A/N: Kelley is usually only mentioned in passing, so I thought it would be interesting to tell an actual story from his perspective. It's pretty short and not my favorite, but I thought I'd share it anyway.
The Tower's big, but it's not endless. On days like this, when the sheets of rain rap the windows and the younger kids come in from training with their bones seeped by wet, shivering cold, it seems more finite than ever. There are people everywhere and, even though the students never quite touch his face, he feels eyes chipping away at his back.
Whoever said that Guild Master was the ultimate forgot to mention all remoteness brought with it. When Kelley walks down the halls it's never in an aimless path, and he never stops to chat; his feet slip soundlessly across the cobble-floor until he reaches the inner-most room and locks it staunchly behind him, for comfort and to retain some of his long-forgotten defiance. At least they gave him keys. At least he has that much power here.
Once locked in self-willed exile he pulls his cloak off and tosses it over a near chair, where he misses. It falls to the floor in a snaking slip of black and lies there until recalled, the only exquisite thing he owns and his obedient sheath. The passing seconds clench at Kelley's stomach. She's late, she's late.
She walks through the doors by way of lock-pick, always the one to slip silently past what's in front of her and use her resources. Her hair tumbles over her shoulders in hapless ropes of blonde; her eyes are remote and calculating, a faint light through the ocean. Her skin's never looked more lily-white than right now.
"Guild Master," Elza greets, like there's cotton in her throat.
"Been a while," Kelley says.
"Yeah." Her lips are parted expectantly, but lock again. Even if her eyes don't shift, she's everywhere, seeping into the wood beams and floor and grit. A good gunner never lets on this much. He figures it can't possibly be true that she's the one to be chosen; he figures his heart is fluttering in relief and not anticipation.
Wordlessly, and with his stare trained just beyond her, he moves to a podium at the chamber's center. Balanced on it is the Guild's age-old strength and pain, gleaming gunmetal and a lethal weight in his hands. Without reaching for the trigger he knows he'll be met with that familiar resistance, the phantom torture of truth and doubt that lurks in both Storm and Kelley.
Elza's still there. He shoves Storm into her hands roughly.
"Go on."
She starts, as if snapping from a faze. "Huh?"
"Pull the damn trigger."
The rifle is only half her height but twice as deadly; her fingers work on it like a familiar limb, down the barrel and to the trigger. One hand steadies Storm's mouth right above Kelley's head and the other is strapped against its wooden hold, a thin forefinger at the switch before Storm emits something gray and earsplitting.
Storm is on the ground before the gunpowder settles and Elza is shaking all over, sweaty and alive. The fire echoes an unfaltering laugh in their ears before dwindling to silence, which lasts longer than anything.
Elza's looking at Kelley and Kelley's not looking at her. He's never been shot, but for a second he swore he had been. Pride won't let tears slick his eyes, but a certain darkness pulls just behind them.
Elza's hand moves just slightly, like she's going to smooth his hair back and tell him it's all okay. She doesn't and Kelley won't press it because they're very different people now, changing like shaken kaleidoscopes.
"You can go now," he mutters, swooping down to retrieve Storm. Those blue eyes, sinking with pity, leave him, and so does she.
It will all be settled in a week's time. He can't look at Elza knowing what he knows, containing these facts of her fate and his own. He passes her and Clive daily, to leave his imprint on her, to will her to come forward and accuse him of knowing the Elder's are scheming, because he's sure she knows too; Guild Master Kelley is limited in some ways, but the Elders are not.
But she never does. Elza flits her eyes over him, looks away, talks to Clive like nothing's wrong. Clive just nods in response, or listens to her intently out of boundless love. Then Clive spots Kelley and hollers at him to come over; Kelley produces some weak excuse not to and skulks off, to contemplate what's coming.
Killing Elza is going to be tough, and not just because he loves her. Kelley loves Clive too, in a way fusing blood and friendship, and Clive won't ever recover if Elza is killed. He thinks of Clive, the way his eyes shiver with warmth when Elza's around. Kelley can't say whose death will mean more to Clive. Clive's really still a kid about so many things, loyalty one of them; nothing in the world will write away the death of half of everything that ever mattered to him.
Two nights before the duel is set to happen, Kelley shares a drink with his brother. Clive is loosened by the liquor around him and goes on and on about recent missions or conversations or cities he's now proud to have been to, and he seems intent on listening to some of Kelley's new wisdom, but Kelley says nothing. His lips curl around the brim of his glass, wondering when was the last time they had all kept so many secrets from each other. For Clive's safety, Kelley won't tell him: Clive would intervene in whatever way possible, even if it cost him everything. It's a salve on all his guilt, to know he can at least protect one of them.
Some of the last things anyone says to him that night are said very quickly and in passing--Elza, from one of the Tower's many halls, in a serpentine whisper when Kelley and Clive go their separate ways:
"Didn't tell him, huh?"
She's kind of remotely beautiful at that moment, like a bruised cannon stranded after war. It's easy to hate someone but not to hate memories, spreading pastoral ripples as they sink in to his mind. It reminds him of a dream where he plunged a poleax into someone wearing a clean red shirt and watched the blood sputter over the sand before getting sucked down like some cool drink to the earth. The most disturbing aspect of it is that as he did it, it felt no more different than making breakfast or loading a pistol or some other trivial thing like that. It occurs to him at that moment that murder can happen anytime, anywhere, despite the laws regimented in their society.
Kelley looks down, jaw squared over hers. "What he doesn't know can't hurt him," he says, and to him it's all very true.
"Don't act like you know what's best for him," Elza says indignantly, though her features remain cool.
"You didn't tell him either," Kelley points out. The words are almost teasing, like he is making crass remarks while watching Elza twist her tongue around a straw.
She shrugs, shaking her head. "I don't have the heart. He's a strong man, but this would do him in for sure."
"It's gonna happen no matter what."
"No kidding, Guild Master," she says, her lips twisting into a smirk. "We're caught up in a political balance."
The choices are so limited. They all lead back to the same problem.
That night in his room, Kelley thinks about his dualities. Elza is right--Storm doesn't belong to him or a million other people. It is hers. He has never belonged to be Guild Master outside of his pliability, and with that in mind he will never actually be the leader he thought the Elders might have seen in him. He is a vessel for their laws, no more influential than a sheet of paper with a king's mandate; everything comes back to the Elder's rule and he is just the line for their signature.
He washes his face over a silver basin, his face reflected back, from the untidy hair to the awful rictus of his mouth. Her words are getting under his skin more with each passing second. It's pathetic how one person can stand in his mind like a tree with no end to its branches. He'll spend hours convincing himself, building resolve, trying to forget all his ties to Elza and Clive outside of being Guild Master, repeating and repeating and repeating:
I don't care about them, I don't care about them; it's my job to do this. The Elders will pull the strings and I will pull the trigger.