Catharsis
Mercury
I have failed in the one duty placed upon me...
- Mia
Mia's going to defend the honor of the Mercury Clan.
- Justin
I hear Fate mocking us.
- Elder
The blue tiles shimmered under the light in Mia's hand as her feet broke through the thin puddles on them. She plashed near-silently to higher, drier ground at the end of the corridor.
The blue statues looked down on her as always, their facial expressions muted with dark, age, and distance. Her little light didn't illuminate much, and with a dim part of her mind she wished she'd packed something a little more powerful.
As always, the main shaft stretched away from her at a crazy angle, her neck cricking as she tilted her head back to look up into it.
She padded softly a little farther down the hallway and turned the corner, eyes seeking to pierce the dark.
A knife flashed out of the shadows and pierced her chest.
Mia flung her blanket away from her as she sat up, gasping for air. Her eyes fixed on the glowing embers of the fire, seeking in them reassurance that this, indeed, was real. This was real. The dark blue corridors slowly faded. When the heaving of her breast had stilled sufficiently she stood up and went to the window, staring out into the white flakes and the black night.
Another nightmare. They were coming more and more now. The lighthouse in her memories had ceased to be a place of comfort. Any why should it? She had failed to guard it.
Felix's convalescence was progressing slowly enough that there was doubt about the steady part. The snow built up higher and higher around the little house in Kalt as Mercury and Jupiter banked their fury.
Mia turned and walked over to the bedside by which she now spent all her time. Felix's chest rose and fell in tiny fractions, as it had in the days since they'd arrived.
She'd traveled along the pathways in Felix's body and mind again, and again, and again, endlessly rechecking every connection and avenue. The Psynergy flowed without obstruction. His flesh was whole and in better condition than it had been for a long time. She'd fed him soup that she and Jenna and Sheba had made, with an eye more toward nutrition than flavor. Good thing he hadn't woken up for that. But he hadn't woken up at all.
She sat in her chair, right by him, and continued to watch his face. There was a certain anger missing from before, a certain calm and stillness now that – thank the gods – the Thing was finally gone. It seemed indeed to be gone. She and Piers and Isaac had turned the ship inside out trying to see if it had reappeared anywhere, but it hadn't.
Mia ran a hand through her hair, brushing off the sweat still trapped in her hairline. She hated bad dreams. They had gradually stripped Imil and the lighthouse of all their comfort, all the protection that memory afforded from the present.
If only she could go back. If only the past could be entered again.
But no, she realized. Not only because she'd lived through things she wanted to keep, but because if she started over from the beginning, she'd just live until he betrayed her all over again.
And then she sat up, and stared through a spot on the wall above Felix's head.
Him. It was him. This was about Alex. All along.
She bit her lip and rubbed her hands. Damn it.
The white streets and the blue tiles hung in her memory. The color of his eyes and the sound his dreams made when he spoke them aloud and the way she'd started to gradually listen with care.
She sighed and sat back. It wasn't fair, carrying around all this anger. How had she never seen it for what it was before?
...If she tried to think differently, would the nightmares go away? Maybe, maybe not. It couldn't hurt to try.
Felix deserved to hear some of this, though it didn't explain all of the tension between them. She looked at him on the bed next to her and snorted. No time like the present.
"Hi Felix," she murmured.
He didn't move a fraction, and she continued to watch him breathe. She saw signs of what Piers had told her about everywhere on his face. Not just the scars from cuts and scratches. The deep lines of worry and thought.
"I hear you've been through a lot," she continued. "I've got a lot to tell you."
She scooted her chair a little closer and leaned down.
"Piers was right," she whispered. "You're so grouchy because you worry so much about all of us. I really appreciate it, Felix. Thank you."
Thank you, Felix. For keeping us all alive.
"I owe you an apology," she whispered. "See, I had this friend once. He was a great guy, a lot like you. He was so brilliant and handsome and daring. He took me to a very special place in Imil, to the Lighthouse. He was a student of mine, but we had grown up together and I was good friends with him."
She took a breath.
"He-he betrayed me," she said softly, "when I needed him the most. And he is still betraying me now. He has turned his back on everything I love. And – for a while – well, I thought that maybe, because you knew him and he worked with you, that you were a lot like him. And you seemed a lot like him at first."
Felix did not bat an eye.
"You were clever, and angry, and witty, just exactly the way he used to be. And he hurt me oh, so much, Felix. But I'm sorry. Because I was wrong about you. You're not like him at all. You can be, sometimes. But sometimes you can be so friendly and so gentle and kind."
She whipped a nervous glance at the door, just in case, but it was in the wee hours of the morning and there was the peculiar living quality about the silence that told her absolutely nothing was stirring.
"You see, Felix," she said, "I- I think I maybe love you, a little bit. You're very handsome and I can tell how much you care about all of us, even though you don't say anything. But Piers told me a few days ago about how you have so much on your mind. I don't know how you feel about me. I wish you weren't so busy all the time. I wish this horrible quest was over."
She looked him over one last time. Sleep was pulling her eyelids closed.
"I promise I'll be nicer to you from now on," she said. "I wish you would wake up."
Isaac, nodding to Piers, hefted his end of the water barrel he'd just corked with a pained grunt. The pair wordlessly waddled across the beaten, muddied ground to the side of the ship, where they shifted it into a low raft. Isaac clambered into the raft, carefully securing the barrel with his body, and Piers shoved both of them aloft with a push of his palm. Isaac rolled the barrel before him onto the deck of the ship and tipped it upright with a crash. Brushing his palms against one another, he stepped back onto the raft and slowly descended to beach level. Feeling aches in every muscle, Isaac rejoined the sailor on firmer ground. He pinched his frost-burned earlobes, trying to restore circulation, and rewrapped his scarf more tightly around his neck. It was freezing out here.
"That's the last of them," he said.
"Thank the gods," Piers remarked wearily, leaning his forearm on Isaac's shoulder. "I don't know how I would have refilled all these if I hadn't met all of you."
Isaac smirked and rolled his eyes. "You would have just died somewhere."
"Well, that's certainly one possibility," Piers said dubiously. White waves washed mutely around the nose of the ship.
"We would probably have died too," Isaac said, more soberly. He stooped to pick up a rock at his feet, pulling it free of the ice and pitching it into the waves.
"I'm sure you would have done just fine, Isaac," his new friend assured him.
"Well," Isaac sighed, "we're done that part. We should make it to Prox just fine."
Piers turned to him, a sober and surprised glint in his eye.
"You know something strange," he mused, "I never stopped to wonder what we'll do after that."
That observation broke open over Isaac like a summer storm. He stood with his mouth slightly open in surprise, wisps of fogged breath drifting loose while he tried to catch up with himself. Piers had spoken the truth. Their actions depended on the belief that they'd still have a ship, still see the sunrise, still breathe the cold northern air, still have to decide what to do with the rest of their lives. Isaac caught a glimpse of the world without the quest hanging over their heads for the first time in three years. The chains would be completely broken. He couldn't decide what unnerved him more, the alien character of that world or the very fact he found it so strange.
His toes were numb.
And they'd only filled enough caskets from the spring to get to Prox. He shifted his feet, trying not to think about it.
"Should we fill more?" Isaac asked.
"No," Piers ultimately said. "No, leave it be." They turned together and walked back up to the house.
Mia sighed and flipped a strand of hair out of her face as she stood. The heat from the roaring, crackling fire was beginning to overwhelm her. She took one last look at Felix, still as inert as the bed he lay in, and stepped out of the room. The silent, ancient couple who normally lived here watched her leave, their eyes searching and mute. She'd had just about enough of them as well. Felix could wake up any minute he wanted.
"How is he?" Jenna asked, as she asked every time Mia left the room where he stayed. Mia answered with an eloquent shrug and frown. Jenna's face fell in her wake, but there was nothing she could say. He just needed to wake up.
Felix kicked at the leaves swirling around his feet, enjoying the early autumn wind playing around his neck and shoulders. Everyone had their favorite season. Fall was his. He loved everything about it: the crisp scent of leaves on the wind, the gathering chill, the haunting feeling of death that reminded him he was still alive. It was so beautiful and so fragile and flawed. The trees that lined the stony path he progressed along were aflame with crimson, pink, and gold.
He passed people, working diligently on the construction of a small stone house, whose faces he thought he recognized, vaguely. A woman stood up, shouting something about finding a coin. Felix smiled. Good for her.
"Are you sure you're headed the right way?" the future mayor of Madra asked him. Wide awake and wise beyond his years, as always. Felix blinked and thought. Yes. He had to go the long way round to get out. He had to brave the pain and heat to get them all free of the desert. There wasn't any other way.
He started walking forward again.
"You could be so much more," his father said.
"I know," Felix whispered, no longer armed against that attack. "Why don't you help me?"
His father vanished, and he pressed on. The leaves danced and skittered along the ground.
Felix blinked and his eyes opened on a dark place, his lungs filled with panic. He had to find the sword. They were coming. He had to find it, he'd left it just around here somewhere. The image of the thing, dark and glittering, hung before his eyes. Papers and clothes flew, books fell and drawers slammed. They were coming. They were coming.
Felix straightened up. Now he remembered. It was gone.
They came through the door.
The leaves crunched. Felix looked down at his foot, planted in the debris on the path. He looked around, at the golden sunlight filtering through the warm red and orange leaves. The trees marched on for as far as he could see to either side, and the thin thread of the path snaked before him to the horizon.
Man, in the end, did not truly need to know. He could not know, in fact, never would know everything he asked after even if he lived a thousand lifetimes. So what man needed must be only to believe. Felix hadn't the faintest idea how belief worked or how he would know it if it hit him in the face.
He walked.
In Prox, naked lust for power and the blank face of death and the indifference of the truly cruel had left their scars on his mind. He could not say how deep they went and he was incapable of speaking their weight out loud. But he knew them by their names, even so.
Love gave most of itself when it believed even though all the evidence was against it. But surely love believed in something good, something it saw underneath the skin of unlovability. Love had eyes that did not see the skin and the words, but something else, that which its eyes alone knew.
Felix knew that those eyes within himself must be closed. He saw only with the sight of the mind, the eyes in his skull, and he saw only what others showed him to be seen. He lived in the world as it really was, the dark world of questions and faraway hopes and truths that ground against one another, and ground lives to dust between them. And yet, was that the world as it really was? Why, if there were nothing more, did the ache in his heart speak so insistently of an unknown better way?
Those eyes were closed within him. Therefore Felix did not really believe that they could be open in anyone else, even in the distant past when he had seen the evidence for himself in a family now destroyed.
Mia could not love him. He had nothing within himself which could be loved. He had shown her nothing which had the kind of nooks and crannies in which affection could begin to grow. Somehow, though, somewhere even within his desperate desire to be loved, a voice spoke of his right to be loved. He did not believe it and he forced it to stay nothing more than a whisper. But whispers carried.
He awoke with the light of a grey sun filling his eyes. The world around him was shrouded in mist. No sound or color reached him from beyond the small circle of grass beneath his body. He pulled himself up off the ground and brushed the moist dirt off his clothes.
He flapped his arms and shivered a bit as the damp chill hit him. Mist floated in the cracks between buildings, their ghostly silhouettes standing solid here and there in the shifting landscape.
Felix shrugged and started walking. Then he stopped. This place was familiar… very familiar.
He lifted a hand to touch the wall of the nearest structure, feeling its bones beneath his fingers. Drizzle drained gently off the thatched roof and onto his head. Brushing away a thin coating of droplets, he moved forward. The sight-destroying fog was a little eerie, but he didn't need his eyes to know exactly where he was in Vale. It had been forever, but everything came back to him seamlessly.
As he approached the last rise to his house, he caught faint voices and the smell of smoke. He walked faster, without thought of fear, curious to hear the conversation he only caught in undertone and see its speakers.
The door to his house opened to his gentle push, and he saw Saturos sitting by his fire.
"Welcome," he said. "Come, sit with me."
Felix stood on the threshold, drinking in the sight of a long-dead foster father. Saturos' face was as battered as he remembered, his eyes the same shifting red, his hair the same weird pale blue.
"Why?" he said.
"We have much to discuss," Saturos said, sounding surprised. "You know how much. The last stage of your journey is approaching, and we must make sure all is prepared."
There was a warm, friendly note in his voice that something in Felix had longed for. But there was a cruel leer he'd never really seen before, hard lines around the corners of his mouth he hadn't noticed in youth. Felix realized with an effort that he'd never heard that voice in life. He'd just wanted to.
"I will finish it, Saturos," Felix said. "I told Agatio and Karst that."
"Did they send those fools after all?" Saturos said, in a mocking tone Felix was much more familiar with.
"Agatio wouldn't know what to do with something he couldn't bash over the head."
"Well, he did his best, but my head is pretty hard," Felix said. "We don't have much of a relationship."
"Ha-ha-ha!" Saturos cackled. Had he really sounded like that? His laughter was harsh and flat, devoid of real humor.
"It is much like the relationship I had with you," Felix said, wondering why he did it.
"What?" Saturos' expression shifted instantly. "What are you talking about? You were my student. I taught you everything I knew."
"You didn't know a lot," Felix said. "You knew only what Prox taught you."
"Prox!" Saturos spat into the fire. "Prox didn't know what was good for it. Only I did. Menardi saw the same truth."
Felix narrowed his eyes. That wasn't a lie. Saturos really believed he knew something their home city didn't. How much did that mean? If Prox hadn't taught Saturos… Who was Puelle? He pushed it away.
"Still, I have little in common with either you or Prox," Felix said, speaking levelly.
"You have much more in common with me than you think, Felix," Saturos said in an ugly voice, standing up to his full height. In the fireplace, the fire surged and roared, sparks flying and snapping. He stepped over to Felix, towering above him. Fear shot up the back of Felix's throat and danced between his shoulder blades.
"I gave you a mission," he thundered. Felix watched from far below, seeing the same chin-first profile that he had as a small boy. "You must free Prox from her slavery to the earth, and allow her to regain her rightful position as the mistress of Weyard. I taught you everything. I loved you, in my own way. I poured myself into you. You were the son I never had."
Felix tried to still his involuntary twitch at that phrase. His whole being flooded with emotion, longing, hope, joy… He controlled it with an effort. It was too much, too close to the fulfillment of a lifelong fantasy to be real. He had been wondering…why this house? Why his house… his father's house. Now he thought he knew.
"Maybe," Felix said, struggling with the thought behind the words, "maybe you did love me, in your own way." He swallowed, once or twice, fighting it down. Gods, this hurt so much. "But maybe I just wanted you to…" he said, slowly, piecing it together as he went. "Wanted you to so badly… that I thought you really did."
"I did!" Saturos insisted.
"How will I ever know, though? You're dead." Felix realized he was sitting down at Saturos' feet. Why was that? He stood up, slowly, bringing himself level, face to face, with Saturos.
"I won't ever know what you really thought about me. You gave me many things," he said, "discipline and passion and desire. But you gave me many other things as well, things not as good. And I need to find for myself what needs to be desired and what needs to be disciplined."
"You'd better discipline your thoughts, Felix," Saturos said. The dying fire in the room beyond him crackled. Felix felt a small dream within him dying, and knew himself to be beyond it, free and clear. He sighed a little wistfully, for all that he still owed to that small boy and his fears.
"You picked too many damned fights, Saturos," Felix said, and slammed the door shut.
Love would not sustain him. He had no right to it. Hope had long deserted him and faith... well, he wanted it, if you could want something you didn't understand. But he didn't have any. Didn't seem like that would change soon. Felix only had duty left. And his duty he would do, whether the gods cared to intervene or no.
His eyes cracked open in a small room. He was lying on his side, roasting to death in a cocoon of blankets. He knew he was really awake because there was an awful taste in the back of his mouth. The room was wood, dark wood, and he'd been there before. The tension slowly evaporated from the back of his neck, and he breathed. They'd made it to Kalt. Good. He hadn't been out too long, hopefully.
It was dark, and bobbing shadows cast by the remains of a small fire shifted around the walls and ceiling. In a chair close to him, Mia slumbered, what was left of a meal on the floor beside her. He instinctively curled into the blankets, keeping wary eyes on her. Back to the land of the barely living. Back to plans and mistakes.
There was only one thing left. Only one way out.
Felix smiled a little, slipping out of his bed like a wraith. He had work to do. This world was less pleasant than the dream he'd left behind, but it was better in other ways. It felt good to push against the hard, unyielding rock of life and know you were alive.
A draft against his legs made him look down, and then flush with embarrassment. They'd taken off most of his clothes. Good thing Mia wasn't awake. Spotting a neat pile of folded garments behind Mia's chair, he moved past her, shaking them loose and ripping them on with near-silent, feverish haste. The open door called him, but he turned back.
He paused by Mia's chair and watched her sleep, breathing when she breathed. She was so good and so beautiful. Too good and beautiful for someone like him. She'd put up with so much from him, so much from the world, with patience he decided must be infinite. The corners of his mouth twitched upward and his eyes softened, tracing the curves in her face. The gentle, soft way her eyelashes fell against her cheeks. His pulse rising, he brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead with infinite gentleness, pausing again to see her new appearance. She stirred slightly, then settled back into slumber. The world let out its breath, and sound and light returned. Felix's breath escaped from between his teeth, but his heart didn't slow a fraction.
For Felix had decided on a course of action. He had resolved to do one particular thing with all the time and effort that was left to him in the world, with all the peculiar gifts he had been allowed to retain through a thousand brushes with death. He had resolved to do it, or die trying; and he was well aware how likely the unfinished attempt would be. He ran a hand through his hair.
This moment was precious, perfect, instant, and it would never come again. He knew he should move, be about his business, but his heart forbade giving his feet the order. He felt his heart ticking by the seconds, but somehow they didn't seem to really elapse.
Something was calling him to dedicate his life to a higher discipline. He felt the all-compelling urge to turn over a new leaf, in this place. Mia's breast rose and fell gently. Maybe he'd give her gods a try. Whatever she believed in was good enough for him.
Felix's gut clenched, and he bent over her, letting his lips just barely brush the skin above her eyes.
He needed that kiss, for luck. With that memory to rely on, all that was to come would be as nothing. He practically danced out of the room, not even feeling the ground.
He danced back in, backwards, his brow puckered in. That wouldn't work. The first thing Mia's waking eyes would see would be his empty bed. He needed a little more time. He approached her chair again, softly.
His head knew exactly what needed to be done. His heart, with its fingers in its mouth, instantly nodded its assent. Felix tried to shove down its eagerness, laughing in the pit of his gut with the butterflies that danced there.
He gently, gently slipped his arms under Mia, and lifted her from the chair into his chest. She didn't move or react, so he turned and passed through the doorway, depositing her in a good spot near the fire. He set her down as if she were a woman he'd fallen in love with, and ran outside into the cold, dark night.
The dawn crept in between Mia's eyelids and pried them open. She blinked and it disappeared, slipping back to watch her wake. She stirred slowly, listening to the morning. Her father's voice and eyes faded from view.
Mia shook her head, coming more fully awake. She had seen her father again. What did that mean? He walked restlessly in her memories, and she felt his unease.
What are you trying to tell me?
"As if they're really there at all," Isaac said somewhere near her. She sat up. He was hunched over near the fire, poking at it with a little stick or something.
"Well, you don't really ever know," the bundle of fur that was Kraden said, a distinct cautionary note in his voice. "That's what faith is all about." He turned and gave her a courteous nod, his glasses twinkling in the reflected light. "Good morning, Mia."
Isaac straightened up and twisted in his seat.
"Oh, hey Mia."
Isaac's eyes on her, for whatever reason, reminded her that her hair was a mess. As soon as he turned back to the logs, she hastily patted it straight, running her fingers through it.
Her mouth opened wide in a huge yawn, and she blinked, covering it with a hand.
"If you never know, then why bother believing?" Isaac snarled tiredly. "It won't change anything."
Isaac looked terrible. The size of the black marks under his eyes meant he hadn't gotten much sleep last night, if any. Poor guy. She tried to spin her mind up to speed in order to follow what they were talking about. Maybe that held a clue to his appearance.
"Maybe it doesn't change them, but it changes you," Kraden said. "You wouldn't be on this quest if you hadn't believed in them."
"If only," Isaac said. Kraden looked like he wanted to agree with that for a second, but for some reason he was playing devil's advocate here. She was more confused than ever.
"Let's say," Isaac said, "for the sake of argument, that I didn't believe in them. Maybe I just believed the Great Healer."
"Well," Kraden said, leaning forward and emphasizing his point with one finger, "he did. This quest wouldn't have happened without faith. Be quite sure of that."
"But does any of that faith mean anything in the end?" Isaac said. "We have no way of knowing."
"I guess we'll find out," Kraden said slowly.
"What are you talking about?" Mia interjected, sensing the first good opportunity. Kraden glanced at Isaac, who stared into the fire.
"Nothing important," Kraden said.
"The gods," Isaac corrected.
"Wh…what about them?" she asked, trying to plug this into what she had heard before.
"Where they are most of the time, what they are doing while we all risk death, that sort of thing," Isaac muttered, apparently hoping she wouldn't hear him.
"The gods are on your side, Isaac," she said forcefully.
"You believe in them, don't you," he said, turning to look at her.
"Yes," she said. Isaac looked down, nodding.
"What have they done for us, Mia?" he asked, pleading.
She stopped short at the demand for evidence. They'd… they'd… what had the gods done for them? What had the gods done for her? Not a whole lot, on the face of it. She'd served Mercury faithfully for all those years, alone, and nothing had come of it. The gods had deserted them. And…in her case, with just cause.
"I don't know," she said. She fought it. She fought the tidal wave of black thoughts, pushed it back and gained herself a breathing space by sheer force. The gods had not deserted them. The gods were good, and they would never desert their followers. They were just doing what they thought was right. This was the right thing to do. Good, that was established.
Why had the gods created this world at all?
"Why don't they just don't come down here and solve all this?" Isaac said. "I want to see them help us."
"I… I don't know, Isaac," she admitted. "But there's got to be a reason."
"Give her a chance, Isaac," Kraden said softly. "Let her think."
Still, her sympathies were all with Isaac.
Why had the gods created the world at all? Why had they bothered? They should have just left the darkness alone.
But here they were, drawing breath. That meant… maybe the gods wanted to see what they would do.
"They gave us air…and fire…and earth…and water," Mia said thoughtfully. "They gave us those. They gave us hope. They gave us faith." She looked at Isaac, her mind racing faster than it ever had before. Oh, she was so stupid.
Felix's eyes danced before hers.
"Oh, it's not fair," she said. "I'm so bad at talking like this. I don't know what I'm trying to say." This was a critical moment, she could feel it in the air. She pushed her palms against her temples and racked her brains, trying to glean something from the barren fields, something Isaac desperately needed.
She kept thinking about Felix, pursuing what inspiration had given her. The answer was with him somewhere. She knew it. She'd known it all along.
Why? Why were they all children abandoned at their moment of greatest need?
Felix had thrown away his cursed sword just four days ago. She saw it in her mind's eye. What… really what had made him do that?
Hope. And faith. No matter how she tried to stretch her feeble brain, it just kept coming back to those two. She felt so useless, so limited.
"Hope…" she said feebly. "Hope and faith. Those are the gift of the gods. They are always with us, inside our hearts, trying to encourage us."
But why couldn't they just reach out and make everything better?
Because…because then Felix would never be himself again.
"Because Felix wouldn't have to fight to make it all better," she said out loud, thinking as she went.
"That's why," in response to Isaac's quizzical stare. "Because Felix is fighting so hard to prove to himself that the world is a good place. If they just came down and fixed everything, there'd be nothing for him to fight for." She bit her lip and slammed her fist against her drawn-up knee. "Argh! I don't know."
Kraden's seat creaked as he sat up.
"We're all so sad because our quest seems pointless. Maybe they want to give us a chance…to mean something. If the gods just solved everything for us, we would never know if we could have done it. Maybe they want to see us ...be heroes."
Isaac and Kraden stared at each other. Kraden started to laugh.
"I like her," he said.
Mia recoiled with embarrassment, confused by the way both of them were now staring at her. "I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm trying to say. I'm going to… I have to go." She beat a hasty retreat, thinking to check on Felix. But his bed was empty.
She wheeled back on Kraden and Isaac, still giving her back a weird look.
"Where's Felix?" she asked. She knew by their expressions that they had no idea. By the time they began to speak, she had shrugged her thick outer coat half-on and run out the door.
Garet stood on the spit, a dark, spiky silhouette against the grey and white water. The dawn was still no more than a cold white light in the clouds.
She jogged up next to him, jiggling her other arm into its sleeve and shrinking as puffs of ice-cold air found their way in with her movements. She didn't see Felix anywhere. Her cold fingers curled tighter around her staff.
His hands were clasped behind his back.
"Kraden told me he'd show me the ocean once," he said out loud. "He was right, it is very beautiful. Beautiful, and dangerous... like life."
She stared at him, surprised by his sudden attack of poetry, then recovered herself. It could wait for five minutes.
"Garet, have you seen Felix?"
He came slowly forth from his dark cave, and then looked quickly up and down the beach.
"Um, no, I-" He paused with his eyes on something behind her for a second, and then took off running. Her stumble sideways, dodging his charge, revealed to her Piers' ship. Anchor raised, it was in the middle of a slow turn out to sea.
Many things, in that split-second, flashed through her mind. The outline of something fantastic, incredible, utterly infuriating, danced half-formed in her imagination. Had he really gone as far as that? What... what did Felix see?
She'd always been faster than Garet, and she quickly gained on him even with her fur on. The ship, broadside on to the land, began moving away from her, generating a small curling wake. She ran harder than ever before in her life. The pumping of her arms and the wind shrugged her coat down her shoulders; she shifted the staff from hand to hand and let the coat fall to the beach behind. The chill bit through her thinner sleeves, but she ignored it. Damn. You. Felix. The ship was closer than before. She sucked in more air and kept running.
She came abreast with Garet, forcing his stocky frame to its last ounce of speed.
The ship was close, close, close, right there. Now or never, never ever ever. Their pounding feet hit the water, splash splash splash. She felt the water getting too deep, the bottom too uncertain, and leapt for it.
Her fingers slammed into the curling carvings at the base of the stern, and she gripped without thinking. She looked behind to see Garet floating in the water, his face beet-red. His jump had fallen short.
"Go, Mia!" he shouted raggedly. "I'll... get the others!" As she looked back to her own plight he turned back to shore.
She gripped more tightly, looking up for another hand-hold.
"Damn you, Felix," she whispered between laughing breaths, listening to the wake pick up volume and strength beneath her.
There. She pulled with all the strength left in her tired, shaking arms, holding the staff against the side of the ship. She would know. She leaned over a slight projection, balancing her stomach on it. Turning her head sideways, she spotted another good handhold a little farther, and carefully reached out until she felt her hand grip it.
She couldn't believe she was doing this. Damn it all, Felix.
How could the gods be on their side if they were breaking their faith?
She slipped.
Her fingers popped loose of their hold, a little salt and grime flying with them. She felt the air give way beneath her.
But as she rolled over and faced the sea her mind was racing. She took a deep breath and streamlined her body, retaining her consciousness as she hit the water and it pounded the warmth from her. Mia oriented herself towards the surface, tiny bubbles escaping from her nostrils, and thought. She surged upward in a case of liquid, spilling across the deck behind Felix. He turned from the wheel.
"Mia?"
She tossed the wet, slick strands of hair from her eyes and rolled her shoulders, trying to release the tension she suddenly felt there.
She sucked in a breath, two, watching his features narrow as he saw her face.
"Aaaaa!" She swung the staff at the side of his head with all her shaking might, twisting her stomach to recover as he ducked. Felix took a slow step back, wary eyes watching the end of the stick. She smirked and forced water over the side. It slammed into the back of his head and his body, and sluiced off to the left. When she could see his eyes again, they were watching her.
She swung the staff again. He ducked. She raised it high in both hands, breathing hard. The end smacked a wet dent in the deck, right below where Felix's head had been.
"Fight me!" she screamed. "Draw your sword!"
He blew a wet smile at that, spray flying from his lips and dripping from his hair. Her heart almost stopped at that smile, and she paused.
"I have to fight you," she yelled, drowning out the roaring of the ocean and her anger. "I have to fight you, Felix!"
He didn't respond, and she lifted her staff off the ground.
"I won't let you do it, Felix!" she screamed, and swung again. "I am the guardian of the Mercury Lighthouse!"
I am the guardian. And I failed you. I failed you all.
The angry snowflakes swirled around the lighthouse in her memory. She brushed the mist from her eyes and brought more water crashing down. The air around the ship grew grey and foreboding. She could hear Felix's black, sodden clothes squelching as he dodged her blows.
"Fight back, damn you! Damn you, Felix! Damn you! Why did you come here? Why did you ruin all our lives?"
Her words blended with the tortured screams of the ship as waves, her waves, writhed beneath it. Felix stumbled at an unexpected dip and scrambled away, weaving just out of her range. He wouldn't fight her. The coward. Bastard.
"I don't understand you, Felix!" she shouted, pausing as she gasped for breath. He stood warily an arm's length away. "It would have hurt less if you just killed us!"
He swayed as if struck, took a slow step back. Just kill me.
She swung again, trying to goad him into action. Swung again in the other direction. He danced and swayed with her attacks, scrambling to clear the end of the staff.
Then he ran out of room, and time, and everything.
The hatred heaving in her breast crystallized right as he felt the railing bump into his back. The look he gave her told her they both knew this was the end. Black hair lay wet across his pale skin. Even at death's door, he had nothing to say.
She felt the ice blades, ready in her hand. She gritted her teeth and flung her arm back for the kill, staring deep into the eyes she loved to watch.
The ice bit hard into the wood next to Felix's arm, chewing it to shreds. She collapsed forward, dissolving into the slick puddles of grimy seawater at her feet. Felix caught her as she fell.
"I'm...I'm sorry," she sobbed. Her whole body ached with tears. "I'm so s-s-s-..."
"Sssh," Felix whispered in her ear, rubbing a hand on her shoulder blades. "It's okay."
"Why do you do this to me?" she said, choking on the words.
"I... I don't know," Felix said. "I'm sorry that it has to be this way."
She pushed away against his chest and stared into his eyes.
"Kill me, Felix," she whispered, still breathing hard, her whole body longing for the blow. "Just kill me. Please."
His lips parted slightly as he searched her face.
"Do you understand why I had to fight you?" she asked. "I failed. I had to protect the Mercury Lighthouse, and I failed. I let it be lit."
"Yes," Felix said. "I understand." Heaving seas tossed the ship, but their eyes never once broke contact.
"I can't kill you, Felix," she said, longing for his touch, forcing herself to stand upright against the vessel's lurching. For the honor of the Clan, she would stand on her own two feet. "I can't kill you. So you have to kill me. Please."
"I'm not going to kill you, Mia," Felix said.
She swallowed, not sure whether she was angry or sad or something else entirely.
"Turn the ship around," she said. "Go back and get everybody else."
"No."
Typical.
"Why not, Felix?" Why not indeed? Why now, at the end, was he doing this, abandoning them all on the last island before Prox? He made no answer, but turned to attend to the ship.
"Is this because of revenge, Felix?" she asked, very, very quietly. He paused and stood up straight, his back very still for far too long.
Finally he turned around, and she braced herself for the worst.
"No," he said, so believably that she didn't believe him at all. "No, Mia, it's not."
"R-really?" she said, aware that he was not smirking, that no levity played around his face at all. He was perfectly serious.
"At least, I don't think it is."
She frowned.
"Explain yourself, Felix, right now, or I'll have to try and fight you again."
"Please don't," Felix said. "I am very tired."
She gave him a warning look and finger. He rolled his eyes. The ship creaked underfoot. She'd calmed enough for the sea to return to its normal state, but it was still running a little high.
"I wanted someone to be responsible for all the hell I've lived through," he said. "That someone was Prox. But I had a dream while I was under. And I think I was wrong. I don't want to hate anyone anymore. I'm just too tired."
She blinked, unsure what to make of so much revelation.
"I... Felix..."
He sighed helplessly, staring at her. She took a step closer, and another, mesmerized by some singing impulse. Maybe now she could learn the truth.
"Felix!" She turned in shock to see Isaac, the other seven behind him, rage flying high in his eyes. Isaac motioned with his fingers, and the ground underneath their feet rippled slightly. She stumbled a bit but kept her feet, chilled by the implicit threat. Felix fell over, landing on his hands with a quiet "oof".
"Stop it, Isaac," Ivan said sharply, stepping forward and putting an arm across Isaac's chest. "He has never used Psynergy against us, so why should we do worse?"
Felix pushed himself up to his knees, and slowly regained his feet. Mia frowned. What was wrong with her? She'd still worried that Felix might hit back, even now? The impulse to move and help him up came too late.
"What do you want from me, Isaac?" Felix asked.
A flood of everything at once stopped Isaac's tongue. Finally he managed to get out one of the answers.
"The truth. I want the truth, Felix."
"About what?" Felix said.
"Everything! Who are you? Why did you leave us on Kalt?"
"Did you use the teleport stone to get here?" Felix asked.
"Yes," Isaac said.
"I didn't know you could do that," Felix muttered to himself, rubbing his eyes.
Their eyes were all fixed on him, she saw. Not in hope, not in fear, not in sadness. Just numb. Waiting for an explanation of everything. The grey clouds hung around overhead, curious about the scene below.
"Well," Felix said. "Sorry about that. Welcome aboard, I guess."
"Felix, explain yourself. Right now," Isaac said.
"No, Isaac, I will not," Felix replied crisply. "I will not explain myself. Ever."
Isaac opened his mouth to say something violent, but Mia shook her head and took Felix's hand. He turned to look at her. As she looked into his eyes, she saw what she'd seen when she fought him – his eyes were not full of hatred anymore. For that, she'd try this one more time.
"Felix," she said. "You've put us all in so much pain. Whatever you have to say, whatever it is... it can't be worse than this."
"Really?" he said. "You think so, Mia? After what you just said, you can say that?"
She quailed under that question and the look he paired with it. He knew what she'd meant. She didn't want to go through with it. Something was coming that she would not want to hear.
"Yes, Felix," she said anyway. "It can't be."
He stared at her for a long, long time. He looked around at all their faces, saw the agreement written across them. Sheba, Jenna, Isaac, Ivan, Garet, Kraden.
"Really?" he said. "You all feel the same way. Even you, Kraden? You think so too?"
Kraden nodded softly.
Felix closed his eyes.
"Okay," he whispered hoarsely, dropping his head and swallowing. "O-okay. You win. I'll tell you whatever you want to know."
She gripped his hand tighter, but his was totally limp and cold. Mia tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach. It had to be this way.
"Why did you try to leave us behind on the island?" Isaac asked.
"I was going to light the Mars Lighthouse alone," Felix said.
"You what?" Garet said, his head coming up. "Why?"
Felix looked him in the eyes. How he loved Garet at that moment, his crazy hair and his unshakeable good-humored self.
"I didn't want you to have to make the choice," he said. "Do you understand, Garet? Do you see? I didn't want you to have to decide."
"So you thought you could decide for all of us?" Isaac said. "Of all the arrogant, selfish-"
"What would happen if you lit the lighthouse, Isaac?" Felix asked, cutting across him. "What would happen?"
Isaac didn't answer.
"You might destroy the whole world, Isaac. Do you want to be responsible for destroying the whole world? Do you believe in the gods, Isaac? Do you think they would look kindly on you for destroying the entire world?" Felix swallowed, trying to control the shaking in his voice.
"If the lighthouse didn't fail, you'd unleash the full power of Mars. You've never been to Prox, but I have. I lived with those people for three years and I know what they want. Power, Isaac. Unimaginable power. You think we'll just go home and everything will be fine, everything will be the way it used to be? Nothing will ever be the same again! The world might dissolve into utter chaos!" Isaac's eyes widened.
"That's why they built the damned things in the first place!" Felix shouted. "Because men couldn't control themselves. What d'you think they'd get around to realizing eventually? That it was all your fault!"
He took a breath.
"And what about Vale!?" he roared. "D'you think they'd understand all of this if we explained it to them? You know how outsiders feel about Psynergy, Isaac! You've traveled as much as I have! If they knew what we knew about the lighthouses, if they knew the risk we were taking they'd have killed us!"
Felix sucked in a breath and shut his eyes tight, covering over the storm in his heart.
"I...I didn't want you to bear that... that weight," he said quietly. "I've made nothing but mistakes my whole life. Lighting Mars would just be one more. I stole the stars, Isaac. I wanted to do this myself. I wanted it all to be my fault. So you could go home, like you wanted to." He dropped his gaze back down to his feet, and fell silent.
Mia stopped breathing as it all finally made perfect sense.
A whole secret history flashed before her wide, unblinking eyes.
Half-completed sentences found words. Bitter glances spoke volumes.
She squeezed his hand even harder, hoping it would be a line keeping her attached to the earth. He still wouldn't respond. I...was all wrong.
"But why didn't you just skip lighting it completely? Just go get your parents and come back to us?" Isaac said.
"Because Jupiter and Mercury have already been lit," Piers said.
"Correct," Kraden said. "If we did nothing at all, the world would freeze over."
They all stayed silent, unsure what to say or do. The ship rocked. Mia breathed, lighter and lighter. She'd been wrong. Oh, so wrong. They'd all been so wrong about him.
"You tried to keep us all at a distance, didn't you," Kraden said. "With Acheron and all that business. So we wouldn't find out."
"Not really," Felix said. "I hate Prox. I just didn't want any of you to be responsible for any of this."
Jenna flew across the short divide and buried her face in Felix's chest, wrapping him in an enormous hug.
Felix choked. He pushed Jenna away, pulling his hand out of Mia's, and stumbled at a run away from them. There was a little click as the cabin door opened and another as it closed.
The eight of them were left to look at one another.
"I understand," Piers said.
Garet's eyes said that he disagreed.
"He thought of it all," Kraden said admiringly. "He thought of everything."
They turned to him. "Please tell us what you're talking about," Isaac said.
"You swore an oath," Kraden said simply. "Felix believes that oaths should never be broken."
Isaac sighed. All the things he'd done for them in secret... Mia let a small noise escape her throat.
"So you understand, Mia," Kraden said, looking sidewise at her.
Isaac and Garet turned to her.
"What? What is it?"
"Felix... he..." she said, trying to figure out where to start. "He tried to hide all of this from us." What was truly astonishing was how close he'd come to getting away with it.
"What?" Isaac said flatly. She sighed and closed her eyes. Why did he have to be so angry?
"Isaac, please, just listen," she whispered.
"No, honestly," he said, looking at her with the sincere eyes she remembered. "I don't understand what's happening. Please explain it to me, Mia."
She took a deep breath.
"First we thought Felix was going crazy. Then it turned out he wanted revenge on Prox and that's why he had the sword. Remember?"
"Right," Isaac said.
"Now it turns out he did still want that, but he was also trying to push us away, so that he could do all the dirty work himself. He didn't want us to be responsible for breaking our promise to guard the lighthouses."
They were still silent. She explored, in her mind, the depth of his understanding.
"He understands," she said. "He sees what we really are. We are just ... just pieces on the playing board. We are... hold on...I'm trying to get this right."
She saw. She really saw it. Felix had climbed a ladder and looked out, and he had seen, as through a tiny window, the whole vast drama of their little lives. The scope of the history that had come before and the history that would come after. The pent-up anger and ambition of Prox, safely frozen for centuries in ice that had begun to thaw. The titanic struggle of nations and peoples and gods, and the strange capricious hand that had chosen the nine of them to unchain the future. The way the gods, for some reason, could not be touched. Only appeased. She would never look at him the same way again.
"He saw the temples of the gods, and all the countries we've been to, and the people who lived there... and he understood them," she said, trying another stab at it. "Isaac, don't you see? Do you see? Think of how much we are responsible for. Think of how different things will be when Psynergy is unleashed. Think of what you were asking Kraden about the gods this morning. Whether they care about us, and whether we're doing the right thing. Felix tried to keep us all from thinking about it. He didn't want us to have to see. To really see it all. The power we have in our hands right now, and the... the size of the choice we have to make."
"I...I...I'll be damned," Isaac said, shaking his head slowly. "I – that's – I can't decide if that's the most brilliant or the most utterly idiotic thing I've ever heard."
"So the plan was that he would die in our place. Die hated by all of us, so that we could go back to Vale and live in peace. We'd have no regrets. We'd never wonder if we'd made a mistake," Kraden said.
"No," Mia said, swallowing a knot in her throat. "We'd just be confused and heartbroken instead, always wondering what had happened to him and why he'd done such terrible things." Things he had made them think were terrible.
"He thought-" Isaac's eyes filled with tears and his voice sank to a rough whisper. "He thought I wanted to hate him? He thought that would make me feel better?" He turned to Kraden, trying to control his trembling lip. "You knew about this, and you didn't tell me?"
"Felix doesn't believe in the gods, Isaac," Kraden said defensively. "At least, he didn't. What hope could he offer you? He had none for himself!"
"You could have told us!" Garet said. "We could have helped you, somehow. Helped him."
"I wanted to do it myself," Kraden said, "but I'm too old and too weak. That was the whole point," he said, and sighed. "If you knew, it would have defeated the whole purpose."
"You still should have told us, Kraden," Isaac said. Jenna sighed and dropped her face in her hands.
"I...i..." Kraden choked. "I was a fool. I made him promise to let me come with him. I wanted to take the Star from him somehow and do it myself, and let him go. I should have known it would never work. Not with him."
They were silent.
"Please go find him," Kraden said. "Please tell him that you understand, because he still does not."