doesitanyway | [ MEADOWLARK ] IC Inbox

[ Trevor lets out a low hum as he listens, thoughtful. ]

That's a promising strategy. But what about the other side of it?

[ The glasses sit in front of them. Ephemera eyes his for a moment, but doesn't take it. Strangely, he doesn't want to be drunk for this. ]

The other side? Oh.

[ He's quiet. He touches his knuckles to his mouth. ]

Guess I'm taking it one day at a time. We talk, me and Drake. I sat with him, after the simulation. That was. Rough, for him. I don't know why it was easier for me. Maybe because I've been in war zones before.

I'm trying to. Know him, as a person.

Actually, I meant understanding and forgiving the people who killed your family. Since some of them are here and that must be incredibly difficult for you.

[ He reclaims his glass and gives a little toast. ]

But it's interesting who you went back to taking about.

Oh.

[ He doesn't blush, but he ducks his head a little. Embarrassed. ]

I think. Even though it's confusing, that's easier. It doesn't hurt, being around him.

[ And it does with the Freelancers. It cuts at him, a physical ache he feels deep in his chest. In his throat. Sharp when he swallows. ]

I talked with them. I don't know. Sometimes I don't end up yelling at them. I think it's always going to hurt, though. Because they're here. And my family isn't.

What were you talking to them about? I'd assume dwelling on who did what and the wrongness there means it'll always hurt.

[ Ephemera breathes out slowly. Flexes his hands, watching the shift of ink and scars across his skin. ]

We talked about the war. The Insurrection. It's...complicated. But there were still sides, even when the Covenant came and everyone was talking about it being humanity's last stand and all that.

[ Command always talked like that made it simple, but it wasn't. It never could be. ]

Carolina asked me why they fought. The Insurrectionists. What they wanted. And she....listened to me.

...well that's different, then.

[ Trevor only half understands what the Insurrection and Covenant are from prior conversations, but he does know war. ]

You know it's possible for there to be good people on opposite sides of things. Whether one side is misled or both -- war can have a victor but truly, everyone involved suffers loss. Perhaps you aren't so different after all.

[ Ephemera snorts. A bitter expression crosses his face. ]

Didn't stop her from killing my people.

[ Stop. Don't go there. ]

I didn't want to understand her. But I think I'm starting to.

I'm not certain if you missed my point or intentionally ignored it to express that your feelings are still winning out -- which would be valid at this stage -- over pragmatism. Maybe we should have discussed this before drinking.

[ He takes another sip. ]

Understanding is good. Probably very confusing, though.

[ Ephemera groans, dragging a hand down his face. He doesn't feel drunk. He feels confused more than anything else, knotted up on too many points, and more than a little like he's taking it out on Trevor, who came here expecting to talk about magic. ]

Sorry. I don't mean to do that.

[ Doesn't stop him, though. He needs to work on that. Practice what he's going to say. Follow his own advice and make a script ahead of time.

He watches Trevor for a moment, then drinks again. ]

Can I ask you something?

No apologies, I just said it'd be valid. It's still a raw thing being confronted with these people.

[ Trevor grins, because he thought the whole point of him being here was to be asked things. But that might not be a great joke to make if Ephemera's asking permission -- it's likely something serious. ]

You can.

You lost your family, too.

[ They talked about that once. It feels like a long time ago. Ephemera regards his glass for a moment but doesn't drink just yet. ]

Did you forgive them? The ones who did it.

I did.

[ He confirms it and waits for Ephemera to go on... and it's a difficult question but not an unexpected one. ]

That's complicated. I forgive the men who stormed my home. Those who actually did the deed, because of how they were led astray. They thought they were doing what was right driving harmful dark magic users from their lands, but the hand pulling the strings was in the church. I don't forgive the bishop who sowed that fear. I don't forgive the evils committed against innocents when I see it now.

I think the answer to your specific question is yes?

Complicated feels like a good word for it.

[ Ephemera rubs his thumb along the rim of the glass. Focuses on the texture, the feel of it against his skin. he THINKS ABOUT freelancer. The institution of it. The setup. The individual players. How it fucked up Washington, fucked up Maine. Probably fucked all of them up. How that had felt like an excuse and maybe still does. He thinks about his family, dead on in the field, and how he wasn't there to fight with them. And he exhales slowly.

He stays in the moment. He drinks. There's only one question he can think to ask. ]

How?

...you know what a life led by hate feels like. I think eventually I couldn't bear it. I had to narrow my focus, or shift it for the most part, to sentiments. A frightened person will do whatever they think is necessary to survive, especially when they have support. I still hated individual people, don't get me wrong. But not in the way of vengeance. It serves my grief better to fight on a grander scale. And as people can be led astray, they can be shown the truth and be better for it.

I don't know your world's situation enough to weigh in, but I hope my story can help you somewhat.

[ There's a lot to parse through there, and Ephemera isn't sure he understands all of it or could ever get there himself. But he listens, watching Trevor all the while. ]

You found something to fight for.

[ Ephemera rubs his thumb along the rim of the glass. Then he sighs and sets it down. His shirt is loose, like most of his clothes. Easy to move in. Easy enough to pull down the collar and reveal the edge of the tattoo. Letters like a brand across his skin. ]

We really did try, with the Insurrection. I wanted that to be my redemption.

[ He shakes his head. ]

I'm glad you found that, Trevor. I'm glad you had that.

I didn't do it alone, in the end. No one will ever be the same as the people you lost, but the void isn't forever.

[ He takes another drink, longer. ]

Though I suppose you have to be prepared to lose them, too. Sometimes by being abducted to another universe.

[ That's not a good path for him to go down right now, though, and he doesn't want to get Ephemera along it either. He looks at the tattoo, fills in the covered letters to figure out what it says. Redemption, hm? ]

Tell me about it? This insurrection.

[ That's what it comes down to in the end, isn't it? Having people there with you. Ephemera's family is gone. The memories haunt him still and likely always will. He became the man he was because of his brothers and sisters. They made him better. They made him good. And then they were gone.

But he's not alone here. Not anymore.

Ephemera leans back a little. ]

They've been around a long time. I don't even know how they got started, not for sure. There was a lot of propaganda. I bought in to it. Pretty much everyone did. Called them terrorists. Just a bunch of motherfuckers who didn't know what was good for them. Too stupid to know better, too selfish to change.

[ He believed it. He killed a lot of them before he started wondering. ]

They didn't want to be under UNSC control. There was more to it, but that was the crux. And we went against them hard. Even with the Covenant wrecking everyone's shit, command wanted them wiped out. Their people were spread out, tended to go to ground when they knew we were coming. And then one day we got the order to hit this encampment.

[ Ephemera goes quiet for a moment. ]

It's called cleaning house. Go in, kill everything that moves. And we were geared up, we were ready. There were sentries, but they weren't....they had armor, or pieces of it, but they weren't trained up, you know? You could tell. They didn't know how to move. And that was when we realized it wasn't a staging area like command said. I cornered one. I was about to shoot her, but, uh. Her helmet fell off. And it was a kid. Just some kid, wearing her dad's armor. She was barely tall enough to make it work. But it looked good from a distance. They were trying to keep people away, look like enough of a threat nobody would bother them. So nobody'd realize it was a refugee camp.

[ Trevor listens, finding that the story isn't quite what he thought it was going to be. He figured it was the side Ephemera was on, but now it sounds like a third group altogether.

His expression darkens at the part about cleaning house. About the children. ]

...were they even actually Insurrection?

Their parents were. And their armor was.

[ It's said quietly. His team hadn't known, but that doesn't change the fact that they were sent in the first place. That he came that close to killing a child just because she had fit the shape of the threat he'd been told to expect. ]

Hunter and Barrows managed to calm them down long enough to talk to us. They were hanging on by nothing. There wasn't anyone older than sixteen in that camp. So we called back. Tried to explain it to command, that there'd been bad intel. They weren't a threat to anyone.

[ Ephemera twitches. Anger flashes in his good eye; an old, brutal fury. ]

But they had armor. That was what that fucker said. They had armor and that made them enemy combatants, so we had to get it done. They were Innie fucking scum.

We said no. And then command dropped a missile.

[ It takes Trevor a moment to remember what a missile is, and he doesn't know the scale of what one can do, but he knows it's a terrible story and it's likely the teens were all killed just like command wanted.

He takes another drink, trying to wrap his mind around it. ]

That's when you got the tattoo. When your family joined their cause.

Yeah.

[ Ephemera drags a hand through his hair. It was shaved down when he first got here but it's starting to grow back out. Come in scruffy. He should probably cut it, make sure it doesn't get in his eye and screw up his remaining vision, but he hasn't. There's a part of him that likes the idea of growing it out. Letting it get long. A change. ]

They didn't trust as at first. Couldn't blame them, not with everything we'd done to them. But we were trained up and our armor was better than theirs. We could go places they couldn't.

I liked them. I had friends. The UNSC treated everything like a number's game, like it didn't matter if they lost people so long as they won the advantage. The Insurrection, they really cared about each other. I remember there was this couple we used to run missions with, Ben and Hadi. Ben was a sniper, real good too. Hadi was a medic. But they decided they wanted to get married one day, in case they didn't make it, and we did. Whole group made the time. They got married in their armor. Somebody even found rings.

[ His expression softens. ]

Think you would have liked them, too. I thought it was a way back from everything we'd done. Redemption. I thought we could make a difference.

[ There's something about the past tense here that feels final. The assumption is that all of them are dead as well, of course, but Trevor still gets the feeling that the tale is incomplete. That this wasn't when the Freelancers came into play. ]

Unlikely, unless I met them now. I wasn't much of a people person until recently.

[ But that's not the point. ]

What happened next?

You never know. They were charming as fuck.

[ It didn't last, though. Ephemera sighs. ]

Ah. It turned out their command was pretty much the same as ours when it came down to it. And then it didn't really matter how good the soldiers were, or how hard they tried. What they wanted to build.

We were running a protection detail for a field hospital. My squad, Ben and Hadi. Couple others. People I liked. My friends. Anyway, we got word the UNSC was coming and we had to pack up quick. Command said we had to bail. But that'd mean leaving the wounded behind. There were a couple who couldn't be moved.

[ Ephemera bows his head. ]

There was no chance. The position wasn't defensible and command wouldn't give us a ship so we could get the wounded out. We would've been wiped out if we stayed. But some of them did. Ben and Hadi. Carter Boone. Rose, her daughter. We tried to get them to leave with us, but they wouldn't. They wouldn't.

[ That haunts him, and always has. Ephemera exhales slowly. He'd been a little in love with Carter Boone, or thought he could be, but it hadn't mattered. None of it had. ]

They lasted about a day. And I know we couldn't have saved them. I know that. All we would've done was die with them. But we couldn't stay after that.

[ Well that's another horrible story. Trevor looks down into his glass, at what's left, and how he thought his life had sucked. But that was only one tragedy.

He downs the remainder and lets the glass rest on his leg, his jaw working. ]

Understandable. I'm sorry, Ephemera.

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