After War Gundam X: Caris Nautilis
The Bronze Labyrinth, Part V
Gundam X and characters are property of Takamatsu Shinji, Sotsu Agency, Bandai, Sunrise and TV Asahi. "Merlin" copyright 1953 to Edwin Muir, and "The Lady of Shallott" copyright 1833 to Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Please do not repost without permission.
After War Gundam X
The Crystal Mirror
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O Merlin in your crystal cave / Deep in the diamond of the day,
Will there ever be a singer / Whose music will smooth away
The furrow drawn by Adam's finger / Across the memory and the wave?
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He could see that Olba was not happy.
The other man hid it well. Olba never voiced any complaints, and on the surface, he seemed as happy as anyone in his position and circumstances could ever want to be. But Caris knew.
He did not attribute this knowing to any sort of Newtype powers, though sometimes he thought it might be a bit of that creeping in. But more than anything, it was because he had somehow developed a very good people sense in the latter half of the war. It was in the things Olba did, the little things, such as sitting for hours at a time staring at the goldfish pond in the backyard, or muttering things under his breath when he thought Caris wasn't listening. It was the way he spent hours in the library, just staring at the wall. Olba loved to read, and when he could walk into the library, lock the door, and come out four hours later and proclaim that he never finished a single page, it didn't take a Newtype to realize something was not right.
But Caris never told Olba. It was not something that the two of them would ever bring up to each other, and he knew that it was mutual, that Olba also somehow knew that he was hurting on the days his Synapse Syndrome would flare up, that the reason Caris slept in so late on those days was not that he hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before. But likewise, Olba would accept Caris' explanation with a smile and a nod and just say that they'd gotten some information from Headquarters the night before, and since Caris had gone to bed early, Olba had done him a favor and started indexing it.
And Caris would smile through the pain, fight it down, and say, thank you, Olba.
The war was over, but some memories were too close still for words.
Things two years after the war were not much different from things a month after the war, a year after the war. Jamil hadn't said much when Caris had walked into the capitol building one morning with a bag on his shoulder, a box of papers under his arm, and Olba Frost beside him. The former Frieden captain did not, in fact, say anything at all about this unexpected development; he had simply held out his hand for Caris' papers, greeted him, then looked at Olba and asked if Olba Frost would like a job in the History Department.
I suppose I should have been shocked that he'd do something like that, Olba had told Caris later when they were home. But I'm getting used to you and your friends. If I were Jamil Neate, I would have shot me on the spot. I hurt him most of all, during the war.
And Caris had given him a shadowy smile, and said, well, the war is over.
Jamil had given him this job of war historian, because, he said, he needed someone who he could trust. He needed facts, unbiased stories, the entire gory truth, and most historians had the unfortunate tendency to distort that truth, to glorify the victor and villainize the defeated, and he would have none of that while he was the leader of the Federation.
Jamil wanted the truth, and Caris would give it to him.
Days passed into nights passing into weeks and months, and the stacks of paper grew thicker and taller, and the library grew messier and messier. Olba was the research guru, putting his love of books and knowledge of Caris' libraries to good use, digging up the oddest, most obscure facts that somehow fit perfectly into their account of the war. And then Caris would be the one who would make the trips out to the capital, the one who met with Jamil to do their weekly reports, because Olba was still nervous about being in the same room with the man who he had betrayed during the war and then tried to kill over and over again.
He hesitated to say that the two of them were best friends. Friends, they were, and it would have been impossible for them, living in the same house, to not become close as time went on. Caris had never been close to another human being before, but neither had Olba, having lived in his brother's shadow for so long, and so it was trial and error for both of them. There were arguments, but those were rare - mostly the days flew past in a sort of wary attachment that gave way to cautious friendship, which then morphed into something neither of them could name, a feeling that Caris thought sometimes was what it would have been like to have a brother.
It was not that he was a replacement for Shagia. No one could ever be that. But Olba's unspoken communication in gesture and expression spoke louder than any words, affirmed that Caris had become someone important to him, just as Olba had become someone important in Caris' life.
But as always, neither of them brought that up in conversation either, because there were some feelings, also, that were too close for words.
They were both historians now, the ones dedicated to chronicling the truth of the war and what had happened therein, of the death and destruction and the myth of the Newtype unraveled. But the farther Caris got with his projects, the more he tried to quantify things and make himself the unbiased judge of things that had occurred, he found that he could not, because too much had happened and too many people had died.
It was almost nine months after the war, almost that long since Caris had started this project and Olba had then joined him, when Caris came home from the capital with a request.
"It's really not a request from Jamil," he explained to Olba over the dinner table, as the other man sipped a mug of coffee and looked quizzically as him, unruly black hair slipping over one eye. Olba's hair had grown long since he had come here, but he had refused to cut it. "I just thought of the idea on the way home."
"Spit it out," Olba said, arching one eyebrow at him the way he always did when he was faintly annoyed.
Caris hesitated. "It's rather personal though."
Olba laughed. "What isn't? This is about the war - it's all personal. Tell me. I won't try and stab you again, I promise."
The lights in the room seemed to dim just a bit, and Caris leaned closer, as if someone might overhear. "Would you be willing to...write an account of the war...from your perspective?"
Olba went very still. One of the logs popped in the fireplace, sending up a shower of sparks.
"From the perspective of the New Federation, really," he amended hastily, wanting to fill the suddenly awkward silence with something, idle chatter, some sort of explanation, anything. "I just thought...well, it's not a true history if only written by the victor, is it? That's how I feel, anyway. The world might think differently...but I think you should have a chance to tell your story, too..."
The candles on the table flickered, and Caris laid his hands flat on the shining mahogany surface, noting idly that he needed to cut his fingernails, that the skin around the cuticle of his right thumb was broken and cracking. Talking with your hands in plain view was a sign of honesty, Nomoa had explained to him, because that then signified that you had nothing to hide.
Ironic that it had been Nomoa.
"I'm sorry," Caris said finally, heavily. "It was presumptuous of me to assume you would be ready to-"
Olba's eyes were black, deep, unreadable. "He died, Caris."
There was no need to ask who he was. Caris twisted his fingers together on the table. "I know. Forget that I had ever mentioned it. "
"No. I'll do it."
"Olba-"
"He deserves..." Olba's voice faded into a whisper. "He deserves some sort of..."
"...tribute?" Caris questioned, wondering what exactly Olba meant.
Olba shook his head. "No, not tribute. We were wrong, you know, and I think I knew that we were wrong during the war, too, everything we did and everything we were. But it never occurred to me that we could be wrong, when he was so...right. I trusted him, and he never let me down, even if we were wrong. Even if we did the wrong thing."
"What then," Caris said, "if not a tribute? Shagia will go down in history as a villain, as a murderer, as someone whose own selfish ends merited his own death. You need to refute that."
Olba shook his head. "I can't."
Caris frowned. "Why not?"
"Because he was all those things. We were all those things - villains, murderers, selfish..." Olba gave him a slight, regretful smile. "Mankind is a selfish creature. I will not rewrite history to reflect something that wasn't, because I pride myself on being a historian." He looked down at his empty plate, down at the cup of coffee between his hands. "But I think your idea has some merit. Exorcise the ghosts, and so on and so forth." Glancing quickly at Caris. "Unless, of course, you don't want this to be something like that. I don't have to."
"I wouldn't have asked you if I didn't think you would do a good job," Caris said, picking up his own cup of coffee. The mood seemed to have broken, settled like the sparks of the fire into nothing, scattered and harmless now, and they drank their coffee in companionable silence, and Caris mulled over the events that had brought things to this, and wondered what would have happened if Shagia had survived.
At the least, Olba would not be here with him now, sitting there in his chair, comfortable and looking like he had always belonged there, like an extension of himself.
"Thank you," Olba said finally.
Caris leaned back in his chair, staring at the ornately carved ceiling. "Thank you. I wish I could have known your brother."
"No you don't," Olba said, laughed, and then subsided. "He was not a good person," he said softly. "But...I loved him all the same."
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Olba made rapid progress on his project, though whenever Caris asked to read it, he would refuse, saying that it wasn't finished yet, and even if it was finished, there were revisions and things he would have to do before it was fit for human consumption. Caris only asked once or twice, and then realized that Olba was set in his resolve, and the excuses were just things he said because he did not anyone else to read his words. So he stopped asking.
He'd given Olba a computer for this purpose, but it sat unused in a corner of the other's room, next to the stacks of manuscript paper and ink pens that were obviously the materials of choice. Perhaps pen and paper had a special significance too; Caris did not know, and he didn't ask about that, either.
As the months crept by, it became more and more obvious to Caris that this project carried far more emotional connotations and side effects than he had expected. He didn't know how he had overlooked it, or somehow missed it, or perhaps because Olba had been so willing to start writing this, he had assumed that those memories of the war had settled at least somewhat and were safe to touch. It was around this time that Caris realized that Olba was not happy, would never be happy even staying in this house and having all the luxuries in the world and having the privilege of a new life after the end of the war.
He didn't want to accept that, but even if he denied it, he knew it was the truth.
Jamil had said this day would come, on one of the trips he had taken down to the capital, and he hadn't quite believed the former captain, had told him that Olba was perfectly happy now, and it would be foolish to interrupt the flow of his new life.
But to him, Jamil had said, the war is not over. The war will never be over because for him, there was no resolution.
I don't understand, Caris said, and Jamil had folded his hands and smiled sadly.
You might more than you think. At least you are happy now in what you do...but when it comes time for Olba to leave, do not try to delay him. You will only hurt both you and him in doing so.
It was only after Caris had returned home that he realized, in all the conversations the two of them had had about the war since Olba had come to live with him, Olba had never once talked about his brother.
It was that second spring after the war that Olba began to bring up, casually, slipping it into conversations and idle chatter, the topic of moving to the capital. It was a little forced at first, but with a note of urgency, and Caris took it in stride, not encouraging or discouraging him, just wondering what exactly it was that was moving Olba in that direction when all that he had known was here. There was a feeling nagging at him whenever Olba spoke the word "capital," a feeling that bothered him because he could not define it, but only knew that it was uncomfortable and he didn't like it.
It was a few weeks later that Caris finally realized it was jealousy.
He couldn't accept that, at first. Jealous of what? A city?
He was lying in bed one night when the answer hit him - that he was jealous not of Olba's restlessness, nor of Olba's memories, but simply of the fact that Olba had restlessness and memories and he did not. The Caris Nautlius before Nomoa had been a nobody, the Caris Nautilus during Nomoa had been someone who he was ashamed to even acknowledge now, and the Caris Nautlius after Nomoa was a man without a home, without anyone to love. Olba had had Shagia, but Caris had nobody.
The only other person in Caris' life was Olba, and he did not want Olba to go.
Olba was in town on some errand on that afternoon when Caris was in the study alone going through some papers, and he happened to glance to the side as he was preparing to leave, saw Olba's bulky manuscript sitting there. Two pages of it were laid out on the table separate from the rest, with an old-fashioned fountain pen rolled carelessly on one corner, as if they had just been written and were sitting out to dry.
Caris took one step to the door, looked back at the papers. Stopped.
It was as if his feet were moving of their own accord, his hands placing his own papers back on the table and mechanically touching the fine sheet with Olba's flowing script seeped into the fibers, bringing it to reading level, fingers shaking slightly. The sun was slanting through the large windows, a tinge of gold on white.
...and the world will remember Shagia Frost as a murderer and a traitor, but I can only remember him as that touch in my mind, the voice in my head. I lived with that for so long that it is difficult even now to bear it. Many days I wake up alone in the middle of the night and feel deep inside that something is missing. It tears at my heart. It is like a terrible gash right through my soul that will never be taken away, but I will have to live with it for the rest of my life.
My brother told me we were special. And he was right. We were special. What my brother did not tell me was that we were not the only ones who were special, because that word means so many different things that I never knew. Every single human being on this planet is born with some talent, some gift that no other person has, and for one person or a pair of people to single themselves out as special, as naturally superior, has no purpose.
The Newtypes and those who used them understood that in the end. We, however, did not.
I suppose that the burden I bear now is fitting penance for what I have done, though maybe there is nothing in this world that can erase my sins. My brother is dead, and maybe even that is not enough. I believed in the concept of vengeance until he disappeared from my life, and I think that vengeance has been served. I think that justice has been done as much as it is able to be.
I don't regret that, because I loved him.
"I wondered when you'd find your way into my things."
He straightened with the page in his hand, closing his eyes against the dazzling sun. "I felt you when you came in the door."
"I know. I am not that arrogant, to think that I can surprise a Newtype like that."
He didn't turn to face Olba, didn't need to. When he touched the other's mind, he could feel a raw, chaotic spot, the only sign that remained of the mental link that had been severed when Shagia died, and then the emotions around the link - no anger, only regret, resolve, sadness.
"When are you leaving?" Caris said.
Olba shifted. "Tomorrow. I was in town buying a train ticket. I leave in the morning. I was hoping to tell you tonight after dinner."
"Now is fine."
"I'm sorry," Olba said. "After all you've done, and especially the memories I have made here. It is not that I don't want to stay, but I need to go."
"I understand," Caris said. "You do what you have to."
"You come to the capital every week anyway, almost," Olba offered, and Caris felt the tentative hope for a little resolution, trying to give him some hope, and he shook his head.
"I do come to the capital every week. But me going to see you there would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?"
"I'm sorry," Olba said again.
Caris smiled tightly. "There's nothing to be sorry about. You do what you want."
He knew that Olba had felt the raw pain in his voice, had hoped that the other man would say that he had changed his mind, had been wrong and had decided to stay here instead, but knew at the same time that he would not. That they would part not quite as friends, but nothing he could say would stop Olba from going.
Mankind was, in the end, a selfish creature.
"Fine," Olba said. "I will. Goodbye, Caris."
That night, Caris dreamed that he was standing on a pier overlooking a wharf of fishing boats, feeling the sea-spray in his hair and breathing in the crisp, salty air as seagulls wheeled overhead. There was something or someone terribly important close by, but all the streetlamps were dark, and he knew that the city was empty.
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Olba left the next day, as he had said, and the big house seemed very empty and dark with him gone. There were the servants, of course, and the occasional visitor from the capital who would bring him reports and critiques and documents, and the occasional word from Jamil. Caris did not ask about Olba, but one day a month later, the assistant director of the museum showed up at Caris' door with a stack of reports, a box of candy from one of the secretaries, who Caris was certain he'd never met, and a letter.
Caris had opened the letter later that night when the assistant director had been pacified with one of the luxurious guest bedrooms, had lit a candle and read it in the near-dark. He already knew who it was from, though the envelope had been blank.
Dear Caris,
Life is busy here. I arrived on schedule here and am just settling in. I have, to my surprise, been on good terms with Jamil Neate and gotten a job in the History Department in the capitol building, just as he promised me when I went to see him with you that time.
My portion of the war history is almost ready, though I think I have a few more edits. I still have shown it to nobody but you. You and I both know that your reading of it in the study that day was no accident, so let's not pretend.
There was a reason I wanted you to see that page most of all, because I think that living with you taught me, above all things, that there was hope even for the most hardened criminal, the worst man alive. I wanted to kill myself when I woke up in that hospital bed, and sometimes I look back and see how far I have come.
I regret hurting you this way, but there is a specific reason that I had to get out of that house and away from you. As long as I stayed there with you and lived the life that you've chosen, I would never find my own path. You showed me the way that I should go, but I don't want you to become another Shagia Frost, someone for me to cling to. I want to be my own man.
I don't think I am ready to see you yet, but when I am, I will send you another notice, and you can come down to visit and we can reminisce about the old times.
Olba
It did not surprise him that Olba had chosen the historian's profession, because he and Olba were alike. Both of them had been led astray during the war by people they had loved, and both of them were now too jaded and too wary to let anyone else dictate the way of things. History was something solid, something set, something that could not be changed, because who could change the past?
He stayed up late that night, sitting at his desk and writing letter after letter, getting halfway through each before deciding that something he had written was not right, that this or that did not need to be said, and crumpling them up and throwing them in the trash. Finally, he went to bed exhausted, with nothing written, not even a single line. The next morning, the museum director asked if he had any return correspondence for anyone at the capital, and Caris simply shook his head.
He dreamed again, the next night, of the same wharf and the same city, and this time he noticed that just above the pier on which he stood was a small building, what looked like a store or a shop, painted blue with a red roof. There were trinkets and knick-knacks displayed in the windows, and he was curious despite himself, found himself stepping off the pier and onto the ramp leading to the door.
When he raised one hand to the door handle, the door drew open in front of him, and he hesitated, then stepped inside.
"Hello, Caris."
"Tifa," he returned, not too surprised to find her here in his dream, because it was, after all, Newtype to Newtype. She looked the same as she had two years ago except that her face was a little less round, and her figure had filled out a bit, but her eyes were still soft, vague, her hair the same wispy brown. She had always reminded him of a little bird, fragile and ready to flit away at the slightest touch.
She smiled at him with that secret smile, and he waited, feeling that the dream would end if he made any kind of movement, so he stood very still. It was only then that he noticed the figure of a dark-haired man to her right, sitting in some kind of strange wheeled chair, one hand holding a brush raised to the canvas in front of him, painting with bold, straight lines over and over in a vivid crimson red that dripped down the white background like blood.
Caris looked back at her, and she gazed at him, folding her little hands in front of him, serene, a little girl who was yet a queen among queens, and she spoke into his mind.
You know.
The man turned his head.
He awoke with a start, panting softly, sitting bolt upright in bed and putting a hand to his eyes where the image of Shagia Frost's pale, upturned face till burned.
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Or a runner who'll outrun / Man's long shadow driving on,
Break through the gate of history / And hang the apple on the tree?
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It was only natural that the post should bring another letter from Olba the next week.
Dear Caris,
My manuscript is finally finished. I think I will send it off to the printers tomorrow...I was going to have some of the other staff look it over, but after thinking about it more, I decided it would be better if it was simply typeset and printed without any sort of editor. It's a very private matter to me, and Jamil understands. After it's all done and bound, I will send you a copy so you can be the first person to read it in entirety.
In more unsettling news, Garrod Ran is here in the city. I ran into him in the capitol building last week, where he was, unsurprisingly enough, trying to break in. He recognized me, and again I was surprised he did not try to kill me on the spot. In fact, he was more shocked than anything else, though I don't think it was at the fact that I was alive, which still baffles me, since that last shot from the Gundam Double X's cannon should have annihilated my Gundam the same way it did my brother's.
We are walking wary circles around each other at the moment. Neither of us has brought up anything more significant than the usual 'good morning' or 'have a nice day,' but I have a feeling it will come to a head soon. Jamil rescued him and he is filling in very nicely as one of the security guards for the building while we wrack our brains trying to think of a job for him. He is not being particularly helpful in that regard.
They are building a new history building and library here across the street from the main capitol building, and when they are done, my office will be moving there. I'm sure you've seen the construction if you've been to the city recently. I will write you with the new address if you'd like, or you can find out from Jamil.
Spring is beautiful here. The trees and flowers are blooming and preparing for summer, and every day I wake up and look out the window and realize I am lucky to be alive.
Take care.
It was signed, this time, with a simple "O".
Olba, your brother is alive.
He was sorely tempted to pull out a sheet of paper, scrawl that, and mail it off in the post, but he twisted his fingers together to stop them from shaking, knew he could not do that no matter how sore he was at Olba's departure.
Caris had no doubt that Shagia was indeed alive, just as he had no doubt that Tifa Adil had tried to reach him that night in her dream and had somehow succeeded. Whether or not that had been a real image or something created in her own mind, that he did not know, but that didn't matter anyway.
The war will never be over because for him, there was no resolution.
If Shagia was alive, then all that Olba had done, all that he had written...wouldn't that be rendered useless? History could not be changed - that was the way of the world, the truth that Caris had known, and the truth of Olba's existence was that his brother was dead.
And if Shagia was not dead, then what of the broken connection in Olba's mind that Caris touched whenever the two of them spoke?
Olba had all but given him a blatant invitation to write him back, and he could write to Olba, but what then? How could he tell someone that the life he had lived for the past two years was based on a falsehood, that the reason he was hurting was not because the person he loved was dead, but because the person he had loved was no longer that person?
The gnawing jealousy mumbled something too, but he ignored it.
You know, Tifa had said.
Garrod was in the capital.
Shagia Frost was alive.
Caris pushed his hands against the heavy oak table, stood, squeezing his eyes shut against the morning sun, and decided in that moment to do absolutely nothing, one way or the other, because it was not his place, his story.
It was a rewriting of history to do anything about it, and that was the one thing he would not do, because it would hurt Shagia, would hurt Olba, but would hurt himself most of all, and he, like Olba, was selfish.
Spring turned into summer and the shrubs and trees outside in the garden grew shiny, rich, emerald-green leaves, and Caris took to taking long walks outside the gates of the house in the evening, where the unspoiled wilderness of young, virgin trees and the smell of musty soil and growing things cleared his head in a way that all the luxury of his old house could not.
He had not received a letter from Olba in over a month, and many times he would tell himself that he didn't care, that if Olba was going to sever all ties with him, that was the best way. He knew that he was lying to himself, but he really didn't care, either.
His favorite trail was one that led to the top of a hill about thirty minutes from the house, set deep through the ocean of trees that were not quite old enough to be called a forest but taller than those found in just simple woods. It was a dirt trail that looked like it had been made by some animal - deer, perhaps - and he would walk it in the evenings after an early supper and make it to the top of the grassy knoll just as the sun would set behind twin peaks of the distant mountains like a messy watercolor painting and the first pinpricks of silver stars could be seen.
It was two months after Olba's last letter and after the dream with Tifa, and he was sprawled on the grass on top of the hill watching the last rays of the sun disappear behind the mountains, and he suddenly became aware of the moon rising, of the quality of the light changing from rough, powerful reds and oranges to a whisper of blue and gray and glimmering silver sparkle.
The war will never be over because for him, there was no resolution.
It was not fair of him to miss Olba, he decided wearily, staring up at the moon, because Olba did not miss him. He saw Garrod's face in front of his eyes silhouetted against the moon, saw the gleaming laser beam descending from heaven like the light of God.
Who was he, just a simple human, to judge the actions of others? History was full of the accounts of those who had tried, and in the end, nothing was changed.
And yet, history said that the war was over, but was it really over?
He gazed into the sky, like a daydream, and felt her shadow falling over him, and he breathed in deep the smell of the sleeping forest.
It isn't over for you yet either, said Tifa Adil, and Caris saw her kneeling beside him, crouched barefoot in the grass and shining faintly, transparent against the trees and the mountains and her voice was like rushing water. One cool hand rested on his forehead, and he protested weakly, but she just smiled.
Come to Durnham. I will be waiting for you.
"Why?" he said.
For you, also, it is time for the war to end.
When he opened his eyes, the moon was high overhead and there were crickets chirping by his ear, and when he rolled over on muscles that were sore from falling asleep on the bumpy ground of the hilltop, the grass next to the hollow where he had lain was indented flat, in the shape of two footprints.
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Durnham was a fishing village on the edge of the water on what had once been France, and it had been almost impossible to find. It was too small for the maps, too new for the libraries, and he had finally dived into the internet and found a mention of it on one small website advertising fishing nets.
He discovered that getting there was almost as big a hassle as trying to find it, and ended up buying three train tickets - one to Triumphe, the largest city in the region, then one to another, smaller, town that was the hub for the only train line that passed through Durnham itself.
It was on his way home from town the last evening before his departure, where he had been to buy himself some new socks and underwear and deodorant and all the toiletries that one required before any long trip, when he just happened to check the post on the way in and there was another letter, thin and flimsy just like the others had been with no return address, but when he opened it, there was just one line.
I have to leave the capital. I can't say when I'll be back. Maybe some day I can explain.
It was not signed.
Caris had a fairly good idea of where Olba was going, because he had met Garrod Ran at the capital and Garrod would not stray far from Tifa for very long. He did not sleep well that night, though he could not remember any dreams, and boarded the train next day with two bags and slept through most of the ride to Triumphe. The train station at Triumphe was large and confusing, and he barely made it to his next train in time. He slept most of the way there too, waking when the train jolted restlessly over the tracks and pulled into the tiny station where he would make his last transfer to the line for Durnham. The weather had turned cloudy in the early afternoon, and as he boarded the 4 PM train, it began to rain.
He did not want to see Olba again so soon. It would be awkward, especially in Shagia's presence, because if Olba was reunited with his brother, Caris would be just another shadowy person off to the side, insignificant now in Olba's world.
He thought of the tide of history, flowing onward, stopping for no creature and nothing, not even for kings, not even for Newtypes, and especially not for any of them. If he could stop time, he thought fiercely to himself, clenching his fist in his lap, staring down at it and hearing the pitter patter of the rain on the window in the back of his mind, he would make sure none of this - the war, anything - had ever happened.
Attention, ladies and gentlemen (the intercom announced, and Caris jumped). We are now approaching Durnham Station. Please make sure you have all your belongings before disembarking.
Caris got up listlessly, pulled his two suitcases off the baggage rack, and ambled his way toward the door. There was no one to meet him as the train doors opened, only the gray rain from the gray sky on the gray concrete. He could feel the spray of it splatter his face and clothing slightly as the wind shivered and flung the water droplets from side to side under the station overhang.
"Tifa Adil's house, please," he said to the taxi waiting outside the station, and the driver did not ask for clarification, simply nodded and started the engine. It was one of those villages, then, the ones he had only read about in storybooks, where the town was small enough that everyone knew everyone else.
The taxi stopped in front of a one-story brick house enclosed by a wooden fence and a wrought iron gate, small and rustic and overall exactly what Caris would expect of Tifa. Maybe not of Garrod, but definitely of Tifa. He paid the driver and got out of the car, but as the taxi sped away, he could not bring himself to open the gate, just stood there on the wet sidewalk, drenched in the rain which had now become nothing short of a downpour, suitcases in hand, wondering if it was not too late to turn back.
For you, also...
The front door of the house opened and someone was coming down the steps, and Caris could not see who it was through the rain, but even if he had his eyes closed and it had been the dead of night with no moon, no stars, no light at all, he would know who it was that was now unlocking the gate and swinging it open.
"I knew you would come," Olba said.
--------------------------
"I've been looking out the window every five minutes since I got here," he confessed later after Caris had dried his sopping wet hair and changed into dry clothes and was seated at the kitchen table drinking some hot tea. "Garrod kept asking me what on earth I was doing, and Tifa had this smile on her face whenever he said that."
Garrod, sitting across from him with his arm around Tifa, scowled. There was something different about him, however, something that Caris could not define either in the physical sense or the mental sense, but he was much more settled, much more peaceful. The green eyes caught his gaze, and the scowl relaxed into a smile.
"I had a hunch," Garrod said simply.
"What were you doing in the capital?" Caris said.
Looks were exchanged between Tifa and Garrod, and then Olba and Garrod, and Caris caught something flashing between the first pair and the second pair, but it was gone too quickly for him to catch it.
"I was taking a well-deserved vacation," Garrod said at last, and Caris did not press him, but then he smiled and squeezed Tifa's shoulders slightly, and she leaned into him. "Doing things I should have done a long time ago. It's good to be back."
Caris nodded.
Garrod flashed him a grin. "It was nice in the capital. I got to see Jamil. I guess you've been there though."
"I've been there."
There was an awkward silence until finally, Olba stood and folded his arms across his chest. "Well, it's time for dinner, and since we can't order out -" scowling at the rain, "-Garrod and I will do the honors."
Caris looked up at Olba, and Olba looked away. Now is not the time, his expression said, and Caris accepted that too, though he wanted to jump up and grab the other's shoulders, confront him, ask him if he'd seen his brother, why everything seemed so quiet and secretive here, and what he had been doing this entire time away from home.
But instead, he listened to Garrod grumble and then get up from the table, following Olba's back into the kitchen, and then it was just him and Tifa at the kitchen table. He took another sip of his tea.
"I'm glad you made it," Tifa said.
"It's raining," Caris said, with a quirk of the lips. "I almost didn't. I was very close to getting off the train, buying a return ticket, and going home."
"I'm sorry I had to do this," she responded, giving him another gentle smile. "But that is one of the burdens of being a Newtype. We are sometimes called where we do not want to go." Studying him through her folded hands. "How have you been?"
He laughed. "Do you really have to ask that? You're a Newtype."
Tifa didn't take the bait. "Emotions are private things. I will not read your mind without your permission. You know that."
Caris looked down at his teacup. "That doesn't change a thing."
"Caris-"
"All I want," Caris said, "Is my friend back."
She arched one eyebrow. "Is that so?"
"What do you want me to do?" he said in a low voice. "You have brought me here, for what purpose? How can my presence alone change anything?"
"You believed in Olba," she said. "Now it's time for you to believe that you are worth something to him. Don't argue," she continued when he tried to protest. "you were the one who saved him when no one would have him. He's been your world for the past two years, hasn't he?"
"I thought...he needed my help. I thought..." he trailed off.
"He does need your help," Tifa said softly. "But I cannot tell you how to give it. Your bond with him is stronger than mine."
"And how does that help anything?"
"Except for that, I'll tell you anything you want to know," she said. "I told you, for you, it's time for the war to end. You have been helping Olba, but yet no one has been helping you."
"I want to know why you've been talking to me in my dreams. I want to know why you brought me here when you knew that Olba would be here. I want to know why you brought Olba here when Sh-"
Her chair clattered back from the table as she flew to her feet, and the words disappeared from his tongue, leaving his mouth feeling dry. "Don't mention that name," she said warningly, with a meaningful glance back at the kitchen.
"Why not?" he asked, knowing it was a facetious question, knowing that besides the tension between himself and Olba, something was very wrong and that he had felt it when he walked in the door, but had not wanted to acknowledge it.
Tifa seemed to hunch over on herself, and he was once again reminded of how small she was, how fragile. "Shagia lost his memory," she said at last. "Along with other things, after the war. He doesn't...remember."
I wish I could have known your brother.
He was not a good person. But...I loved him all the same.
Olba found him a little later, standing with his hands in his pockets, staring out at the rain again from the window of the living room. He knew it was Olba, knew what the other was here for, but again didn't turn around.
"Is there anything," Olba said at last, "that I can say or do to make you forgive me?"
"You can turn back time," Caris said. "That's about the only thing, I am thinking."
Olba sighed explosively. "You haven't changed, have you?"
From the kitchen came the muffled sound of Garrod's voice and Tifa's laughter, and Caris turned his head slightly to glance at the triangle of yellow light shining through the doorway, contrasting sharply with the dusky black-gray of the room in which the two of them stood. He said nothing.
"I was surprised when Garrod came by the history room one night and said he wanted to talk," Olba went on, "and I was even more surprised when we went into the back corner and he punched me in the face." Caris turned around at that, and Olba touched his right cheek gingerly. "He didn't draw blood, but there was a nice purple bruise there for about two days. Then after that, he held out his hand and said that we were even."
"Did you punch him back?"
"God knows I wanted to." Olba shook his head wryly. "But no, I shook his hand, wondering what the hell was going on, and then he said that someone had taught him old grudges and old enemies were just that - old. And it was a new world, so we should make new friends." He hesitated. "That made me think of you."
"I'm flattered," Caris said dryly, but he knew Olba could still hear the hurt behind the sarcasm.
"Don't do this, Caris," Olba said.
"Don't do what?"
"Make this any harder than it already is."
"You were the one who left," Caris pointed out. "I took you in, and then you left."
Olba crossed his arms over his chest. "You sound like I owe you some kind of favor."
Caris favored him with a pointed stare. "Don't you?"
Olba was quiet for a moment. "You took me in, that is true," he said. "You saved me from the law. That's true also. But...Caris, I can't depend on you forever. You knew that one day, we would eventually go our separate ways. It couldn't be helped."
"And I am not Shagia," Caris said dully.
The silence was strained. "No," Olba said at last, voice choked. "No. You're not. It was...wrong of me. I had to go, before..."
Caris knew the answer before he asked the question, but it had to be voiced. "Have you-"
"He lives in the city," Olba answered quietly. "Three houses down from the dockmaster's station. He works there. He's an accountant."
"I...see," Caris murmured. There didn't seem to be any other answer to that statement.
"He doesn't-"
"I know," he said, before Olba had to say it. There was a dull throbbing in his skull, and he didn't know if it was him, or maybe Olba, or maybe even Tifa, but it was oppressive and he could feel it throbbing in time with the beating of the rain on the windowpanes. "Tifa told me. You don't have to say it - I know."
"It's all right," Olba said, sounding like he was talking to himself. "It's the same, though he's alive. He doesn't remember, and he's happy that way. I'm glad for him."
"Olba-"
Olba closed his eyes. "No, it's all right. What I live with every day: the pain, the memories, the suffering, the guilt...he doesn't have that. He has a good life, has good friends, has people who love him, and that is all that anyone could ask for."
"I'm sorry," Caris began, and Olba took two large steps forward and touched his shoulder awkwardly, just a soft, barely-there touch that said, I am here now, and everything is all right. He felt the hot tears squeezing out at the corners of his eyes. He couldn't remember the last time he had cried.
"It's not anyone's fault," Olba murmured. "The war, everything. It is simply history, and the way of things." He dropped his arm, and Caris stepped away, dashing tears from his cheeks in hard, sharp motions, as if that could erase the fact that he had ever cried at all.
"History lies, sometimes," he said.
Olba didn't respond, simply dug around in one pocket and pulled out a messily wrapped package and handed it to him. "Here."
"What's this?"
"You know what it is," Olba said.
Caris looked down at the small package, feeling the weight of it, the weight of tens of thousands of words poured straight from the heart onto crisp, printed sheets of paper, bound, printed in inked black letters that formed the structure of one man's confession.
"You'll be the first one to read it. Like I promised."
--------------------------
He only read half of the book that night; could only read half because every few pages he would be blinded by tears again and have to stop to wipe them away. The war had never been so vivid in his memory as when he was reading Olba's words, and in the middle of the night a plan formed in his mind, a plan so ludicrous that he told himself that it would never work. But yet the idea would not leave him, and as he tossed and turned in bed, listening to the rain that was still falling, he knew that he had to do something.
The next morning when he woke up, the house was empty. He ate breakfast alone and sat there at the kitchen table for almost an hour just watching the wind and the sunlight outside on the trees. He wondered what Shagia Frost was doing now. At work on this fine morning, most likely. His mind sculpted the imagined visage of the older Frost brother out of the air in front of him - strong cheekbones, dark, curling hair, commanding, scornful stare. Was that really how he looked? Or had his Newtype-addled brain simply imagined it?
There was only one way to find out.
The house was on the outskirts, but it was only a brisk ten-minute walk to the center of the village, and navigation of the roads was no problem. Fifteen minutes later, he found himself in the middle of the village marketplace. Twenty minutes later, he was the proud owner of a bag of fresh strawberries, a hat, and a wooden toy train, with the old lady at the last stall waving at him and smiling toothily, like he had just given her the world. He supposed that smile had been worth the few pennies he had spent on the toy train. Maybe Olba would want it. That thought made him laugh.
He left before he could spend more money on frivolous things, stopping once to ask directions to the dockyards, and then spending about a minute standing in front of the building, staring at the sign, wondering what the best way to go about it was. He occupied himself by tucking his marketplace purchases into the bag, then hesitated.
"You can walk on in," a pleasant voice said behind him. "We're friendly people."
Perhaps it was that his mind had been occupied, or maybe other man's memory loss had put some sort of mental block on his brain, but Caris had not felt Shagia Frost come up behind him at all, had a small jolt of surprise when he turned to see the smile on that pale face, the thin, atrophied legs in that mechanical chair.
"Good morning," he said. "You're the accountant? I was actually hoping to come find you."
Shagia's raised eyebrow was a mirror image of Olba's. "Oh? Do you have a transaction?"
"Something of the sort," Caris said, and Shagia smiled again.
"That's no problem. Follow me in, and I'll see what I can do for you."
He started the wheelchair, and Caris followed him through the automatic doorway, through the crowded front lobby, where the secretary turned as the door opened, and waved a greeting.
"Morning, Garrod."
"Good morning," Shagia responded, and Caris blinked in surprise. Garrod?
"Your name's Garrod?" he questioned, as Shagia maneuvered his chair into his office and Caris followed, seated himself on one of the overstuffed chairs in front of his desk. "Are you new here? I haven't seen you around before."
Shagia hesitated, the briefest of pauses, and Caris would not have caught it if he hadn't been looking for it, waiting. "Yes," he said at last. "I'm fairly new here. What about you? I haven't seen you around either." His face was longer, more square than Olba's, but the eyes were the same and the noses were the same, and there was something in his expression, too, that was similar. But where Olba's eyes were piercing, direct, Shagia's were hesitant, questioning.
He doesn't remember, and he's happy that way. I'm glad for him.
Caris folded his hands in front of him. "I moved away a few years ago, and I'm just in town visiting relatives."
"I see," Shagia said, sounding a little uncertain, like he really didn't see but was just saying that, and Caris gave him his best businessman smile, snapping into the familiar elegant, formal posture. One should project confidence at all times, Nomoa had taught him, and that, at least, was one thing Caris knew how to do well. "Anyway, can I help you? You said you had some financial matters to take care of?"
Caris flashed him another businessman smile. "I'd like to open an account here with the docks. Establish a presence here so to speak."
Shagia gave him a long, considering look. "You plan to move back here then?"
Caris shook his head. "No, but I do have vested interest in some of the property here. You could say I'm a..." he hesitated, as if searching for a word, "investor. I like to have investments wherever I am, for future planning, of sorts. I own an estate up in the hills by the Federation capital, though, and I consider that my place of permanent residence."
"I see," Shagia said again, and Caris waited, knowing from the tone of his voice that there was something more.
"Is there a problem?" he said at last.
"Let me tell you something," Shagia said slowly, drawing out the syllables, as if trying to reword the sentence as he spoke it, to make it better. "I haven't been here that long myself. But it would be an extremely foolish move to try and invest in property here for the sake of technological advancement." He gestured out the window. "This town is rustic, yes, and might be considered 'quaint', but it's what makes it unique, and its residents prefer it that way. If you try and come in with promises of industry, you might just find yourself driven out of here."
Caris resisted the urge to smile, instead leaned forward intently. "Believe me when I say that is absolutely not what I intend. I did say I have relatives here, yes? Durnham is almost like a second home to me, and I would never do anything to change it from how the residents wish it."
Shagia nodded, but Caris could see he was not satisfied. He waited.
"I do not like people lying to me," Shagia said at last, eyes hooded under heavy black brows, though Caris could still feel their heat, just a shadow of the power Shagia once had, but powerful nonetheless. "Perhaps it's just something that I've had too much of in my short life, but liars are never acceptable. Under any means."
He started to open his mouth to utter more platitudes, to soothe Shagia with more of his businessman's flatterings, and then stopped. This was Shagia Frost, one-time enemy turned wary friend, and Shagia might have lost his power, but anyone had the power to unmask a liar.
More than anyone, Shagia deserved to know the truth.
"I'm a friend of Tifa Adil's," Caris said at last. "I won't lie to you."
--------------------------
Caris waited two days before going back, and spent the next day scouting out possible properties around the village. Olba helped him, idly curious. "You've got money to burn, I suppose," his friend said, "and I understand why you would like to come visit your friends once in a while, but still, isn't buying a whole property a bit much?"
Caris laughed. "Investment is always wise. I really do like it here. Besides, if you get tired of the capital, you're always welcome to move in here."
He finally found a plot of land that suited him; a little smaller than any of the vast estates that he was accustomed to, but it seemed wrong somehow for a village like Durnham to have anything else but homey cottages and tiny, one-story houses with thatched roofs. Shagia had promised to help him with the paperwork necessary to transfer funds from his account to the village bank, and a week after he had made his first trek down to the docks, Caris decided he liked the property enough to buy it.
He finished Olba's book that night, slept uncomfortably plagued by odd dreams, and Tifa was in the kitchen when he came in for breakfast the next morning. When he looked at her, she gave him another smile, picked up her bag from the chair next to the door, and said simply, "Good luck today."
That, of course, did not surprise him.
It isn't over for you yet either.
Sometimes he wondered what she saw when she looked at him, but then he thought about what he saw when he looked at others, and thought it was most likely the same for her - a little clearer, perhaps, a little stronger, but mostly the same.
Caris knocked on Olba's door after he ate, but no one answered, and when he opened it, the room was empty. Olba might have gone with Garrod to work this morning, which was fine with him.
He picked up his copy of Olba's book from his own room, tucked it into his bag, and wondered if he was crazy. No crazier than the people he called friends, he decided, and locked the house door carefully behind him. When he walked into the accounting office, Shagia was there waiting for him.
"Good morning, Mr. Adil," he said, smiling easily. "I heard you've been scouting about in the hills up north. Did you find what you were looking for?"
"I did," Caris returned, reaching out and shaking Shagia's outstretched hand. "What's the first thing I need to do to buy a property around here?"
Shagia rose from his chair, and Caris followed him into his office, closing the door. "I've got the book in here. It isn't anything too hard, but I need information on any other private properties you might own, either around the country or anywhere else in the world."
Caris waved a negligent hand, then unzipped his bag and made a great show of digging around in it. "Nothing too hard, I imagine. I have a few papers-"
The door opened.
"Oh, hello," Shagia said. "I met you the other day, didn't I?"
It was the second time that day that he had not felt someone coming up behind him, but this time there was no excuse, because Olba's startled face was almost a mirror image of Shagia's as he stared at Caris, taking one step into the room. He felt a flash of hurt from the other man, quickly hidden, at Shagia's words.
"What are you doing he-"
"Shut the door," Shagia said abruptly, and Caris stopped rummaging. That voice was not the Shagia of a few minutes ago, the friendly docks accountant. It was a voice with a core of iron, one used to command. He turned to stare at Shagia, who was looking a little dazed, as if he did not even know where that had come from.
Olba opened his mouth, then snapped it shut and turned sharply on his heel and slammed the door.
"Go home, Caris," he said, not turning around.
"I thought you were at work with Garrod," Caris returned. "Were you following me?"
"You've been acting strange," Olba muttered. "I knew you were up to no good. What's gotten into you? This isn't a game!"
"Don't you think I know that?" Caris shot back, ignoring Shagia's confused stare. "Don't tell me what to do, Olba. You know me better than that."
"History has been written!" Olba barked. "Who are you to change it? This is my life, not yours!"
"The war is over," Caris said. "It's a new world. And perhaps history can be rewritten, too."
"You-" Olba began, and Caris moved to cut him off, but something stopped him, told him no, not that. He hardly even realized when his hand grasped the book inside the bag and drew it out.
"What's that?" Shagia demanded sharply.
"The world will remember Shagia Frost as a murderer and a traitor," Caris read, smoothing the page with sweaty palms, "but I can only remember him as that touch in my mind, the voice in my head. I lived with that for so long that it is difficult even now to bear it. Many days I wake up alone in the middle of the night and feel deep inside that something is missing. It tears at my heart. It is like a terrible gash right through my soul that will never be taken away, but I will have to live with it for the rest of my life."
"Caris-" Olba burst out, sounding panicked, but Caris ignored him. He knew it was coming before Olba lunged, tried to knock him out of the chair, but Caris had already stood and backed up against the wall, eyes glued to the page, not daring to glance up. Olba toppled over the now-empty chair and crashed to the floor on one knee.
"My brother told me we were special. And he was right. We were special. What my brother did not tell me was that we were not the only ones who were special, because that word means so many different things that I never knew. Every single human being on this planet is born with some talent, some gift that no other person has, and for one person or a pair of people to single themselves out as special, as naturally superior, has no purpose."
He felt it from Shagia then, the first twinge of something resembling emotion, a spike, a peak of something unnamed, and Olba gave a sharp, thin cry, clutching at his head. Shagia's breathing quickened.
"Who are you?" he questioned harshly.
Caris felt the tears at the backs of his eyes again, kept his eyes on the words, knew that if he tried to look up, to look at either brother, he would start to weep. Something was building in the air, like lightning.
"The Newtypes and those who used them understood that in the end. We, however, did not."
Shagia's sense was tortured now. He could hear the older man's gasping breathing, and Caris had to struggle to stay upright through the waves of mental anguish piercing through his own mind. A mental block was made of layers, the rational part of his brain told him, and peeling away the layers required suffering.
"I suppose that the burden I bear now is fitting penance for what I have done, though maybe there is nothing in this world that can erase my sins. My brother is dead, and maybe even that is not enough. I believed in the concept of vengeance-"
Olba made a keening noise of pain and doubled over.
The air was full of sparks.
The war will never be over because for him, there was no resolution.
For you, also, it is time for the war to end.
He gritted his teeth, forced the words from between his lips. There were black and white spots in front of his eyes, and he could barely breathe. "-until he disappeared from my life, and I think that vengeance has been served. I think that justice has been done as much as it is able to be-"
"Stop, Caris," Olba breathed raggedly. "Stop it...stop..."
He took a deep breath and then he saw Tifa Adil again, standing in her shop looking outside the window, a paintbrush in one hand and a look on her face of joy, of hope.
Strength.
The war, she said clearly, her voice like a clear bell through the sunlight, ends now.
"-I don't regret that," Caris rasped, "because I loved him."
A sound like thunder, and Olba cried out, collapsed against the floor. Caris felt his legs buckle beneath him and his skull being squeezed into a million pieces, compressing and expanding until he felt that he could encompass the whole world in one glance, billions of living organisms spinning round and round and then it would expand until he could hold the whole galaxy, the whole universe, all of that history in his hands. But no, it was they that held him, spinning him round and round, and he could not breathe, could not hear, could not see.
Something shattered, shards falling away into nothing.
Someone screamed. Maybe it was Olba, or maybe it was Shagia.
Or maybe it was himself.
--------------------------
The pounding on the door jerked him into wakefulness, and he opened his eyes gingerly, found himself sprawled on the floor, the book still clutched in his hand.
The door rattled in its frame. "Open up!" someone shouted from the other side, and someone else tried the lock again. He ignored the voices, dropping the book on the floor, touching his face as he always did when he had a nightmare, to make sure that he was still alive.
There was something different about the room, but he could not at first figure out what it was. His mind was hazy. How much time had passed?
Where was Olba? Shagia?
"Olba?" he choked. There seemed to be massive quantities of dust in the air of the room. His throat was dry.
"Caris," Olba's voice said from beside him, and then he coughed. "Here."
"Are you-" he stopped to take a deep breath. "Are you all right?" He struggled to his feet and held out an unsteady hand to pull Olba to his feet. "Are you-"
Olba's hands were cold, his face stunned. "Caris? I think..."
Movement. Caris froze, looked over at the man behind the desk, felt Olba's muscles tense under his fingers like springs. Olba was shaking, too, breath coming in small hiccups, wrapping his arms around himself and staring at the man in the wheelchair.
Niisan?
With a start, Caris realized that he could feel them, both of them, the single mental link running like spun glass from one man to the other. It was weak and it was fragile, but it was there. He felt hurriedly for Olba's consciousness, felt for that raw, bloody spot that had been there since he had first stepped in the door of Caris' home that day two years ago, and felt the thin glass link wrapping around it, pulsing faintly, alive. There was no pain now, only a sense of being whole.
He felt Olba's shock, the unbelieving joy, and the only thing he could think of was that at last, the war's orphan child had come home.
I don't regret that, because I loved him.
"Olba," Shagia said, wonder in his face, with the tone of a man waking from a long dream. "It's you."
--------------------------
Will your sorcery ever show / The sleeping bride shut in her bower
The day wreathed in its mound of snow / And time locked in his tower?
--------------------------
It was only later that he realized that in that moment, he had understood why Olba loved Shagia, why even through all the pain and the guilt he could not let go of his brother's memory. It was not any obsession, it was not for any sort of tribute, and it was not in any quest for vengeance. Shagia was not a god, nor was he a devil. And it was not that he, Caris Nautilus, was not good enough to be a replacement.
One human being could not replace another. There was Shagia, and there was Caris, and to Olba, they were both precious.
It was simply that in the end, Shagia had also been a man who had loved his brother.
History could not be changed, but there was nothing that said it could not be rewritten in the future - not written over, but added on to as years went by and lessons were learned so that future generations would not repeat the mistakes of the last one. And time, too would go on, until the memories of all wars had faded and the earth was whole again, and he and Olba and Shagia and Tifa and Garrod and Jamil and all of the others who had come to this point were only one single person with one set of memories, one heart, only one path of history.
Once, there was a war...
25 February 2004