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+---- Thread: The night the lights went out (/showthread.php?tid=9673)
The night the lights went out - Anju - 06-24-2024
Anju sent one other letter the moment she hit Torchline’s shores beneath cover of endless midnight. A location, date, and a signature pet name she only calls him outside of uniform. No signature, and sent by a kid looking for coin who would otherwise never be known as a courier.
It’s entirely likely that she is being overly cautious. Anju knows that plainly. But there is no precaution she won’t take when lives other than her own are on the line. Especially Koa’s.
The Fingers are suitable for this reunion; labyrinthine, largely avoided, and all the more intimidating in the dark. Standing with her back to the wall, lit by a torch stabbed into the sand in front of her, Anju’s hands squeeze her own biceps as a pitiful outlet for her restlessness. Zavien mentioning Koa’s name had been the only confirmation of the young man’s existence, and she had been refused any other hints that might have led her to finding him before he deemed to write his own letter. The idea of Sohalia leaving was just barely believable enough given her last interaction with the Heart, but Koa? Anju only had unanswered questions and the sharp claw of grief to fill the space he’d left behind.
Riya alerts to an approach, a soft click in her throat making it clear she is also clearing her airways in preparation for fire as well. Anju stands off the wall and turns, one hand on her sword as she waits for the newcomer to come far enough into the firelight to identify.
RE: The night the lights went out - Koa - 06-24-2024
She used my nickname.
She's being subtle.
What if it's a trap?
Such are the thoughts racing through Koa's head as he picks his way through the quiet darkness, into the labyrinthine stone. Anticipation and terror, guilt and need for validation, the temptation to run both toward and away - he's a child being called in by a parent, not sure if he's about to be scolded or praised. Even Pip is quiet and cautious, sensing his trepidation through their bond. She rests upon her bondedmate's shoulders, a low grumble purring against his neck. It's comforting, strengthening, and he clings onto it, trying not to let the hand that holds his lantern shake.
She's one of them. She isn't one of them. She's going to hate me for what happened.
He isn't wearing armor, only a light jacket and dark shorts. No chakram, but the bracers on his wrists and the ring on his finger afford some reassuring sense of defense. They're alone for what feels like eternity but is in truth barely over a minute, creeping through the oppressive dark, hoping not to get turned around. And then, ahead, firelight, and as he steps into it there's the familiar shape of Riya, and---
[say]"Anju."[/say] Koa breathes it involuntarily, his voice shaking as months of repressed emotion threaten to spill forth. Collecting himself, he tries to slip his mask back on, to straighten up and reassume the soldier's careful calm. But it's hard, and she's there, and he's just a boy, desperate for the safety of a familiar adult.
RE: The night the lights went out - Anju - 06-24-2024
The sharpness of her letter imploring Koa to separate woman from rank may have had ulterior motives, but it also allows her to stand here as Anju and not as his Captain. Though she has always encouraged decorum and restraint in uniform it has never been an ultimatum - how could it be so easy when she’d been there for his sister’s birth, and had held them both close at his mother’s funeral? When she knows his favorite foods, and his middle name, and when he’s low on laundry just by the color of socks she can see peeking from his shoes? Anju has striven for fairness above all else, but it’s an open secret that even her famed impartiality has a solitary weakness.
[say] “Cub,”[/say] she breathes, lips trembling as she reaches out to pluck him from the darkness and into her arms where the fire’s glow can show her every tiny, living piece of him. Damn propriety; there’s no need for it here. Anju’s arms are steel bands around him, and her forehead finds his shoulder for lack of place to fall with Pip around his neck. [say]“You foolish boy, I thought you were dead,”[/say] she curses, but her tone is weak and her throat stings with the threat of tears she has stubbornly refused to shed in his absence. Not until I know, she’d told herself. Not until there’s no hope at all. Anju has experienced the death of hope that certainty brings once already - and all this time she’s been waiting day after day, carrying that hope like a knife in the gut, to see if she’d failed Koa just as she’d failed his mother.
RE: The night the lights went out - Koa - 06-25-2024
'Cub,' she says--
--and Koa shatters.
He lunges into her embrace, wrapping Anju in his arms with a ferocity to mirror the Captain's own. [say]"Aunji-"[/say] Koa half sobs, half laughs, Pipsqueak squawking happy indignation as her tail is caught between the pair. The name is remnant of days long ago, a childish bastardization of Auntie Anju that Koa probably hasn't said in well over five years. Not since the last time they hugged like this, when he'd clung to her like a lifeboat in the bleak absence of his mom, the only time he'd truly allowed his broken heart to show.
And now? Now his world is ending again, and she is here, and he can't think of a single reason why he didn't go to her before. Tears sting underneath his tight closed lids, threatening to spill out, to pool into her hair. How could he have been so foolish? All these seasons he's been searching for the place he belongs, but it was always there.
He was just too damn frightened to find it.
[say]"Auntie, I'm so sorry."[/say] He pulls away from her, then, his hands on her shoulders, his boyish face awash in guilt and pain and rivulets of tears. [say]"I should've-- should've written, or come home, but I was gone so long and when I got back they told me you were on her cabinet and I was just so scared---"[/say] And he searches her, then, his copper eyes pleading, desperate for her confirmation that it isn't true. That she isn't lost, the way Everest supposedly has been. That she's his shelter in the storm.
RE: The night the lights went out - Anju - 07-05-2024
Anju lifts one hand to smooth his hair back and thumbs away some of the wetness on his cheeks as his words spill out. It’s a maternal motion she’d never planned on learning. Not until Koa had been born and her best friend confidently placed a squalling bundle of baby into her arms; insisting that Anju couldn’t avoid holding him forever, that she’d have to learn how to handle kids eventually, so why not hers?
Anju knew Mahina would have wanted her to take care of her children, and so she had. That’s all there was to it in her mind. But as Koa cries, the fear of inadequacy that had been planted the moment Anju saw his mother’s coffin sink into the ground metastasizes into a terrible sense of condemnation. This is my punishment, she realizes miserably as she wipes his tears while she still can, that I lose him now, because I betrayed you. Because I love him more than you asked me to. More than she thought she could, though a claim of ignorance will not spare her now. The punishment must fit the crime; the scales of judgement must be leveled with the weight of her own broken heart, which might not have shattered so fully had it not strayed. He is not her son, he is not even her soldier anymore, and soon she may have to call him her enemy.
[say]“No. You stayed alive. The rest doesn’t matter, certainly not my feelings.”[/say] She would see every Dragoon code of honor disgraced if it would keep him alive. The same code that, for the first time, feels like a chain around her throat instead of pillars holding up her world. [say]“Forgive me, Koa,”[/say] she murmurs, though she has no right to ask it, [say]“but I am.”[/say] Riya presses her head against Anju’s hip where she lingers in the Captain’s shadow. At least when the dust settles, she will not be truly alone. [say] “I must. No matter what I think, or feel, or how transparent her evil may be.”[/say] After all, where is the line? Cian? Dahlia? Wessex? Zariah? Dragoons - especially the old guard - are not afforded the luxury of moral resignation. They live, breathe, and die for the one who sits in the seat of power. It is not their job to question. [say]“I’m a Dragoon. I’m Captain.”[/say] With no identity of her own, these statements are all she has. There is nothing more she can say to explain it because what else could there possible be? [say]“I can only hope that if the time ever comes, someone,”[/say] and here her hand drops away in shame as she commits her first act of treason, [say]“might see fit to take advantage of my position.”[/say]
A backdoor. A flaw in the code, or a skeleton key.
It’s a sentiment meant for storybooks with risky heists and valiant turncoats, tomes as childish as the excuse hiding in her useless offer. She is no right hand or confidant; to puppet her would achieve the same access to Dahlia as any soldier or civilian, and Anju cannot willingly lift her sword against Dahlia without falling on it herself.
Anju has always believed that this level of faith - of fealty - was proof of her perfect embodiment of their code. Now, faced with what she stands to lose, she thinks maybe she’s just a coward. Maybe she knows she can’t survive what comes after accepting that her entire life and sense of self has been built on a lie crafted to be sweet enough to die for. If you can’t survive deprogramming, you never become a security risk; exactly as intended.
RE: The night the lights went out - Koa - 07-08-2024
I am. I must.
[say]"No,"[/say] Koa breathes, taking a shaky step backwards, his head swaying with denial. No, she can't mean what she's saying, nor all that it implies. Because what Anju is saying - what she isn't saying - is that she's made her choice. Or perhaps the choice was made for her, but it amounts to the same thing: as long as the Family holds sway over Stormbreak, the Captain is theirs, a weapon to wield.
Which means the Dragoons are, too.
Never once in his endless agonizing had the young man let himself consider this as a true possibility; now it leaves his chest rent open, a beating wound that spills out blood and hope and childhood faith. But he understands it, and maybe that's the worst of all: because the path she's laid out is one he has been raised to follow, heritage and upbringing and values all dictating that Koa go along.
They've separated: Anju standing on one side of possibility, Koa on the other, cold and alone. [say]"What about me?"[/say] he asks her then, the tears still making his tarnished eyes gleam as he gazes, betrayed and afraid and lost. [say]"All I've ever wanted was to be a Dragoon- to be like you. To serve Stormbreak. To protect. But the Family---"[/say] He looks away then, eye contact breaking along with his heart. [say]"I am loyal to Stormbreak, Auntie. To you. But I'll never be loyal to them."[/say] Even if it means he has to betray the history he stands for, the vows he's made.
[say]"So what am I supposed to do?"[/say] How can he come home, when home is so irrevocably changed?
RE: The night the lights went out - Anju - 07-08-2024
Her hands do not cling or clench as he backs away, no matter how dearly she wants to. Run, she wants to tell him, and as if he knows what lingers behind her painfully clenching teeth he gives her the opening to say it.
[say]"You find a different part to play in the story,"[/say] she murmurs, voice heavy with grief instead of gravitas and command. Her hands are empty, calloused, useless against her thighs. [say]"History is yours to make, Koa. I - I can't tell you what to do, I -"[/say] am already speaking treason, they're always listening, they'll use you against me - [say]"In the eyes of the Dragoons you're a traitor."[/say] Her eyes are dark in the firelight, the faint lick of red bringing out the bloody undertones in her irises, fixed on Koa.
[say]"But history is written by the survivors. Codes can be rewritten."[/say] If the old one is crushed, if his avenging crusade succeeds and he is heralded a hero for having earned their scorn only to free them from the chains around their wrists. It's a cruel weight to place on his shoulders; Anju prays - more fervently than she ever has - that someone else will play the hero, and that Koa will someday return home without ever having been risked. That Anju will still be there to receive him, with an empty throne and as much freedom as that can grant her. It's the only happy ending she can foresee for the two of them. [say]"I can't know what you plan to do. You know I can't."[/say] One hand rises as if to touch him only to falter and fall. [say]"Just...survive."[/say] He is free now - willingly or not - from the code that sits heavy around her neck. She only prays he'll use that freedom to ensure his own survival, because her own fate is far bleaker.
RE: The night the lights went out - Koa - 07-11-2024
You're a traitor.
Three words, and his life is ruined. It hurts- hurts worse than if she'd slapped him, worse than a punch to the gut. Worse than the concussion he suffered only days before. It hurts so badly that he can't breathe, like his heart has been ripped from his body leaving his lungs torn sails flapping bloody in the wind.
You're a traitor.
Koa chokes on his outrage, gagging on the pain, the disbelief and shock that courses through him like a tidal wave of emotion eroding his soul. [say]"You don't mean that,"[/say] Koa whispers, heedless of how his hands are shaking, the pallor that's washed over his face. He's dizzy, on the verge of keeling over as the foundations of his entire life are shaken to their core.
Traitor--
But she does mean it, he knows she means it, because despite how gaping the void between them has grown, Koa still knows her. Anju doesn't mince words, or say things that don't have meaning. She doesn't throw around idle barbs or pointlessly cut other people down. If she's calling him a traitor then that's what he is, a traitor to all the Dragoons stand for, what's been inscribed in their code of honor since the organization's dawn.
Codes can be re-written.
Koa inhales, hard and sharp, as realization hits. In the darkness, a path arises, as clear as a high beam cutting through an inky, moonless night. He might be a traitor to the Old Guard, but to the Dragoons of today? To Zavien, or Everest, or all the people that he's sworn to protect? Straightening up, he stares at Anju, steel in his copper eyes. [say]"I understand."[/say] Codes can be re-written, his aunt had told him, so that's what Koa will do. Write his own code, and live by it. Protect his home, and the people in it.
[say]"I'm coming back to Stormbreak. Back to the Dragoons. I'll survive, Auntie, but I won't leave the people I love behind."[/say]
Including her.
RE: The night the lights went out - Anju - 07-23-2024
Anju's lip trembles, and it's as damning as averted eyes or a bowed head on the stoic woman. [say]"I don't,"[/say] she whispers, but it's a vain excuse when Anju and Dragoon are synonyms, and saying even this much threatens to force a schism that will break the woman long before it breaks the role. Here and now on unofficial business she can tell herself it doesn't count as treason to distinguish the two, but when she faces him again in the daylight? There will be no such allowances.
But he gets it, of course he does. [say]"Clever cub,"[/say] she murmurs, and tries to pretend her heart doesn't break to see valor painted on his young face. Anju lifts a hand to cup his face and this time she doesn't retreat like a coward. She lingers there for moments unknown, looking for something his eyes that she can't find anymore. A pouty-faced boy, perhaps. An uncertain teen with blunt training sword in hand. She might have swayed and dissuaded those versions of him. Might have saved them. His determination is beautiful, but damning - and damn her, too, for believing in him enough to hope.
[say]"Stay that way, Koa. Remember what we taught you."[/say] A childhood of hide-and-seek with watered down Dragoon tactics of ambushing and stalking that - far earlier than she'd hoped - had evolved into weapons training and patrol schedules. She can't know anything he plans to do, so he'll have to outfox her. If he can achieve that, Anju knows she will be able to face Mahina in Mort's halls without regret. She'll be able to tell her that she left Koa with all the skill and knowledge she could possibly impart, a protection more long-lived than Anju can hope to provide as a guardian. [say]"And if the time comes,"[/say] her voice goes somber and serious, [say]"do not hesitate."[/say] They had both been robbed of goodbyes once, and Anju won't have them taken again, even if this all ends up with this moment becoming morbid presumption and nothing more. [say]"Know I love you, and that there is nothing you can do to me - as Anju, not as Captain - that I would not forgive."[/say] Even a dagger to the heart.
RE: The night the lights went out - Koa - 09-03-2024
It's so much - too much - and Koa can feel himself crumbling beneath it, his broad shoulders shaking as more weight piles on. It isn't the things that Anju says so much as the things she doesn't, the veiled instructions and desperate asks, darker than the moonless sky. He can feel his soul catching in his throat, his heart sinking and his bile rising as cotton balls fill his mouth. Do not hesitate, she says. There is nothing that I would not forgive.
But could he forgive himself?
[say]"I'll make you proud."[/say] It's a whisper if that, hoarsely exhaled, a sacred vow he doesn't know if he can hope to keep. Copper eyes gleam in the flickering firelight; he looks at her as a child does his mother, a soldier does his captain, a hero does his queen. [say]"I love you, Auntie,"[/say] are the last words he tells her---
---and then he turns and walks away, desperate for fresh air and feeling as though he'll drown if he doesn't see the sky.
[fin]