Part Four: The Colossus
It just wouldn't shut up...
After all the sounds of battle had faded, it remained, a mewling and squealing that had seemed soft at first, especially when compared to gunfire and the battle roars of grown men and orcs half again their size. But now it was quiet, and the screams seemed to fill Theon's head with stabbing knives that were also searing hot to the touch. The latter part could have simply been the sand sea, and the heat of the day. They had gone too far in this week, but they'd had to. It was that or take on organized patrols of King's men, and Theon the bandit leader wasn't fond of attacking targets with that kind of firepower, and so little reward. They were in the desert for the sole purpose of hunting bands like Theon's, and there was nothing to gain by confronting them.
His men could hardly thank him for it now, though. They didn't see the soldiers, like he did, with the powers he was born with. They'd simply had to take his word for it, and push further into the blistering heat of the desert because he told them to. They'd only gone a few hours when Theon alerted them to the next closest threat: a small group of orcs, heading their way. They were far fewer than the soldiers, and by the looks of them, not as experienced in bloodshed as others of their kind. Rather than go further into the desert to avoid them, too, they chose to take them head on.
A poorly prepared band of orcs was still a notable threat, and they managed to hack apart a few of Theon's bandits before they were brought down. The scryer himself had participated in little of the fighting, as the others had worked up a thirst for blood by then, and charged out ahead. He was left with only the remains of the battle, most notable of them a small, writhing, screaming, slimy orcish infant. And here Theon thought human babies were ugly things. It produced twice as much drool and snot as any human child could in so short a period, and its voice was powerful, bawling its discontent. One of his bandits poked a spearpoint between the infant's legs to reveal that it was, in fact, a boy, as though that changed anything.
No matter how well Theon could see the future, it seemed one step ahead of him still, conspiring to ruin whatever plans he laid. Why one of his brutes could not have dealt with this during the fighting, he didn't know, but now that their leader arrived, the matter fell to him, and of course the judgment would fall on him as well. As if he hadn't had enough of that in the past few weeks. He was weak, their eyes said. This was what he thought he wanted, they said behind his back, but now that he was in the middle of it, it was clear that he didn't have the stones for it. It was a matter of time, now. The first had already broken and ran in the night, while Theon dreamed of days no less miserable, only a different kind. Others would soon follow if he failed to prove his worth, to prove his authority.
He swiped a single-barreled pistol from the nearest man beside him, aiming it down towards the sand as steadily as his shaking hand could. At least it would be quiet soon...
Theon hardly stirred when he woke, merely opening his eyes where he lay on his side. His hair was damp with sweat again, and he only moved to rise when a bead of it rolled down into the corner of his eye. He blinked in discomfort, sitting up and wiping at his face with a towel he kept beside his bed. He cracked open his door and peered outside, noting that it was early morning, not quite dawn yet. There was little noise other than the background rumbling of the ship's engines. There was a dull throbbing in his head, a residual effect of the damn forest still lingering. Sleep had helped it some, though the memory he'd slipped into probably made it a bit worse. He figured some air might be of use, and so he threw on the least sweat-stained shirt he could find and a loose pair of cloth pants, slipping out the door of his room.
He felt less and less afraid of falling over the side of the ship as they went, though he wondered if that was truly a good thing. It was too early to think about it, he decided, and he shuffled onto the main deck, ignoring anyone he came across, though almost all of them had learned by now that he was not the most pleasant man to make conversation to. He stopped at the bow, taking a seat when he came close enough to the edge. The wind helped cool him a little, and Theon pulled his knees halfway to his chest, letting his arms rest on them as he stared blankly at the gorgeous view of the horizon.
Sleeping schedules were skewed all around, it seemed like. Vivi sat high above perched in the crow's nest in true Vivian style-- nowhere near the relative safety of the mainmast, but rather dangerously dangling her legs off the edge. Thanks to the immense exhaustion she felt after leaving the forest behind, she fell into a deep sleep, and only woke up at a ridiculous hour in the morning, meaning that she was tired again sometime during the midday the next day, and that meant she woke up at an ungodly hour that day. Eventually, she'd have to force herself to stay awake long enough to retain an ordinary sleep schedule, lest she risk ending up like Captain Gwen and however the hell she managed to survive with her weird sleep arrangement.
On a positive note, that meant she was able to watch the suns rise as the Elysium skated upon the clouds. Waking up in the dead of the night gifted her with a lot of time to herself, time which she spent primarily thinking. And Vivi gradually began to understand how thinking wasn't the strongest of her attributes. Give her action, give her direction, give her any kind of activity to work towards and she was fine, but give her time to herself and she begins to scratch at things best left unscratched.
Of late, these... Sessions inevitably turned to Theon, where'd they been, what they'd done together, and always ended what he'd said to her. "You had no problem leaving me last time," and always she'd feel the same thing when her thoughts converged on that singular statement: Guilt. The anger she'd felt initially had given way and been engulfed by that very emotion. It was a strange feeling, and one she felt so rarely, she was never one taken by regret-- and even now she didn't feel regret, just guilty for leaving him as she did.
As fate would have it, upon pondering on these thoughts, the man himself emerged from the bowels of the ship, walking to and taking a seat by the bow. Then another foreign emotion weaseled its way into the fold. Apprehension. She wanted to speak to him, but then again she didn't. She was afraid of what else he might say. She didn't care what anyone else thought or said of her, but Theon was the lone exception. And that was why she couldn't sit stewing in her own thoughts any longer. They needed to talk, they needed to get clear the air, and they needed to reach an understanding for better or for worse. Since starting this quest for glory, neither had really talked about what happened.
But if they needed this, then why had neither approached the other? Why did she still sit instead of making her way to him? She was motionless for a time before her lip quivered and a steady stream of curses left her mouth. Standing, she let out a simple word, "Stubborn," before she made her way down. She too then crossed the deck, and came to stand in front of Theon. Without a word, she slipped to the deck herself, crossing her legs and interlocking her hands, looking to him. Her stare wasn't intense, nor was it accusatory it simply... Was. She didn't know how to begin.
Oh, this was going to make his headache much better. Theon expected some kind of immediate lashing, as his sister had been bristling and bothered ever since the skirmish with the warship in the sky. He supposed it was his stupid mouth that got him in trouble again, though honestly, he didn't know exactly what the next step here was supposed to be. Was there supposed to be an apology? If so, from who? Was it her, for leaving him in the desert with murderers and thieves, men who held him hostage as much as he pulled their strings? Or was it him, for letting her go, or not going with her, or not stopping her from coming along in the first place, or for lashing out at her days ago on the ship?
Theon spent a moment scratching at the side of his head, noting how it was a bit greasy, and he was overdue for a bath, but Vivi didn't speak, she just stared at him, obviously expecting him to go first. Always the leader, wasn't he? All the reward, and all the blame. He wondered which he would get this time. "The crew's not around anymore," he said quietly, referring to the one that had wandered the sand sea with them, not the one piloting Gwen's ship. "Some deserted... most died. Either way... gone." He looked up at her, though she was heavily shadowed by the light rising behind her. "In case you were curious." She had yet to ask, but now she didn't need to.
"Did you know that I didn't want you to come, when we first left Deluge?" he asked, thinking back. "I wanted you to find your own way out of there. Wasn't like I could tell you to stay, though. Couldn't preach freedom and then tell you what to do with your life." He would have explained it more clearly to her at the time, if only he'd known better. The life he'd been heading for... it was easy to get into, but it wasn't something you could simple leave. Especially not someone in his position.
"I had an idea," Vivi revealed. Theon wasn't so subtle as he thought if he believed that it escaped Vivi's notice. There was something in his tone, and his eyes back then. "But then again, I didn't really care," She said. "Now, did you know that without you, I would've have left a long time before?" There had been nothing there for either of them, but each other. Had Vivi the chance, she would've bolted at the first opportunity, but she wouldn't leave Theon in the hell that was their childhood. And for whatever had happened to the rest of their band, Vivi didn't particularly care. The only person that mattered to her back in those days was the one sitting across from her.
"Freedom's never so free," She added, rather aptly. "But I did what I did because I wanted to, and I wanted to follow you. Don't you dare try to cheapen it by thinking it's your fault," She bit off a bit more harshly than she intended. However, she refused to backpedal on her words, letting them instead hang in the air. They needed to get it all out into the open, they needed to put everything on the table and only then could they go from there. "We both know that there's nothing that you could've ever said that would've changed my mind then."
Leaning back on her forearms, a rarely seen thoughtful look crossed her face. She hated this talking part. There were words that she didn't know how to say, questions she was unable to form, and answers she was unsure she was able to give. She still didn't now how to begin, nor what to say, so she decided to do the usual Vivian thing. She cut through all that and asked a direct question. "Tell me what you really think."[color] She paused for a moment, letting the question sit for a second before speaking again, [color=#F87431]"None of this pussyfooting around, neither of us are good at it. How do you really feel about me leaving like I did?"
She never did care, he could see. She never cared about any of it, the only thing that ever mattered was staying with him, getting out of Deluge with him. She couldn't possibly respect the position he'd been in, could she? Without ever knowing what that was like? She was never the leader in that group, never responsible for any of them. All she ever did was follow along, until she decided it wasn't worth her time anymore.
"I wanted to go with you," he said. "Really, I did. But you didn't understand what you were doing. You never think about things first, you just do what your gut tells you to." He shook his head, feeling a frustration creeping up that was similar to the last argument they'd had, the one she was asking him to express his feelings on. The others thought of him as some brute, some unfeeling, callous asshole with no regard for the consequences of his actions. Every choice he'd made in his life he felt as though he'd been cornered into, left with no other options. Mostly because the pretty face in front of him was the one who didn't think before she acted.
"Maybe you didn't care about anything but me, but I did. They were mine." He prodded at his chest. "Yeah, they were the scum of the earth, but I was their leader. I brought them together, told them to shut up, get behind me, trust me, and get rich with me. Maybe that meant nothing to you, but I wasn't just going to drop everything and scatter them to the winds." It wouldn't have been so simple as that, either. They were in the middle of the desert, and Theon was their map, the only thing keeping them from aimlessly wandering until death found them. If he had tried to leave with her... it wouldn't have flown with them.
"And then, after you left..." he said, his gaze falling slightly. "Things started to fall apart. They started to doubt me, they questioned my strength. I couldn't even keep my sister in line, how could I have the stomach for when things got ugly? And they got ugly. You don't know... the things I had to do, the examples I had to make, just to prove to them that I was capable of leading the outfit..." In the end he felt more their prisoner than their leader. He led the scum of the earth, and became scum of the earth himself. It was a part of him now. The orcish raid in the night had been a blessing, looking back. It had freed him from his obligation to them. But it could never free him from the things he had done.
"I'm not the Teo you ran away from home with. I'm someone else now. It's no one's fault. That's just how it is." A callous brute wouldn't care about all the horrible things he did. That was how Theon knew he was no brute. That was how he knew he was something more.
There it was again, that damned guilty feeling. Why must he always make her feel like that, and despite her best efforts to push it away it still clung to her like a stench she couldn't wash off. Vivi's face quivered and twitched, indicating that yes, she did feel. She never was good at hiding her emotions, and keeping her face the blank slate she wanted it to be was next to impossible. "You say that like it's my fault," She said, raising her chin defiantly. "You're right. I act on instinct, and I plunge ahead. I'm the same Vivian because that's the freedom you wanted for me. I," She said, pounding her chest fiercely, "Was free."
She paused for a moment to let the words filter through the air. Satisfied with the silence she allowed to pass, which of course wasn't long at all, she broke it again by sighing. "You know, I never considered myself as part of your crew," shaking her head, letting her coffee strands whip around her face. "You never were my leader. You were my brother. You were the only person I cared about in that damned desert." She then sighed heavily, letting her eyes slip to the deck between her legs. "You traded one prison for another, Theon, but that time you did it yourself."
Unable to keep sitting upright, Vivi arched her back in the opposite direction and laid with the cool deck against her back, looking up into the early morning sky. "You talk a lot about things you had to do. What were you trying to prove? What are you trying to prove now?" She asked. He cared for his men, a lot more than she did, she understood that. But if he cared about them as much as he let on, then why didn't they? Vivi then felt a prickling of hate rising up in the nape of her neck. They doubted him, his strength, his loyalty and it pissed her off. No matter how hard things got, no matter what either of them had went through, Vivi had always loved and trusted her brother. He'd always been there for her, and she felt no different now than before.
The scryer sighed through his nose, leaning back on his hands. Maybe someday, when Vivi could build something from the ground up, something that depended on her for its entire existence, would she understand. For the most part, he didn't care about the pieces of shit he'd cobbled together for his crew. Individually, he wanted little to do with them. But together, they were something that he had made, something that would die without him. For the first time in his life, he was no longer a tool, but a king.
He just didn't realize what the price of being a king was at the time.
"There's nothing to prove, sis. The rest all hate me, and they don't know the first thing about me. That's fine. They'd just hate me more if I told them anything." Maybe that was true, maybe that wasn't. Theon didn't much care. "I'll be their prophesied savior anyway." He'd be something more than what he had been, now that he finally had a chance. It probably wouldn't redeem him in anyone's eyes, and it certainly wouldn't redeem him in his own, but at least he would know.
He stood, ignoring the dull throb in his head. The morning had made it worse already. "I'm gonna find somewhere dark and lie down for a while."