Thrice Upon A Choice

Chapter XVII

Bastian

I had seen it. She had stopped herself from moving, letting herself be thrown to the ground. It had been a second's hesitation, a second's worth of control. Then, when I had been struggling with her, I had recognised the lack of strength behind her efforts, as though she had been trying not to struggle. I had seen her eyes, the widened pupils having shrunk, even the tiniest bit. She had been in there and now that I knew it, there was no way she was slipping away from me. Aspen would never have given up on me and so there was no way in hell that I would give up on her.

She had loathed me when we had first met. For good reason too. I had been a dick, having finally escaped my family. Having finally escaped my father. He and I had always fought a lot and when he wasn't fighting with me, he was fighting with Emmy or Mum. In the rare moments when there was no argument, we would've fooled anyone into thinking we were a picturesque Corran family. But no. Dad had been tough on us. Emmy and I especially. He had been big on male dominance and had been hard on us from a young age. He was completely different around Mum and Posey, changing into this over-loving husband and father. But Mum hadn't liked the way he had treated me sometimes, and he would bite her head off for standing up for me. That had spouted most of my fights with him, trying to defend her back. But I had been so young that well-formed arguments fell through and he would always get in with the last word. I had also loved him, never being able to completely write him off because he was my Dad and I had to love him.

It had been hard; more than I had let myself think it was. So when the opportunity to join the military had come up, I had jumped at it with a bitter and selfish desire to get away. I had left Emmy to face Dad alone, knowing Sara would never stand up for him the way she had for me. She was my mum; not his.

I had arrived at Corra two years before Aspen would. Arlo had been there from infancy. Dante would arrive within months of Aspen, and Echo only a month or two after that. Thorne would be accepted into cadets a year or two later. And with them, I had completely blocked my family out of my mind, until the day, two years from my arrival, when I heard the news that a civilian car had been blown up in some tiny rebel group, trying to stop the migration of people from Corra to Kindara. The victims were identified as Patrick and Sara Gun. I had cried that day for the loss of my parents and spent the next three years checking the news and media for any mention of my siblings. I had come to the conclusion that they had been split up. Posey was in boarding school after all, and if Jiro hadn't been blown to pieces along with my parents, then he would be in the foster care system, probably renamed and given a new home. Emmy was old enough that he could look after himself. He would be alright.

But look where we were now, the four of us. One dead, the other three in the midst of a war. Emmy grasping a broken ankle and hanging over the body of a friend, Posey darting in the shadows tending to the injured, and me...watching the one person that I would do anything for, being controlled like some kind of tame animal.

I stumbled to my feet, hurting more on the inside than any wound I had attained. But as I looked up, readying myself against Aspen's next attack, Seok came through to clap a hand down on Aspen's shoulder. The contact made Aspen jerk slightly as her pupils expanded wider still. She stiffened and I watched in such profound horror as she became nothing more than a limp puppet, waiting for it's strings to be pulled.

It was in that moment that I felt the obscene anger. The meaning behind that touch, the possessiveness of it, was taking away everything Aspen stood for. My loathing for my former commander had never been more than it was in that second, as she ripped away any of Aspen's lingering control. It was like she was recharging her, building back the walls that Aspen had been clawing through, fighting to still herself instead of attacking like she was being told. Not told; forced.