I Did It!

[cygna_hime]

...She crows, throwing caution to the wind and running around in circles. It took me a lot of work, but...

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So, for your edification, the last piece of the first half: Part 7.1.


Chapter 7

Mar Tir, exhausted, refused to wake at Mar Ter's early-morning prodding, and eventually he gave up and decided it would be better to let well enough alone. The morning was lazy and vaguely clouded, in keeping with the somnolence of its personification, and as far as Mar Ter was concerned it was welcome to stay that way, if doing so would keep his twin at peace. He was, therefore, more than a little bit put out by the dark figure he spotted standing in the corner of the living room, waiting for something or someone.

"Lei?" he said, startled. "What are you doing here, of all places?"

"What do you think?" Fei Lei snarled.

"I think I can't let you stay."

"And how, precisely, do you propose to stop me from doing whatever I take it into my head to do?"

"I'm not sure. I can find a way. Give it to me."

"Give what to you?" she asked, perfectly innocent and uncomprehending, but he had seen her hand move to her waist instinctively, and that was enough.

"That knife you have," said Mar Ter levelly. "Give it to me, please, Lei."

"No," she replied, equally levelly. "I see no reason why I should surrender my possessions to you."

"Because, you see, I won't let you use it."

"Once again, it seems I must ask you how you propose to prevent me from using it in any way I please?"

Mar Ter seemed to grow taller as a light fog blossomed from beneath his feet. "I am not unskilled, Lei, though I would rather it did not come to that."

"Well, it's too late for that, isn't it?" she growled. "It has come to that, Ter; it came to that the moment your precious brother took my mother away. He deserves to suffer for what he has done; I would have preferred it to be only him, but now it comes to me that another way is just as satisfying!" She lunged at Mar Ter, knife upraised, only to find him not where she had expected him to be and invisible in the thick fog that filled the room.

His voice seemed to come from everywhere. "Would you do to me as he--as he did to Fan? Would you become worse than he?"

"How worse?" she asked the fog, seeking for the shadow she knew her opponent must cast. "What is reprehensible about returning pain for pain?"

"You cannot only return. Would you accept pain for pain as well?"

"What pain?" Fei Lei asked, furious. "What pain has he to give that he has not given already tenfold?" She could not sense Mar Ter's shadow anywhere, no matter how she searched. There were only the shadows of furniture, blurry against the sleeping sun.

"You don't know. I do." The smoke lightened a little, just enough for Fei Lei to see vague shapes. "And would you become like him? Would you hurt me to hurt him...as he hurt your twin? That is worse, Lei, so much worse. Can you not stop?"

"Of course you would say it is worse!" she shouted to the smoke. "It's your pain, not Mei's this time! You who know so much about better and worse, how does that measure?"

She could hear a tremor in Mar Ter's voice when next he spoke. "Tir was wrong, so horribly wrong he may never come right again. But he did not hate only you, Lei. He did not hurt your sister for the sake of hurting you. Is it better to hurt those who love the ones you hate, or only the ones you hate?"

Fei Lei could see the door through the smoke, a vague outline through which she knew Mar Tir lay sleeping. "You are quite right," she said to the smoke. "You are not my enemy. I know who is." Without warning, she lunged for the door and her chance at vengeance.

"No!" Suddenly the curls of smoke resolved into Mar Ter standing between her and the door, clutching at her knife hand. "Please, Lei, don't!"

His eyes were upturned to hers, as she was the taller, and Fei Lei realized with a shock that Mar Ter would truly let her attack him rather than Mar Tir. "Why?" she asked yet again, but for the first time willing to hear an answer.

"Because," he replied softly, "when you break, I don't know if anyone can put you back together."

He was not, she understood, talking only about her. "He is broken?"

"Breaking," Mar Ter said in the barest hint of a whisper. "Mei...do you want her to have to watch you shatter?" The pain in his eyes said what his words did not.

Fei Lei nodded and slowly lowered her knife. "No. I do not want to know I have made her look as you do, not were all that is good in the world to pay the price."

"You care for her so much?"

"You care for Tir so much?"

Mar Ter nodded. "Yes. I see. Please go back then, and care for her. I will--I will try to do the best I can."

"As will I."

They walked, silent, to the doorway. Fei Lei asked, "What do you suppose that you can do?"

Mar Ter smiled mirthlessly. "I'm going to talk to some people, and hope."

"Nothing else?"

"Can you think of anything?"

"No. No, I suppose not. Fare well, then, Mar Ter. Perhaps someday we can get to know one another in a better way than this."

"Fare well to you also, Fei Lei. And--I am sorry. For everything."

"As am I, Ter. As am I."

It was odd, Fei Lei thought as she rode the shadows back to her home, that Mar Ter was so reclusive. He could be very persuasive when he tried; it was surprising that he did not try more often. Perhaps, then, it had been born in him to be secretive. An unusual family trait, but not an unwelcome one. She could trust him, at least, to do his best as she would do hers.

The real surprise, as far as Fei Lei was concerned., was that she had had a half-brother who was so like her for so long and never known it.

* * *


Wonder of wonders, it's even at the right place chapter-wise; about halfway through.

Is anyone reading this? Whistle if you are.

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