Thread Closed
She climbed up the mooring line like an over-sized rat. Virara was never one to do things the easy way. Perhaps she wasn't as far from their kin as one might be led to expect. The four-legged crawl suited her well. She'd left Leanne to her own devices with the Revenge. Understanding what Hat Lady wanted from its crew was beyond her capability, or care. When she was called upon to act, she did it. There was no reason for Virara to follow her onto that ship, nor raise any questions about what happened there, or what Leanne meant to do. There was a different obligation to settle. Somehow the time passed slipped through her mind like a faulty sieve. Virara found herself upon the Tumult's deck, a faint air of disorientation entering her impassive features, as if reconsidering her choice to come aboard, or to speak to that man. Her expression was far nearer to seasick than all the time spent upon the ships, the rocking of the boat particularly insufferable during the time they were underway to meet the Garleans cannon to cannon.Â
Slaeglac wasn't hard to find. There was a strangely respectful air on board the Tumult. People were approaching him like he was some kind of god. The battle of Gloam and its results, the pending treaty with Limsa - all of it was well-known to all on the island, and Slaeglac was, of late, being credited with the creation of it all, for none of it would have happened had he not taken the first step and gathered the crews together on the island.
If he was enjoying this, he didn't seem to show it. Indeed, he seemed bothered by it all, resting at the aft deck and watching the opening to Gloam's natural harbor, a point wedged between two rocky outcroppings on the island's western edges.
"Slay Man."Â
Virara spoke suddenly, though as is typical of her, it's easily drowned out by the slightest ambient noise.Â
"I am here."Â
An uncomfortable glance towards the harbor. She focused her eye on the water where the land and sea connected, searching for whatever invisible landmark Slaeglac occupied himself with.
"The island. Is it well?"
"Hm?"Â
He turned his head to the left, then had to cast it far, far down to see Virara.Â
"Oh. Aye, it's fine," he replied with a nod. "Word came from the Garleans. They've shut down the Dagon facility. Still pumpin' out enough fuel to keep us goin' and them powered, but otherwise all's well. We're right secure."Â
He wrinkled his nose. "Didn't think I'd live t'see it."
An eye like a glass bead looked back at him.
"Did you want to?"
"Don't know if I wanted to. Just thought it'd happen."Â
He lifted his captain's hat to scratch his head. The man was old, but for once he actually seemed to look and act his age.Â
"I was ready for it, tha's for sure. Whether by hangin' or battle."
She sat limply against the ship's gunwale, watching the man with an irregular focus. It wasn't unlike an inept student attempting to decipher a foreign language; the intensity with which she tried to absorb everything in front of her dwarfed her inability to comprehend.
"... Why did you offer yourself to the Maelstrom?"
Her words came slowly, as if questioning itself was alien. Why was she so curious?
"Was it to take responsibility? For the division?"
"Aye. Well, if it'd keep the Maelstrom happy then that'd be one thing."Â
He picked up his Sahagin-tooth necklace in one hand, running his thumb across a fang.Â
"That'd be responsibility, surely. More'n that, place can't be free if they're always looking over their shoulder t'see what ol' Captain Slaeglac would think've it."Â
He chuckled.Â
"Not even goin' to the treaty signin', you know. That'll be Goldyna's doing, an' rightly so. Be a good cap for her term as speaker."
She looked strangely exhausted. There had been relatively little fighting for her to do since going to that strange island, with its wrongly shaped trees and blue clouds, and yet the invisible vitality driving her forward seemed diminished. Her arms dangled limply at her sides.Â
"She is a normal woman. Not a captain. Not a fighter. Not like you. Can she do it? Protect this island."
"Everybody starts out that way, don't they?"Â
He thumbed to himself.Â
"Weren't as if I were brought up bein' a captain an' a turncoat. Was just a poor kid signed up to sail an' make some extra coin, an' from there it just grew. Same for a lot've these people. She's done fine here, so far. Pretty clear the people didn't pick 'er out've pity."
She tilted her head, a inky pigtail drifting incongruously alongside her blank face.
"And if the city turns upon your island again? What will you do? Will they rely upon you again?"
Her unblinking eye shut once.
"I can't understand. I want to understand. It's strange. Is it wrong for them to watch you? Learn from you?"
"Not wrong," he said, frowning and shifting from side to side, seeming to try and work his way through the pathways his thoughts were taking to shape them into something more concrete. "But I ain't always right. I was wrong about the Wound. Got people killed f'r that. An' I don't need people learnin' the wrong things from me on account've it. I wanted t'give 'em freedom, the real thing or as close as I c'd get it. Not Slaeglac's Island and associates."
"As for the city . . . they might. They might turn again. An' I'll step up again, if I'm here when it happens."
"So it's because you made mistakes. That's why you don't want them to learn from you?"
Virara brushed the side of her head with a small, round hand. Its grip was uneven, shaped oddly, like it was grasping something invisible in the air before tangling itself in her messy bangs.
"You want them to not rely upon you. But you don't want to leave them alone. These things are enemies..."
She peered up at him.
"How do you decide? You can't stand between them and Limsa without them behind you. Can you support them from the side?"
"I don't want them to treat me like some manner've god. That's how y'get more Admirals, y'know. Thinkin' 'One man did all this.' An' I didn't. It's not true. You an' yours saved us, but we all made choices. We voted not t'use Dagon, t'even come out here. But all those little smart decisions, they're just gonna - "Â
He made a puffing motion.Â
"Gone. All in'face of my own choices."
"Your flattering is unbecoming. I was of little use, with my meager skills."
Virara shook her head, hair flitting about.
"If it happened, it happened. It won't go away. I don't think it will. What you've given them. I don't understand how it would disappear."
The words struggled their way out of her closed throat with a raised volume much unlike her, but hardly enough to qualify as another's indoor voice.
"I don't know gods or admirals. But I know what it is to follow. Is following wrong?"
"Wrong enough when you follow 'em inta the wrong place. Ought to be damn sure of it here, clearly. Followin' is what makes folks like the Commodore get where they are - he's a bastard, they say, but at least he follows."
"So yeah, I don't want 'em following me. Not like that. I pointed a way. They can go that way or they can sod off an' do different fifty years down th'line."
"But I don't want 'em to follow just on account've it's me. I want 'em to follow on account've they think it's right for themselves."
Virara's lips tightened into a deeper, firmer frown. A spark of life coursed within her, small but fervent.
"I hate what if's. How can you make a decision to surrender them solely to make choices based off that?"
Her hands tightened around the hem of her beggarly coat, faded and stiff from the endless sun and salt of Vylbrand cool air.Â
"Are you not forsaking them?"
"Depends on who you ask, an' what that means. There's a fair few people who say I'd have forskaken them if I hung. Would y'say that?"
Virara lowered her chin in contemplation, mouth drawn taut with the effort.
"Master told me. In the old country, some nobles slit their bellies to assume responsibility for failure. Not being permitted to do that... It is unthinkable. But at the same time... I've never seen such a thing. Because I'm a stranger to her country, if not her ways."
A fugitive sigh made its escape.
"I believe a person can choose when they die. Until their body chooses for them. I'm unqualified to speak of how they'd feel. But I don't think they'd accept it. They would feel forsaken."
"Well, there you have it then. I'm not planning on forsaking them. If the Maelstrom still wanted m'head for the safety of the island, then yes, I'd do it. Small price. I said as much before an' I do so now. Â If it's not needed, then I'm going to settle in to the island an' enjoy the success, an' if pirates or Garleans come calling, then the Tumult'll sale out to meet 'em, an' I'll be at the helm."Â
He patted his chest, at least aware of that much.
"But I'm not in charge, is my point. I follow them, now on."
Virara paused, almost freezing in place as she attempted to decypher what he has said. Not for simple lack of comprehension, but rather as if the concept itself was impossible to truly grasp for her. She continued to observe it inside from every possible angle. No matter what pattern it took, Virara was unable to perceive the entirety of its form. Something fundamental was missing from her that keeps her from seeing anything but meaningless shapes.
"... You'll follow them? So you do not aim to die, then."
Her hand fell slack to her side, loosely gripped, fingers encased in worn leather.
"I see."
"If I'm followin' 'em, and they seem to be damned keen to keep me alive, seems the least I could do, wouldn't y'agree?"
Virara for the first time that day averted her gaze, following lines in the ship's wooden deck.
"I misunderstood you yet again. Forgive me."
Without warning, she rose to her knees and bowed her head against the wooden deck in a display laden with sullen obsequience.
"I came here to be your second. I see that is not necessary."
"Could've been."Â
He seemed familiar with the concept. Perhaps his travels had taken him to Doman waters in years past.Â
"If they'd asked it, it could've been. But there's ways t'take responsibility an' then there's ways, you see? I'll keep 'em safe. IF the Admiral wants me head for it, that's one way. If they want me at the ready to push back the Garleans, that's another." He gave her a curious look. "Why y'need a death like that, d'you think?"
"I-"
Her head jerked upward, a bit too hastily to be truly polite. It was all a gesture trained to the point of reflex, sincere but clumsy, the meaning behind it never truly settling in.
"But that man. Woman. Whoever they were. They denied you your chance to settle the matter with Limsa Lominsa. Did that not shame you?"
"Should it?"Â
He smoothed out the bald patches along his pate, mostly the product of scars rather than age. It left his hair a little on the wild side past his temples.Â
"I've me shames, no mistake. Shamed I trusted the Garleans an' didn't know I was damning the Wound in trustin' 'em. Shamed that I had -six- ships planned to come here, an' naught but three arrived, in the end. I thought I knew me people better. Shamed I could do naught but stand and pray while that Garlean beast sailed towards the island as the other ships fired 'pon it."
He lifted his eyes to the harbor.Â
"I'd be more shamed if I didn't work twice as hard to overcome 'em."
Virara could but digest his words. Another shame. Another form. Another method of assuming responsibility. The enormity of what he'd taken upon himself became visible in its entirety. The patterns merged together. It'd been, to her at least, a matter of thrusting people into a situation they were unequipped to handle without himself, something to apologize for; once settled, it was finished. Just another form of settling obligations, like so many Virara accounted for. Slaeglac could disappear like he'd wanted. There was far more to fret over than she'd ever recognized before. Did Virara have the capacity to feel that weight? Did such weight mean anything to -her-?
"That's what draws you back to them. You can't leave them alone, but neither can you let them follow you."
Virara nodded once.
"Twice I've misunderstood you. To judge you as incapable, before when you spoke of the Garleans to us. I regret my carelessness."
"I apologize."
He listened to her words with an increasingly incredulous look, and then, at last, he laughed. It was a powerful bellow, and for some reason the crew of the ship seemed heartened by it when it happened. Â An echo of the freest man on the sea.
"Well, I'm sorry I called y'daft. It's a Doman way of thinking, innit? Should've known better, meself. No harm done either way." He leaned to face Virara. "An' thank y' for wantin' to second, ifn' I did decide, that were the way."
She shook her head furiously, raising a hand to deny him in quiet modesty.
"Would that it were. I am foolish, my Master says. What is daft and what is not, I can hardly tell. It might be... that this land has something useful to teach me yet."
Virara leveled a calm, serious gaze at him. But it lacked the same everpresent bestial suspicion. The look she gave everyone, like they were either out to steal her food or beat her red was gone. It was only for a moment.
"The offer stands. It's your choice to accept or not."
She lowered her head in deep respect.
"My promises don't fade."
"Well, if it e'er comes to that. If my own hands have brought these people t'ruin, if they're cursin' and damnin' my name an' both they and Limsa alike want me head, I will send for ye. Is that fair?"
Virara bowed at the waist in that overly formal manner of hers.
"I understand."
Slaeglac wasn't hard to find. There was a strangely respectful air on board the Tumult. People were approaching him like he was some kind of god. The battle of Gloam and its results, the pending treaty with Limsa - all of it was well-known to all on the island, and Slaeglac was, of late, being credited with the creation of it all, for none of it would have happened had he not taken the first step and gathered the crews together on the island.
If he was enjoying this, he didn't seem to show it. Indeed, he seemed bothered by it all, resting at the aft deck and watching the opening to Gloam's natural harbor, a point wedged between two rocky outcroppings on the island's western edges.
"Slay Man."Â
Virara spoke suddenly, though as is typical of her, it's easily drowned out by the slightest ambient noise.Â
"I am here."Â
An uncomfortable glance towards the harbor. She focused her eye on the water where the land and sea connected, searching for whatever invisible landmark Slaeglac occupied himself with.
"The island. Is it well?"
"Hm?"Â
He turned his head to the left, then had to cast it far, far down to see Virara.Â
"Oh. Aye, it's fine," he replied with a nod. "Word came from the Garleans. They've shut down the Dagon facility. Still pumpin' out enough fuel to keep us goin' and them powered, but otherwise all's well. We're right secure."Â
He wrinkled his nose. "Didn't think I'd live t'see it."
An eye like a glass bead looked back at him.
"Did you want to?"
"Don't know if I wanted to. Just thought it'd happen."Â
He lifted his captain's hat to scratch his head. The man was old, but for once he actually seemed to look and act his age.Â
"I was ready for it, tha's for sure. Whether by hangin' or battle."
She sat limply against the ship's gunwale, watching the man with an irregular focus. It wasn't unlike an inept student attempting to decipher a foreign language; the intensity with which she tried to absorb everything in front of her dwarfed her inability to comprehend.
"... Why did you offer yourself to the Maelstrom?"
Her words came slowly, as if questioning itself was alien. Why was she so curious?
"Was it to take responsibility? For the division?"
"Aye. Well, if it'd keep the Maelstrom happy then that'd be one thing."Â
He picked up his Sahagin-tooth necklace in one hand, running his thumb across a fang.Â
"That'd be responsibility, surely. More'n that, place can't be free if they're always looking over their shoulder t'see what ol' Captain Slaeglac would think've it."Â
He chuckled.Â
"Not even goin' to the treaty signin', you know. That'll be Goldyna's doing, an' rightly so. Be a good cap for her term as speaker."
She looked strangely exhausted. There had been relatively little fighting for her to do since going to that strange island, with its wrongly shaped trees and blue clouds, and yet the invisible vitality driving her forward seemed diminished. Her arms dangled limply at her sides.Â
"She is a normal woman. Not a captain. Not a fighter. Not like you. Can she do it? Protect this island."
"Everybody starts out that way, don't they?"Â
He thumbed to himself.Â
"Weren't as if I were brought up bein' a captain an' a turncoat. Was just a poor kid signed up to sail an' make some extra coin, an' from there it just grew. Same for a lot've these people. She's done fine here, so far. Pretty clear the people didn't pick 'er out've pity."
She tilted her head, a inky pigtail drifting incongruously alongside her blank face.
"And if the city turns upon your island again? What will you do? Will they rely upon you again?"
Her unblinking eye shut once.
"I can't understand. I want to understand. It's strange. Is it wrong for them to watch you? Learn from you?"
"Not wrong," he said, frowning and shifting from side to side, seeming to try and work his way through the pathways his thoughts were taking to shape them into something more concrete. "But I ain't always right. I was wrong about the Wound. Got people killed f'r that. An' I don't need people learnin' the wrong things from me on account've it. I wanted t'give 'em freedom, the real thing or as close as I c'd get it. Not Slaeglac's Island and associates."
"As for the city . . . they might. They might turn again. An' I'll step up again, if I'm here when it happens."
"So it's because you made mistakes. That's why you don't want them to learn from you?"
Virara brushed the side of her head with a small, round hand. Its grip was uneven, shaped oddly, like it was grasping something invisible in the air before tangling itself in her messy bangs.
"You want them to not rely upon you. But you don't want to leave them alone. These things are enemies..."
She peered up at him.
"How do you decide? You can't stand between them and Limsa without them behind you. Can you support them from the side?"
"I don't want them to treat me like some manner've god. That's how y'get more Admirals, y'know. Thinkin' 'One man did all this.' An' I didn't. It's not true. You an' yours saved us, but we all made choices. We voted not t'use Dagon, t'even come out here. But all those little smart decisions, they're just gonna - "Â
He made a puffing motion.Â
"Gone. All in'face of my own choices."
"Your flattering is unbecoming. I was of little use, with my meager skills."
Virara shook her head, hair flitting about.
"If it happened, it happened. It won't go away. I don't think it will. What you've given them. I don't understand how it would disappear."
The words struggled their way out of her closed throat with a raised volume much unlike her, but hardly enough to qualify as another's indoor voice.
"I don't know gods or admirals. But I know what it is to follow. Is following wrong?"
"Wrong enough when you follow 'em inta the wrong place. Ought to be damn sure of it here, clearly. Followin' is what makes folks like the Commodore get where they are - he's a bastard, they say, but at least he follows."
"So yeah, I don't want 'em following me. Not like that. I pointed a way. They can go that way or they can sod off an' do different fifty years down th'line."
"But I don't want 'em to follow just on account've it's me. I want 'em to follow on account've they think it's right for themselves."
Virara's lips tightened into a deeper, firmer frown. A spark of life coursed within her, small but fervent.
"I hate what if's. How can you make a decision to surrender them solely to make choices based off that?"
Her hands tightened around the hem of her beggarly coat, faded and stiff from the endless sun and salt of Vylbrand cool air.Â
"Are you not forsaking them?"
"Depends on who you ask, an' what that means. There's a fair few people who say I'd have forskaken them if I hung. Would y'say that?"
Virara lowered her chin in contemplation, mouth drawn taut with the effort.
"Master told me. In the old country, some nobles slit their bellies to assume responsibility for failure. Not being permitted to do that... It is unthinkable. But at the same time... I've never seen such a thing. Because I'm a stranger to her country, if not her ways."
A fugitive sigh made its escape.
"I believe a person can choose when they die. Until their body chooses for them. I'm unqualified to speak of how they'd feel. But I don't think they'd accept it. They would feel forsaken."
"Well, there you have it then. I'm not planning on forsaking them. If the Maelstrom still wanted m'head for the safety of the island, then yes, I'd do it. Small price. I said as much before an' I do so now. Â If it's not needed, then I'm going to settle in to the island an' enjoy the success, an' if pirates or Garleans come calling, then the Tumult'll sale out to meet 'em, an' I'll be at the helm."Â
He patted his chest, at least aware of that much.
"But I'm not in charge, is my point. I follow them, now on."
Virara paused, almost freezing in place as she attempted to decypher what he has said. Not for simple lack of comprehension, but rather as if the concept itself was impossible to truly grasp for her. She continued to observe it inside from every possible angle. No matter what pattern it took, Virara was unable to perceive the entirety of its form. Something fundamental was missing from her that keeps her from seeing anything but meaningless shapes.
"... You'll follow them? So you do not aim to die, then."
Her hand fell slack to her side, loosely gripped, fingers encased in worn leather.
"I see."
"If I'm followin' 'em, and they seem to be damned keen to keep me alive, seems the least I could do, wouldn't y'agree?"
Virara for the first time that day averted her gaze, following lines in the ship's wooden deck.
"I misunderstood you yet again. Forgive me."
Without warning, she rose to her knees and bowed her head against the wooden deck in a display laden with sullen obsequience.
"I came here to be your second. I see that is not necessary."
"Could've been."Â
He seemed familiar with the concept. Perhaps his travels had taken him to Doman waters in years past.Â
"If they'd asked it, it could've been. But there's ways t'take responsibility an' then there's ways, you see? I'll keep 'em safe. IF the Admiral wants me head for it, that's one way. If they want me at the ready to push back the Garleans, that's another." He gave her a curious look. "Why y'need a death like that, d'you think?"
"I-"
Her head jerked upward, a bit too hastily to be truly polite. It was all a gesture trained to the point of reflex, sincere but clumsy, the meaning behind it never truly settling in.
"But that man. Woman. Whoever they were. They denied you your chance to settle the matter with Limsa Lominsa. Did that not shame you?"
"Should it?"Â
He smoothed out the bald patches along his pate, mostly the product of scars rather than age. It left his hair a little on the wild side past his temples.Â
"I've me shames, no mistake. Shamed I trusted the Garleans an' didn't know I was damning the Wound in trustin' 'em. Shamed that I had -six- ships planned to come here, an' naught but three arrived, in the end. I thought I knew me people better. Shamed I could do naught but stand and pray while that Garlean beast sailed towards the island as the other ships fired 'pon it."
He lifted his eyes to the harbor.Â
"I'd be more shamed if I didn't work twice as hard to overcome 'em."
Virara could but digest his words. Another shame. Another form. Another method of assuming responsibility. The enormity of what he'd taken upon himself became visible in its entirety. The patterns merged together. It'd been, to her at least, a matter of thrusting people into a situation they were unequipped to handle without himself, something to apologize for; once settled, it was finished. Just another form of settling obligations, like so many Virara accounted for. Slaeglac could disappear like he'd wanted. There was far more to fret over than she'd ever recognized before. Did Virara have the capacity to feel that weight? Did such weight mean anything to -her-?
"That's what draws you back to them. You can't leave them alone, but neither can you let them follow you."
Virara nodded once.
"Twice I've misunderstood you. To judge you as incapable, before when you spoke of the Garleans to us. I regret my carelessness."
"I apologize."
He listened to her words with an increasingly incredulous look, and then, at last, he laughed. It was a powerful bellow, and for some reason the crew of the ship seemed heartened by it when it happened. Â An echo of the freest man on the sea.
"Well, I'm sorry I called y'daft. It's a Doman way of thinking, innit? Should've known better, meself. No harm done either way." He leaned to face Virara. "An' thank y' for wantin' to second, ifn' I did decide, that were the way."
She shook her head furiously, raising a hand to deny him in quiet modesty.
"Would that it were. I am foolish, my Master says. What is daft and what is not, I can hardly tell. It might be... that this land has something useful to teach me yet."
Virara leveled a calm, serious gaze at him. But it lacked the same everpresent bestial suspicion. The look she gave everyone, like they were either out to steal her food or beat her red was gone. It was only for a moment.
"The offer stands. It's your choice to accept or not."
She lowered her head in deep respect.
"My promises don't fade."
"Well, if it e'er comes to that. If my own hands have brought these people t'ruin, if they're cursin' and damnin' my name an' both they and Limsa alike want me head, I will send for ye. Is that fair?"
Virara bowed at the waist in that overly formal manner of hers.
"I understand."
ã€Œè’¼æ°—ç ²ã€ã‚’使ã‚ã–ã‚‹ã‚’å¾—ãªã„!
AV by Kura-Ou
Wiki (Last updated 01/16)
My Balmung profile.
AV by Kura-Ou
Wiki (Last updated 01/16)
My Balmung profile.