Completed A Residue of Sympathy

[Everleigh Ebersol]

Caeso and Quinctus were brothers, the love and bond they had for each other was different than the one that Everleigh shared with Zael. In one’s life parents would leave too soon and your lover and children would come too late, but it was siblings that stayed in one’s life the longest. Dreadlords didn’t seem to get that one kindness from the world. If Caeso and Quinctus didn’t have magic the brothers would have probably been in each other’s lives for so much longer.

Dreadlords were not known for their lifespans and life, for a human, was already short enough as it was. The regret in Caeso’s face was telling, and his question was filled with it. He hadn’t wanted to, it sounded like with him fighting his older brother he hadn’t wanted to. Yet back at the Academy he had seemed proud of it, even if he hadn’t necessarily said anything, there had been that scent of superiority lingering around Caeso.

Caeso and Everleigh were more alike than they thought.

Which was why she seriously contemplated the question and was honest once more, even giving Caeso something that she knew she shouldn’t: her fear.

“Nearly every night after my graduation,” Everleigh said, fibbing about the time only a little, “I have nightmares of him burning me alive. I wake up and all my nerves are burning like there’s fire in my blood. But it doesn’t matter if Zael would or wouldn’t. Because I know how I feel.” She had confessed to Zael in the infirmary and truthfully, Zael could have rejected her right then and there. She still would have loved him anyways.

It wouldn’t have made her feelings less real. It wouldn’t have made her feelings untrue. It wouldn’t have changed the love she had for him. The love that came so easily as if there was no other way, why or how or when not mattering, because Everleigh knew that she was always supposed to love Zael. She just hadn’t realized it back in the Academy. It took nearly losing him for her to stop lying to herself.

She was tired of lying.

“And my feelings will always be true, even if others think they’re wrong.” The truth that Caeso had made her realize. “Even if others don’t feel the same as me. What I believe is enough for me. And not you, or the proctors, or the Academy, or even Vel Anir itself can take that away from me.” She grinned then, a gesture that was more Zael than her. “Besides, Zael’s not taking me out that easy. I’ll make him work for it harder than anything he’s had to do before.” Unless she would need to sacrifice herself to keep him safe, and if that was a case, she’d do so without even blinking first.

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Clarity.

She loved him.

For Quinctus he had fraternal love, and Everleigh for Zael had romantic love. And with this sunlight spear through the clouds of indignation and disdain was that very veil pierced, and now all fell into place, all made sense.

"I do not know what is to come, what it is that Zael aims to achieve. Yet when our duel was finished, he spoke with a steadfast conviction. What he does, he truly believes in."

These words, in a sense, summoned a mirror, and this mirror now revealed to Caeso the reflection from which he had been averting his eyes for nearly five years. He had to pause. Steady himself.

"For what worth you may find in my words," Caeso said. "His bravery is not merely posturing."

Unlike himself. In all those years since Quinctus's death, Caeso had been living a wretched lie, spewing forth the words he always had because it was all he knew. He had deluded himself terribly. What overwhelming strength, presence, and conviction he projected in reference to the Old Way was a façade, and beneath it was nothing but a hollowness he tried to bury and deny.

All this time, Zinnia had been right. Caeso was a fool.

Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

“I know.” A lightness to her words, a genuine smile that matched the softness of her eyes. Full of the radiant warmth of admiration and more, Everleigh turned her head from Caeso. All of a sudden, she felt a twinge of embarrassment in her gut. All she could think was how the sun never failed to rise up even after the coldest, darkest, longest nights.

“Do you miss him? Your brother?” Everleigh asked suddenly as she turned to look at Caeso. “In the report it sounded like you started the fight.” The key phrase: sounded like. So much had been redacted and she wasn’t authorized to read a lot of it, minus a few words here and there that essentially only said the brothers began fighting and Caeso was the one to finish it.

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso, his body and his actions feeling divorced in near totality from his mind and heart, resumed putting on his gambeson. Given with how much ill-will all of this had started, given indeed how much he had scorned Everleigh the moment he knew she had ascended to the station of Proctor, there as still a very thick and tangible surreal fog about the present moment. It slowed his motions, made his fingers as he now fiddled with loops and buttons feel as though they were miles distant from himself.

"Everyday," he said. "Everyday I miss him."

Caeso let out another breath.

"Proctor Malaneaux pit us against one another, all but directly commanded it. And I found in that moment...that Quinctus was far more committed to the Old Way than I."

Years upon years of reinforcement from Sabian, from all the Proctors around him, for the supremacy of the Old Way, and in that moment when Caeso was made to regard Quinctus as his enemy...it all evaporated. There the hollowness that was left in its wake, that very hollowness he in all the time since covered up and pretended wasn't there by acting as though not a thing had changed.

"I begged him to stop. But...he would not. No force on Arethil could have stopped him, made him relent."

His gambeson on, he looked again toward the cavern ceiling. His throat felt swollen and stifled. Yet he tried his best to be stately, dignified, regardless.

"And so, to my shame, I committed the irredeemable act of fratricide. I am a kinslayer."

And at last, the impetus arrived at that which he thought he should not never speak aloud. He mustered the wherewithal and looked over to Everleigh for this; she deserved that much from him, and he ought to at least have the fortitude to look her in the eyes.

Then he admitted it.

"Shame," he said. "Shame is what stilled my tongue."

Everleigh Ebersol

 

[Everleigh Ebersol]

She listened. Everleigh looked at Caeso and listened to him. She didn’t know how it had come to this, wanting to punch him, wanting to hurt him, and now? Now she wanted to try that gesture her mother had done to her when she was upset: rub his back and nod her head along to his words. She knew she shouldn’t.

She was glad, once again, that she had killed Malaneaux. Just as she had said in that infirmary, there were proctors that liked to pick an initiate or two and terrorize only them for some particular reason. Zael had Kimble, she had Goetsch, and Caeso had had Malaneaux. Caeso had been fooled, just like they all had been in that bloody graduation.

They both shared that dolorous tale, they just had different versions.

It would have been better, she decided inwardly, for Caeso or Sieglilly to end their tormentor instead of her. Not quite the therapy Proctor Matos would recommend, but still, Everleigh thought it would have been justice for them. She also decided how unusual and cruel it was for Caeso to have his childhood ripped from him and fight his own flesh and blood.

Caeso hadn’t been at her graduation, but he had endured and survived it years before she did. Thinking of her graduation, finding similarities in his words to Zael’s, now understanding why Caeso hadn’t told anyone about the Zael’s abduction. He acted like the best when he must have felt like the worst.

She was quiet, giving Caeso the space and time he needed, letting him pause when needed and continue when he needed. It was the least that she could do, it was the bare minimum that he deserved as he tied his gambeson tight around him, as if he needed that padding more than anything else. Marianne was right. Zael had made her soft.

Caeso no longer needed to apologize, there was no need. Everleigh forgave him. And it felt good.

“Today, it no longer does.” Everleigh said finally. “You spoke the truth. Your truth, the only one that matters most to your heart. Shame and regret binds your body and mind without you even realizing it. It becomes your best friend and pretends to support you as it adds another chain around your chest.” That was where she had felt it, when Marianne showed a young Everleigh the tiny metal bars and studs; when Marianne laughed at Everleigh slouching over to try and cover her naked body as if she were strong enough to protect herself. Why had she thought about her parents being disappointed in her?

“But now? Shame has no power over you. You don’t need to tell everyone or anyone else if you don’t want to, but you’re free. What else is there to cage you?” She smiled a rare smile. “You’re going to graduate. You’re going to leave the Academy. You’re going to do whatever it is that nobles do with your planned, boring futures. Then maybe you can forgive yourself, or at least thirteen-year-old-you who was tricked. Just because Quinctus is not around to forgive you doesn’t mean you shouldn’t forgive the one who still cares years later.” Because that was what overcame shame, wasn’t it? Forgiveness. Or rather, Everleigh thought, the act of forgiving yourself when no one else could.

Caeso Diemut

 

[Caeso Diemut]

What he wanted to hear, what he needed to hear. Through the efforts of Initiates like Lumen, Zinnia—even Mieri—and others still of his class had the initial prospecting been done, through all the combined cracks they made was it now possible for Everleigh, in this most unlikely of circumstances, to have finally broken through.

Would he change overnight? Would he shed his façade here and now? Would he forgive himself this moment?

No.

But where before it was impossible, now, at least there was hope. The promise of a better way of being. And it started with him. Yes. Like Zael had said, and in summary of what Everleigh said now, it started with him.

A moment's passing as Caeso absorbed the answer.

"You are right..."

And then, a smile of equal rarity.

"...Proctor Ebersol."

Everleigh Ebersol