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save-the-spiral · 2 years

Text

Lyssa

oh fuck oh shit what the hell. who are you people why am i here. uhhhh. oops.

Content warning for implied suicidal-ness, mentions of death, torture, rabies, animal death & suffering, dead parents, and existential conversation.

“Would you kill me?”

“What?” Tytonidae says immediately, his monotone voice echoing from somewhere behind that owlish mask.

“If you had to, I mean.” Darling Alexander Dove says casually, flipping one of his golden throwing knives, letting it twirl in the air, gleams reflecting moonlight.

“Could you perhaps elaborate?” Tytonidae asks after a moment.

“So-” Alexander flips the knife again, snatching it out of the air before it even finishes a rotation. “Say I fuckin’ lose it, right, and I start killing the crew- would you kill me?”

Tytonidae stares out into the skyway, unreadable as always, just an automaton given life. He sighs even though he has no need to breathe. “...Would you also kill Bonnie Anne?” He finally asks.

Alexander shrugs, sheathing his knife before bringing it back out again in a useless waste of energy. “Maybe. Probably. And I’d be tryin’ to hurt you too, y’know. Like if I lost it like that, I would- y’know- try to kill anyone in my way. And I know Bonnie wouldn’t off me, even if I deserve it. So would you? If I really got like that, and needed to be put down?”

“Like a dog.” Tytonidae says, managing to sound even more emotionless than usual.

Alexander nods, taking off his large tricorn hat, placing it on the ship’s wheel and running his hand through his hair. “Yeah- Yeah! Like a dog, y’know- when the mutts on the streets get too hungry, or rabid- you gotta put ‘em down before they hurt people. You kill something and save everyone else.”

“I would not kill a dog.” Tytonidae says. “They are just animals.”

Alexander begins to pace. “So are people, at the end of the day. Some of us more than others on the outside- but inside as well. We’re all just animals motivated by greed or power or hunger and need. It’s just how we operate.”

“No it is not.”

“Sure.”

“People and animals might be the same, but they still deserve... better.” Tytonidae struggles to come up with a proper word.

“What they deserve and what they get is two vastly different things.” Alexander begins to pace rapidly, one hand twirling the knife between his fingers and the other pulling at his hair, the tie holding his ponytail together now on his wrist.

“You deserve better.”

“I don’t.”

A moment passes, full of just the wind’s song and the creaking of their ship in the Aquilan skyways.

“I would not put down the dog.” Tytonidae says. “Even if it was rabid, and would die in a few days anyway because it is scared of the water that sustains it.”

Alexander stops, his hand shakily falling from where he had been carding through his hair.

Tytonidae continues. “If an animal is suffering, sometimes it would be cruel to keep them alive. But I am selfish. I would keep the animal alive no matter how it suffers, just so I would know I tried my best. My pacifism will render me a selfish coward, and that is the price I pay for standing by my ideals. That is why I will keep you alive as well. Because I care for you. Even if you tried to kill me, and everyone else. I am too selfish to let you go, Alexander. Just like you are too selfish to let your parents’ past go. Just like you are too selfish to consider why Bonnie Anne would say no to the same question you asked me. People are not inherently selfish, though. They are inherently good. Animals- they do not understand morality as we do, and so cannot be measured by it. But people at their most basic will create art and love each other. That is what they did in ancient times. It is what they are built for, communities and creation. You are hurt, too hurt for art or love to heal you, but not hurt enough to be put out of your misery.”

Alexander refuses to look at Tytonidae anymore. He is leaning on the railing, staring off into the Aquilan night, unfamiliar constellations watching over their voyage.

And Tytonidae cannot help but continue. “You are scared of trying to become a better man and failing at it. You have become your own fear and now you fear it. And nothing can fix that, not even death. Death may not save you, or even be the end.”

“For a bucket of bolts you sure can talk a lot of shit.” Alexander says, voice rough with emotion as his lip quivers, as he stares out and pretends the wind is what causes his eyes to water.

“I learned from the best.” Tytonidae’s voice is a ringing bell in the night.

“Fuck you.” Alexander bites back, falling into anger because it isn’t grief or pain.

“You cannot keep doing this, acting as if you are still the same man you were months ago. You are allowed to change, Alexander. To become better. You will never be perfect, but none of us are. Becoming a good man does not mean you are disregarding the lives you have taken or ruined, it does not invalidate your guilt or deny it.”

“I’ll never be a good man, Dae.” Alexander stabs one of his knives into the wood of his ship and then grips the railing, painted nails digging into the wood, splinters piercing his skin. “I’ll never be worth anything. No one should mourn me.”

What he doesn’t say is that he is constantly mourning the little boy who waved his parents off onto their next big adventure, mourning that kid who ran out of money because his parents never came back. He mourned a pathetic street rat who had to scavenge in the sewers like vermin. Mourned the child that reached for Bonnie Anne’s hand and let her drag him onto a ship as a cabin boy.

“Being good doesn’t matter as much as you think, Alexander.”

“Then what does matter?! Fuckin’- being kind? honest? happy? I’ll never be any of those things either! I’ll never be someone worth saving or sparing. I will always be a goddamned wreck beyond redemption, someone who no one thinks should’ve lived this fuckin’ long when so many others died.”

“You would trade your life for your parents’ lives.”

“Of fucking course I would! What orphan in this damn Spiral wouldn’t? Bonnie would say the same thing! Hell, I think even Ratbeard would do anything to have his father back, and the bastard has the spine of a fuckin’- I dunno- somethin’ spineless.”

“Some people kill their parents.”

“Some people are fuckin’ dicks, Dae.”

“You would not. By your metric, those people would rank below you in some hierarchy of those deserving of life.”

“I fucking get it, Dae. I’m a fucking hypocrite. I don’t need the lecture on all the goddamned flaws in my argument.”

“You would rather I talk about your flaws.”

“I don’t even know why I fucking bother sometimes. It was a simple damn question and you make everything about what it means to be a person or whatever the fuck.”

“Sometimes I talk about other things.”

“Birds. That’s the only other thing you talk about.”

“To be fair, I am still learning how to be a person.”

“Yet you've got a concept of fairness.”

“Yet you have a skewed perception of fairness. You believe that your life is somehow worth less than others because of how many lives you have taken, because some of those lives were taken because of your own bloodlust, greed, and enjoyment. You are a cruel person who killed and maimed people for not even your own gain, but just to see them suffer and die. And yet still, I would not condemn you to death even if you made an attempt on mine or our crewmates’ lives. Never. In no hypothetical would I bring you to harm, Alexander. Not because you do not deserve it, but because no one deserves it. People do not deserve pain, or hardship, or suffering.”

Alexander snorts, but wipes away a tear with a shaking hand, still staring out into the skyway.

Tytonidae approaches Alexander from behind, towering over him, and places a hand on his captain’s shoulder. “If the world were made as I see it, people would always be good and do their best to ensure no one else suffers. No more hunger, thirst, greed, or pain. Everyone would love each other and the world around them, because I know they are capable of it and that they want to. Systems implemented by those with more power will force their hand, and they will inevitably harm others. And still they deserve that goodness and love.”

“And still you would not put down the rabid dog.” Alexander’s voice is hoarse as he hunches over the railing.

Tytonidae’s arm curls around Alexander now, a half-hug, as he is unpracticed in such things. “And still I cannot bring myself to put anything out of their misery.” He says.

“I want to believe you, y’know.” Alexander says.

“That the world can be good? That your misdeeds are not solely due to your own inherent wrongness, but something forced upon you that you adopted in order to distance yourself from the pain? If someone else is hurting, that must mean you are not, correct? If someone else dies, you are still alive. If you have control, you are okay.” Tytonidae rests his own head lightly on top of Alexander’s, uncaring of the inevitable tangle of hair in his delicate joints.

“I should’ve left you to fuckin’ rot.” Is all Alexander says as he hunches down further, the force of the sob that leaves his mouth making his shoulders hitch as he chokes on it.

“You are too kind for that.” Tytonidae says cruelly.

Alexander cries, and heals a little bit that night, and it is not enough. There will be many more nights like this, and it still will not be enough.

Maybe one day he will be enough.

#pirate101 #writing #Darling Alexander Dove #Tytonidae #my ocs #ocs #pitty101 #p101

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