The King of The West

Raum’s heart blooms with joy at the sight of him. His gut, though, wrenches with thick, viscous dread. Saved? In danger? Should he like him? Hate him? Everything whirls into a chaotic mess of emotions, each as bold as the blade of a colourful pinwheel, love-betrayal-fear-trust-suspicion-gratitude-uncertainty-admiration, blending by their excessive motion into one single, dumb sentiment: look cute and pray that he likes you.

Given that Raum is currently bloodied, beaten, bruised, pulped, and swollen on the ground like a worm, his present chic is much more ‘slab of roadkill’ than ‘cute’.

Toreas surges towards Aquila, sending forth a wave of heat so hot and fast that an explosive boom tears through the air. But faced with this oncoming wall of pressure, Aquila simply squints and raises his hand, which is clad in a delicate silver gauntlet, itself inlaid with a pronounced turquoise gemstone. As if by that motion alone, the visible wave of force peters to nothing.

Toreas charges onward, his entire body a wrecking ball set to bowl Aquila to pieces. As if conducting music only he can hear, Aquila’s gauntleted hand moves and fingers twitch in short, precise motions. Toreas’ armoured body then rapidly browns with rust, shedding a sandstorm of grit. His legs snap, his head collapses inward upon itself, his torso cracks apart like an egg. Soon he is nothing but a pile of rusted scrap — flecks — slag, congealed in a lump on the floor.

Aquila slings his rifle over his back and lowers his hand, victorious without fanfare. He does not seem excited to have eliminated this legendary enemy of his at all. If anything his demeanour is more that of a janitor, coolly and almost boredly attending his chores as a matter of course.

He stands over the mound that is Toreas’ body, or corpse, inspecting it with some dissatisfaction. But when he looks over to Raum, it’s with a helpless smile, coupled with a comment so dry it just sounds like a joke: “Stubborn work."

Raum has no idea how to interpret any of it.

It’s not that it’s different from the Aquila he’s seen, insofar as Raum has seen anything. It feels like him, and in character. But what it doesn’t feel is — normal. Even were one to call Aquila calm, or collected, or careful, or composed, this degree of coolness is not normal. The emotional strings that Raum is naturally attuned to, in Aquila, right now, feel so vague they might as well be absent.

Aquila turns back to Toreas, and Raum abruptly grasps what Aquila’s comment meant. Toreas’ soul hasn’t dislodged. He is still alive, in that immobile metal chunk. The point of the black sword groans across the ground as Aquila carefully, and with strenuous effort to keep the weight balanced, drags it over. With another of those smiles, he asks Raum to assist him, and presents him with the hilt of the sword.

Raum hesitates. When he does grasp that hilt, a wave of sickness so great that he nearly drops the thing courses through him. Aquila sets his soft hand over Raum’s, gently guiding him to aim the blade at Toreas. Aquila quietly apologizes, whispering into Raum’s ear with what sounds like genuine regret. If his own hands could do this, he wouldn’t be enlisting Raum’s, he says. Blame me.

Raum thrusts the sword into the mound of scrap, which twists and blurbles like a bubbling swamp, then slumps motionless again. Though still no soul dislodges, Raum feels the oppressive constraints of Phoenix’s command release and fade from inside him, acknowledging their fulfilment by the death of Toreas of Lacren.

Toreas is dead, and by Aquila’s coaxing, Raum has killed him.

This time he does drop the blade in panicked disgust, flinging it to the ground mindlessly, every cell in his body puking for each second in contact with the cursed thing. Raum collapses to his knees, dry-heaving into his palms and weeping ferociously. His chest is an incandescent smear of fear—panic—guilt—disgust—shame. His soul itself feels marred, and the only way to clean himself again, to be to vomit that soul right out.

All this over a sanitised mound of scrap that doesn’t even resemble a human. If this had been a flesh-and-blood person, the thrust of that blade would have likely killed him, too.

This is how Reyl became what she is.

This is what, all along, Reyl had truly been protecting him from.

And such are his dim realisations, as he vents enough of the tempest inside him for him to compose himself enough to remember, and care, that Aquila is still standing right there.

The hairs on the back of Raum’s neck prickle with fear. This isn’t the same type as the horror still eddying inside him, fearing the implications of one’s actions upon themselves as a person, but the far simpler, animal terror of a rabbit before a wolf.

Aquila is watching him casually, saying nothing, waiting for Raum to speak first. With Aquila’s emotions still in that strange, vague state, Raum cannot imagine what he would want to hear, or conceive a safe distraction from the elephant in the room. Which is that, as far as Raum can figure, Aquila has tried to kill him. Aggressively. Twice.

But, well, hold on, some stupid part of him urges. Does he really know that? How is he so sure he isn’t making off-base assumptions? Plenty of things about the whole situation are unclear, and he’s far from detangling them. Much of his information hasn’t been verified, and everything he’s figured is correlations, not necessarily true of anything, so—

It’s obvious why Aquila isn’t talking.

It’s because he knows that Raum knows he’s guilty, and he’s testing Raum’s reaction. That’s all.

You’re still just imagining that, the voice inside urges, but falls mute beneath a sense of certainty. What rises in its wake are his natural emotions, and his natural, spontaneous questions, the ones he truly wants answered. How come you lied to me in Indris? Why did you send an assassin after me and Reyl? Who has been helping you? Why? Is this about Phoenix? Are you geassed? Are you a cultist? What do you actually feel about me? What are you going to do to me? To Reyl? Can you seriously let us go, given the things we know and the positions we hold back in Ordanz? Do you want me dead, or were you forced?

Did you really, with premeditation, take me from Ordanz just to kill me?

Can you justify that, in any way, that lets me still believe in you?

Did you kill the Whitewoods?

His voice, when he finally speaks, is hopelessly weak with tears. “Did you—"

Aquila interrupts the question with a quiet nod, closing his eyes as if conceding, then returning to that curious stare. Yes. Yes. Duh. That’s the point. That’s the predicate. Yes. Raum’s gut clenches, freezing cold. His teeth chatter, as he scrambles for words.

Alright.

Alright, they’re on the same page. They’re on the same page, and he’s not immediately dead. That means, there is a way out of this. There are clever words he can say, that will be the right ones, that will get him out of this. They’re there. Alright. Be suave. Be smooth. Be assertive — Raum has seen enough of the board to make an impressive play, here. But his throat catches.

And what comes out of his mouth is, rocked by the ugliest, most embarrassing sobs he’s ever sobbed, “—I-I didn’t, tell, anyone."

It’s very much the opposite of suave.

It’s not even a play.

“Please! I didn’t. I swear, I didn’t. Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. I didn’t do anything bad I’ve been good please I’ll do anything just please please please please—"

It’s his natural state. Begging. Crying.

His words soon disintegrate into loud, hideous bawling, interspersed with wails so agonised his throat strains and aches around them. It’s the culmination of all his suppressed fears and doubts, finally bursting through their dam. He can’t even be mortified. There’s not enough space in his overloaded head, or blazing chest, to devote resources to anything but snivelling.

Even Aquila seems surprised at the degree of it. He kneels down, speaking in a comforting tone, though Raum is too disconsolate to make out the words. All the same, it works to ease him out of the fit enough to at least try to compose himself, listen, and feel absolute shame. He peeks up at Aquila.

Who is smiling, with that perfect mix of interest, amusement, concern, and affection — much like his mother’s smiles, often given in extremely similar circumstances.

Raum feels something in his brain snap.

A tangible halo of light radiates out from Aquila. As he stands he moves as gracefully as a dancer, with the assertive poise of a swordsman. His elegant fingers, which brush back a stray lock of his stylish white hair, are clearly those of a pianist, brimming with delicate strength. Every inch of his exotic, inhuman body is so exquisitely perfect and artfully marvellous, it proves that God, stricken for the first time with a true conception of the definition of pulchritude, awoke from the dead on the day and instant of Aquila’s birth, to confer him with immaculate beauty.

Even if it’s to kill him, having been touched by this majesty is an honour. The entire purpose of his life was to be touched by this man, so that — even for a instant, even for a moment — a fleck of that unyielding inner strength, and love, and warmth, might permeate into his skin. Anything, anything, anything!

Anything for that!

He feels high.

I love you.

But all the same, Aquila’s demeanour doesn’t change. He seems to observe Raum’s obvious turbulence with a scientist’s cold interest, and says in a somewhat amused, but altogether matter-of-fact tone: I wasn’t going to kill you.

The comment feels like a slap of ice-cold water, promptly tempering down the insane, drunken ecstasy—

—Insane. Raum’s fingers flash to his temples. That’s right. That’s the word for what’s happening right now. He is, somehow, in the presence of Aquila, who is not even doing much of anything, going completely fucking insane. Abruptly Raum feels himself on a precipice. His unchecked emotions, doing these marvellous backflips, are leaving the human being Raum Whitewood behind. If he continues to let them drive the show, they’ll kidnap him and dump him in a deep, black hole.

Rattled, Raum stands up and glances behind him. There are Toreas’ remains. The asphalt of the bridge under his feet. The black sword. It’s still raining, but the fog has thinned. The air is muggy. His burns pulse with pain. Amazed at himself, Raum reaches out to feel the hard metal of the bridge’s railing. Squeezes it. It’s solid.

Raum turns back to Aquila, still stunned, and manages a dumbfounded, “sorry."

Aquila nods, accepting it. The overwhelming halo around him dims to a mild, but persistent glow, hovering just around his skin. Raum rubs his eyes to dispel the hallucination — stubbornly, it stays put.

Seeing that Raum has collected himself, even if only marginally, Aquila finally plays his hand. He has a proposal for Raum, but it’s one he’ll only give with Reyl present. Raum interjects to blurt that he doesn’t know where Reyl is, then wants to slap himself, since if he had known, he would’ve just tattled her location without hesitation. Aquila is unbothered by this news, as he then informs Raum that she’s secure and in custody.

While part of Raum is relieved to know her location, and to know that she didn’t get caught in the rain, the abrupt feeling that everything is conforming to Aquila’s flow fills him with unease. But all the same, it’s exactly because of that flow that Raum can see few feasible options but to follow Aquila and hear his proposal.

It’s weird. Usually, when he knows he’s walking into a trap, his brain fills with dumb optimism to compensate. But this time it doesn’t fill with anything. Not even curiosity about what the proposal is. Despite everything favouring Aquila, this bizarre zen assures him that going through, and not around, is not simply ‘an affordable option’ from a severely limited pool of such things, but the objectively correct call.

Aquila is not so stupid as to corner them, if he can achieve his mysterious goals without needing to.

When he says he wants to talk, that’s not a pretence to shove a knife in his back. It means he is genuinely shifting the battlefield into one of diplomacy.

Raum is quietly stunned. Suddenly, he understands how Toreas ever got to the negotiating table — and though Toreas ultimately lost, he feels he understands how, in his confusion, he misplayed.

Ready to leave, Raum stares at the sheet of rain still blocking the end of the bridge. Aquila follows his gaze, and with an understanding nod, jokes about the unfavourable weather, but assures that this is an artificially induced rain, and not poison. All the same, he notes by the weak smoke on the horizon that the fires are now seemingly out, and waves his gauntlet as if closing a zipper. By that simple motion, within only a handful of seconds, the rain stops completely and the sky clears into pale, silvery blue.

Aquila hops off the bridge, pausing to turn and instruct Raum to sheathe Toreas’ sword in its scabbard and bring it. Seeing no reason not to, Raum does so. Toreas’ corpse still lays in an unattended lump, and though looking at it brings back that feeling of sickness, Raum cannot help but wonder if leaving it unattended is smart. As if reading his mind, Aquila advises he’ll send someone to retrieve it once he has the manpower available. Right now, things are still too hectic for one displaced corpse to be an immediate priority. Makes sense, Raum figures.

Raum sheathes the sword. Aquila watches him as he does, his gaze tangible and ticklish on Raum’s skin. Out of nowhere, he notes cheerfully, “you kept the earrings."

The blush that explodes across Raum’s face rivals all his burns combined in its heat. That’s right. I did! You noticed? You noticed!! As beams of light again spear from Aquila, Raum only barely wrangles his grin back into something ‘giddy’, rather than ‘manic’. Hey, tpo. Stay cool, he tells himself.

Combined with the terrible weight of the sword in his grip, and the sickening pain and discomfort that seeps from it into his tender, blistered palms, the gravity of the situation again impresses itself upon him. He takes a breath, refocuses, and follows Aquila out.

Still, as he falls into step, the ember in his chest lingers. Its warmth comforts Raum just enough that he, despite everything, feels somehow safe, and beside Aquila, protected.