Captain Davis had once told Willis that the best way to know a person was through their eyes. A person could mask their body language and speak fluidly and succinctly but the eyes hold their true feelings, it is the hard if not nearly impossible to hide it because the eyes do not lie. Throughout the years, Willis always tried to gauge a person's motivations by staring directly into a person's eyes. What comes out from their mouth can be full of shit but if a person smiles when their eyes aren't then that's a bigger sign that a person is hiding something It doesn't matter how much honeyed words they can lace together in a sentence.
Ari's eyes was full of fear something that was rare for Willis to see, whenever she was kidnapped her eyes were that of irritation and confusion but rarely fear. It wasn't a surprise displaying fear in the Outer City of
Alliria was a good way of getting a person killed or used. Only the hardened of people can survive the docks and streets of Alliria and even then only very few thrive. Willis' face was mixture of emotions; sadness, confusion and desperation all rolled into one. His body begging him to turn back and rejoin the others at the camp maybe talk to
Kikwi about this mess. As far as Willis knew, Kikwi was the only friend who can guide Willis out of this mess.
He shouldn't have been surprised at the whole ordeal being a womanizer hungry for sex meant that he would've left a trail of babies in his wake. Yet here Willis was staring at a begging Ari like a Dreg staring mindlessly at a piece of fruit and the first thing on his mind was to run away. It was funny when he discarded his original name he built
Willis Reede to be this strong and confident confident man that the boy wasn't. Willis Reede would make a decision and stick with it, Willis Reede would always look a person in the eye and laugh, Willis Reede would always shout back to his mother and tell her that she was an evil, abusive witch, Willis Reede was everything that he thought that a man should be.
However when it came to Ari's revelation that they had a son together and is telling him not to abandon her. That fortress that Willis built for himself over the years came crashing down and in the rubble left that boy again shaking and indecisive.
He was once again Amare.
Willis closed his eyes, he wanted to embrace Ari and tell her that he loved her but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Right now he didn't know what to do all Willis could think of was the time he left Ari when they first had sex and how he desired to be with her, yet Ari refused to go. Willis found himself letting go from Ari's embrace and turned around heading to the camp only to stop a few steps in.
"You know," Willis said. "If you've told me that you were pregnant back then. I would've left Captain Davis and raised our son together. I would've married you Ari."
The words came out shaky but in Willis' heart he knew it was the truth, Ari was his first woman he gave himself to, the first woman he ever loved. Yet years of separation had hardened the both of them and tore each other apart. Even if they were married ever since that revelation it felt that the two of them were more separated than ever. But it did explain a lot of Ari's bitterness towards Willis, his heart once swelling with euphoria was now shattered just like persona of Willis Reede he built for himself.
And it was all his fault.
Willis continued to make his way to the camp raking his arm over his face. Fresh tears came out from his eyes, genuine tears something that didn't happen since his mother abandoned him.
