Foreword:
I'm afraid I'm about to do something very unfair to you readers after ending the last chapter with that terrible cliffhanger. This chapter is all about Darix. Sorry, but you'll have to wait until next week to find out what happens to Becky and Tobey. I'm evil that way. :) Just so you know, though, there's a reason why I felt the need to give Darix this chapter. Slimebag though he is, I love him. He's a character who I put lots of time and effort into creating, and I want to make sure he has a chance to tell his story. It's okay with me if everyone hates him, just so long as everyone also understands him.
Syncretism [sing-kri-tiz-uh m] – the attempted reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles.
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I am not a monster.
I told myself this as I stepped into my quarters, a little disturbed that I felt the need for reassurance. Granted, the way things unfolded was far from ideal. Granted, I hadn't wanted to force my hand so strongly and so cruelly against the daughter of my departed colleague. Granted, I took no pleasure in the pain of children, especially when I was the cause of it… However, there was nothing for it. I was doing what had to be done. For justice. The feelings of two adolescents and a monkey were insignificant compared to that.
And yet, I shuddered. I remembered the girl's tears and her friend's screams, and I felt remorse. I thought of the mutual devotion I saw in them, how it reminded me of my son, how I could look into that human's furious eyes and see Kyto's face… and my resolve actually wavered.
No, I told myself. No, I can do this. I must do this. For Kyto. His death will have meant nothing if I allow his murderers to go unpunished.
"Dad…"
His voice came back to me, clear and strong and confident. He even sounded like that human… or was that just my rebellious conscience playing a cruel trick on me?
"Dad, watch this!"
Kyto beamed exuberantly, his soft yellow hair whipping around in the air as he flew across the wordball court. He bounced the ball back and forth between himself and the glowing letter tiles on the far wall with effortless speed. Then he twisted around in midair just shy of slamming into his team's logo and blasted into a zig-zagging pattern almost too quick to follow with the eyes. The boy practiced with skill and style, so free and energetic and happy… yet as I watched him, I could feel nothing but worry.
He finished his routine with a flourish and returned to me with a sparkle in his eyes, not looking the slightest bit tired.
"What do you think?" he asked. "I designed that play myself! It lets me hold onto the ball long enough to form really long words and it works pretty much no matter what letters come up."
I smiled weakly and tried to force some mirth into my reply. "The other team won't know what hit them."
"What's the matter, Dad?" he asked, so innocently it almost hurt.
I took a deep breath and looked into his kind, steady eyes. "Kyto… the attack is going to happen soon."
My son's eyes darkened, but he said nothing.
"Kaven is sending his daughter away on a scout ship, and I want you to go with her."
"Dad—"
"She's such a frail little thing, I'm sure she'd have a better chance if someone was with her to—"
"Dad! Don't! You can't use that poor girl to guilt me into leaving!"
I froze, my tongue suddenly feeling like it was made of lead. Kyto just stared at me with angry eyes, his hands balled into fists at his sides, but only for a moment before his face fell and the sadness overwhelmed him as well. We both stood there staring at the ground, each cumbered under a different burden, until I finally found the strength to speak again.
"Why, Kyto? I don't understand… The danger is enormous. Kaven and I have to stay because of our positions, but… you're only fifteen years old. There's no reason why you should stay."
Kyto took a deep breath and looked back up at me. His expression had softened with sympathy, but I could tell that my words had not swayed his resolve. For no reason that I could discern, he smiled, and flew back out onto the wordball court. Slowly. As though beckoning me to follow him. Puzzled though I was, I did follow.
"I remember when you first explained to me how this game works," he said, tenderly resting his palm against one of the blank score tiles that would be lit up with a letter during a match. "'The tiles light up with random letters from thousands of languages, and the object of the game is to shoot the ball into the tiles and form words,' you said. 'It's a symbol of pride to our people, because it's a game that no one besides a Lexiconian could play.'"
I narrowed my eyes at him, wondering what his point was. With a warm smile, he looked me in the eyes and said, "Dad, don't you think it's strange that Lexicon, of all planets, doesn't have its own official spoken language?"
I stared for a long moment at my boy, still mystified. I was starting to think he was trying to change the subject and sweep my concerns aside, but this seemed like an odd way to do it.
"I mean, I guess I kind of understand," he added with a shrug. "My teacher says that we were capable of space travel before we even invented spaceships, so we came in contact with foreign languages in our early history… and since we can understand any word we hear, we never really needed a language of our own. Our people always just adopted the language of whoever they were talking to."
I heaved an exasperated sigh and decided to cave. If he wanted to talk about linguistics, we would talk about linguistics. We were Lexiconians after all. "Well," I inserted, "we did develop a universal written language once it became necessary for us to be able to standardize written texts."
"True! But that's not the point," my son said with a finger stuck knowingly into the air. The gesture was so endearing in its impetuousness that I couldn't help but smile, even as I frowned.
"Then what is your point?" I sneered, crossing my arms in front of me.
Kyto brought down his finger, his smile crumbling as he did so, and he looked once more around us at the dim, quiet, empty stadium. "Wordball has been declining in popularity these past few years… I feel like our people are losing their sense of identity. That's why people like the Zymians are able to push us around. They can tell we aren't a unified people that knows who we are."
He had clenched his fists again, but his face looked more solemn or frustrated than angry. "I have to stay here, Dad. I may only be fifteen, but I'm the kind of person Lexicon needs, now more than ever. I have to help our people hold onto who they are in the midst of the onslaught. There's no point in surviving if we let them take our purpose away from us." He looked up at me one last time, his passion and determination practically radiating from his smile. "Do you understand now?"
I heaved a deep sigh, overflowing with pride and worry and admiration and fear and—oh, far more emotions than I could count. However, my confusion, at least, had finally been put to rest.
"Yes," I said, though the words felt like poison on my tongue. "I understand, Kyto."
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I stood there in front of my desk, thinking back on what I'd told WordGirl about love. She probably thought I'd said it just to be cruel, and if so, that was fine with me. I was sorry to lose her genuine heartfelt loyalty, but at this point it was better if she feared me. That way it would be easier for me to get what I needed from her. Still… I wished there was some way to prove to her that I had meant every word.
Love was a deceitful emotion, and she would be better off without it. I was sure of that. After all, what had love ever yielded for me? I loved my wife, who had ultimately abandoned me, and I loved my son, whose stubborn refusal to abandon his people had, in an ironic twist of cruel fate, been the very thing that had ultimately taken him away from me as well. Now I had only the memories—the scars that love had left behind. Love was far more painful than it was worth. I would rather have justice.
I heard my doors open behind me and turned to see my chief pilot storm inside. Her flaming red hair matched the furious glare on her face as she looked me defiantly in the eyes.
"What was that all about?" she asked—in English, I noticed. I hadn't expected that tradition to hold once WordGirl had gone from 'honored guest' to 'unwilling captive.' The crew had decided when we first set out to retrieve the girl that we would speak exclusively in English for the duration of the mission—to remind us all of how different this child was from a typical Lexiconian child and of how essential she was to our cause. Of course, switching to another language was as comfortable and natural for Lexiconians as breathing was for humans. The one exception to this was WordGirl, which was ironic since she was the only Lexiconian I had ever heard of who grew up on a planet where so many different languages were spoken. She was indeed an enigma, that child. For any Lexiconian to stay in one city and have no desire to explore the Earth and its millions of words in thousands of tongues, she must truly have grown attached to the people who raised her.
"What?" I asked back at my crewman, trying to sound uncaring.
"That little 'show of force' you did back there," she clarified, indignantly pointing behind her. "I was under the impression that we were trying to protect that poor girl's future!"
I tensed. "I wanted to protect her as much as possible, but it was necessary. There was no way to maintain the subterfuge, and little chance she would continue to cooperate voluntarily. I had no choice but to coerce her."
"Pretty extreme method of coercion," she commented.
"Your point?" I muttered, teeth grit in annoyance. "I was under the impression that you understood the lengths to which we might have to go."
Her glare broke with surprise for a moment, and she flinched. It was enough to give me a tiny rush of satisfaction to counterbalance my dejection.
"We all agreed," I reminded, "that we would do whatever it takes… and time is running out."
"I know," she snapped, clenching her fists in frustration as her eyes welled with tears. "But… for pity's sake, Captain, this is… horrible."
"I won't argue with that," I said with a somber sigh.
"You were terrifying in there," she added, her face a confusing blend of sadness and disgust. "You were… so ruthless."
Her words unsettled me more than I wanted to admit, and I swallowed instead of offering a reply. I drew a sharp breath, fixing a frustrated glare on my subordinate. Curse her bluntness, but the jolt of reality was in order, I supposed. Like a splash of cold water to someone who needed to wake up.
"I'll be as ruthless as I need to be," I said at last, "to secure the future of my people."
Yes… That was the point of all this. I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn't about me, or those unfortunate children. It was about justice, and the fate of the entire Lexiconian race.
My pilot took a sharp breath, and drew up her face in a conflicted frown. "Well... As long as you're being honest with yourself."
Honest with yourself...
Those words had also unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.
Her departure was as wroth as her arrival had been. As she blasted through my doors and out into the corridor she nearly collided with another crewman, who shied back to let her pass. He said nothing, and turned to look at me with a distant, unreadable expression on his face—one that I had seen a dozen times before. Gray held my gaze until the doors closed, and out of nowhere I experienced a chilling, irrational sensation of being cut off from everyone.
I leaned back against my desk, fending off a sudden wave of nausea.
I'm not a monster, I told myself again, clenching my fingers tighter on the cold metal behind me.
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Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
— Romans 12:21
Author's Notes:
- Wordball— Whaddaya think? Does my made-up sport feel sufficiently Lexiconian? Were you able to get a decent image of it from my frail attempt at describing it? :} I'm not much for sports, but I just loved the idea of using a Lexiconian sport as a backdrop for Darix's flashback.
- The Lexiconian Language— The idea I presented in this chapter for how the Lexiconian language works is based on the supposition that the ability to understand any language upon hearing it is a standard Lexiconian superpower. My headcanon about how Lexicon has their own written language but not a spoken one came from a brainstorming session I had with my brother when we were trying to figure out the language logistics of the story. For a while it looked like I might not find an opportunity to explain it in the story, but then I had the idea to make it a part of this Darix chapter, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. :)
- '…not willing that any should perish…'— My journey with Darix has been an interesting one. In the first draft he was basically just a vehicle for the plot and was cruel and sadistic just because. When I started work on the second draft, however, I realized that wasn't good enough for me. The more I write, the more the process reminds me of my heavenly Father, and the relationship between God and people that the Bible talks about. God is like a writer telling an enormous story in which every human being is a character. The thing is, He loves all of us—even those of us who go down the path of a 'villain' and do heinous, terrible things. The Author of our story still loves us. He will give us our just deserts in the end if we don't repent, and He won't prevent us from suffering the consequences of our mistakes, but He still loves us. And this is the philosophy that I try to adhere to when writing for all of my characters—even my villains. I may not be able to save them, but I still have to love them. It can make for a really sad writing experience, but it also makes for a better story, and I think it even helps me to understand how God feels when he says things like, "How can I let you go? … How can I destroy you?" in Hosea 11:8. "My heart is torn within me, and my compassion overflows." I couldn't have said it better myself. T-T
- MINI-GAME (if anyone's still playing, that is XP): 'Another Point of View'— This chapter was—and will be—the only chapter in the story that happens completely from Darix's viewpoint. However, there was a previous chapter that showed one scene through Darix's eyes. PM me the name of that chapter, and I'll give you 5 points.
- Theme Song: "Hymn for the Missing" by Red— This isn't the type of song typically applied to villains, but honestly, that's one of the reasons I chose it. It's not about what's happening right now, with Becky, and Lexicon, and the Zymians. It's about what happened years ago, when Darix lost the only person in the universe who he still loved. It's about the grief he couldn't deal with that ultimately led him to where he is now. It's about a Darix who there might've been hope for, if he'd made different choices. :(
- Theme Song: "Lie to Me" by Red— Red sure is good for angsty theme songs. DX This one is a bit weird because Darix is the second person in the lyrics, but once you get that idea in your head, it's a perfect fit. I guess it's what I imagine his son would tell him if he could… that he's not being honest with himself and what he's doing is wrong, but it's not too late for him to let go of his anger, pain, and hate, and make things right.