Relias: Uprising (38 page)

 “No time, Sera.” Hendrick said, getting to his feet. “I can call you that, right?”

 Seraphine tried to get to her feet but winced in pain. “Yeah…” She said through a groan. She tried standing up again but this time it looked like the pain was too much. She collapsed to the ground onto her backside.

 “Everybody here all right?” Came a deep, foreboding voice. Kristik yelped and nearly fell over, taking several steps back as Vyvyr passed in front of him.

 “We got it.” Hendrick said while reaching down to help Seraphine to her feet. “She was just healing one of the cuts I got in my spat with Frenz. Have to get a calorie pack in her though. Whatever she had before she doesn’t have anymore.”

 “Still a bit of work left, I see.”

 Hendrick put Seraphine’s arm over his shoulder and he gave Vyvyr a mocking look.

 “And that’s why you’re single.”

 “We have to move.” Vyvyr stated, taking no time for banter or untimely pleasantries. “There’s Forge tanks on every peak surveying the valleys. Once the rest of the forest cools down we’ll be impossible to miss on their thermals. Now I just got a good look up ahead and the other two groups have stopped about a mile downhill. Probably found a good place to set up camp.”

 Hendrick began walking with Seraphine, finding that she was virtually incapable of bearing her own weight. She insisted that she was capable of walking on her own but Hendrick ignored her and scooped her up in his arms.

 “Then let’s get there then.”

 Pontious stood at the edge of a subterranean cavern, looking over the forest behind them in search of the final group. Morlo and Muldoon rested themselves on massive rocks where Morlo attempted to hold conversation with Muldoon but ended up holding that conversation with just himself. Taking a look down inside the cavern was Serenity, not straying too far as she wasn’t quite sure what they might find inside. And sitting next to one another at the mouth of the cave, in complete silence, was Luke and Tess.

 Neither one knew what to say, and what they thought might be appropriate was put down by the discomfort of actually saying it. The possibilities of how Luke might spark a conversation kept flitting across his mind, though every time Luke decided against it.  

 She felt guilty. Tess had inherited Luke’s inability to hide his emotions. She made attempts at seeming indifferent, but her feelings were obvious. But no matter how bad she felt, she wouldn’t say anything. For one reason or another it was like Tess felt like, if she didn’t talk about the problem, it would blow over as though it hadn’t ever happened at all. Teenagers were strange beings.

 They had been there almost an hour and Luke was starting to get impatient. That third group was the only group that actually mattered to the mission. But then he saw that the sun hadn’t moved since they had sat down, and Luke realized that they didn’t actually have to worry for another couple hours.

 “Luke!” Yelled Morlo, who got to his feet and approached Luke. “We gotta get out there ‘n find those guys!”

 “They’re fine.” Luke replied without an ounce of concern. “Just be patient.”

 “We were only a few hundred yards apart, man. There’s no way that-“

 Morlo stopped as he saw Luke tapping a finger in the direction of the sun.

 “Decelerated Time-field.” Luke said. “There’s a Furo spring somewhere nearby. I’d say that our time is about a tenth of the speed of regular time.”

 “…Cool.” Morlo said as his concern melted and he immediately returned to his own jolly self. “Hey, Muldoon! Let’s arm wrestle!”

 “Not a chance.”

 “C’mon, you little poon!”

 As Morlo returned to rejoin Muldoon in the two-man circle they had created, Luke put his focus back on Tess, thinking of the right things to say. The fact that he was worried surprised him, though. He knew she felt bad yet he found himself afraid that he still might say something wrong. And it wasn’t like he had her entire childhood as a reference to predict her behavior; in the past six years he had seen her a grand total of eight days. That wasn’t exactly much for him to go on. That fact though is what Luke suspected fueled the anxiety around his interactions with his daughter. He still didn’t even know her, yet she was all he had left. He didn’t want to mess things up a second time.

 “So… are you okay, Tessy?”

 Tess exhaled sharply as though she had been holding her breath. “I’m not twelve anymore, Luke. You don’t call me that anymore.”

 She used his first name. Luke’s confidence plummeted.

 “You can still call me Dad, Tess.” He said quietly.

 “What,” Tess said, tensing up in preparation for an argument. “You don’t even know me. Reading my mind isn’t going to tell you everything. Just stop it.”

 Luke found himself being timid. Only his family could do this to him. “I never said I knew you.” Luke said with regret lacing his voice. “But I’ve always wanted to.” Again, he stopped. Everything he’d been doing was proof to the contrary. “I… I never wanted things to be like this. Is that what you think? That I like slaughtering Legionnaires, sleeping with my sword in one hand… that I like… that I like wondering if I’m going to die the next day or even that night? Or if you might die.,.”

 Tess leaned in. It looked like she was no longer on the offensive. She seemed to melt at the sight of Luke’s depression.

 “I never wanted any of this.” Luke said, almost pleading with Tess. “I wanted a quiet life. A good life. Before Lynch came along and ruined things for everybody I had my entire life figured out.”

 Thoughts of his hopes and dreams for life came sprinting back to him with such ferocity it made his heart skip a beat. Every once in a while Luke would wonder what life would be like if the Commune hadn’t taken power, but there was never a time when he recalled those things so directly as he did then.  He smiled fondly.

 “I was going to get you a new dress for your first birthday. You know, one of those little pink frilly ones that your mom used to talk about. Whenever we would get up and get dressed for church your mom would dress you up with little ribbons in your hair… you had so much hair for your age, Tessy, you really did… and she’d say how much she wanted to get you one of those cute little pink frilly dresses to wear to church so everybody could look at you and see how gorgeous you looked. And every week we went to Church everybody would say to Trina… they’d say to your mom ‘Trina, she’s so beautiful.’ And they’d ask to hold you and coddle you and your mom would let them… and you never cried. Not once. With all the people we passed you around to you never cried.”

 Luke paused, smiled and plucked the next happy memory that came within his reach. “I remember… it was going to be a surprise for you and your mom and your brother… well more for your mom and Lazarus because you weren’t even one yet… but I remember how excited I was. There was this beach house in Valhalla that we loved to go to. It wasn’t anything big or fancy but we loved it. It wasn’t ours but… but there wasn’t ever another place we’d want to visit. Lazarus was making millions through his stint with Pit fighting and he could put us up in the nicest, poshest hotels in the world but every time we wanted to go somewhere we went to Valhalla and stayed at that same beach house and rented it from the same people. Great people.”

 “We never had much money, Tess, I mean, we had a very nice home and nice cars and nice things but that was because of those things were provided to me because of my role in forming the Union. But we could never go anywhere or do anything fancy but that never mattered to your Mom. Lazarus didn’t really hit it big in Pit fighting ‘til a few months before the fall of the Union but even after that…” Luke stopped. He thought about Trina, their plans for life, and he found that the emptiness he had felt for so long was filled, though temporarily. “I had saved up for years. That’s where me and Trina went for our honeymoon. That beach house. The first time we ever went we spent every dime we had just to get there. I honestly hadn’t planned on the trans-Carpathic airship costing as much as it did, but we went anyways and… heh, you should’ve seen your mother’s eyes when she first saw the ocean, Tess. I wish you could’ve. They were so big and bright… you have her eyes, babe, you have her exact eyes. And the smile on her face, I’ll never forget it, she was so happy and so beautiful I could’ve cried. I didn’t tell her that I spent all our money on the flight over alone so I tried to hide it so it wouldn’t ruin her mood but she didn’t care. She was just happy to see the ocean and she… she ran out there with her shoes still on her feet and ran through the crystal clear water and… I’ve never seen anybody so happy. But we went to the beach house and talked with the renters and begged them to set up some sort of financing option or something like that just so we could stay there for a few days. We were only twenty years old and these people were fifty five, sixty. But seeing us, seeing how happy we were, the couple let us stay for free. For a week. “ Luke stopped again, trailing off into the glorious past. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so happy. It was just us and we loved each other. And we promised the couple we’d come back twice every year. It was a lofty goal, but we made it. I didn’t eat lunch for fifteen years but we made it there. And even though the property value of that beach house went through the roof as Valhalla became a major city and commercialized, the couple kept the rates the same, God bless ‘em… there was no place on the planet that your mother loved more than that beach house. And seeing your mother that happy… well that was enough to keep me alive. I didn’t have to eat, sleep, drink, but just seeing Trina that happy… that kept me living on its own.”

 “So the trip after you were born I spoke with the Rob and Shayla… the owners. They were well into their hundreds. Humans too, I don’t know how they managed to live so long, but I talked to them and said I’d give them all the money I had for that piece of property. They didn’t even live in the beach house. They lived in a house far inland and used the rent money to pay their own expenses which they couldn’t even afford because of how expensive living in Valhalla had become. But… but they wouldn’t take my money and told me just to take the house. It was the only thing that gave them money but they offered it to me for free. When I said I wouldn’t take it Rob sat me down… he couldn’t even stand up himself he just waved for me to come over and patted the chair for me to sit down. He said that we’d make a deal. I’d buy the house from him for the amount it would’ve cost back when we first went there. I mean, the property value was literally fifty times greater than what it had been. It was oceanfront property. But after begging him to take more he refused. I gave him the money, he handed over the title, and I was going to surprise your mother with it.”

 Luke stopped immediately as his memory came to the next point in time. It was at that point that he became speechless. There was a moment’s silence as Tess watched her father unable to speak. She scooted closer and went to put an arm around his waist but stopped herself.

 “It was one of the worst moments of my life.” Luke uttered in a voice so low it could barely be heard. “Your mom never knew I bought the beach house. She… the last time we spoke, we fought. It was because I was never home and I was neglecting her and you… I would never neglect you for any reason it was just… Trina never understood why I was gone and never knew how serious things were. I was out trying to find out who the man was trying to wreck the Union but she thought I was just obsessed with work… After it all blew over I was going to surprise her, watch her eyes light up like they did when we first went there, watch her run through the waves, watch her laugh and yell and… and just see her happy. That’s all I wanted. That’s really all I ever wanted. I just wanted to make her happy. So the day I was going to surprise her with it… just a few hours before actually… I got a call from Miles. He said that Frenz…”

 Something grabbed Luke’s throat. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Miles called and he said that Frenz…” 

 The happiness was gone. The warm feelings that the velvet memories wrapped around him vanished at the thought of Frenz, of what he had done to Trina. The darkness had returned. Luke’s hand shook as the anger built, rising and rising until the searing heat was in his throat.

 “GODDAMMIT!” Luke roared. He backhanded the edge of the cavern and plowed his fist into the wall. Rocks exploded from the impact and sent a small shockwave through the ground, drawing the attention of everybody in the vicinity. As his breathing calmed down, Tess pressed herself up against Luke, wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him like the father she never had.  She wasn’t afraid or hesitant. He was her father. Luke pulled his bleeding fist from the rock and rested his hands on Tess’s embrace.

 They sat there, father and daughter, not saying anything, not moving, barely breathing. And for Luke, feeling Tess hug him took every hateful, vengeful thought he had and smashed them into oblivion, fending off the darkness once more. Luke breathed deep and felt that, for the first time in a long time, regardless of what was going on around them, everything was right with the world, Commune or not. 

 “…Dad?” Tess whispered.

 “Yeah, Tessy?”

 Tess took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Tell me what mom was like.”

 “Your mom?” Luke said with a smile. “Your mom was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. That’s not exaggeration that’s just the straight truth. Your mom was gorgeous. She had long platinum blonde hair, big beautiful eyes… like I said, you have them exactly… she was in shape, she had a beautiful smile. She always told me she hated her smile but I thought it was the most perfect thing in the world. I love her smile. And her laugh too. And I don’t want you to think that I’m being too mushy or anything but your mom could also be just straight adorable. She just… I don’t know what it was but your mom could be so cute and she knew just what to do to make me do exactly what she wanted me to. I was clay in her hands and I really didn’t care cause I was in love….”

 The silence crept in once more and the scattered chirps of crickets rose up from the forest as the sun sank slowly beyond the distant hills. The shadows were dying down and the sky was blue in the sky was gradually deepening into a cosmic black.