the golden age

[deepest_magic]

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

Comments

[jackfrostbite]

"Then forget me here and set yourself to some more pleasant task."

[neverbeatme]

She takes a moment to unravel this.

"...You want me to go away and leave you alone so I don't get upset thinking about your eternal torment?"

[jackfrostbite]

"If all that's left to me is the choice not to drag anyone else down with me, then that is the choice I will make."

[neverbeatme]

"I can respect that logic, I think," says James. "But we've already established the part about eternal torment, and I still want to understand the rest."

[jackfrostbite]

"Ask, then."

[neverbeatme]

"Why did you kidnap Queen Isabella?"

[jackfrostbite]

"You have hatred in you, I think. What I could have done... you would have wanted to destroy me more than anything else, even knowing I wanted the same."

[neverbeatme]

"...It occurs to me to wonder where you think you learned that."

[jackfrostbite]

He laughs softly.

"Don't be coy, Aslan's King. Or are your loyal creatures listening?"

[neverbeatme]

[jackfrostbite]

"What were the words... 'you just don't want to admit you got played by an eleven-year-old'," he quotes. "I was there, you'll recall."

[neverbeatme]

"...Pretend, for the sake of clarity, that I don't understand a word you're saying," says James.

[jackfrostbite]

"Very well. You stood accused a traitor, and your defense was not that she spoke falsely, nor that you had kept faith in your heart; you said your words were forced, but what you wanted recognized in that moment was your effectiveness, not the depth of your loyalty. Your victory, not your regret for its unintended cost."

[neverbeatme]

"That's... a perspective," she says. "I wouldn't even say it's a wrong one, necessarily. But what all that have to do with me containing hatred? I hope you're not going to tell me I hated the White Witch."

[jackfrostbite]

"No. You were annoyed with her, I think. Greatly annoyed."

He half-shrugs, still facing away from the bars of his prison, toward the solid stone wall.

"It is... harder to explain than I thought. But I still believe my plan would have worked."

[neverbeatme]

"So - and let's not get into exactly what you were planning to do and whether or not it would have incited my undying hatred, because I don't see that as a productive line of discussion - why didn't you finish what you started?"

[jackfrostbite]

"The cost was too high."

[neverbeatme]

"...Do you want to elaborate on that?"

[jackfrostbite]

"I found, when it came time to decide whether to kill her, that I did not want to. Even to save myself from eternal torment."

[neverbeatme]

"You have killed people before," James observes.

[jackfrostbite]

"I... it would be dishonest to say I've changed," he sighs. "But perhaps also dishonest to say I haven't. I am... not the Witch's creature any longer. I am my own. And Winter's Winter - is no one's assassin. Not even my own."

[neverbeatme]

"I... see."

[jackfrostbite]

"Do you truly?"

[neverbeatme]

"I think so."

[jackfrostbite]

"A marvel."