Ellas - A few years ago

Kane

‘So what now? Do you have a plan?’

I shook my head wearily. I had known that this day was to come for years, centuries even… but not in this form. I had thought that Anna would die, so at least there was some relief for the guilt I had carried for all those years. But still, she was gone. Gone from my life forever.

And I had no plan. No plan beyond where I would be, where I must be five years from now. Or was it seven, was it two. One even?

Time was one quantity that I could not measure when I was with him, and what came after was little better. Pain, now that was another thing. Pain I could measure. When it came to pain, I was the yardstick. But time, now that was a fragmented thing to think on.

The David I was had been taken, and ten years he had lived in this world, or so I believed.

Those days, the days of pain, could have been exactly that, mere days, or the years that I accounted them to be. And then there was the time after I was free of him.

After Anna’s sacrifice for me… after today. Five years I believed that to be. And yet now, in this life, time seemed different somehow, distorted. Anna was gone from us, and yet only three years have passed since the day I watched myself taken, of that I am sure.

The years do not tally… what I know now and what I recall differ. How long will it be from this day to when I send him back… to begin the cycle anew?

‘Well?’

'Patience, Carthia. That at least I thought Anna would have taught you during your so very secretive friendship.’

‘Do not be the stubborn man that I know so well now, please. Now I need the one that Lady Anna trusted enough for such a sacrifice. Now, I need you.’

‘Lady? You have not named her so since the first we met, Carthia.’ But it wasn’t my first meeting with Carthia that I spoke of. She did not know of that still.

‘She has always been thus in my heart. I did as she bid, but Lady Anna she will always be to me. But do not seek to divert my question… the plan? A plan… something that moves us forward… away from this bitter place that my mind now lives within.’

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My mouth opened, a reproach on my tongue, but I held back my words. She knows nothing of my life. Nothing of what I have lived through. She does not know that I have lived trough this day before, and she does not know of the part she has already played in my life… and will do again. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close.

‘Anna I loved as my own flesh and blood. She was all things to me… a mother, a sister… my friend. And I will never forget her… nor the sacrifice she made today. 'And you, Carthia, are as a daughter to me. Nothing you do will ever change that now.

The look on her face was a mix of puzzlement and annoyance. ‘You seek to divert me once again,’ she said, in a tone of mock anger. ‘A plan?’

‘I have none, Carthia. Other than we fight him… harass him at every turn… and wait.’

‘Wait! Wait for what? Anna gave her life for… for what, so that you could wait?’

‘Yes, wait,’ I said, patiently. ‘A time will come,’ Seven years… or whenever I thought, ‘when the way forward will present itself… Anna—‘

‘Lady Anna, she knew of this? She told you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, not the complete truth and yet not a lie.

‘Wait!’ Carthia spat the word as if it were a curse. ‘When you speak thus, you sully the very name of the one you name mother and friend. It is plain that you have no plan… so speak true. It does no honour to you or Lady Anna.’

Across the fire from where we sat, Tomas turned his face away to look at anything but we two.

Seeing him now, and every day since my world was righted, I could not understand how I had not seen it before.

And yet, on that day when who it was that had sent me back to my home had become clear to me, all I had seen was a fleeting instant of what was to come in my future. All I knew was that I would be there that day. I knew nothing of what would happen before or after that day. Did I?

‘We fight him, Carthia,’ I said, as a fleeting memory came to me of tales told of the battles won and lives saved by the army I never possessed. Was it me? Was it always me, the other me, the one I am now? Did we both fight against him?

I laughed. At first, barely a cough, and yet in an instant, my shoulders were shaking, my chest heaved and tears rolled down my face.

Carthia shook her head in disgust as she stood. ‘Were Lady Anna here, she would bring you to task, fool man,’ she said, over her shoulder as she walked away to her blankets.

####

And so that’s what we did. We travelled the land fighting evil wherever it struck, slowly gathering comrades as we went.

We sometimes followed the one that I was as he did his master’s bidding, putting right what little we could. Other times we fought his roving bands of Nargu as they spread fear throughout the land.

Later, as the time of his forced return drew near, we followed the one I was, aiding his fight against Dar’cen from the shadows - always unseen, and as my memories of that time reminded me, often leaving before his arrival.

So it went until that fateful ambush that changed his life forever, setting him on the path that would bring him full circle back to this day where I now sat, hidden by the trees, waiting for Carthia and our band to spring the trap.

Strangely, I felt sorry for him, for all he would endure until he too sat here and watched.

Madness! I thought, as finally Carthia spoke, and the words I had said she must say without deviation, reached me through the trees.

‘Lay down your arms… you cannot escape. As long as you comply with my wishes no one will be harmed. You have my word,’ she said.

So it has begun, I thought, as my sadness at what I did this day ebbed away to be replaced by anticipation as I waited to be reunited with my long thought dead companions.