Hello! With this chapter finished the other two which almost entirely finished will be coming more quickly. Work has been understaffed because of reasons I'm sure you can imagine. On a sunnier note, I'm getting married! More to come soon I promise, this tale is never far from my waking mind.
-Old Night
The cold of Mirrard's 'spring' still cut at times even when one was dressed for it. In retrospect, Sindri felt thankful for its bitter kiss as it lessened the pain across his chest and neck. He felt dehydrated and weak but the cold pushed him forward and away from the city lights towards the tree-line. There was something pleasing to him in the presence of the Darskirr, despite the knowledge that his compatriots meant to harm him. There was warmth and familiarity in the ponchos woven by hand, the helmets and the chain veils.
They'd driven him at a trotting but merciless pace he dared not stumble from, slow or trip. He could 'feel' Spearmother's eyes boring into him like a hooked barb in his brain as she kept pace behind him.
It didn't surprise him they had a few rigs waiting for them in the woods. Wordlessly he was ushered into the vehicles and seated between two fully armed and armored warriors. The drive was silent and he knew better than to ask for a poncho or clothing. The intent was to make him suffer privation. His modesty rankled at being made to remain unclothed, but he held his tongue. They'd hit him, he knew they would.
It's just as well. After five long years I felt young again. No more secrets, I'll tell the truth and I will die. If they string me up from my guts it'll be quick. I can't last long.
Sindri looked to his side as the hours crept by driving in the dark.
He began to feel unease wondering what elaborate torture Spearmother had in mind for him. If it was just to gut and hang him a long drive was unnecessary. If they meant to flog him or flay him until dead then he had many hours left still to arrive at the village by his guess and many more to die perhaps.
One thought did cross his mind that chilled his blood. Being sacrificed at the godheads would bring his spirit straight to the gods to be judged and scrutinized. They would find him wanting, the thought of passing on and away from the underworld made him feel nauseous.
Sweet merciful Gods, please. Please let her kill me instead of sacrifice me for your judgement.
Tears welled in his eyes as he thought of his parents and his siblings, the eternal shame he'd bring to his family by being slain in such a fashion. To never see them again, even in death.
Gods, I'm going to be sick. Please, I know I don't deserve it, please just let me die.
The rig began to slow as several others began to peel away and linger nearby.
Stopping completely the passengers on his flanks hopped out of the vehicle and gestured him to emerge.
Sliding out and into the snowy grass Sindri cursed himself for the familiar sense of pine needles under his feet.
I never used to clear this shit around the house, never bothered until the girls came to live with me. Where are we? This isn't a godhead.
The bright lights of the rigs cast a strange pattern of lights and deep shadows among the trees. Out of the bright came Spearmother who approached Sindri without fear or reproach discernable on her shadowed face.
Guiding him away and into the half-shadows she smiled with her voice.
"Welcome home, oathbreaker."
-0-
Vetra swiped her keycard and the magnetic lock on her apartment door clacked open. Peering into the livingroom she looked into the kitchen where Sid craned over the stove and went about fixing dinner. The living space was white, round edged and non-descript with very little to make it stand out other than the smell of the xillah meat and mashed brommi with grilled shadestalks the little turian worked on with an easy hand. The scent of a homecooked dinner was the only thing that implied the place was something approximating a home.
And she hated it.
It was a reminder of everything that had been given up. That and Sindri's poncho, which Sidera wore every single day since they'd left.
"Hey Sid."
The little turian didn't respond, with a flick of her wrist he tapped her wooden spoon in her hand clean and she stepped off the stool.
"Dinner will be ready in five minutes. I'm going to go wash my hands, don't let the stalks burn please."
With a grimace Vetra stood and stepped in to watch the purplish vegetables brown at the edges and sear pleasantly.
Spirits, I hate coming to the apartment.
Taking a long moment to think it over as her younger sister set the table with a sullen look in her eye, Vetra closed her own and breathed deeply. The smell was like a needle in her brain. Vetra felt an acute and sudden need to do something, anything. Anything but be here in this ugly place and with her sister who'd insisted she wouldn't forgive her. Not when they'd moved and not after leaving Grennik seven days earlier.
"Sid."
The little turian nodded in her direction as the barest acknowledgement.
It was the most she was going to get out of the kid.
"This weekend I'm going to visit some people in the afternoon. We can go anywhere you want until then."
"I don't want to go anywhere, I have to study."
"Sid, you don't want to study. You're doing it because you feel like you have to instead of what would make you happy."
The little girl glowered at her older sister.
"Life isn't about being happy. It's about doing your duty."
-0-
Sindri's heart skipped a beat and his eyes widened in horror as he realized he was in fact at his old home in the woods.
"Please."
"Please what?"
"Please, don't make me go in there."
The woman's hateful eyes fastened onto his own umber colored ones like nooses.
"I'm not going to make you do anything. You struck me to defend the honor of your 'wife' and 'daughter'. You embraced your atonement rather than let that doctor eat a bullet. There is some core in you that is still Darskirr, even if you are the least of us. You have come too far and hurt too much to falter now."
Sindri shook his head and his voice trembled.
"I-I can't. Please."
Gesturing like a hostess to the front door, Spearmother smiled.
"Go."
"If you are just going to fucking kill me then do it!"
The woman shook her head, amused.
"Not yet. Tell me, Sindri, why did you spare Callux? You never told me back in Dubek, I assumed then even you didn't know why, not really."
"Turians are closer to animals than people, you said it yourself. Why do you care?"
"Because you do."
-0-
Vetra leaned back into her chair and her mandibles clicked. She wanted to be happy, to not be miserable at home every minute she was there. And she wanted Sid to stop acting this way.
"Your teacher spoke to me today. She said you're being difficult at school."
Sidera froze in place as she placed a fork down on the table and began to visibly seethe with anger.
"Mrs. Smith is lying, I always do my homework and I haven't gotten into any fights."
"That's not what I'm talking about. You are angry all the time. Everyone can tell and it makes everyone uncomfortable. How are you going to make any friends if you keep acting like this?"
"I don't want any friends. We're just going to move again."
Vetra could feel the bile rising in her throat, it was less nausea and more anger and stress from a child she'd sacrificed everything to provide for and being punishing for failing.
"What do you want out of me?" snarled Vetra, the tension in her voice was low and taught.
"Nothing."
"Then why are you so mad?"
"Because my honor says I need to stay here and make sure you stay out of trouble. It's what Sindri would have wanted."
Vetra wanted to scream but swallowed it back. Anger painted her cheeks blue, her faceplates felt hot and sweaty.
"How long are you going to use him like a stick to beat me with? You think you are so right, to hate me this much. You are just a child, you don't know anything and you still can't understand why I did what I did." she turian hissed, her pupils pinning and her voice grating.
"What's there to understand? You're a thief."
-0-
Sindri's eyes narrowed, and he spared a long look into the dark past the Spearmother. Shivering from the cold wind he focused until he could make out the lurking shapes of his armed kinsmen. They were here and many more than the ones that came to claim him.
She's fucking with me, Spearmother wants something. Why the audience?
"How was he different from any other invader? Why did you spare him?"
"Oppiter's family was a mirror of mine. And he was no monster, he was just a young man swept up in a war that shouldn't have happened."
"You saw yourself in him, did you?"
Sindri turned his head again towards the door. He knew what has inside, he couldn't face it.
"What do you want Spearmother? Why are you saying these things?"
A sharp inhalation from the woman punctuated the dialogue as she stepped away from the man and towards the open door.
"The clan is not angry because you chose to protect a vanquished enemy or because you saw a kinship with this alien. We are angry with you because you dishonored yourself."
Cold air moved through the trees in a creaking sigh and the doorway into Sindri's old home howled quietly, like an open mouth into darkness.
"What?"
"You were evil, Sindri. And we took to your example because we were in pain, just like you. We've chosen to atone for that in our own way, after all the turians were worthy foes. No shame in that. But you let your friend die because you were too afraid to raise a hand at the Mirrardi, correct?"
A tear slipped out of his eye and down his cheek.
"Yes."
"Why were you afraid of defending your friend, Sindri?"
"I couldn't, I-"
Sindri's eyes glazed over for a moment and he exhaled for what felt the first time since his friend died and he relinquished his secret.
"I chose to not harm the Mirrardi because they are kin."
"Who did you love more? Who had the honor then?"
"Oppiter, on both accounts."
Shaking her head, the Spearmother turned to him. Deep disappointment colored her expression.
"And instead of revenging your friend and punishing his murderers you decide to compromise in a challenge by blood to Nikita?"
"It seemed like the best choice, the others were in danger."
"Were they? How many had been murdered before your Oppiter?"
"None."
"So you compromised for an imagined threat, instead of taking action."
"What was I supposed to do?! They were many and I was but one!"
The Spearmother looked at Sindri for an uncomfortably long moment before she bore her perfect teeth in a contemptuous snarl. She looked very close to violence, and Sindri could taste it.
"You were but one because you left your tribe and joined a clan of strangers. You forsook the people who would have died to a man to defend you to instead break bread with these weak Darskirr. And that you were one even then is meaningless; one does not feed the wolves to placate them, one kills them."
"I would have died, Spearmother, I was afraid."
Disgust crinkled the woman's perfect nose and her fingers curled into fists as she stood unmoved and unblinking.
"Your Callux was afraid when he died! You would have answered with your life for such an affront if you had any sense of honor! The tribe couldn't give a dead dog that he was a turian, only that he had honor and so did you. Perhaps you would have died and he lived. Would that soothe your tortured soul, Sindri? Maybe both of you would have died together or perhaps even escaped with your lives. But we will never know, because you chose to be a coward."
Tears streamed down Sindri's face as he held her gaze.
-0-
The older sister stood and her hand snapped around the collar of Sid's poncho and she pulled her forward harder than she'd ever dared before. She looked at the once treasured the old garb and despised the very sight of it. The hollow in her chest ached and anger dug into her down to the veins behind her eyes.
"Take this thing off."
"No!"
Struggling against her older sister's grip the little turian pushed and scratched at Vetra's hands with a little genuine fear, but more concern for what the older turian was digging her nails into.
"I said take it off!"
"No! Stop it, you're ripping it!"
With a snap Sid bit down as hard as she could into Vetra's hand and the older turian only distantly registered the pain before lifting her younger sibling and ripping her head out of the garb. Unwilling to have the poncho taken from her Sidera grabbed on and pulled as hard as she dared.
"Stop it! Give it back to me! Verine made it!"
Vetra's mind cast back to Sindri's desk unwillingly to a picture of a young, sweet looking human female grinning back at a camera. Her long skirt being latched onto by a train of children and her oldest boy carrying the youngest on his shoulders with a very distinct, smug and self satisfied smile on his face. Giving an almighty pull Vetra tore backwards and away from her sister. She had no plan, no idea what she meant to do and no words to speak. She had been made out to be a monster after everything she'd sacrificed, suffered, given away and taken just because of one mistake. How much longer did she have to suffer for it? How much longer was her younger sister who knew and understood so little going to condescend to her like she was beneath her.
The poncho ripped clean in half.
In a heartbeat the air in the room stilled, Sid's mouth fell open as she held her share of the well loved fabric in her hand. Vetra's temper and indignation vanished and she held her half of the garb with the remorse of sacrilege.
Tears came to her younger sister soon thereafter and she embraced the fabric to her chest and sobbed quietly.
"Sid, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. How do-"
Vetra grimaced, realizing she actually had no idea how to mend such primitive garb. But she knew Sid did.
She'd learned from a patient teacher after all.
-0-
"Fine. You're right. Tell me what I did wrong with Vetra and Sid. Go ahead. I want to hear this."
"Nothing."
"I-"
"You did nothing wrong. They are the reason I didn't cut you down at the hospital. It took courage to defend a stranger against a murderer, to take her in and protect her and her younger sister. The Mirrardi are cruel as well as dishonorable when they think they can get away with it. That you chose exile over allowing the clan to kill two innocent people took virtue."
A pregnant silence spanned the few breaths between them as Sindri wracked his brain looking for the angle or ploy from the savage woman.
"And-" Spearmother began with some difficulty.
"while not a soul in the clan understands why you came to love that turian, we don't condemn you for it. Your love for one another seemed genuine, if the Mirrardi are to be believed. The little one too."
A hollow stare overtook Sindri's expression and he fell to his knees.
They left a hole in me. Please, I just want to go home. I want to see Vetra, I want to see Sid.
"Do you love them still?"
"Spearmother, stop! Just fucking kill me, please!"
He didn't look up at his tormentor as she kneeled by him, or when her frigid hands grabbed his face. It only deepened his dread when he finally met her gaze and saw her smile.
"No."
Shaking her head, she continued and reached for his injured arms. With scarcely a grunt of effort she helped him stagger to his feet.
"Life itself is suffering. You have nothing left, not even your own two hands."
"Why are you trying to make me choose?"
"Because the only thing you have left is your life."
The woman's fingers fastened gently around his forearms, cradlings his bandaged wrists she smiled at him with an inscrutable leer.
"The source of all your misery is you. And that is the blessing; you can choose to stop suffering."
"How?"
Ink stained fingers came to stroke Sindri's hair with surprising tenderness. With each stroke he felt his own sense of privacy, his pretenses slip away.
"Choose. Will you bow your head and succumb? Or will you kill this Sindri and become the man you could have been?"
Seeing the question flicker in his eyes before the words could even be spoken, the Spearmother smiled at him pleasantly even as her bony knife's handle poked out from her belt and homespun poncho.
"Redemption is an amusing thing. It is only when you've fallen to your knees that you can rise again."
-0-
"Sid, I-"
Words failed Vetra as she looked at the form of her whimpering younger sister. She clutched the poncho to her chest and sobbed, shaking her head at her sister every time she tried to touch her.
"Sid, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to rip it, we can take it tomorrow morning to a tailor and fix it. It'll be good as new."
"Get away." the little turian whimpered.
Reaching out with a comforting hand and remorse plainly written on her face, she shook her head at Sid.
"Please, let me help-"
"Get away!" the child snarled. Stomping forward she shoved Vetra away, her mandibles clicking loudly.
"Get away from me, I hate you. You don't love me, you don't love Sindri, you will never be one of us."
Bolting to her feet Sidera ran to her room and locked the door. Standing alone Vetra just squatted and sat on the floor. Her mind lay empty and the sullen ache in her chest pricked her sharp like cold snow.
I don't know who I am anymore.
Breathing deeply and stifling the sob which worked hard to escape her lungs she took a lingering look at her open palm and remembered what human skin felt like.
"Spirits, help me."
-0-
Sindri took a single wavering step into his home and felt immediately out of place. The home, the structure, it all felt wrong. Dishes were where he'd left them earlier that week. Laundry was folded, books were in their places and all was as it should but the abode felt utterly alien to him. He wasn't supposed to be here. It was not home.
Stepping by and into the dark, followed by the Spearmother he opened his refrigerator his forearm and struggled to get the bottom drawer open. Inside he saw it. The square, empty space and absence of the turian medical case.
She really did steal from me.
Passing through the empty halls of his home and sparing a single bitter glance inside the girl's room he pressed into his own. Their belongings had been left where they were, save the obvious rummaging of a quick exit. Sid's stuffed animals squinted back at him from their phalanx on her pillows and the hint of Vetra's scent invaded his nose as he stood in the doorway. Exhaling sharply though his nose he wandered into his room. His made bed and books lined the far wall, the photograph of his family smiled back at him. Bitterness was awash in the air in his lungs and his beating heart.
Sorely he slumped onto his icy bed without flinching, his even gaze looked at the floor and his heart beat empty.
Quietly, the Spearmother stepped into his view. He pale feet wrapped by leather cords from sandals made of leather in a design a thousand years old tapped the floor. Whether the woman was impatient or amused, he didn't care. But his eyes did reach up to her face as he heard the distinctive click of a handgun.
His dark eyes fastened on the barrel of the revolver held inches from his face.
"I am going to kill you, but you are pulling the trigger-"
With a roll of her eyes passing for what a smirk should have expressed she sighed.
"-metaphorically speaking. Go ahead and ask me, don't be afraid."
For a brief moment he wondered what she was inviting him to do. What was expected?
Whichever I wish, to live, truly live.
The last year of his life passed through Sindri's waking mind like a cloying smoke, intangible but acrid on his tongue and unpleasant in his nose. The images, the sounds and feelings came to him in crystal clarity but he found he couldn't recall the specifics or the disjointed meanings behind them. The dream or nightmare passed across his waking eyes and his forehead pressed into the revolver's barrel and relief throbbed from the cold steel. It was not unpleasant, the relief of knowing he could leave whenever he pleased. but the riddle nagged him; what had he done? Who was he and what had he accomplished this last year? The last five? What had he done since Callux was murdered?
I am a coward and it taints everything. I made the wrong choice at every turn.
He didn't have an answer, only injuries and a head full of bad memories.
His teeth reached for his bandages, the completeness of Mirrard's heavy cold only partially made it to his wrists. He wanted to feel all of it all over before he died.
Clumsily he removed the bloody cloth and stared stupidly at the prosthetic port sticking out of his flesh. It was digital, moisture resistant and shiny. Sindri recognized it for what it was but he didn't understand it.
Why did they give me prosthetics while I slept? I didn't consent to that, who?
The crate of turian medicine came to him in an image clear as day. At once a wave of anger came at the thought of Vetra's face, her beautiful face and her trilling voice which at once infuriated him and drowned him in longing.
She is home still. Vetra stole from me, she abandoned me.
"What's on your mind, oathbreaker?"
His dark eyes, almost black in the gloom, opened wide in anger.
Sindri stood, unashamed of being bare and inured to the cold he leaned into the gun being held between his eyes.
"I will earn back my name. I will not die."
Another sadistic snarl cut the Spearmother's perfect face.
"Fearsome words, oathbreaker. Of course, spoken from the depths of your empty home, pray what will you-"
"Burn it."
The woman blinked at him, the language between them clear and mild surprise overtook her expression.
Sindri pressed his forehead into her and loomed over despite being only centimeters taller.
"See my locker over yonder? Open it, take my helmet, my gun, dress me and burn this house down."
The Spearmother's cheeks reddened mildly and she curtsied facetiously.
"As you wish, Darskirr."
Stepping lightly around the man she spared him a knowing look.
"The rest of your life begins now and make no mistake; you are going to suffer like only a rare few have in our clan's history."
A small cloud of steam escaped Sindri's lips as he exhaled.
"That will be my atonement. Not just the torment at your hands, Spearmother, but everything yet to come. The butcher's bill is writ large and sooner or later it comes due."
Spearmother's smile faded and a hint of concern crossed her face.
"I wonder if it would not be better if I did make the choice to die for you?"
"You still can."
A terrible silence spanned a few heartbeats between them and the Spearmother's confidence and attitude faded. A wiser and more measured woman took her place.
"And there is the Sindri I used to know, many years ago. I had a feeling."
Drawing a pair of folded pants and helping the man into them she buttoned the military fatigues and grasped his face in an almost maternal way. Her pale green eyes full of concern, she frowned. No words needed to pass between them for both of them to understand she was making a choice and how concerned she was if she could bear the consequences yet unforeseen.
"I truly wonder."