Come Sail Away IC Inbox

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's voice mail message is in a weary voice: "Erin Peters. If you called in the middle of the night and I didn't answer, I'm dying. If I pick up and someone on your end isn't dying, they will be shortly. Text otherwise."

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[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri's still unarmed, as much as he can be. (Darcy has his swords, anyway, but Erin doesn't need to know that.) He's not here as a knight, or a soldier, or a weapon; neither an agent or justice or vengeance or both. He can't be. It's not his to exact.

(If it was, would it change how he feels? Maybe. But it isn't. The question's moot.)

He's picked a corner booth, where they can both have their backs to a wall, and Erin doesn't have to face him directly. A steaming mug of chamomile sits onto the table, but he hasn't touched it.

He glances up at Erin's approach, then back down, staring into the spring-green depths of the mug.

Low and controlled, he says, "I've been trying to think of what to say. I find myself with nothing. I asked to meet in person because I would rather hear the truth from you than continue to speculate."

His gaze flicks back up, reptilian pupils needle-slit.

"Who is Liz Malloy, and why did Erin Peters kill her?"

[crushed_pearls]

It takes awhile for Erin to answer. She sips at her coffee, elbows on the table, looking...tired. So very tired. Dimitri was one of the people she'd thought of when Bash told her to spare others the horrors of her past.

Now he's demanding them.

"...Some context is going to be necessary. Between myself, Ossie, and Giles, how much do you know of what the Lost go through? What happens to us to make us differently human, and the nightmares who inflict it?"

"...While I'm at it, Ossie and Giles both can confirm what you'll hear, at least in part. Their world had, or has, a Liz Malloy." A bitter snort. "My supply of nickels overflows."

[prince_of_beasts]

"Relatively little. Some I've been told. Some I've put together, though I'm unsure how correct I am. I know you're taken out of time as well as place, with little rhyme or reason as to when you return. I know that your bodies are altered at the whims of your captors. That you're left with certain frailties and compulsions; that you're made into beings of magic and word as much as flesh and bone.

"But as for what happens to make you that way, I've asked for no details that haven't been offered."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin swirls her cup. She can't turn her head to look at Dimitri, can't bring herself to see his face.

"At thirteen, friendless, tormented by the children of the high and mighty, I tried to summon a demon to make them stop. The Patriarch came instead, and took me beyond the Glass Gates to live in darkness and misery. When I tried to escape he caught me and offered a bargain; return to the lands of my birth in exchange for my service. I took that bargain and told a lie to myself and the world. I said, Erin Peters is dead. I said, my name is Liz Malloy, and I love nothing."

Her voice is hard and low.

Full of pain. Full of shame.

"Two years later, when I was seventeen, the Patriarch demanded that I return one of my people to slavery. I complied. Hid my crime behind great accolades and noble status. Liz Malloy loved nothing and so bought and sold everything freely. Love and lust, my skills, my body, magic, mayhem, murder. When I was caught I fled for my life and gathered a crew of vermin as desperate and broken as I was. Together we became a dark legend. Liz Malloy and her pirates, the reason you never answer a call for help. My poison shadow spread over the world, gnawing at trust and compassion, worrying away at my fellow victims with terror and doubt and the terrible knowledge that my skills were still for sale. We attacked Lost. Mortals. Those wizards I mentioned, one of the few jobs I'm willing to call good. Thirty years my reign of terror made a mockery of virtue. I told myself I was happy. I told myself I loved my crew. I even faced my master for them, extracting his oath to never do them harm."

"I didn't kill Liz, Dimitri. One of my victims did. A man named Arthur defeated me and had me at his mercy. Anything he might have done would have been justice. Anything. But anything isn't what happened. He told me it wasn't too late to be better. Pleaded with me, as if I had any power left, to believe that I could be something happy and good. I told him something true. I said: my name is Erin Peters."

A drink, from her cup. "My crew didn't believe that. They chose the headsman over the fury of Liz Malloy, and so she died alongside them, on a foggy morning at the shore. I've been burying her since."

1/2

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri listens. He watches Erin's face, unblinking.

Very, very carefully, he lifts his hands from his lap and spreads them flat on the table. A tremor rattles down his shoulders and into his wrists. A muscle twitches in his face.

"By every moral I was raised by, and every code of ethics I’ve been taught," he growls. "Had I not given my word, I should kill you here and now."

2/2

[prince_of_beasts]

The fury fizzles like a doused lantern. Dimitri’s posture crumples. He buries his face in his hands, and drags them back through his hair.

"I had to uphold those morals. To be the exemplar. To embody all that Faerghus is. But I've seen where they lead. I saw what they wrought in Duscur." He looks like he might drop his head onto the table. He doesn't, but it's only the frame of his bones holding him upright. "Would killing you help? Would it bring back those you killed? Rescue those you sold back into captivity? Liz Malloy deserved to die. I don't think Erin Peters does."

A soft, hysterical giggle cracks his composure.

"What right have I to judge you? You're not the only one hiding an identity."

[crushed_pearls]

"...Others here knew, before last night." The admission is quiet. Soft. "You're not the only one at this table wondering why I'm alive. It's...a relief to hear in a lot of ways. I was starting to think I'd lost what was left of my mind and taken myself into a delusional world where Liz didn't matter."

"But I see I'm also not the only one here dragging a heavy past behind them, youngblood. You've intimated some before, and I'm far from having the right to ask what they did to you. But if anyone here has no right to judge..."

[prince_of_beasts]

He doesn't have to tell Erin.

It's a novel feeling. Dimitri's still used to a world where his business is everyone's business, where his position and the gory details of his trauma are public knowledge. He's begun to regret how forward he was with others, before he'd fully understood that he wasn't repeating the details of what they'd already known. Erin doesn't have to know.

Erin -- Liz Malloy would have served the viscount, if he'd bought her. Might have put Dedue's siblings, his parents, to the sword herself. Might have been the mercenary whose spine Dimitri ripped out through her stomach, and the thought makes his blood burn, floods his nose and throat with smoke and the reek of congealed iron. Dimitri can't resolve that with Erin Peters, who's been so gentle, who understands as so few do the weight of a sword in blood.

-- no. No, he can. The road from Liz Malloy to Erin Peters, who buried her in her garden -- Dimitri can see that broken, thorny path.

It's why he wants her to know.

He hauls himself up, props his elbows on the table and folds his arms. "Dedue told you we served together in the name of the prince of Faerghus," he says quietly. "That's not entirely the truth. That name is mine. I am the prince of Faerghus. And it was against my will, but in my name, that the country of Duscur was razed."

[crushed_pearls]

"...Your father was the one killed to give cause for war." A statement, simple, comprehending. "And ever since then you've had to listen to the vermin who did that to an entire people, who orphaned a generation, hold it up as if it brought glory to your nation."

A small sip of her tea.

"...I will need to apologize to Dedue. I was cruel earlier without knowing."

[prince_of_beasts]

"Yes. You were." For once Dimitri doesn't try to equivocate.

"Duscur was our neighbor. Smaller. Less martial. It wasn't a war, it was a massacre." Dimitri's knuckles whiten on his elbows. "I know my father's killers did not belong to Duscur. But the greedy and the grieving swallowed the lie readily. My witness was dismissed. They wanted vengeance, and they claimed it in the blood of innocents."

Dimitri grinds his knuckles into his eyes. His head's starting to pound.

"And with my father dead, every ambitious minor lord began squabbling for power. My uncle the regent did nothing. And the people who weren't drafted into their skirmishes began to starve and freeze, and they turned to raiding and banditry to survive, and Faerghan justice would say they deserve death for that. And yes, some of them learned true cruelty, but if they changed once, can't they change back? Doesn't the true guilt lie with the lords who failed them? And -- " He sucks in a breath -- "When I was fifteen I was sent to fight against an uprising in the west. I recognized their general from the massacre. His spear pierced my guts and I clawed my way down it to crush his beating heart in his chest and I don't regret it, but only the Goddess knows how many poor bastards I tore apart on the way to him. Dozens, I think, whose only crime was taking their pay from the wrong lord. Because I wanted vengeance, and found them worthy targets. Because I hated, and they were in my way, I enjoyed killing them. And I face no consequences, because it was war, and I'm a prince. How is that right? How -- "

Pain stabs back through his eye, fierce enough that he flinches, broken on a gasp.

" ... I have to believe," he croaks, "that we can be better. Or I live in a world where the massacre in Duscur was justified. Where parents and children and elders can be slaughtered in their beds without consequence. Where my people deserve death for being cold and hungry and afraid. Where I'm the one who's strange, and wrong, and foolish, for being horrified by all this. And I couldn't bear a world like that." He sniffs and scrubs the back of his hand across his eyes. "If we can be better -- then there may be some hope for me. If Erin Peters can change -- so can I."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin says nothing for a long while. Doesn't move, doesn't reach for her drink. She sits with Dimitri's words and turns them over in her mind. She acknowledges the surge of overwhelming, murderous rage she feels at the people who did this to him and then sets it aside; it's not helpful right now. Maybe one day if the ship stops by Faerghus there can be such a slaughter as the world has never seen, but...no. Not now.

When she finally speaks up her voice is very quiet: "There is a question I would like to ask you. It is not a kind question, Dimitri. I might go so far as to say it will be an act of cruelty. But...I suspect you need to hear it."

Erin digs into her belt pouches and takes out her stopwatch. She sets it for five minutes but does not turn it on.

"If you're willing to hear this question I want you to seriously consider it before you say anything about it. May I ask?"

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri eyes the timer. "Perhaps," he says slowly. "But that isn't why I spoke. This conversation isn't about me. I told you these things because I want you to understand -- and to help myself understand -- why I believe you should live. Even if it were my place to claim vengeance -- " He twitches, flinches, forces his thoughts back into line. " -- I believe I would feel the same."

He looks up. There's no eye contact to make, which makes it easier to fix his gaze on Erin's blindfold.

"You chose to be better. That's the world I want. What would punishing you accomplish now? Why should you be killed at the very moment you choose to do the right thing? What would that mean to anyone else struggling with that choice?

"People can't be better if they're never given the chance. Your Arthur gave you that chance, and I -- I am glad that he did. I am glad to have met you, Erin Peters."

Dimitri's gaze drops. He wraps his hands around the mug, fingers laced so his skin barely brushes the ceramic. Quietly, he adds, "I would have liked to meet Arthur. He sounds like someone I could learn from."

[crushed_pearls]

A soft and distant smile breaks across Erin's face. "Arthur's an Ogre. You may recall me mentioning them before. He can grow a mighty skin of stone that can stop blades in their tracks and turn aside bullets; I saw him in battle with one of the gods of nightmare, the very day he gave me my choice, and his protection gave even her pause. But before he became a thing of violence and might, he was an engineer; he designed bridges and pipes, built vast systems whose purpose was solely to help real people live their lives in comfort - to bring them water, to connect their communities, to light their homes or keep the stink of factories away from their beautiful neighborhoods. Arthur's a very thoughtful man, whose idea of being a mighty and just king was not simply to defend the innocent, but to leave behind a system that might ease the life of his subjects and all kings to follow, to create the machinery of governance which might bend his home towards compassion even without his hand to operate it."

"You say you could learn from him, but you just told me the same thing he said, when I spat his mercy in his face in my grief and demanded to know why I wasn't dead. You don't give yourself enough credit, Dimitri."

[prince_of_beasts]

A thorny snare tightens around Dimitri's throat. "I don't know if I can accept that compliment," he manages, his voice thick. "But in the spirit it was given -- thank you."

[crushed_pearls]

"You'll see, in time. This is a good community. The people here have so much to offer. Maybe you'll never be king; so many of us are from worlds that did away with kings, and are happier for it. But someone used to the view from on high, who can see what people are all together? That's a rare skill. In times of trouble what you've learned will be a blessing."

The timer sits on the table. Waiting.

[prince_of_beasts]

"I think mine would be better off," Dimitri mutters. His gut wrenches. It's never been more than a half-thought, a feeling unformed and carefully avoided -- he couldn't even put it to words, when his own mind isn't exactly private, let alone give it voice. But it's lurked there nonetheless, persistent, because -- "No one life should ever be worth that much."

He takes another, longer look at the timer, then shakes his head. "I'd like to hear what you have to ask me, but ... not now. I stand by what I've said to you, and I will, but it's ... hard to retain focus, in the face of the morals I was raised with." The world's beginning to warp around him, slippery and uncertain, whispers creeping in at the edges, and it takes all his strength to dig his nails into the path he's chosen. "Another time. When things have settled." And when he can think more clearly.

[crushed_pearls]

Erin nods softly. "I'll hold you to it, Dimitri. If my advice is any good right now, I would find a friend to be with. If...if our business here is settled, I'm going to go do that myself."

The timer is taken back, and put away.

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri's tea has long since gone cold. His sigh riffles the pale surface as he pushes himself to his feet. "Thank you. I'm sorry the Captain did this to you. I'm sure I'm not the only one with questions, and I can't imagine how hard it would be to face all at once." Not that it should be easy, but. "I will defend you, if it comes to that, and your choice to do better. It may be unfair of me, but -- I'd ask that you do the same. Or at least rely on those who will."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin shakes her head. "I'm not going to lay down to die, but I'm not going to raise my hand to the people here, Dimitri. And I'm going to explicitly, without ambiguity, tell you that I don't want you defending me with anything harsher than words. There's no practicality you can put on this table that justifies letting you put yourself in harm's way for me."

Erin stands, with a sad little smile. "...You're not my prince or my king. Here you get to be a boy, at long fucking last, and in that world I'm supposed to defend you."