*COMPLETE* "People don't believe in us anymore. They don't believe that in the end we will do what is right. We can't let them down. We can't let Ben win."
Decisions made on top of the lonely, wind-swept cliff of Lethinor reverberate around the five...
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"You know," Commander Beinsho says, "you don't have to come back."
It's twilight, and the lights around The Tower twinkle like starlight as they stand on the flat rampart, looking out at the plume and bustle of the city below. At the Commander's words Lei had turned to him, and he watches him now, but the older man does not look back.
"It's alright," are the words Beinsho follows up with when he finally glances over, and there's something sad in the way his lips quirk up, something kind that rarely comes out. "I assigned you to her because I wanted you to have a chance at something else. Something different."
This is not the language of a commanding officer, not the punctual, precise, emotionless words of an order. Lei doesn't know what they belong too, but he doesn't want to guess, doesn't want to put a term to it, because whatever it is it hovers close to familial, and his palms begin to sweat at this, his fingers begin to shake.
"You are so weak."
"You are welcome back here, you are always welcome back here," the Commander says, and he places a hand on Lei's shoulder, a touch it has taken years to trust, but trust it Lei does.
He can hear the unsaid "but..." lingering after the Commander's sentence and he avoids it, avoids Beinsho's gaze, which, he has to remind himself once again, is kind. Not sharp, not piercing. Not waiting.
"Why do you always mess up, Lei-Lei? How can't you get this right? You're never right, Mom's going to be so—"
"I would not be disappointed if you chose to stay with her," the Commander says. "I would be proud."
"How can you be my son? My son—"
He thinks about it. He thinks about it as he rests against the long shadows of moonlight, lying on top of a neatly made bed, in a tidy, well-arranged room. He thinks about it while tracking the slow shift of the light across the ceiling.
So feeble. Her voice. Always her voice, and always so disapproving. I told you. I taught you better. The heart, that fickle, beating thing, could have ruined my well-crafted plans had I not conquered it. And look at you, yielding so easily to it.
He thinks of her instead—of her dark, fathomless eyes and the shifting, wheedling haughtiness. She is all pin-pricks and rancor, but he thinks her anger is another mask with something else, something she doesn't want him to see, lurking behind it. He caught it in her room, when she gave up her secret to pay for his own; then on the stairs, just after she left the prisoner, when her poise unraveled in a tremor of nausea and panic; and then in the hall, when she was his dark reflection, an open sore of loneliness, afraid of touch.
I should have known how much of a disappointment you would be. I knew when you came out, quiet and wide-eyed, there was something wrong. Isati screamed herself hoarse, but you, you just sat there, taking it all in. Such a... delicate child.
