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 Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 8:42 pm
Chel already had her hood down, but her hair was crashing around behind her in the wind. She had long since gotten used to the mess being in the way all the time. It was why she got Chris to braid it most of the time. Unfortunately recent knight events hadn't allowed her to.
"To save Chris." Not entirely a lie, but the darkness in her eyes easily betrayed the fractured response.
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 8:44 pm
They were so different and yet so similar to the eyes from his memory. "Apparently he has the same idea. What if you both get chosen, then?"
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 8:48 pm
"Then we die together," she said simply. "Better that way, I think, actually."
Jack had an odd way of making her talk and she quickly backed away. "And you?"
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 9:01 pm
"What else can I do now but offer myself up to the greater good?" he replied with a small, wry smile. "We're all going to die here. I'd rather mine mean something, if that's the sole decision I'm allowed to have in my destiny."
(The vision's made him hungry for something he can't have, and already it's gnawing at him from within. Embracing a purpose that would destroy him first is oddly soothing.)
Moving slightly to a more comfortable position, he turned his gaze away and watched patches of land go by where her cloak didn't obscure. "I wonder how many of us would have still taken the pledge if we'd known what was going to happen."
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 9:04 pm
"I still don't know why I took it," she replied, hands balling into fists on Jack's back without meaning to. "What the <********> pushed us so bad we had to join this shithole?" It was the question she'd been screaming in her brain the entire time. Why is the sky blue...
Hands relax. "I didn't just do it for Chris."
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 9:13 pm
"Maybe the alternative was worse." The scar on his face had been there long before he had received his sacred weapon. "Imagine being in this sort of world and not able to defend yourself with the weapons that we have," Jack mused with a sober look outward. "Knighthood would seem more palatable."
He glanced at her curiously. "What do you mean?"
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 9:18 pm
Chel said nothing to his supposition, but as he wondered about his scar so too did she wonder about herself. The countless lines on her back that made it look more pattern than skin.
"I want answers. I want answers and- ... Chris is barely a reason- no, he's an excuse." She spat the word and for some reason, it felt good to reveal her selfish plan. Like as though releasing it from her body would somehow make it less horrible. "If they give me it ... I'm not sacrificin' myself."
There was an implied I'll let everyone die, but she said nothing more as they touched down on the mountain top. Letting Jack down was cluttering, awkward with the words she'd just said. She let him think about it while he got his wings.
Despite her words, she showed no remorse. It seemed memories or not, she had given up a long time ago.
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 9:30 pm
Chel wasn't altruistic as far as he knew; her real reason didn't take him by surprise like her initial offer had. And it wasn't as though Jack hadn't considered it himself--just taking the power and running away. But--
"If you're chosen, you'll be destined to die. That is your fate, not your choice."
He felt the weight of those words fall on him as they landed, making his steps heavier as he let go of Chel. Saying it aloud made it seem more real, even though he had heard Lancelot say so himself. As much as Jack had raged at Galahad for imprisoning them, anger hadn't led him to anything productive. They were all irrevocably moving towards an end they had no control over; he could accept this peacefully now that he had acknowledged it properly.
The artifact waiting for them was a white feathered cloak with what appeared to be blood stains, the hooks of which were fashioned like a small draconic talon. As he picked it up, Jack could see that despite looking like a set of bird's wings, they were segmented closer to a dragon's or a bat's, making it a strange but not unpleasing (to his eye) fusion. He slipped it on and felt the soft hum of magic emanating from the cloth.
"I empathize, though; I want answers as well," he continued a little more softly. "But perhaps we aren't destined to learn them either. It may well be that our pasts do not matter, only our presence in the here and now."
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 9:56 pm
"Then you don't want them as badly as me," Chel threw back at him angrily. "
She couldn't succinctly wrap up how much she despised every one of his words. Fate. Not destined to know. Past doesn't matter.
There was a disgusted look in her eyes and she turned heel to walk back out to the outer ledge of the mountain. Jack had his wings. He could go back alone or fall off the mountain for all she cared.
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 10:02 pm
He was strangely nonchalant for someone whose cape would soon be titled the Wings of Ares. Anger was a part of the process of acceptance after all: she would lash out as much as she needed to before bowing her head. (And maybe he should be angry too, maybe he should be telling himself to ******** quit it with this bullshit, but what was the point? It had been clear from the start that none of them had any true power in the events transpiring here. They were only puppets, just as Morgana had said. A bitter fact but a fact nonetheless.)
"Thank you for bringing me here," he said to her back.
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 10:12 pm
Jack was right on all accounts except one.
Chel would never bow her head. She would thrash against claws that pierced her until the bleeding slowly killed her. Kill her it would according to the great knights. Chel didn't care.
On the ledge she stood with the tip of her boots hanging over the precipice. She took a long breath and closed her eyes for a moment while her hair whipped around in the direction the wind was blowing. The hood went up but the hair kept blowing, tangled but free.
Over her shoulder she said, "It will not be fate that defines me." With that, she pulled the hood taut and fell over the side of the cliff, letting the wind carry her back on her own.
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2015 10:34 pm
He wanted her to be right. Deep down, past his own set beliefs in the death forthcoming for them all, Jack prayed that she was. It was a dim light of hope, but it existed.
Allowing her space to fly ahead, he eventually followed her method and looked out over the mountain top, gazing into the plunge until his own weight forced him over the side and the magic kicked in.
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