Original Stories Fan Fiction / Realism Fan Fiction ❯ Aqua ❯ Uncertainty ( Chapter 11 )

Chapter Eleven

Uncertainty

 

 

“Captain Lackardel…There's something I've been meaning to tell you,” Arisan said, blushing. She couldn't look her captain in the eye as she continued, “For the longest time, now, I…I…I've loved you.” Her blush spread across her face until it was entirely red. When Lackardel made no response, she quickly turned and ran down the corridor to rooms she shared with several other females and bolted inside.

 

A few of the other woman looked at her funnily as she walked to her bunk and began stripping her armor off. “Did you tell him?” her best friend, Fay, asked her. Arisan didn't look at her childhood friend as she nodded, but her tears betrayed what she so desperately was trying to hide.

 

“Arisan?” Fay asked gently. Arisan shook her head and turned away. Fay placed her hand on her friends shoulder in a comforting manner and gently asked, “Who did you tell you liked them? What happened, how did they react? Do you want me to kick their sorry arse around until they regret rejecting you?”

 

Arisan smiled a little at the last part, but again shook her head. She was grateful that her friend cared enough to unknowingly threaten their captain.

 

Over the course of an entire month, she did nothing to re-instigate her confession. She was glad that Lackardel was kind enough not to mention it, but she noticed from time to time that he was watching her.

 

Several weeks after admitting that she loved him, Lackardel called her out one night. Arisan refused to look him in the eye and couldn't help but wonder if this was about that confession that she had been hoping that he would forget. When he didn't say anything, Arisan turned to go again, but was stopped when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to look at him and was surprised to see him smile at her. Impulsively, she leaned forward and lightly kissed him.

 

When he didn't pull away, she stepped closer and put her arms around his shoulders. Lackardel felt his mind go blank for a moment, but quickly recovered when she put her arms around him. Now, I either accept or reject the woman that I've loved for the longest time. Duty or love? he thought, but every coherent thought was melted away when he kissed her back.

 

There came a sudden cheering that made the two broke apart and step away, blushing. It seemed that the entire Royal Guard had known how they felt about each other, except them, and had just been waiting for one of them to admit they liked the other. They looked from each face and knew that there had several bets placed on how long it would take them to admit they liked each other, making them blush all the more and laugh a little.

 

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“Having a nice dream, my pet?” came the smooth voice of the one that she had learned to loathe. She slowly opened her eyes to see the face of her old Letrangra guard. He smiled icily down at her and she stared coldly back up at him.

 

“You might as well know that the one you call `Captain' is going to be sent to isolation soon,” the Letrangra said, walking out of her view. She turned her head to the white wall and refused to acknowledge the immense guilt that she could feel at the border of her consciousness at having been the reason that Lackardel was currently imprisoned in the dust hole of a planet that they had stumbled upon by chance.

 

Her guard again tried to elicit a response out of her by different means this time. “When you slipped through our grasp that night, we had never thought to have the good fortune of seeing you again. After your disappearance, we resolved to make our next weapon incapable of emotion, where we had allowed you to retain some of that capacity foolishly thinking that it would enhance your performance in battle and, for a time, that assumption was correct.

 

“You killed without thought. All you ever felt was hate and a need to fill an endless void, and taking life filled that void. Then…then something went terribly wrong. We brought in another weapon to speed the killings up, to make them more effective. Everything went smoothly for a while, before we noticed that the two of you were becoming-” here his lip curled in disgust, “-quite fond of each other. Your killings no longer had the deadly accuracy they once had. Instead, you were becoming reckless, as you had found another means to fill that empty void.

 

“So, we tore your partner's heart out before your very eyes and force fed it to you. After that, you went into a numb state of shock and temporary insanity. We thought that we had cured you of your weakness, of your aliment. There was no change in you for several weeks, but then you seemed to gain a rebellious spirit and you stopped killing your assigned targets all together.

 

“We tried to beat you back into submission, but you refused to obey even our simplest orders. We had just decided that putting you under a spell would be the best solution, but the night that the spell was scheduled to be cast, you disappeared.

 

“So here we were, left without a warrior and at a loss as to what to do, little did we know that our problems would be solved in the form of a newborn babe on a planet tucked away in an unknown region of our quadrant.

 

“The creature is young, even by our standards, but it will soon be ripe for the picking, and mark my words, it will not be spared the horrors you were. However,-" here Arisan's eye's involuntarily darted to him, “-if we were to have another weapon miraculously appear, there would be no need to go through the trouble of retrieving her from the miserable little planet that is currently housing her.

 

“Herein lays your choice,” he paused and brought his lips as close to ear as they could be without touching, “Do you take up your old post, or do you let another suffer in your place?” Then he let out a cruel, mocking laugh and drew away. Without another word, he turned to leave, but before closing the door to her room, he said, “If you decide to take up your old post, the one you call `Captain' will be taken to my home world and tortured to death.” Then he left in a bout of mocking laughter.

 

As soon as his laughter died away, tears welled up in her eyes and she curled up in a ball next to the wall and silently wept. What do I do? Do I condemn an innocent soul to the life that I know is hell, or do I save that soul and condemn the man I love? What do I do? Uncertainty welled up within every fiber of her being, making her all the more miserable. Either way, someone suffered for her choice.

 

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