Outlands........ Into Acadia?
He knows that Seifer is angry with him and with the Sorcerer, and quite possibly, with life itself as a whole. He knows that the Sorcerer is wary of him. He knows that the people he has served think he is something he probably isn’t but just might be. He knows that he has committed a crime as surely as if he’d slit his masters throat himself. He knows that he may never see his homeland again, just as he’s never seen the ocean after his mother’s slaughter. He knows that when they get to the capital he may come under trial and be sentenced to execution, or worse.
He doesn’t dwell on these things. They are facts and he can do nothing about them. He can not tell the wind where to blow, only listen to its tales. He doesn’t mind. How can he? He is a slave, he has no right to an opinion, to free thought, to desires or actions or beliefs.
As a child he fought. He was beaten and raped and eventually broken to the yoke through pain and humiliation and the weary toll of time. Now he waits. He accepts. He has, through the one act that no slave should ever dream of, given himself wholly to his reality.
He has given his mother vengeance. He has soothed in his own mind, the pain and terror her spirit could not escape with the blood of the man who killed her. Nothing else matters. Not his fate, not the fate of the Outlanders, and not the discomfort and anger of the men around him.
He served his master. He lived for his mother. Now, he exists. For no reason or purpose except that no one has ordered him dead yet. The darkness has spread from inside to cradle him in its gentle numbness. He has no name. Without a name even the Church must admit he has no claim to a soul, and can die with the peace of fading into non-existence. He can not be sentenced to hell for his deeds because he is not accountable. He is a thing. People go to hell. People fear the Church. People care about the next life.
Slaves hold no such worries. After all, what does Hyne care about the thousands of humans in servitude who live and die in misery? Why would Hyne care any more about them than about the rats in the sewers of cities or the fleas on dogs? Nameless, soulless, he finds a dark and morbid humor in knowing more about the ways of the Church and the paths of the future than a man born to nobility with a name and title and the greatest gift of all. Freedom.
This, he thinks, is the greatest freedom a slave can have. To be nameless. Because for the nameless, the grave is the end.
The Silver King will decide if he remains nameless. He doesn’t know anything about the king, only rumors about his looks and favoritism to certain slave gifts. If the king accepts him as a gift he may well turn around and give him to another noble in his court. Or gift him back to Seifer. Or kill him.
Or give him a name. He doesn’t want a name, but he doesn’t not want one either. He has no right to feel one way or another about the matter and so in his darkness he simply accepts that it may occur and leaves it at that. If he gets a name, he will loose the numbness and have to live again. If he doesn’t, it doesn’t matter.
He thinks, if he were asked, he would have to say that he would like an Outland name. Not because he is an Outlander, or because Outland names are more lyrical, but because the woman for whom he gave himself to this living death was an Outlander with an Outland name and it would honor her beyond anything the Church could do.
Gray eyes watch the hills pass by in a blur as the chocobo beneath him gallops west, Seifer’s arm a bar of steel around his waist to make sure he doesn’t fall, unable to grip the male with more than hands in its feathers. The future is coming. Finally, he can let go of the past.
The tournament had ended the third day and just as proclaimed, Seifer was the victor. Not something he really wanted to think about because if he thought about it he’d start to question if he won because he was the best or because everyone already thought he would win and so they let him win and no, not going there.
The feast was a lot of fun. Lots of singing and dancing and drinking and pretty girls who wanted to dance and yet not sleep with him. But that was okay because he got to snuggle with a frigid little brunette thing that was way too skinny. Of course, the slave didn’t want to help him with his morning wood either.
Seifer had a lot of mixed feelings about the seer he was ‘guarding’ on their way west. For one thing he wanted to talk to the guy, get him to open up and smile and Hyne forbid maybe even laugh a little. On the other hand he wanted to open his pants, push up the guys robes and show him that sex didn’t have to be about punishment and torture and whatever else that twisted fuck Heidegger taught him.
And he wanted to fatten him up a bit because as cute as he was skeletons weren’t really his thing. The last was actually something he could work on.
Because as much as he might tease, the little Princess wasn’t his and Tseng was watching them and brooding and killing any sort of romantic mood that they might find on the backs of horses racing against whatever bug was up Tseng’s ass and sleeping only a few hours at night before getting up again to follow the stars until the sun rose. A normally four month journey across various borders was being cut as short as inhumanly possible. The blond knew that Tseng was doing something to the horses to make them run faster and longer then normal.
Already at least a week had been shaved from the trip, just by cutting out the resting time and leaving the servants to follow slowly. It was just the three of them and two red male birds. Tseng claimed it was for safety reasons. “After all, a larger party would attract bandits and political enemies seeking to execute us on the road where it would be hard to find proof or evidence of the killers.”
Seifer didn’t know what was really going on, but as long as the Princess wasn’t asked to do any of his mojo he figured he could hold his tongue.
He’d once called the brunette ‘Squall’ as a peace offering, but in his mind the seer was simply ‘that guy’ or ‘Princess’. It wasn’t like the slave gave off any sort of preference. He only spoke when directly questioned. Actually he mostly sat silent and watched the landscape, as lively as a warm corpse which was really freaky but Seifer didn’t mind. He didn’t know *why* he didn’t mind but he chalked it up to inherent stupidity and a lack of survival instincts and just went with it.
After all, it wasn't like anyone had ever wanted him for his brains, he thought grimly.