From the moment Rhys Tamlin had been able to walk, his parents had focused on training him for battle.
He’d hated them for it at first. Each day was packed and exhausting, culminating in a monotonous and friendless early childhood. It didn’t dawn on him until much later that it had been their way of protecting him in a world without guarantees. When the children of his age group were placed into mandatory training due to the ongoing threat of Ghurian raiders, Rhys had already been honing his magic for more than half his life. He’d already learned that the best way to be approved of was to be strong. Ruthless.
That was why, the day he met Iree Nobelis and was made to face her in a mock bout, he beat her into submission with brutal precision. Her magic was no match for his, but she wouldn’t stop getting up, so he didn’t stop crushing her.
For reasons still unknown, Iree seemed to think the encounter made them friends. Rhys was drawn in by her enthusiasm. Most kids his age and even some adults were scared of him, so being chased was gratifying. He worked harder than ever in his at-home training, earning snippets of free time to go play at her house.
That was how he met Sharee Nobelis. She was kind and gentle and treated him like the child he was. She doted on him and Iree, treating their scrapes and bruises and baking them sweets. Iree loved her mother fiercely, especially since Sharee was a single parent after Iree’s father had left them to marry into a more prestigious family. Soon Rhys found himself loving Sharee too.
He was happy. He didn’t have to think about anything beyond the next time he got to be with the people he was starting to think of as his second mother and big sister. He didn’t really care about anything else.
Illness took his biological parents when he was thirteen. They were put in the ground, and he should have felt empty, so empty, but Sharee and Iree were there behind him. Iree took his hand and told him they were going home. Sharee said she didn’t expect him to see him as her mother, she just wanted to take care of him.
He wanted to repay their kindness somehow. His life’s goal became to help them achieve their wants and dreams. They’d already given him more than he’d ever wanted, more than he had a right to, so their happiness was all he needed.
Sharee was a soldier, just like every other able-bodied person in Sacer at that time. She was a squad leader, responsible for quick responses to Ghurian raider attacks. When he turned fifteen, Rhys was eligible for deployment, and Sharee drafted him into her squad.
His first kill drifted through his memory in blurred flashes. As the enemy advanced on him, he reacted on instinct. Rhys’ attack, a simple but inescapable slash of water, tore through the attacker’s chest and flew upwards, slitting their throat and dividing their face cleanly in half. The lips were ripped open, split apart into four flapping sections. The gums seemed to melt, red sliding over pink in a sheet as blood streamed, rooting between teeth. All these years later, what stuck with him wasn’t the imagery but the fact that he felt nothing upon seeing it.
He had only worked hard and become strong because it was what everyone expected. His thoughts and ambitions had never been his own, not really. Making Iree and Sharee happy was something he’d landed on because it removed the need to think for himself. The only things he knew were fighting and killing.
Then, that day six years ago. The blankness he’d lived in became real for the first time. It started out as a simple raid on a Ghurian village in retaliation for their own raids. Rhys and Sharee were going through a final sweep as the rest of their squad retreated to tend to their wounds.
They broke into a locked home; after a shared glance and fingers held to lips to signal for quiet, they split up to creep through, peeking past corners. If Sharee had been the one to find them, perhaps things would have been different, but it was Rhys who encountered a man, a woman and a baby.
The woman immediately lunged at him, but a flying streak of water severed her head from her neck before she was even fully to her feet. The man screamed, short-lived grief splitting the room. His body quivered with rage and terror as he watched Rhys approach. He shifted and, anticipating an attack, Rhys severed both arms and legs. Though the man writhed and screeched in pain, he was still careful not to drop the infant or hold it too tightly. He lowered himself onto his back as he bled out, securing it on top of his chest.
“Please,” he begged in his final breath. “My child… Don’t…”
From the very start, Rhys and all children like him had been taught that anyone could and would be an enemy. Every Ghurian was a foe to be put to rest. Every child was a future soldier, every elder a former aggressor.
Sharee approached from behind him. “The other rooms are secure. I figured you’d have this handled, but…” She crossed her arms as she noticed the baby. “Well, that won’t do. I’ll take her back to—” She cut off with a gasp as Rhys lifted a hand to gather water that created a line across the child’s throat, shallow but more than enough for the kill. Blood spread across a blanket patterned with clouds. “Rhys… Why…?”
Why did she sound so horrified? He’d disposed of a future enemy. He turned to her with explanations he’d thought were so clear on his lips, but words died when he saw her face.
It was twisted with utter revulsion and horror. It was a look Rhys would never forget.
“I realized what I was then,” he said in the present, trying to speak normally through the sensation of his chest ripping apart and caving in upon itself due to his emotions. “Sharee and I never talked about what happened, but I always caught her looking at me in that same way. She died a year later in the epidemic, and I… I never apologized or got the courage to confront it before she was gone.”
Dorothea’s voice was small. “Rhys… You—”
He was scared of what she’d say, so he spoke in a rush. “Since that day, deep down I see a person on the field of battle and know they’re someone’s child, someone’s loved one. I… We’ve always killed one another’s children and moved on. I moved on, or I thought I did. I’ve done the bare minimum since then, but now even that’s just…” It was all too much.
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Dorothea reminded him of that time, the way Sharee had broken the way he’d seen the world in simple terms. He saw in the girl beside him the cost of human life, the view of someone who hadn’t been breathing conflict since childhood. There was something cherishable in that, something too precious to lose. Rhys, meanwhile, had murdered an infant and not felt a thing until he’d received repercussions from an outside source. Once he had realized how inhumane and unforgivable that was, he’d shattered.
He’d done a thing like that and felt nothing. That wasn’t supposed to be possible. The realization of what he’d become opened him up to the guilt of the things he had done, and that threatened to destroy him. Part of him wanted it to, but he knew he didn’t deserve to run away. The impossible question was how to ever approach atoning.
“So in the end, I…” Rhys whispered, faltering. It felt like he’d been speaking for hours. Some of the candles had gone out, cloaking them in a powerful, weighty darkness. His throat was sore from talking on and on, backtracking and adding tangents, trying to explain parts of himself he feared and didn’t understand. It was surprising she hadn’t run away from him by now.
It took Dorothea a long time to say anything else. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to rest,” he answered, finding these to be the closest words for his desires at the moment. “I just want to rest, and I can’t. I haven’t earned that right.”
“I think…” She considered her words. “I believe there’s a way to make up for everything we’ve done. Or I’d like it to be true.”
Could he dare to try and believe that? He’d be damned if he cried now, but she was making it hard, and his lips trembled over his words. “Thank you. It means a lot that you’d say that. That you'd…listen. And stay.”
“Mmhm.” Dorothea’s utterance was weak and high-pitched, so Rhys was less surprised to find her crying now instead, face scrunching into a preciously ugly mess.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, unsure. Had he scared her that badly?
“I’m a sympathetic crier!” she hiccuped. “If I see someone else crying, I, urgh, I can’t… I cry at sad books, I cry when I see a kid fall on the street and start crying, and then there’s weddings and funerals and proposals and of course stage dramas and… Um, I cry a lot, Rhys. I’m no good.”
Now he’d gone and done it. “I’m sorry.” He’d just felt so safe with her, safer than he had in a long time, that he’d ended up telling her everything.
“I know you don’t need my pity… But I’m sorry too. For everything you’ve…” Her shoulders jerked up and down, and her hands clenched around the hem of her dress, exposing a slice of waxy skin above tall black socks. She hadn’t even been back home to change yet, and she was still bloodstained.
“It’s okay,” he said, rubbing her back awkwardly. “We’re gonna be okay.” He kept going until she stopped crying, then pulled away.
“This whole time, I’ve felt like you’re the one who really wanted to cry,” she said quietly.
“I almost did.” His capacity for that much had shocked him. “But in that case, thank you for crying on my behalf.” It felt like a gift somehow, to be worthy of her emotions.
“Well…” She swiped at her face one last time with the heels of her hands. “Thank you for sharing with me. Really. I know it must have been…” She smiled and shook her head. “That’s not something I need to say.”
No, she didn’t need to. He knew already how she appreciated the gravity of his tale and his uncertainty, how she would hold his secrets close. That was just the kind of person she was. That said, he still couldn’t fathom how and why she was so calm.
“Aren’t you scared?” he asked, tentative. “I did terrible things.”
She shook her head. “I won’t lie. It’s horrifying. But if there’s anything I’ve learned since coming here, um, or at least within the past twelve hours, it’s that I can’t judge your lives based on what I think is normal or right from my experience. I won’t say the things all of you have done don’t bother me. I’m guilty of it too though, of hating and agreeing to hurt others without thinking. So I think we both have a lot of work to do…” She looked at him apologetically. “Sorry. I don’t really know what else to say. I wish I could be more helpful.”
“No, that’s plenty.” She’d done so much just by listening.
“Hey, Rhys?”
“Yes?”
“I want to tell you something too, if that’s okay.”
“Of course.” There was no way he’d refuse after the kindness she’d just given him.
Dorothea looked down at her lap. “I told you I fell from a tree once, right?” Her face clouded with shame after he nodded. “That time, my mother had to use her magic to heal me. I took something away from her she couldn’t get back. I’ve been afraid of heights ever since then, and I… I haven’t been able to forgive myself. For doing that to her.”
“Oh…” So that was why she’d been so scared in the watchtower.
“Not that that makes it all good, or that I can forgive her for…” She shook her head. “But now I think that maybe I understand how she felt, and maybe it’s the same way I feel now. That it’s okay in the end. That it’s worth it.” She smiled at him. “So don’t worry about me.”
She knew, he realized. She understood his guilt and fear towards what her magic was doing to her and how they were all complicit in pushing it further.
“Dorothea, I…” For all the times he could have fought harder, fought at all to prevent her from trading previous time away… "I am so, so —"
“It’s fine.” She stood, still smiling, and beckoned to him. “Come on. We both need sleep.”
“I’ll walk you back.”
They walked in silence, the streetlamps casting them in pale, washed-out light. Once back at the Creed residence, they stopped for farewell, Dorothea standing on the first porch step and Rhys at the base of the stairs.
“Rhys?”
“Yes?”
“There’s always a place for you in Sirpo. You know, once there is a Sirpo again. If you need somewhere to go, plans for when it’s rebuilt could always change.”
He shook his head, though he was again almost moved to tears simply from the offer. It was huge for her to say that. “Thanks, Dorothea, but that’s not necessary.” No more running away. He had to stay until he’d found a way to face what he’d done.
She didn’t look surprised. “I hope you can find your way.”
“Thank you. I… I’ll do my best.”
Dorothea offered an encouraging smile. “Good luck. Let me know if there’s ever anything I can do for you.” A small pause. “Well, I should go…”
“Dorothea, I’m sorry, but one last thing.”
“Hm?”
He hesitated. “Rather than comrades, it’s…” The distance between them had drastically decreased in a short time, and he wanted to convey that.
She smiled, looking shy. “Friends, right? Can I call you that now?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.” He smiled back sheepishly. “And… Thank you.” A thousand times over, thank you.
“Any time.” With one last smile and a dip of her head, she turned away.
Maybe, with a friend like that nearby, he could really try. Maybe the growing apathy and despair that threatened to crush him could be torn apart if he fought with all his might.
Could he really hope for that?