The body is still warm.
"I remember him. Marcus." Mòrag looks down at him rather impassively, only the slightest twitch betraying the carefully obscured pain behind her eyes. Her knuckles are white, fists tightly clenched against her back, but concealed by her gloves. "He was one of the new recruits."
"Yes, ma'am." A soldier bows his head. "It was Gibbon. Turned traitor and killed Marcus before running off while the two were investigating the wastes near a Brionic hideout. We've got a couple witnesses who confirmed the story."
Mòrag squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. She allows herself one shuddering inhale, just one crack in her composure. "What about the insurgents we were pursuing?"
"All taken into custody, ma'am."
"Good. Gibbon will be next, then."
"Of course, ma'am." The soldier looks between Mòrag and Brighid, suddenly nervous. "Should I notify Marcus's family, then…?"
"Leave that to me."
"S-Special Inquisitor? Are you sure?"
She only nods once before turning on her heels and briskly walking away before the soldier can protest further.
Brighid follows her pace, brows furrowed in concern. "Mòrag."
No. She has to do it herself. The title and its accompanying responsibilities are still relatively fresh upon her shoulders, and it's already stained with blood. Mòrag is no optimist. She knew what to expect when she became Special Inquisitor. Yet all her studying and training never prepared her for the dizzying realization that someone had died under her charge, that even if she hadn't been the one to pull the trigger nor did she lead the soldiers herself, she could have personally assigned a third soldier to patrol with Marcus and Gibbon or ordered their captain to be more careful or taken the lead or been there… or….
"Mòrag." Brighid says again, this time with more insistence. "Are you alright?"
"I need you to organize a squad to investigate Gibbon's current whereabouts," Mòrag says, steely gaze fixed straight ahead. "If we find him, we'll find more of them. I'll be back within the hour."
"You don't want me to come with you?"
She shakes her head. "It shouldn't take long."
His mother weeps, doubling over at the waist and knees violently trembling. She clutches her mouth as if she's about to vomit and leans heavily against the rusted metal of the doorframe. Mòrag keeps her back straight and shoulders squared, but her head is lowered.
"I'm sorry."
Marcus's father holds his wife and glares through furious tears. "That's all you can say for yourself?!"
"M-My son… gone…" The woman gasps.
"How could you let him die?!"
Mòrag stares down at her boots. It wasn't her fault. She wasn't there. But it was also her fault. She's Special Inquisitor, now. It was her fault. Gibbon had betrayed them under her command. It was her fault.
"The circumstances were beyond my control, regrettably—"
"Then what kinda Inquisitor are you?!" His father roars, spittle flying. "Is this the kinda person the Emperor trusts?! The kind who lets sons get killed for no damn reason?!"
"My Marcus…" His mother wails.
He was a year older than herself, Mòrag realizes. The full scope of her inexperience crashes down upon her like a tidal wave, and she finds she can't tear her eyes away from the ground. Her hands are shaking. It was her fault.
"He… will be buried, with full honors. His service, however brief, will be memorialized. Your son's death was not in vain."
"We lost our son, thanks to you!"
But it wasn't her fault.
They can't waste any time dwelling over that young recruit's death. People die all the time in battle. Nothing new there. Mòrag, accompanied by Brighid and no more than a handful of soldiers, quickly descends upon Gibbon and several other insurgents in a long-forgotten area tucked away in the Old Industrial District.
Mòrag still sees Marcus's lifeless form when she closes her eyes. She and Brighid manage to corner Gibbon as the soldiers engage the insurgents in battle.
He laughs at her.
"Special Inquisitor," he says, mockingly. "Looks like you ain't so stupid after all, if you managed to find us."
Mòrag narrows her eyes. The whipswords illuminate the darkened tunnel with Brighid's flames.
"Man, I really shoulda killed you while I was still at the Palace. Sure, I would've been executed on the spot, but it would've been so worth it!"
"Why?" Brighid spits, her flames fueled by both the venom of Driver and Blade. "Why defect?"
"Why? Why? Because why is the Empire left to a boy who hasn't even outgrown his nappies?! Why was his bitch sister made Special Inquisitor?! Why is the Jewel of Mor Ardain wielded by a little girl?!" Gibbon's voice rings through the tunnel. "I love Mor Ardain far more than you ever will, Mòrag Ladair! And that's why we're gonna kill the royal family and make things right in this country once and for all!"
Mòrag's hands are trembling, but this time with a boiling rage that's taut against her grit teeth. Brighid feels her Driver's anger seeping into her ether; the fires around them surge and fill the tunnel. There's nowhere for Gibbon to run now.
"And what did Marcus have to do with any of your delusions?" Mòrag quietly asks, barely audible over the crackling of the flames.
"Simple. He was in our way."
Her rage is suddenly escalating into a killing intent. Brighid senses this and gasps, desperately turning to seize Mòrag just as she raises one of her swords and moves to lunge forward—
"Mòrag, no—!"
If you kill him, you can never turn back.
Who will bear that burden?
Would his family weep?
Gibbon laughs as Mòrag lowers the sword and slowly falls to her knees, her greaves clanging against the tunnel floor. Her face is deathly pale and her mouth silently opens and closes with the horror of realizing what she'd been about to do. The whipswords slip from her slackened grasp, and Mòrag convulses with bile rising up her throat.
Brighid thrusts a hand forward, and Gibbon's laughter distorts into deafening screams as he's consumed by fire.
"He will be kept in custody even after his burns are healed. I cannot promise that he will ever be released, for what he's done."
"We… we understand," Gibbon's father and mother are too shocked to even show any signs of confusion or anger when Mòrag brings the news to them, later that evening once all else had been more or less settled.
She's just about to leave when his mother speaks up.
"Thank you, Special Inquisitor."
Mòrag hesitates, brows knit in confusion. She looks back to them. "For…?"
"For bringing our son to justice." They look sad, so sad that Mòrag is having trouble keeping her shoulders squared. She offers a curt nod and walks away. She's not sure if she can handle hearing any more from them.
"It wasn't your fault," Brighid speaks up after they've been walking in silence for some while, nearly unsure. She'd only been with Mòrag for a few months. And just today, Brighid sees that something had died within those young eyes that had looked upon her with awe and wonder on the day of their resonance. "What happened to Marcus and Gibbon wasn't your fault, Mòrag."
"But I'm Special Inquisitor," she says in a voice that's much too small for her. Her hands are still shaking as she comes to a standstill and removes her cap.
They're all alone in this part of the residential district. Brighid carefully takes Mòrag into her arms and holds her as she weeps, no longer able to keep her grief contained.
Mòrag understands that this is only the beginning. She clings to Brighid and wills her tears to stop, gradually composing herself back to a stance of controlled impassiveness. It could be her fault, and perhaps it is, but all she can do is continue moving onwards— for Marcus, for Gibbon's resentment, and for all the lives that have yet to be lost.
Her ears still ring from both Gibbon's screams and the wails of Marcus's grieving parents.
"I'll get used to it," she swallows back the lump in her throat, pressing her face to the warmth of Brighid's chest.
Brighid sadly strokes her hair. "I know."