we're all killers
“A secret,” he murmured with a smirk, a snicker, pretenses aligned and ignited at the height of his reign. They’d tried to piece the fragments back together, but without the main composer and engineer, the efforts had gone to waste. They had worked, once, during massacres and upheavals, when they spread sedition through glory and failures. They’d been a brilliant, seething part of their imposing, intimidating force, something to behold, something to shudder beneath, something to honor and cherish; but not infallible, not infinite. None of them were. Eventually, things wore out, diminished, faded away – he’d done the very same, the lights gone out, death calling and crooning, siren sway of knells and dirges.
Peace treaties and truces were never something he thought he’d have to concoct or produce; never a diplomat, but always a strategist, a surveyor in calculations and machinations, understanding the weight of their loss, the reasons for it, behind it, and why they’d come to clash, foe upon foe upon foe, for what felt like an eternity. A warrior through and through, ready to fight, ready to wage, ready to terrorize; but not at the expense of those suddenly under his care. He’d always watched his soldiers, always praised their efforts, always admonished their poor tactics, and when the mantle of monarch suddenly settled around his shoulders, he realized he had to protect the entire kingdom – not just children, not just his comrades, all of them. It had led him down pathways he’d never ventured or sojourned along, not so thorned, not so brambled; those would come later, later, later, when tides turned and churned, when sickness molded into onslaughts, when new terrors rose.
Then she asked of the lone child who lingered behind, who chose a home he’d been forced into – his grin falling to withdrawn lines, not a frown, but not a glimmer of triumph either; trust Rexanna to ponder over the wherewithal of another babe. He would’ve laughed had it not burned its way into his mind; he’d never found the boy again to ask him. Why did you not want to come home? Had it been his father? His mother? Or something else altogether – the strife, the dramatics, the blistering hate and bitterness thriving in the Basin’s roots? The way they’d sculpted their foundations? Or had the new kingdom been something more to his tastes? The answers wouldn’t ever be heard – he shrugged, relished another swallow of his drink. “Sacre. One of D’art’s children.” He paused, furrowing his brow only slightly, uncertain if she’d been acquainted with the Doctor, his poisons, his experiments. “Did you ever meet either?”
Peace treaties and truces were never something he thought he’d have to concoct or produce; never a diplomat, but always a strategist, a surveyor in calculations and machinations, understanding the weight of their loss, the reasons for it, behind it, and why they’d come to clash, foe upon foe upon foe, for what felt like an eternity. A warrior through and through, ready to fight, ready to wage, ready to terrorize; but not at the expense of those suddenly under his care. He’d always watched his soldiers, always praised their efforts, always admonished their poor tactics, and when the mantle of monarch suddenly settled around his shoulders, he realized he had to protect the entire kingdom – not just children, not just his comrades, all of them. It had led him down pathways he’d never ventured or sojourned along, not so thorned, not so brambled; those would come later, later, later, when tides turned and churned, when sickness molded into onslaughts, when new terrors rose.
Then she asked of the lone child who lingered behind, who chose a home he’d been forced into – his grin falling to withdrawn lines, not a frown, but not a glimmer of triumph either; trust Rexanna to ponder over the wherewithal of another babe. He would’ve laughed had it not burned its way into his mind; he’d never found the boy again to ask him. Why did you not want to come home? Had it been his father? His mother? Or something else altogether – the strife, the dramatics, the blistering hate and bitterness thriving in the Basin’s roots? The way they’d sculpted their foundations? Or had the new kingdom been something more to his tastes? The answers wouldn’t ever be heard – he shrugged, relished another swallow of his drink. “Sacre. One of D’art’s children.” He paused, furrowing his brow only slightly, uncertain if she’d been acquainted with the Doctor, his poisons, his experiments. “Did you ever meet either?”
DEIMOS
