The Beetle & The Knight-Beets and Marto- 13/07/22
Jul 15, 2022 13:35:26 GMT
Velania Kalugina, Derthaad, and 4 more like this
Post by Beets The Beetle (Feenix) on Jul 15, 2022 13:35:26 GMT
Cowritten beautifully with the truly exceptional Marto Copperkettle !
The beetle fairy flits slightly ahead of the young knight, a weighted silence pulling at both with neither ready to break it quite yet. The destruction around the Fort is slowly being undone but it’s taking time. The dusky pink building has been repaired by magic, which only serves to make the contrast more stark between its solidity and the damages everywhere else.
Marto glances at Beets, staying silent as he follows her around the southwest corner towards the clear blue pool that was once surrounded by lush trees and a beautiful sitting garden. Someone has been doing work to bring back the tranquillity of the little oasis but they have their work cut out for them.
“How about over there?” Marto says, pointing to a cluster of rocks that form a natural bench next to the water.
Beets has fluttered quietly just ahead of Marto, her hands gripping the arm of the other, her gaze lowered, mouth locked in a small sad frown. Inside her mind her thoughts echo, deep and cavernous, the low internal droning she keeps expecting to flair up an almost inaudible soft hum, like gently bubbling lava inside a volcano.
She thinks, Maybe that last outburst when it fully took over me tired it out… This could be it then, this could be my chance to tell him… I can’t keep it bottled up, it was too flittin’hard. I felt like I was gonna buggin’lose it any minute… And that’s when it could-
“So, how have you been?” Marto asks, placing his shield against the rock and starting to take his gauntlets off.
Marto’s words pull her from her thoughts as she flutters over to take a seat beside him on the bench, and takes a first proper look at her surroundings. Kavel’s pond looks quite different from the first time she came here.
The once tidy edges of the pool have been marred and messed by dragon claw and hoof prints. Many of the lush trees have been smashed and splintered, completely uprooted or scorched by dragon fire. Piles of chopped logs sit around a central stump of one unfortunate tree that was too far gone, a simple woodcutter’s axe casually left sticking up out of it, proud, biting into the pale wooden surface. Perhaps they’ll return soon from an early dinner… Or perhaps, not soon at all.
“Oh you know…” Beets says after a small exhale of breath. “Watched Coll get kidnapped and killed by Githyanki. Went to a lovely fashionable ball at your sister’s place. Got torched and ripped to shreds by a yanki-dragon. Fought a vampire. Made friends with a lovely dragon from the Feywild, who then got horribly killed by a yanki-dragon when fighting in the big war battle with us. Oh! And I’ve got a new delivery job!” She says this all so normally and casually, her gaze unfocused, drifting about as she talks.
“So how about you?” she asks rather quickly after, her gaze flitting over to him on the word ‘you’, then away again. “I hear you’ve been… busy.” The final word slightly louder and higher pitched with a very prominent ‘zzz’, like a bee had just darted out from a nearby flower.
Marto frowns, goes to say something, stops, closes his eyes, then sighs.
“I’ve been a really shitty friend,” he mutters quietly, leaning forward so his elbows rest on armoured legs. “You’ve been through so much and I… just left.” He looks at her, still leaning forward, the apology is clear in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Beets. Even though I was tied up in my own things I…” His voice wavers, eyes unfocusing for a moment. “…I should have talked with you. I was just- I didn’t want to see you get hurt- But it seems like you have anyways and- What I mean is, I acted the way I did to protect you.”
The words fumble and fall from Marto’s lips, like he wants to say so many things but his mouth can’t get all the words out at once. By Yondalla’s graceful right hand, why was this so hard for him to say?
“I don’t know where to begin…”
Beets re-adjusts herself to sit cross legged, her gaze trailing slowly back over to examine her friend. His new shorter cut, parted hair barely covered the long scar that ran across his scalp to his brow, another dashing across on his left cheekbone. The beard that hung from his jaw, twirl ending and moustache to match. His armour, bigger and clanker than ever. Yet right now, in his current stance, it made him look smaller than ever.
“How about you tell me how you… got those scars? And the… ‘whiskers’?” Beets adds, unable to stop the small smile that creeps onto her lips as she speaks, her gaze shyly focusing on a leaf drifting slowly at the water’s edge.
He nods, preparing to piece together the story for her. He wanted to get things right, but he also knew what talking about this would do to him. Marto’s hands are laced together in a vice-like grip. He wets his lips but already he tastes ash on his tongue. The ghost in his memory drapes an arm around him and the phantom pain of a dull ache on his left side begins to pinch ever so slightly.
“The scars are from the devil I faced when Zola, Velania, Kavel, Sorrel, Silvia, Kháos and I went to Phlegethos to end the Unending Word and stop the Heralds of Blade and Ash. You remember that mission we did where we met Tricky Otto? It was related to that. It was the final battle of that cycle, the one that would determine if the Unending Word would continue or if we could actually end it. That fight… that was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Silvia almost died, were it not for Kavel. I nearly-”
He has to stop and take a moment to ground himself. Marto closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and continues.
“I nearly made the biggest mistake of my life. I nearly gave my soul to the devil I loved, to Adhyël…” A small shudder ripples through him that Marto tries to mask behind a large intake of breath, attempting to cleanse the ash that has become smoke from his lungs. He clears his throat. “I was ready to sacrifice everything to make sure the others survived. But it was Velania who held me back.” He lets out a shaky laugh. “And then I killed him. I killed Adhyël even though I-…”
Beets sits listening as Marto struggles with his tale. Only a couple short weeks ago, she had sat at the water’s edge with Kavel recounting her own struggles. Her gaze slips out over the water whilst the beast inside her smolders away, like a long since gone out fire.
As he finishes a tear trickles down her cheek, leaving a clean cut line in her ashen eye mask. “Oh bug… Marto…”
She watches his struggle with the last word. The very word she found herself unable to say. About how she felt about him.
“So, the mark on your chest… That meant… that he?”
Beets puts a hand to her chest, right above her heart, a simple but clear action for a word somehow so hard to say.
“No.”
The response is said with such force and certainly it shocks Beets out of her gentle reverie. When she looks at Marto his eyes are hard as millstones, his hands white knuckled in their grip of each other.
“Adhyël did not love me. Not in the way you mean Beets. As for what the mark meant, it was a tool created by Ophanim, used by all of the Heralds to try to control us. To take over our minds and will and make us attack those who stood beside us, to kill our friends.”
Beets’ hand drops from her chest, her mouth slightly open in shock, feeling like she’d just been hit with a bolt right between her wings, like hearing one of her far too many unspent gold coins dropping to a hard stone floor with a loud metallic ring.
He-He was like m-me! she thinks. H-he understands.
Her gaze drifts to her open right hand, the very hand she had almost struck Poppy with days before, the very hand that tried to strike Marto with when he’d come to her aid.
“I’m sorry I-… I…yo-…” She struggles to speak.
Marto is shaking his head. “It’s why I left. When we came back, after I had killed Adhyël, after being through all that I needed… space. To not think. To not feel. But in doing so I abandoned you, Velania, Zola, Kavel, Gerhard, Sorrel, Fog…”
His hands unclasp themselves. The strain from holding on can be seen in the lines of his palms but Marto doesn’t notice, doesn’t even care. The weight, the smoke, the phantom pain still lingers, whispering the echo of words once said to him in dreams. He tries to shake the ghosts from his head.
“I wasn’t fit to help anyone. It took me… I don’t know how long… I’m still not right. I’m better, but not… quite me anymore.”
He looks up to Beets, finally. The halfling that looks at her is not the same one she had met all those months ago on their very first, mock adventure. The scars only tell the surface of what Marto’s been through, his words barely the top layer of soil. There’s so much more and this is clearly hard for him to speak about, but he is trying to be honest with her, as much as he can be.
“I’m sorry I left you alone, Beets. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you anything at the time. I’m sorry… for all of it,” Marto says, his voice raw as his emotions claw at his throat and tears prick at his eyes.
Beets raises a hand towards her mouth, as if it can grasp and hold back the sob that breaks in her own throat, her sharp teeth setting. Rims of tears glistening in her eyes, threatening to spill forth.
“…not… quite me anymore.”
The words swirl in her mind. So achingly familiar.
He’s gone through so much. So much pain. Sought comfort where he could. But then hid away alone, suffered through all it, just like me.
There is a distant shifting in her mind, like the slight twitch of a leg. An echoing snap as a spark ignites in a piece of wood of the fire of fury that lays dormant inside her, as it senses a change.
She wants to rush at him, comfort him, wrap her arms around him and pull him into an embrace. But she is scared. She knows what could happen. But she is desperate. She has been waiting so long, and to see him breaking in front of her. She needs to do something. Needs to hold him. Hold his pieces together before he shatters, splits into countless irreparable shards before her, and is gone.
Shakily she holds out her arms towards him. Her lip quivering, the odd tear breaking free of the flood to add another clean streak through the mask of shadow surrounding her eyes.
There’s a moment where Marto hesitates and there’s a flash of something in his eyes, but it disappears before either of them can really identify or address it. Then, slowly, hesitantly, Marto leans in to accept Beets’ offered embrace. It’s not a tight hug as he still has the rest of his armour on. The warmth is not felt in the embrace itself, but in what the action itself means between the two of them. As Beets enters the embrace, softly, carefully, it’s like walking on an ice covered river that could crack at any moment, ready to plunge her into the deep dark depths that lie beneath. She waits… and waits…
Before she knows it Marto pulls back, leaving one hand gently resting on Beets’ shoulder. He takes a moment to wipe his eyes of the tears that had fallen.
“Oh yeah. As for the ‘whiskers’,” he gestures to his face, “they grew out when I was in the Court of Harmony. Merla insisted I stay with her when I returned from Hell. She knew I wouldn’t have been able to face our family after… everything. Almost like she could read my mind…” He shakes his head, the smallest smile playing on his lips. “My beard was a lot bigger when I came back. I liked having it but it’s a little too hot to keep the whole thing, so I tried trimming it a bit. What do you think? Does it make me look... silly?”
She smiles, her first genuine real smile to him in months. Tears flowing down as her cheeks flush with happiness, her heart fluttering to hear his merry tone that she has so missed hearing, the memories incomparable to the warmth that flushes through her as he looks to her smiling-
Before her world goes black.
Beets’ body hunches slightly, her eye contact with Marto breaking off as her head drops forward, eyes suddenly a deep cavernous black. The clean tears from her eyes flood with pitch, like a spilt bottle of ink, pouring down from her cheeks in streaks, like a damn has been burst free to flow.
A humming comes from Beets’ lips, still fixed in that same smile. Soft. Gentle. Sweet. It is a sad refrain, one that speaks of sorrow. Yet as it continues Beets’ voice gets louder, her tone changing pitch. Jarringly. Almost mockingly. Like a child intimating a song they have heard, but with a touch of spite.
Then words flow forth.
She met a halfling of Galore’
But one year or more
A moment that kindled her love
He said-‘Hey great legs’
He laid out his webs
To lure her right into his trap
He spoke soft to her
Her made her heart purr
“A fairy filled with the strength, to expel…”
He captured her heart
That night full of lark
Such love she never has known
How could she foresee
The force awaken, finally!
That had been trapped inside so deep… IN HER HEART!
As she finishes the last of the song with almost a snarl, her head twists to look up at Marto, her sharp fangs fixed into a big forced smile.
“Well hello… Marto,” says the almost but not quite voice of Beets.
“Hello,” he says cautiously, keeping his hand on Beets’ shoulder.
It’s a bit of a long shot, but Marto has read many a folktale and as much lore as he could get his hands on about the fey. There was one he read — some argued it wasn’t a fey story but after reading it Marto thought otherwise — a story of a young man with two souls, battling for control of the person’s body. This one in particular had fascinated him as a child. Now Marto wonders if perhaps something of that ilk is happening to his fairy friend right now. This isn’t the first time he’s been faced with the beastial rage inside of Beets but it is the first time it has talked directly to him.
“It’s nice to meet you… what should I call you? You’re not the Beets I know…”
Beets moves her head up, rolling it on her shoulders with a horrible popping and clicking sound, before stretching out her beetle legs with an equally jarring clack-clack. She gives out a long contented sigh, before turning to smirk over at Marto, like a cat eyeing a mouse.
“Oh-We’ve met before. When you came-a-knock-knock-knocking at Beets’ door!” Her hand, suddenly morphing with a splurge of black ichor from her skin, into a vicious insect claw as it lifts up to mime knocking in time with her words. The monstrous form is familiar. Marto first saw it when it burst through the bottom of Beets’ door. Its long sharp talons flex and twitch unnaturally in the air, before eerily turning to waggle at him in a gruesome imitation of a cheery wave.
“Your little ‘trick’ with your dear Yondalla caused a right BUGGIN’ nuisance for me! I had almost gotten hold, had almost taken control. She fought hard- Oooohhoho she did she FIGHT! But then you intervened. You FLITTIN’ cheated me!”
The little speech finished with an accusing talon pointed in Marto’s direction, whilst Beets’ disturbingly long sharp teeth are clenched into a snarl.
“I was helping her,” he says calmly. Marto does not flinch at the claw flailing in front of his face and he keeps his concern hidden. “Some part of you knows that, because she knows it.” His other hand not on Beets’ shoulder slowly makes its way to a pouch on his belt. “You didn’t answer my question though. What should I call you?”
Beets face snarls in rage, frothing yellow spittle foaming at the corners of her month, her pointing beetle hand clenching into a fist which slams down into the stone bench beneath them. Small shards of rock splinter from the impact, a slight but clear crack left in the stone between them.
“I know you were trying to help her,” she says in a mocking, goo-goo tone with the half talon hand doing air quotes. “What I said was your HELP,” she raises the jabbing talon to emphasise the point, “your buggin’ halfling hospitality ruined what would have been an easy task in my weakened state. Instead your-” She spits the word out with a disgusted look, “-goddess made me lose any hold I had achieved over her after breaking free!
“Months. FLITTIN’ months, I had to endure. To be finally free, but too weak to do anything. Having to watch her go on adventures and form friendships. Having to listen to her snivel in here about what is going on with you. ‘Oh Marto found other girls that are much stronger and prettier than me.’ ‘Oh Marto doesn’t like me anymore and now he’s gone away-oh boo hoo!’ I thought I was going to be in trouble when that buggin’ moon-dragon showed up and she started getting close to her. Luckily…” Her smile is cruel and sharp as she raises a clenched fist, “she got killed by,” Beets sighs admiringly, “that beautiful red mother, and any chance of dear ‘Qir’ helping her flitted away!” she finishes opening her clenched talon, as if releasing something to the air.
“Oh did dear Beets lose it then… She was beside herself with grief, and I seized my chance. I FEASTED! Oooh how delicious those dragons were! Such unbridled ferocity! Such blind murderous rage! I haven’t felt this strong years!!” She clenches her fists admiringly, watching the ripples of her veins travel up her arms as they flood with black ichor.
“But you,” she looks back up at Marto, lifting one leg up onto the bench before leaning forward to smile at him. “You came back. A little rough around the edges. A little troubled in the mind. But don’t worry darling, girls just LOVE a backstory.” She gives a mocking laugh, which is horribly offset by Beets’ tinkling tone.
“So you want to get to know me? Sure, let’s get to know one another.” She licks her tongue across her top fangs, before giving an unsettlingly sharp smile. “The name’s… Bogar.”
“Bogar,” Marto says, almost like he is tasting the sound of the name. “A strong name for a strong spirit. Is that what you are? A fey spirit?” he asks, cautiously undoing the button of the pouch on his belt. Reaching in, his fingers touch the small vial of blessed water but Marto pauses before bringing it out.
“Were you there when Beets was banished from her home? Do you happen to know her mother?”
There is a long pause. The balmy summer evening is slowly growing still. Silent. Beets- No, Bogar stares back at Marto, that freakishly forced smile affixed to Beets’ face until, with a sickeningly loud, grinding crunch that echoes in the quiet, Beets’ face turns to one side, unnaturally far, like an insect’s. She blinks, her dark paned eyes locked with Marto’s and stares inquisitively amongst the sudden flutter of lashes.
“You like the fey don’t you Marto? Read every book you could get your hands on, or so I heard. Is that why you like her?” Bogar enquiries, Beets’ face drawing a little closer. “Is that why you like ‘me’? Hehehe!” Beets’ voice rings out sickeningly sweet, the juxtaposed hands adding to the already unsettling image as they frame her off-kilter face, twitching and flexing as she giggles with delight.
“I do like the fey,” he answers. “But that is only a small part of why I like Beets.”
Marto carefully uncorks the vial of blessed water, pouring it into his hand so his fingers and palm are soaked with it, cupping the rest of it in his hand, which he keeps by his hip. He then fully faces Bogar, his right hand still on Beets’ shoulder pulling her body closer to him, his grip getting firmer as he squares his shoulders.
“She is brave, funny, and kind. When she gets the desire to help someone, she gives everything to that cause, sometimes even if it’s too dangerous for her. She’s brash, flighty, and excitable but her heart is good. Her heart is not a weakness, it’s her greatest strength. It’s what draws our friends to her, friends like Kavel, Lolli, Gerhard, Jenna, and so many more.”
He brings his left hand, the one cupping the blessed water up to her face, but pauses before he tips his hand as he says, “You may make fun of her pain, her sorrow, Bogar, but all that shows is how desperate you are to have what she has — people who love and care about her.” Marto places his palm with the water against her cheek. “Because there are people who care about you, Beets. Don’t let Bogar convince you otherwise. I care. I’m so sorry I left you without any rhyme or reason. We are all here for you, Beets!”
A clarifying warmth blossoms in his palm as Marto casts protection from evil and good.
Bogar screeches like he has been burnt, a horrific otherworldly sound that pierces through the air causing Marto to loosen his grip reflexively to clasp at his ears. The fairy pushes away from him, hurtling up with the roaring drone of her wings to hover above the waters of the pond, the still water now rippling from the sudden downdraft.
He hisses at Marto, the cheek the knight had cupped red and raw, black wisps of smoke trailing from the spot. Black eyes wild with rage, Beets’ mouth is pulled back in a snarl, dripping with foam.
“Fattyú!” Bogar hisses with a sneer. “Another dirty trick! You’re more like your beloved fey than you think boy! They’ve always known how to play unfairly! How to befuddle others, enchant things just to their liking!
“She met your sister, you know,” he continues, looking down at him from above the pond, the smile reappearing around the fangs. “Dear Merla — or Merlin as Beets first called her! Ha! My my my, what a fine specimen! A fey touched halfling, and a queen now too! Such… power!” Bogar gasps in imagined enjoyment. “My, what I could do… if I twisted her to my will,” he remarks, looking up wistfully as the clawed hand clasps the air as if grasping something desirable.
Marto stands on the edge of the pond looking up at Bogar, but he speaks to Beets. He knows she is in there, he just has to reach her.
“Call a spade a spade — You’re the one who’s the manipulator, the one who is trying to isolate my friend. But it won’t work. I know you’re in there, Beets, I know you can hear me. Come back! You still have something you want to tell me, don’t you? And I want to know what you think of my silly little beard.”
Beets’ body shudders as if wracked by a sudden coughing fit, her head lolling onto her chest as her wing beats slow down. Then, her head flips up to reveal her bright brilliant eyes, wide and alert, as her mouth begins to move.
“Oh Marto, my hero you’ve saved me!”
Her hands swing up to clasp and nuzzle into her cheek, the movement erratic, unnatural, as if Beets is a badly controlled puppet, her voice back to that mocking sing-song tone.
“I’ve been waiting ever so ‘flittin’ long to tell you how much I…”
Her head turns towards Marto, as if forced by a hand to meet his gaze. The eyes are a complete contrast to the widening smile below them as if it was all a gruesome gag. They are wide, full of worry, full of fear.
“…love you.”
Tears form in her eyes as the confession is finally made.
Now gone.
Taken from her.
Stolen.
Marto stands there stunned, confused and uncertain, a clambouring of voices and memories, dreams and desires, all of it echoing around inside his mind. Beets’ rage has taken on this horrible personality full of spite, hatred, and jealousy, but he doesn’t know what to do. It’s just not in him. He can’t bring himself to say anything in response to the confession that he knows is true. The fey spirit, Bogar, may be puppetting Beets but those words, that tone, her eyes… all of it tells him it’s true. He begins to panic. He knows he has to say something, needs to do something, but those three simple words have tipped his inner world on its axis, the tranquillity of the Forest with No Name in his mind that was slowly regrowing with new seeds of harmony suddenly feels thin and ephemeral, like there’s hardly any substance left to him.
“No…” he starts. Marto is floundering, his thoughts all a jumble, the cage of ash, smoke and blood constricting around his heart. “No, you-…” He tries to ground himself. “No. Don’t you dare use Beets’ feelings for me against her, Bogar. You coward!”
“My it seems we’ve touched a nerve-haven’t we Beets?!” says the deeper, more masculine voice returning with a smirk. “I can see why that fiend liked you, lover boy! You’re so…” Bogar bites out the last word, “PASSIONATE!”
Bogar begins to laugh, a deep insecticidal torrent emerging from Beets’ throat as he throws her head back, arms splayed, revelling. Until suddenly, the beetle claw swings down, punching herself in the gut, causing the laughter to cut off with a sudden splutter and spray of foam as she hunches over.
“D-did- Did you just hit yourself Bee-URK!?” Bogar begins before being cut off as both of Beets’ hands raise to lock around her own throat, the fingers and talons flexing, grappling for purchase atop one another, a battle between two creatures.
Marto looks on in renewed panic, uncertain what he can do to help her except staying concentrated on his spell. Then, her wing beats slow almost to a full stop, and in those last moments Beets‘ eyes focus forward. No longer full of white eyed fear and panic, but set, blazing a fierce green emerald.
“W-What are you-? N-NO!” The words struggle from the once spiteful mouth. Now her features are juxtaposed, wide, trembling, aghast.
“Care for a swim, BUG?”
It’s no longer the voice of Bogar, nor the mock imitation. It’s Beets’ own, real, pure — and it’s buggin’furious.
Her wings stop flapping. Then Beets tips over and falls, horn first, down into the pond below.
“Beets!” Marto shouts.
He takes a step, hesitating, trying to see her.
The setting sun, blazing as it begins to kiss the horizon glares out across the water, hugging the edge of the fort. The struggling form of Beets is a faint shadow, rising and falling from view as she swirls in the stark light beneath the surface. Before slowly fading into the depths.
There is silence, stillness. Marto takes a step into the water. Then-
SPLOOSH!
“HUURHHHGGH!” gasps Beets as she breaks the surface. Her form floundering slightly in the water from fatigue. But back. In control. Herself.
Marto is instantly in the water, appearing in a swirl of woodsmoke and shimmering golden sunlight.
“Beets! Here, take my hand.”
Beets flinches with a splash, more in surprise than fright. She hesitates, eyes focusing on him before she sets her unsure mouth, and lunges to grasp his offered hand with hers.
He helps her swim back to the pool’s edge. It’s not easy but thankfully it isn’t too far of a swim. They’re both soaking wet but in the heat of this late summer afternoon they are already starting to dry off.
“Are you okay?” he asks Beets, eyeing her warily, still holding onto her hand. “Is Bogar gone? For now?”
Beets coughs up some water, before curling her tongue in, flobbin’ out a final mouthful of yellow foam to the bank.
“I-I think so,” she gasps, swaying slightly as she tries to compose herself.
He nods. “Good.”
He lets her go and begins the slow, arduous process of taking off his armour. Marto doesn’t look at her but continues to speak.
“How long have things been getting worse? Have you told anyone else? Is this the first time Bogar has been so... present?”
“He’s um… spoken to me before. But never like that… Never with that… voice.”
She presses a hand to her temple, the other grasping her beetle horn and pulling it and the headband from her wet hair, before letting it fall with a thunk to the ground.
“Y-You were talking,” she says, her other hand rising to join the first as she massages her temples.. “You were talking and it all went black. I felt like I was trapped. I couldn’t hear. Couldn’t see. And then I came back when he… When he made me…”
Her gaze drifts down, turning away as she hugs herself. The skin where Marto’s had touched her cheek is red and stark on her pale skin, like a beauty mark.
“When he made you confess that you love me.”
Marto’s back is to her so Beets cannot see his face. He has unstrapped one pauldron and has begun working on the other, his movements methodical, practised, habitual. Beets just stares at him, waiting for Marto to say something, anything, but he doesn’t. He has already undone the second one, setting it down on the grass before starting on the clasps and straps of his chest piece when he finally speaks again.
“How long have things been getting worse?” Marto repeats. “Is anyone else aware?”
Beets is caught off guard, her arms slipping slightly as she adjusts her thoughts, staring across to the fort wall.
“Um, well it I guess it kinda got worse when I was talking to Kavel about… you,” she admits. “I don’t think Kavel really understands what he-… It is. Then when Qir- When Qirliria died and Gert-Gerthad’s girl-… When Orianna was taken by some ‘Mister’ fella, well that’s when it started to talk to me properly. Try to make me see things from it’s view. And then earlier today, at the snake place, I don’t really know what happened. One minute I was in there with you all. The next minute we’re flittn’down the street, and there’s blood in my mouth. I-I didn’t hurt anyone… Did I?” She looks back at him, eyes wide.
“Bogar might have but you didn’t, Beets. You blacked out and that fey spirit took over. You are not at fault.”
It sounds as if Marto is speaking about more than just what happened in Sigil. He has finished undoing the straps on the left side of his breastplate and starts on the right when he pauses.
“Gerthad… do you mean Gerhard? You saw Mister?” he half turns to look over his shoulder, a slight frown on his face. Beets nods and Marto looks away, muttering something in halfling she doesn’t understand. The divot between his brows gets deeper as he goes back to undoing the straps on his armour.
“I heard about Qirliria as well,” he says, voice soft. “I didn’t know you were close with her. I’m sure Merla’s planning a memorial — she was one of my sister’s advisors at court. I met her once… A lovely dragon.”
“Yes,” she responds, her right hand clutching at the crescent of scales on her left hand. “A lovely dragon.”
The silence that hangs between them gets more awkward the longer Marto doesn’t speak yet Beets doesn’t know what to say. Eventually, the final piece of smouldering plate armour is removed and Marto stretches letting out a long sigh of relief.
“That’s better,” he mutters. Then he bends down, takes a small bottle filled with magical red liquid from his armoured belt and holds it out to Beets. “Drink this. It should heal up the mark on your face real quick.”
Beets takes the bottle, examining it in her small hands. Feeling it’s warmth pulse through the glass on her fingers, it’s crimson shade colour the colour of-
“No,” she says, and holds the bottle back out to him. “I need to remember this.”
Marto frowns, uncertainty flashing across his eyes as he reluctantly takes the bottle back.
“Right…”
He stands there looking at his hands holding the potion bottle, gathering himself and the thoughts he has been piecing together as he took off his armour. Finally, when he thinks he’s ready, he begins to speak.
“Beets, I’m not-…” He stops, feeling his throat wanting to close off. Marto takes a deep breath and tries again. “After what happened with Adhyël, I-… I can’t-” His jaw snaps shut with an audible click. He should look at her when he tells her this. She looked at him when she confessed her feelings to him, it’s the least he could do for her.
Very slowly, Marto’s eyes lift up to Beets’ face. She can see the words clear as blue skies even before he speaks them.
“I need time, Beets. I’m not sure when or if I’ll be ready for anything like that again. He is still with me, and I just-… can’t. I hope you can understand that.”
Beets shakes her head, not in misunderstanding of his words, but as if to try and stop the struggle Marto is feeling inside. One she has known all far too well.
“Marto, you don’t have to explain. I-I’m sorry it had to come out like this. I never would of- Never wanted to cause you more pain. Besides,” she says, turning to look down at her reflection in the water in the last of the amber sunlight. “With him… With this thing inside me,” she presses her hand to her chest, “I don’t think I could risk getting close to you in that way either.”
She turns her head slightly, examining properly for the first time the puckered fingerprint scar that sits at the corner of her mouth. “Some scars run deep…” she says quietly, before moving a finger up to gently stroke the new addition to her features. “Some even can touch the heart.”
And then she smiles.