had not known what to say. Eventually she confessed, “I know.” Because there was nothing else to acknowledge.
Now:
I know it wasn’t.
Now:
Nothing about this was worth it.
Boudika feels embarrassment; she feels foolish, to have thought it had meant anything at all. She remembers the cavern by the sea. She remembers the way he had always returned to her. But perhaps it was only because she was some untamable beast, an unclimbable mountain, an unconquerable sea. Were men not drawn to such conquests, such feats of daring and power?
Standing across from Elena, she begins to draw comparisons: how Elena is soft where she is hard, how she is light where Boudika is dark, how she is gold and bright and beautiful where Boudika is scarred and masculine and worn. She looks gentle.
It is not easy for her to forget Tenebrae’s heartfelt confession, his desperation when he had said, I would not leave the Order for her.
But it does not matter. Because Boudika, and all that she is, was not enough to fill him. She was not enough to bring him happiness, or assurance, or—
And she knows she can go on with all of the things she was not enough of.
Her mouth is dry when she says, “I am on the shore because all the shores of Novus belong more to me than to you.”
That, at least, she can say.
That, at least, is true.
A hunger—an envious, volatile hunger—begins to grow in her. She recognizes it for what it is: bitterness, anger, regret. Just because she recognizes does not mean she will stop it.
“Do you ever think,” Vercingtorix began, earnestly. It was one of the few times he glanced at her with such raw expression. “Well… do you ever think, we can be more than those who raised us?”
She had laughed; young and joyful and invincible, the whole world was whatever she wanted to make it. “Of course,” she had said. “Of course, we will be. We have each other. We will make sure of it.”
Boudika’s father was the loneliest man she had ever known. He did not share sentiment; he did not confess love; he died alone, with few to grieve him.
When she dies, she thinks, no one will grieve her.
It makes standing across from Elena all the more unbearable. But rather than want to crack, to break, to scream, to shout—
She only wants to burn. She only wants to consume. To make the whole world feel this raw hurt, feel this burden of wasted potential, of not being enough.
“What could Terrastella’s Champion of Community have to do with one of Caligo’s sacred monks?” Boudika’s voice is sand, salt, storm. Boudika is every bitter whip of wind stinging against her face; Boudika is every ship ever sunk in the sea. Her tail lashes and her lips draw back nastily from her teeth. The expression is a mockery of a smile, sharp-edged, predatory. “What duty could she have had, I wonder.”
Then, that cruelness breaks. Boudika asks, rawly: "Did you know? About me?"
Time, time. It's time.
The business of Troy has long been done.
Achilles in lreuke has come home.
And soon you too will be alone.
