Before leaving for Xadia, everyone was preparing. The soldiers were learning how to work with each other, because if they were going to go to war with Xadia, they had to be one united army, not four divided ones. Soren had no idea what his dad was doing, and he didn't think he wanted to know. Claudia was in the woods, collecting some last minute ingredients for any spells she may need to do. She'd asked Soren to join her, and he knew this was her way of getting some alone time with him so that they could properly talk, but he'd turned her down, said he had some preparing of his own to do.
It wasn't exactly a lie. Soren definitely didn't feel ready to go to this particular battle, but he didn't think that sharpening his sword and packing his gear would help him feel any better about this. The thing was, Soren just didn't want to go. Just the thought of going to Xadia to do...whatever dad wanted them to do there, it made his stomach hurt. If Soren could, he would stay in Katolis and watch the castle, but he knew that dad would never allow that. The best that Soren could do was find some privacy so he could just calm down and figure out what he was going to do.
Sorren had muttered that he needed to pack, though since Claudia had already left he doubted anybody was paying attention to him, and he went up to his room. Once Soren was in the safety of his own room, the door closed and nobody in the halls, he felt himself slouch, like he suddenly found the weight of the world on his shoulders. Soren closed his eyes and leaned his head against the door. He wondered how so much could have changed so quickly.
Soren was the first person who would admit that he wasn't the smartest guy. Taking in information was really hard for him. He would hear something, and completely forget it seconds later, or misunderstand what he was told. Learning wasn't really his strong point, unless it was learning how to fight or use his sword. Despite this, there was one lesson that he'd learned as a little kid, and he'd never forgotten it, even for a second.
Running away was cowardly.
Soren didn't really know just when he had learned this, or who had taught it to him, but he knew exactly when he'd really taken it to heart. He had been just eight years old, and his mom was planning on returning to Del Bar. She was planning on leaving Katolis, and their dad.
Soren's mom had pulled him aside to have a one-on-one special talk with him. She had tried to explain how she felt and her reasons behind it, but Soren had a hard time following it. Finally she had tried to use language that she knew he would understand. She told him that she was starting to feel like every day was a battle.
Soren had heard how his parents fought all the time. He'd just thought that it was disagreements that would pass, like his fights with Claudia. Hearing her call their fights a battle though, it made everything feel so much more real, and it scared him. He'd thought that being married was supposed to be a happy thing, not a private war.
Soren had started to understand his mom a little more, but then she'd said that this battle she was in was one she didn't know how to win, and desperately didn't want to lose either. She didn't want to fight anymore, so she thought that the best thing to do was make a tactical retreat. Soren had closed up. With just those two words, Soren knew which of his parents he would stay with. His dad.
Soren had been young, but he'd known enough about battles and fighting to know that a tactical retreat was just a fancy way of saying running away. Soren's mom didn't know how to deal with his dad, so she wanted to give up and leave, and Soren didn't understand it. He had just been a child, but he'd started to do a morning run with General Amaya every day. It was exhausting, and he frequently felt like he couldn't take another step, but General Amaya pushed him past what he felt was his limit, and that was what made him stronger. Soren already knew that he could do a lot more than he felt he could, and if that was true for him, then it had to be true for his mom as well. And yet, she had decided to give up and leave.
Soren's mom may be a quitter, but he wasn't. He wasn't weak, or a coward. She could return to Del Bar, but he had decided to stay. When he'd watched her walk away and leave, Soren swore to himself that he would never run away. He wasn't going to be like her.
Staying with his dad had been hard, and it seemed to get harder every day. Soren tried so hard to prove to his dad that he was strong, but it never seemed to be good enough. He may have physical strength, but that wasn't the kind of thing that his dad cared about. He liked magic, and intelligence, and Soren had none of that, not the way that Claudia did. It seemed like no matter how strong Soren got, or how successful he was as a soldier, his dad would find something new wrong with him.
Soren tried to prove that he was capable, or useful, or whatever his dad wanted from him, but it was hard to do when half the time he didn't even know what he was doing wrong. His dad's orders, comments, and instructions were really confusing. Soren would believe that his dad had asked him to do one thing, but later, after he finished it, his dad would sigh in disappointment and said that wasn't what he'd meant, that Soren had misunderstood him.
The weird thing was, when their dad was giving instructions to both Claudia and Soren, he understood him perfectly. Soren got things right, and while his dad was never proud of him, at least he wasn't disappointed in him, and Soren had come to accept that was the best that he could get.
Soren knew he wasn't that smart, and he was willing to accept that he messed things up all the time. He tried to get better, but sometimes it seemed like the harder he tried, the worse he did and the less he seemed to understand what his dad wanted from him. He had just come to terms with this, but then...but then his dad told him to kill the two princes.
Soren was so sure that he hadn't misunderstood this particular order. His dad actually wanted him to kill the princes, there was no doubt in Soren's mind about that. Soren knew this, because he'd gone over the conversation countless times in his head. He looked for anything he might have misunderstood or messed up, because he really, really didn't want to kill the princes.
Soren had been so conflicted about this mission, so when he and Claudia had visited their dad in the dungeon, and their dad had told him that he'd misunderstood the mission again, like he so frequently did, Soren realized that something was incredibly wrong here.
Soren knew he hadn't gotten it wrong, not this time, but his dad insisted he had. It was confusing, and it hurt. Soren knew what he had heard. It made Soren wonder if there were any other times when he had, in fact, perfectly understood what his dad was saying, and yet for some reason his dad decided to say that he was wrong.
It made Soren paranoid. Was there anything that he could trust from his dad? He really didn't know anymore. Soren found himself doubting every word that came out of his dad's mouth. Now, he didn't know if it was because of his new wariness around his dad, or if things were actually getting worse, but he could swear that his dad was getting a little power hungry and out of control.
Most people didn't seem to have a problem with it. Even Claudia was acting like everything was normal. A part of Soren wondered if he was just overreacting and looking for problems where there weren't any, but he wouldn't let himself doubt himself. He had been so sure that he was right about what his dad had told him about killing the princes. If he'd been right about that, he could be right about this. He just had to trust himself, for once.
While Soren had an internal battle with himself, the whole kingdom of Katolis seemed to be getting ready for a war. Very few people seemed to question his dad's authority. Those who did, they didn't linger around for long. They left.
Soren heard a lot of the soldiers muttering to themselves. They were saying horrible things about those who had left. Just a few weeks ago, Soren knew he would have been one of them. Walking away from a battle was shameful. If you couldn't handle fighting, why bother becoming a soldier in the first place?
But now...he really wasn't sure. A part of him actually admired the dissenters. Opeli, Corvus, young King Ezran, and the soldiers that walked away, it wasn't that they weren't ready to fight, it was that they firmly refused to fight under his dad's orders. Soren understood this all too well. He was tired of trying to follow his dad's orders too, only for it to never be good enough in his dad's eyes. His dad seemed to expect so little from him, but he still demanded so much. It was impossible, and Soren didn't know how to deal with it. He didn't want to deal with it anymore.
Soren hadn't known what he should do. He thought that Ezran was right, or at least he seemed more compassionate and in control than Soren's dad was, which was why he had decided to help Ezran escape and contacted allies that could help him. Soren didn't completely understand what this war was about, or what either side wanted to get from it, but when it came to deciding who he wanted to help, Soren didn't hesitate to choose Ezran. He may be a kid, but he was the rightful king, and it was Soren's job to protect and serve him.
At the same time though, Soren couldn't bring himself to leave his dad and sister. So while he helped Ezran, he still followed his dad, because he knew that's what was expected of him. Soren hated disappointing his dad, and he really didn't want to give up just because things were getting hard. Who knows, maybe if dad lost this battle he would go back to his normal self again, and everything would be okay, just like it was before.
Except Soren didn't know if things had ever been okay in the first place.
Soren sighed. His head hurt, and thinking about all of these emotional feelingsy stuff was just making it worse. He needed to do something productive, get his mind off of the disaster that seemed to be getting worse right in front of his eyes. Soren opened his saddlebags and began packing. He grabbed things that he might need for the trip, plus some additional things that he wouldn't normally bring to a battle, just in case he might have to be gone for a little longer than this trip to Xadia. He didn't really know why he would be gone for very long, or where he would go, but it just felt like the right thing to do. Since he was going to trust his gut now, he was going to go all out with it.
As Soren was getting his things he somehow found himself grabbing something that he usually tried to forget he even had. It was a letter from his mom that he had found on his bed the day she left. He'd read it dozens of times, and it always made him feel angry and really upset. He'd tried to burn or rip it to pieces multiple times in the past, but it always fixed itself.
The first time he had found the letter, he'd ripped it without even reading it. He was upset with his mom, he didn't want to know what she wanted to say to him. When Claudia had found out what she'd done, she had screamed at him, hit him, and used her new magic that she barely understood to put the letter back together again. She was bedridden for three days after that, so drained from using magic on something more than creating an orb of light. Soren had felt so guilty and worried about Claudia that he'd ran to dad and begged him to put an enchantment on his letter. The kind of enchantment that Dad normally reserved for political letters or historical documents. Soren still hadn't wanted the letter, but he didn't want Claudia to try something like this again just because he'd done something stupid. If keeping the letter made her happy, then that's what he would do.
Soren had found himself pulling out the letter a couple of times over the years. It usually happened after he'd disappointed dad and Claudia was busy helping dad with his latest spell, leaving him alone with his horrible feelings. Soren had been desperate for any kind of familial approval that he would read the letter, though it usually made him feel even worse.
The last time Soren had read this letter had been on his birthday, when Claudia had been gone on an extended ingredient collecting trip and dad had been busy preparing things for King Harrow's birthday. Now, with dad getting progressively worse and Claudia starting to show signs of dark magic overuse, Soren felt like he needed this letter more than ever.
Dropping his things, Soren sat down on his bed and opened the letter, which was almost five pages long. Most of the letter was just Mom sounding like Mom, talking to him like there was no problem. She used to be the only person who understood how to talk to and connect with him, before Claudia had gotten older and taken that role herself.
Soren usually tried to read just the first part of the letter, because it was nice and comforting. Today though, he skipped over that and went to the very last page, which only had a few words on it.
'I know you're upset that I left. I hope that someday you will understand. More than that, I desperately hope that you will never have to.'
Soren had never understood what that part meant. How could you want one thing while also wanting the opposite? It didn't make any sense. Now though, after ten years, Soren thought he understood his mom a little more.
Being here, being with dad, it was exhausting. It felt like much more than he could handle, and thinking about keeping this up for the foreseeable future made him feel so scared and stressed that he felt physically sick and couldn't breath. He wanted to be anywhere but here. So he definitely understood why his mom had left, and he was actually impressed that she had lasted as long as she had.
While he understood his mom better, he wished that he didn't. Suddenly seeing all the flaws that surrounded him, realizing how many lies his dad told him, it hurt. It felt like everything he'd ever known was suddenly gone. It felt like that time that Claudia had discovered illusion magic and Soren had made the mistake of volunteering to help her test the magic, and for the next week he hadn't known what was real and what wasn't.
Claudia hadn't conjured any particularly terrifying illusions, but Soren sometimes still had nightmares about the experience. These past few days, he'd had those kinds of nightmares every single night, which didn't help with the nervous anxiousness he seemed to constantly have to deal with.
Soren read those few words a few more times before he folded the note up again and put it in his saddlebag. Maybe he should find Mom and ask her how she had decided to leave. She'd tried to explain it before, but he was a lot older now, and much more willing to listen to her. As a kid, he'd thought that she had taken the easy way out, to leave instead of staying behind and trying to fix things. Now though, Soren thought he marvelled at her bravery, not because she'd left him and Claudia, he still didn't know if he'd forgiven her for that, but because she'd walked away from Dad.
Soren wished he was strong enough to get up and walk away from his dad and all of the impossible expectations. He didn't know how he could possibly stay here, especially when he knew it was just going to get worse, but his dad was still his dad, and Claudia was his sister. How could he possibly leave them? What would he do without them? Soren's job may be a Crownguard, but his family was his life.
But staying here, Soren felt like he was being drained of all his feelings of happiness. He felt lost, and empty. His family may be his life, but Soren still felt like being with them was slowly killing him. He couldn't take it for much longer.
Clenching his fists to stop his hands from shaking, Soren stood up and numbly went back to packing. Whether he liked it or not, he had to be ready to leave for Xadia as soon as his dad gave the word. He really didn't want to go, but he didn't know what else he was supposed to do right now. So though it was going against his better instincts, Soren got ready to leave.
It was going to be a long journey, especially since they were travelling with four kingdom's worth of armies. Since there wouldn't be a lot for him to do as they went, Soren knew he would just be stuck with his own thoughts. This was usually something he really didn't like, but maybe this could be a good thing. Having the time to really think things through, not being able to really do anything else, with luck Soren would be able to figure out just what he was going to do from here.
Maybe Soren would be able to work up the nerve and courage to do what he'd always thought was cowardly and easy. Leave.
A/N: This was kind of a therapeutic fic for me to write. I've recently decided to walk away from a group that, while not abusive (at least not towards me), it definitely isn't the healthiest group for me to be part of. Yesterday though, I learned that one of the leaders has said that people who leave are like unruly children who decide to run away from home because they're throwing a temper tantrum.
Walking away from a relationship or group that's not good for you doesn't make you childish or immature, it can make you stronger. I had such intense feelings about this that I immediately thought of Soren and felt like writing it. I just needed to get this off my chest. I hope it made a decent story though.