i guess time is my enemy

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

A nod is given to Weaver in response to the answered question, already making mental plans to send some her way from the source in Torchline – an easy feat, he imagines, compared to everything else he’s had to try and get his hands on. A small flicker of a smile as he swallows down all the other thoughts crosses his face, lifting the glass to his lips as he nods. “They’re almost everywhere in Torchline.” He rumbles by another sort of answer.

But then she talks about Lusea, and he shifts a small amount almost uncomfortably. He reaches for the letter from Maea, to tuck it back into the envelope, before reaching into his pocket to pull out the pack of them he carries with him – letting Weaver take a cigarette of her own before he settles again and lets his gaze linger along the glass and debating whether or not the burning in his gut is good enough.

“I should give you a bit more backstory to Korofi for most of it to make sense, probably, hm?” He says with some exhausted amusement. “Promise not to make fun.” A wink granted to that before the glass is rolling between calloused hands and he focuses on the contents inside again. “In Korofi, there were different sectors. Like… Halo versus the Grounds and Torchline. Their own spaces, ‘ruled’ by separate people, but they all worked together for the full country against the neighbors of ours.” He pauses to see if it makes sense. “I came from the laws one. So we’d write the laws, enforce them, ensure that life was structured. My father was the Arbiter, which was basically the king of our little section. But in order to follow those footsteps of his, we had to fight for it. They’d train all the noble boys from a young age to learn how to fight and become this… Machine of sorts. And on our seventeenth birthday, they’d shove the noble boys and whomever from the lower class who could afford to, into a pit and told that the last person standing wins.” His gaze lifts to Weaver then, waiting to see if she has any questions before he continues.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

”Torchline does seem to have all the good stuff,” she muses, a smile on her face. ”It is a wonder I haven’t decided to move.” Her tone is playful and light though, the implication that she wouldn’t actually leave Halo clear. It is unlikely, to say the least. Halo is home, despite all its faults and attempts to kill her. She takes another sip of her drink, still leaning across the bar. Sunjata offers her a cigarette of her own, and she plucks one out of the pack with deft fingers.

Bringing the cigarette to her lips, Weaver snaps her fingers and a little flame bursts to life. The snapping is purely for show and definitely unnecessary, but that is pretty much a description of Weaver herself right there. She lights the cigarette and takes another drag, imagining the taste of smoke mixed with the alcohol. Perhaps there was a way to infuse it….

Her mind is halted before it can wander too far down the path of cocktail flavors as Sunjata answers. Weaver nods as he says she’ll need some more background information, and then cracks a small, wicked smile. ”Me, make fun? Never.” She sobers though, listening intently, nodding along occasionally. She follows well enough with his illustration, and though she’s probably slightly off in her imaginings, his explanation paints a clear enough picture.

As he continues though, her brow furrows slightly, rather aghast at what he describes. The idea puts all the shit Caido could throw at them to shame, because at least it was nature trying to kill them and not their own people. All the children into a pit to fight to the death? What a waste of life. Weaver shakes her head slightly, but she doesn’t say anything, simply nodding for him to continue the story.

Weaver

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

A small smile is given to Weaver at her comment of Torchline, hardly able to imagine the woman among the sands and heat — not burrowed up to her neck in scarves and furs. But before long Sunjata is giving her a bit of a history lesson of Korofi, pausing only when he explains the trial and what occurred during one — gaze flickering up to ensure she’s understood, has no questions other than the horror most people did. And she nods to him to continue, so his gaze flickers back down to the cigarette between his fingers, picking up where he left off.

“So ten years ago, I won my trial. And I hated everything about it. My father who wanted nothing more than me to perish in the trial suddenly praising me for winning it. I went into further training to become the Arbiter, and at nights I’d research and rewrite my own laws that I wanted to implement when I got there.” A drag off the cigarette and a heavy exhale. “So then they stationed me on the front lines to try and figure out where the resistance was forming, to end it before it really got to begin. And I found it… Eventually, though I didn’t tell anyone. I joined them instead, starting off as a boxer for their illegal gambling rings. They didn’t trust me, being a Senzaok and all of that. But one day I got stabbed in the ring and blacked out, and when I woke up I was on a bar table in the back and Lusea was there stitching me up.” A snort leaves him, shaking his head, a ghost of a smile crossing his face.

“She told me she didn’t trust me. That I was an idiot… things of that nature. I thought she was an angel. Long dark hair, eyes like flint, fiery bronze skin. Quite tall, but everyone from Korofi was compared to here. ” A louder laugh to this as he flicks the ash from his cigarette and lifts his gaze to Weaver. “So I did what any reasonable man would do, and I kept getting fucked up in the ring just to see her and talk to her.”

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

Weaver takes another drag from the cigarette as he talks, blowing the smoke into the glass in her other hand. Why the heck not? She takes a sip of the alcohol after, getting a little of the smoke mixed with it. This method obviously would only do so much, but it happens to be in her hands, so why not play around?

Her movements are half habit though as her mind follows along with the story Sunjata tells. He paints a fuller picture of the pieces she’d collected in their few other meetings, and she finds herself glad to call Halo home. What a thought, to prefer a Tundra out to kill you. Yet there was something vastly better about that than a world that told their children to kill one another. She cannot get over the waste of it, the barbarity. It speaks of a place that doesn’t care, that has more than they know what to do with and therefore doesn’t value any of it. Perhaps that is wrong, but still, that is the impression such actions paint.

Weaver can’t help but laugh as he says what any reasonable man would do. ”Of course you would,” she says with a playful grin, tipping her glass in his direction slightly. ”So what happened?” Because that couldn’t be the end of the story. No, that was just the beginning. Didn’t all the best stories start that way? With a boy doing something stupid just to see a girl smile?

Weaver

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

Of course he would – he was young and it was really the only thing that made sense. And he can’t help the somewhat nostalgic smile that crosses his face at this. “So eventually, they trusted me enough to start having more responsibility, also probably because the rebellion members enjoyed beating the hell out of their ruler’s son.” He imagines Weaver might understand a bit of what that’s like. “But anyway, Lusea’s father was the leader of it. He told me that I should think about getting a tattoo… Sort of a big fuck you to my father, since the noble family could only have the scars of battles on their skin. No tattoos, nothing else. So I did. I got the wing tattoos.” His smile falters here and he focuses a bit on the glass again, pausing to take a sip.

“So my father found out about the tattoos and that I’d joined the rebellion. And he, well.. He killed my mother for it, because I wouldn’t tell him where the rebellion was hiding. So it fucked me up, watching it happen… I went to kind of process it back in my room, not too well. No alcohol but a few too many packs of cigarettes... And that night, Lusea showed up at my door with her father’s oldest alcohol. That’s about all I remember of that night.” He doesn’t remember how much they talked – but he does remember her slipping away sometime in the night.

A deep inhale of breath follows, a draw from the cigarette as the smoke curls again. “And a little bit after that Lusea and I got together. Officially. More of a fuck you to my father because we knew he wouldn’t hurt my sister – not since she could carry the line and that was all he cared about. And we were pretty successful for a few years. Until we got caught.”

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

He continues, and she listens, still leaning across the bar with her drink in one hand and the cigarette in another. This feels so much more like her in some way, as if she’d always been born for this life and not the one she had been living. Not that she was a bad hunter, but it was a requirement of her life and not a part of her. Hunter was her identity here, but it was not who she wanted to be. Not really. Not even when they were hailed as heroes and treated with so much respect.

She takes a drag of the cigarette as he tells her about his mother. What his father did, how Sunjata was forced to watch. Her face falls, though only slightly, with some understanding there. No one killed her father just to punish her, but she watched him die all the same. You do not come back from that experience the same, and to watch your father kill his wife, your mother… She can only begin to imagine the horror.

”When you got caught as part of the rebellion,” she begins when he pauses, one part of the story not totally adding up, ”were you not removed from your position as the future Arbiter? Could you not leave him?” The question is without judgment, merely trying to understand. Because she would have simply been gone, left her family for the confines of the rebellion instead, to the person she loved and the people who trusted her.

Weaver

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

Her question would make sense, but his father had been blinded – had seen the carnage he’d helped cause, thought he could change him and make him into that perfect soldier again. So he shakes his head, lips pursing a small amount. “I wasn’t. He thought he could change me into being that son he wanted.” His head tilts as he looks up to meet Weaver’s eye. “He caught Lusea and I. Tossed us into the prison below the home I grew up in. Tortured her for weeks and made me watch.” His voice is flat at this point, suppressing the thoughts of that to get the point across.

The point being, it was absolutely fucked up.

“Then, he brought me and her back up to the foyer. Thought he could use Lusea to his advantage, and killed her… Engaged me off to some random woman in a neighboring county to try and keep me on a leash with him.” His gaze drops back to the glass and he downs the rest of it – because it hadn’t worked, it had only made him resent his father more than he thought was possible. “I tried to kill him, you know. But I wasn’t strong enough, and there were so many guards holding me and surrounding him, it was almost impossible.” He reaches up to rub against the scar that trails from behind his ear to beneath his collarbone. “I got this scar from that encounter.” That attempt, that almost killed him but his father had kept him alive.

Only for him to still manage to get out.

"So my father, then, decided to praise me all over our news and screens and everything. Claiming I had been a spy and got with the daughter of the rebellion to snuff it out from under them. There was a bounty on my head from Lusea's father and the rest of the rebellion, and I wasn't quite welcome back in my family without any sort of chains." There was no way out, until he'd created one.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

He wasn’t removed from his position, but why not run? The question sits on her lips, but she drowns it with the liquor in her glass. The question doesn’t matter now, so many years later. He must have had a reason, though she does not understand it. Even if there was no good reason at all, what good would it do to drag him through that pain? Maybe if he’d run, things would have been different. Maybe. Or maybe not. And there was no reason to ponder the possibility.

So instead of asking more, instead of prying, she simply continues to listen. Listen to the horror that he had lived, to the father who wasn’t a father at all. Weaver knows she is lucky to have had the family she did, despite how short their time was. She has always known it, but it is in moments like these that she can fully appreciate it.

The story gives some sort of fullness to him, slotting in pieces she didn’t even know she was missing until now. ”I’m sorry,” she says, letting go to her glass to put a hand on his arm. It is a useless thing to say, but it is all she can offer now. ”What happened?” she asks, and her voice is soft and honest.

Weaver

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

Her apology and the hand on his arm get his attention again, and he pulls out of those drifting thoughts to focus back on the subject at hand, a small awkward smile crossing his face with it. “So. I took my sister and I and we escaped to the neighboring land.” He shrugs, as if that was the end of it. “And around three years after that, I fell into Caido, in the Labyrinth if you recall.” From their first meeting, when he’d mentioned the strange maze, how he’d arrived there confused and lost, expecting buildings and towers only to have shrubbery and crying squirrels in the rest of it.

But he uses his free hand to lift the glass to his lips again, running a hand through his hair after he sets it down, and the muscles in his jaw feather ever so slightly as he looks back down and ahead – avoiding her gaze. “Wasn’t much else I could do back there, I wouldn’t be given a chance to change it. Wouldn’t be trusted if I kept it.” There’s a curl of his lip that begins. “I’d be married, probably have a couple of kids and … Gods.” So many of the things he doesn’t want, and its clear in the way it colors his voice before he shakes his head and focuses back on Weaver then with a small shrug.

As if that was all it was.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

She nods at the mention of the Labyrinth, remembering their first conversation and his warning about the talking squirrels. It feels like so long ago now, though really, it was not that long at all. Only a season, nearly two now, and yet so much had happened that it feels like a lifetime. Funny, how time can stretch and shrink itself, almost always moving in the way you’d prefer it did not.

She chuckles as he mentions kids, the grimace in his voice clear. ”We will forever be too young for children, I think.” It certainly feels like that will be true, even if already it is not. At least not physically, but she is certainly many lifetimes away from being a decent mother.

Though he shrugs off the ending of his story like it doesn’t quite matter, she knows better. It’s the sort of thing you do to lie to yourself along with everyone else. Weaver grabs the bottle of vodka again, righting herself from her position across the bar. She pours another shot into each of their currently empty shot-glasses, and picks hers up. ”To you, for surviving one hell only to be thrown into another. Though it seems like this one is going a bit better for you.” Two bars, a new life in Torchline. Though it was without Maea, still, it was brighter than the past he’d come from. She downs the shot.

Weaver

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

A hum of a mirthless laugh is given back to Weaver, a slight tilt and bob of his head to that. “It was one thing Lusea and I agreed on. No kids, because growing up in Korofi was hard enough as is… Let alone, adding to it.” There’s something strange in his heart that settles with that. “Growing up there was shit enough, let alone adding someone defenseless to it.” His lip curls with that, but he’s thankful when she begins to refill the shot glass, lifting his up as well as his shadowed gaze to meet hers own.

He hums, a smaller smile growing, but he toasts it nonetheless, lifting it to his lips and taking the shot and swallowing against the burn before his gaze focuses on her again – a bit more intently. “A bit better.” A small wry smile to that before he braces his arms on the table, turning his attention entirely onto her now, lifting the cigarette to his lips. “So, now that you’ve gotten me to spill most of my life story, what about yours?” A raise of his brow to that – a tilt of his head decidedly avian to accompany it.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

His reasons for not having kids are far darker than her own, though they are definitely valid. She nods, busy pouring the shots that he could likely use right about now, though it’s clear she is listening as he talks. A good bartender can do both, after all, and it’s not like there’s anyone else here to distract her anyway.

Both shots done, the conversation and his focus shifts to her. Which is fine, as she doesn’t really mind talking about her past. There are no secrets or ghosts within it really, no tale so deep and dark as his own. ”Rather like most every other Halovian’s story, in many ways. My step-father died of disease when my older brother, Erebor, and I were teens. Korbin was still a kid. Mom disappeared in the same span, just left one day and never came back.” She shrugs slightly, simply to say that they likely will never know what happened to her. A blizzard, an ursur...Weaver still hopes it was a dragon. Something as mythical as the memory of her mother was, for her mother deserved nothing less.

”The juicy bit really is that I’m a bastard middle child. I never knew my actual dad, and I get the impression I’m not necessarily missing out. But he was the sort of man that I could see my mother with, and they had an off and on thing all their lives. Wild and improbable, according to her stories. Though regardless, John treated me like my own, and he was my father. Raised me, trained me, never treated me like someone else’s kid.” The thing is, for all the death in Weaver’s life, she’d had it pretty good. It was harder for Korbin, who’d been so much younger when he lost both his parents. Not that Weaver didn’t miss them, but she had memories of them, she had time with them.

”Erebor and I raised Korbin for a few years together. He picked up training me where John left off, and life was pretty good, as much as life in Halo can be. Till we fucked up, anyway. Not that it was really anyone’s fault, sometimes blizzards just come out of nowhere here. ” This is the part that breaks her and Korbin both, though in different ways and for different reasons. She takes another long drag of the cigarette, before grabbing a small plate and snuffing out the butt. Her hands now free, she pushes her braid behind her and tugs the top of her shirt down enough to reveal the ursur tusk shaped scar in her chest, the skin forever mangled and discolored. ”Well, blizzards and urusrs.”

Weaver

SUNJATA

the flood

i'm nothing more than a page unwritten
on the pavement, blowing in the wind

He settles in to listen to her story, leaning back a bit and lifting his head to get a better view of her. And really? Somehow he can see the way that these little bits and pieces had made the stubborn yet strong willed and minded Halovian before him. There’s a slight tilt of his head at the mention of a bastard middle child, wondering how that might affect things unless it was due to the quiet act of wanting to know. Perhaps… Much like he told Melita, knowing your lineage and what they were like were half the battle.

Did you get the fire from your father, or did you get the shitty parts.

Still, he remains quiet, nodding along while she spoke, giving her the time to go through it all. And when it gets to the mention of Erebor and Korbin, the passing of parents, a slight frown crossing his face at the mention of blizzards and ursurs – many of which were things he wanted to avoid at all costs here in Halo. His gaze flickers as she pulls the top of her shirt down, spotting the scar along her chest, frowning further but understanding a bit better.

His gaze flickers back up to Weaver’s face, a slight tilt his head as he drags from the cigarette again before putting it out on the plate much like she did. “I take it that the blizzard and ursurs didn’t go well?” He asks, exhaling a long sigh of smoke. He’d met Korbin… Had yet to meet Erebor, and yet it seemed as though it was an opportunity long since passed.

you win a lot, and you lose
just a little bit more than you gained in the end

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind

The literal and figurative fire comes from her mother, who wielded inferno’s with ease. Much of Weaver comes from her mother - her looks, her wild attitude, a burning passion for life. Her mother had more patience than Weaver, a thing she imagines she can thank her wayward father for. There were pieces of John in her too, added by nurture rather than nature. The ability to sit in the Tundra for hours and wait for prey quietly, the easy understanding that Weaver can find with so many. Those were John, through and through.

”We were close to the Citadel,” she says, letting go of her shirt and pulling her braid back in place over the scar. Why she still did that, she couldn’t honestly say. There was no point to it, besides her own comfort. ”It’s rare to find an ursur so close, and I can only assume it was thrown off by the storm. Honestly, we should have been fine. We should have made it back into the Citadel and home without incident, and maybe we both let our guards down just a hair. Which is all it takes, here.” She takes another sip of her drink, finding the glass nearly empty, and somehow there wasn’t enough left to revisit that day.

Still, she does it anyway. ”The ursur came out of nowhere. Couldn’t see it through the storm. It came for me, and I couldn’t get to a weapon in time. Caught me in the chest as Erebor charged it. He was a mage, and a good one at that. How it killed him, I will never know for sure. I know he killed the ursur too, or I’d be dead. But still, it got him all the same.” He’d been too good to die that day, too young and full of promise. He deserved to live. ”Someone must have heard. Some people dragged me back to town nearly dead, and thankfully we had decent enough healers. Still, it was touch and go for a while.”

She remembers so little of what happened. The story is little more than shattered fragments at this point. She remembers the blood though, the way it gushed from the wound in her chest. She remembers how red her hands were, clutched against her chest for as long as she could manage. ”Korbin burned my brother alone. They didn’t wait for me, because honestly, they didn’t think I’d live. I remember his face too, every time I came to. He was always there, so fucking scared. It’s a fear he has never managed to shake.” Where Weaver lives because Erebor cannot, Korbin fears because he’d almost lost it all in the blink of an eye.

Weaver