Fate

Luck

Love…

Trust?

Fuck them all.

I don’t need luck and I’ve always sworn I’d make my own fate so what in all hell has me sitting here staring out at the waves in the middle of the night?   How have I let myself get to this point?  How have I fallen this far?  Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago I was mocking others for this very thing?

I feel… guilty.

As if I have any reason to feel guilty over this.  I’m not the one who couldn’t keep her hands to herself.  I’m not the one who didn’t know what she had until it was gone.  And yet they nag at me, assailing my ears, my mind, my heart and it never ends!  It never fucking ends.

Of course they pity him.  Maybe if they’d learned to keep their damn skirts in place, they’d be able to look at this a bit more logically.

Logic…

Hah.   That’s as likely to sink in around this bloody city as I am to board this ship leaving port right now and head to Perran.

I may have lost all trust, but I haven’t lost my fucking mind and I don’t intend to throw away everything I’ve worked for.

I make my own fate.  Decide my own destiny.  And I do not wish to taste my death again.  After all, I already know what it will be.

So until then, I’ll leave the sea alone.

(The page is streaked with a coppery hue, darker in some places than others.  No efforts have been made to clean it, and at the bottom of the page, a rough outline of a feather has been inked; a mere doodle in the extra space on the page.)

I am who I am.

I have gone back.

Leave it to him of all people to remind me that I… I am far more primal than my polished facade lets on.  Is this why I have felt so despondent of late?  So willing to bury myself in the pettiness of things?

Poor Martha… but no,  she should know to keep a respectful distance, by now… I am a predator and she displays her weaknesses too readily.  It is far, far too easy to watch her bleed… oh no, not really.  Even now  I am not quite that far gone, but she cowers and falters with every scornful look, every derisive comment and it satisfies me so.

Perhaps when the whiskey is gone, I’ll pity her.  Perhaps.
No.  She should have known better than to try and push her way into my world, my territory without invitation.  The day was there when I tried to befriend her, but she had to take what was not hers.  Has she learned, yet?  I doubt it.  She will and she’s not the only one.  Oh no.  The others… simpering, stupid little girls that think they can push their way into my life, take my place?  They will learn too… it would be wise if they learned from her, but they will not, will they?

A pity.

But it ought to be fun.

Tonight, something broke free when those words sunk in.  I don’t remember… what brought me out or how long I was out but when I focused…  How long has it been, since I’ve been in the fields, up to my waist in corpses and covered head to toe in blood?

I cannot recall the last time I felt so alive, so determined, so… at peace.
Raven; angel of death…

I have returned… with or without Her, I know my place in this world once more.

If only my beloved were still here.

(There’s little on this page but a crimson stain where wine has spilt across the page and been carelessly blotted up. Whatever had been written has dissolved away, save for a single statement that appears to have been written in a very heavy hand, and underscored twice.)

…if he’s going to fuck around behind my back, I’ll damned well screw him over…

The waves roiled.  The sea tossed and churned, building up a froth that would have made any brewer proud, and it was dark.  The water, darker than the sky overhead, reflected the blood moon with an eerie glow that made everything about seem disproportionately shadowed.

She clung to the railing of the ship, ragged skirt whipping about skinny, bare legs with her long, dark hair in wet, storm-ravaged strands that clung to her face just as tightly.   Her  face was pale – deathly so – and her lips parted in a scream that could not be heard over nature’s roar as she hung above the waves, scrambling for a foothold, for a way to pull herself back up.

She had been pushed.  Or had she?  A child is no match for the storms of Darkfall, after all.  An icy plank would be all it took… had she fallen?

The laughter echoed, behind her, giving answer to her question and fueling her desperate bid for survival.

Cold, cruel and haunting, it carried over the waves and buffeted the child,  causing her to scream again and again; all without sound, without hope, without help.  It wasn’t the sea, it wasn’t the storm, it was him.  This she knew intimately. His mark was left deep within her core and yet she could have never pointed him out in a crowd,  never given him name.  It was only… Him.

Her feet found security on the wooden planks and she fell to her knees, sobbing.

The cold touch of a blade caused her to shiver, to leap to her feet with the speed of a hunted deer and spin.  He wasn’t there.  A shadow flickered further down the deck.  It wasn’t him.  From overhead?  No… the side… everywhere, and nowhere, this creature made her life a living nightmare and the ship’s promises of wealth untold for a sneaky little minx, became suddenly a cage from which escape may never come.

She pushed away from the rail and ran, as fast as her legs, weak with hunger, would carry her.  She fell and a splinter of wood gouged a path across her ankle, leaving a  spotted and sporadic trail of blood – more than enough for a true predator to follow.  She ran anyway, poor child, knowing little better, knowing little else, and the laughter continued to ring in her ears, to fill her thoughts, until she was certain nothing, nothing could ever free her from his touch again.

Down the gangplank.  Off the ship.  Freedom!  Salt and sand stung her bleeding leg, but nothing would stop her now.

Through the streets and into the stench and filth of the slums she ran with the instincts of a frighten child.  She ran straight for the arms of a mother who, though destitute, loved her.  She ran home to the open arms that would embrace her, to the  soft caring voice that would chase away the fear.  The warmth of a fire, the secure haven of a well known place, even if it was only a hovel, even if there would be no meal.
But he had already been there.

Sprawled across the floor, cut and broken, pale beyond anything natural, lay the only person who had ever loved her.  She stared, stricken and threw herself onto the bloodless doll, the thing that had once been her mother.

Tears fell, as salty as the sea that had nearly claimed her earlier that morning.

A soundless scream rose to her lips.

And behind her, the laughter echoed.

A  name makes it all seem so much more real.

Liam.

It’s a sweet name, but having it makes me long to see the face it should have belonged to, the chubby fingers…  What is happening to me?  I had thought it so far out of mind… but it was not, was it?  He was not, and now he is back and I ache — not like I ached then.  No this is new.  Deeper and far far more painful, and brought on by the sorrow in the Baron’s smile.  Doesn’t he see that it’s better this way?  A bastard child born to a noble’s mistress… by the time he had returned he would have been unable to salvage the child’s name.

But now I understand why I was so… motivated.

The children’s home will be finished much faster now.  I’m sure of it.

Until then, as always, time to bury myself in my work.  The rest of the godsdamned world can just wait.

Oh that’s putting it mildly.

It feels like some sort of cosmic prank, bringing back the dead and thrusting them back into my life.  It isn’t the first time.  No… the third.  But this one…

The Baron has always had a place in my heart that I… denied.  I denied him because of the Rogue, because of Aanson and it turns out that he is the one to prove true?

Dammit, why?  Why?  Everything was falling into place.  Everything.  Goals were being met, bridges made, I would have had myself secure and now I’m… I’m turning to these pages like a silly girl .

I’m so confused.  Love.  What a word to bring up at a time like this.  Is that what it is? (Gods above, listen to me.  Do I love him? Why am I asking such things?  Petty.  Beneath me to even worry about…)  And yet tonight… that  meeting in the baths should not have happened.  Hell all I need is to find out a month from now that I’m pregnant AGAIN.  I… I don’t think I’d put it past him to use that to snare me all over again.

He’s changed so much.  He’s not the same man.  He’s… he’s something better, if that’s possible and dammit, yes I love him.  There.  I said it.  I love him and by the Gods I want so desperately to hate him.  One reason… anything.  Anything that I can cling to to prove that he’ll be no different…

The mage will probably never forgive me if he finds out I’m feeling this way.  But then again, he’ll probably just go fuck that new pet of his and magic her up a bit to make me jealous.   Faithfulness has hardly been our way.

It’s so much easier that way.

Haunts of the past revisit now and then, reminding me of what I’ve lost.  It happens.  Everyone has them.  They are what shape us into who we will be, after all.

Never have I been so torn though, between past and present, fact and fiction, reality and dream.

Consequences be damned, and that’s all I have to say on the matter.  If it was folly to look my past in the eyes and smile, to give in to the moment with abandon and just remember what it was like to live that life, then so be it.  I was foolish.

When I woke, the moment had faded into the past once more, as I had expected and I will go on with my life.  I have no expectations that what was past will ever be again.

I may have been foolish for a moment, but I am no fool.

It seems like only yesterday I felt this way… when Marcus was torn away.  My brother, my partner, my dearest friend gone and that quickly.  It wasn’t that long ago, at all, that I relived those memories, swearing in my rage revenge over a year old but tonight… I felt it again.  That tearing.

My hunter.  Gone and gone so… quickly.  How?  Where?  Why?  Perhaps I’ll never know.  I will miss him, terribly.   May he find his peace in Her arms now, instead.

But now I know why I did not feel the same way when the Rogue died.  He did not.

He sounded the same as ever, too.  Carefree, entirely pleased and as roguish as ever he was.

It is good to know he lives, still.  Though right now I feel as if I could kill him myself for leaving like that, we both knew from the start that he would not stay forever.

I do wonder, though…

Did he miss me?

The waters of the lake are always so calm, so clear.  I remember now why I used to come out here, so often.  The peace settles my mind, the voices fade away to nothing and then it’s just me.  Me, and my thoughts.

And my thoughts tonight were strange.  Very, very strange.    The twisted path that has been my life has continued on, winding through the shadows and yet, at some point I lost track of it all.  

For months… months! I have been far too absorbed in trade.  Buying, selling, soiling my hands with this desire to keep things running the way they had been.  Disgusting.   The Raven is no common shopkeep.   Not that I begrudge myself the luxuries purchased with that coin, by any means. 

No. 

But she is not who I am.  That was made far too clear to me the other night.

When outrages that once would have brought cold vengeance are left unpunished and the perpetrators are made bold enough to brag of their feats to me, then I know that it has been too long, and I have been made a fool.

Rogue, how I need you sometimes.  You would never have allowed me to become so lax.   Always, I was driven with you.

And yet, without him, I have found another.  My conscience.  There are times I cling to him… I do not think he realizes, truly, how much I need his wisdom and his… utter disinterest in dirtying his hands, to maintain any sort of hold on myself.  Where would I be now, without him?  I still cannot believe I made him that promise… He has gotten so far under my skin.  Perhaps deeper even than my rogue had, though I swore never to allow such weakness again.

And my hunter… ahhh  yes.   So primal.  So full of life and yet, outwardly so very calm in even the harshest of circumstances.  Everything in me screams with questions about such loyalty so easily given.  Can it be real?

There is nothing to suggest it is not.

Perhaps with these two, I will reclaim my path and my place in the minds of the citizens of the city.  Perhaps now that the terror of the monsters has died down, it is time for the truth of things to be revealed.

May She be ever pleased. 

(A small flourish ends this entry, resembling an inkblot that has been shaped into a small, rather blurred rust-hued rose.)

Darkfall is three days in, as I write this, and I cannot remember a time when my own thoughts have been darker.  Perhaps I ought to shift my birthday.  It seems petty to celebrate in the spring, now.

Petty.  Yes.  

I sit here writing about my own little miseries.  

The Baron is gone – my hopes for a title of my own with him.  What other noble in the city would?

But that is petty.

I’m starting to think the entire city is founded on pettiness.

When a man can speak of brutal torture and murder offhandedly, and expect no retaliation and when justifiable vengeance for that murder is denied — why?  Oh yes, right.  Heresy.

Petty.  

It will crumble around their ears and then they will see for themselves.

Once it’s too late.

I can almost understand why some would give in to the urge to paint the city with blood.  Almost.

I would not have minded seeing the Wraith bathed in it last night.

But then they would have called on me to heal them, once they had purged their pettiness in this way.

I suppose it is good that they did not, for I would not have, would I?

No.  After all, I am petty too.