The Strength You Need for Tomorrow [Private]

Dinah was standing in the shadows, unconsciously tapping into her invisibility blessing. She was not making herself invisible; she didn’t have the strength for true invisibility yet. Not after the recent mission. It had been a victory, but she had taken a vicious crossbow wound to the haunches and it was far from healed, draining her strength and shortening her temper as well as affecting her blessing. But the Paladin didn’t need true invisibility, not in the shadowed corridor. She simply allowed her outlines to… soften, fade away, cloaking herself in her surroundings rather than removing herself from them.

And she was silent, silent as she listened to the muffled sounds of the prisoner. Her prisoner. Dinah’s nostrils flared as, once again, she considered the situation at hoof. Dinah had spent nearly her entire childhood behind bars, had been a captive, her free-will subjugated by the bloated, malignant blight on Hireath that was Aodh. Dinah watched as the captive’s muzzle poked out of the cage, his own nostrils flared and seeking, and she felt a sort of muted, twisting revulsion at the role reversal, at the knowledge that she now was the captor, that she was taking another’s agency.

But this stallion was no slave. He was no victim to an oppressive regime; he benefited from the subjugation of others, and chose to remain in his position. Chose to go on the mission Dinah’s Vindicators had interrupted, in which he would have accepted and transported other equines back to Aodh in chains.

Dinah’s invisibility flickered as her golden eyes flashed with cold, focused anger, and the Paladin strode forward, favoring her wounded leg but lacking none of her purpose, none of her tangible aura of quiet, dangerous fury. There was a muted, almost inaudible sound of wings, and Dinah’s eagle owl Oren had swooped down the hall and landed with a click of talons onto a crate next to Dinah. He fluffed his feathers imperiously and turned his sharp, aristocratic head to peer at Axenus, his golden eyes the same shade as Dinah’s. Horse and owl were silent as they considered the dirty, disheveled captive.

Dinah tilted her head.

“Can you give us one reason,” she asked quietly, her tone as cold and unyielding as frost on a window pane, “why we should continue to waste our resources on you?”

Your silence, was the implication, or your life.

The Paladin waited.

Dinah tilted her dark head the other way, golden eyes glittering in the half-light of the bunker. The stallion… he was a picture of violence. Suppressed, controlled- but not dormant. His violence was waiting, simmering just below the surface of his dirty coat. It was nothing Dinah had not seen before, time and time over, endless variations on a theme. It was the latent violence of a prisoner, someone who knew they must fight to survive. Knew they probably wouldn’t. It was a desperate sort of violence that Dinah knew, deep in her bones, aching in every scar on her body. We are not the same, she reminded herself harshly. The stallion’s words only confirmed that, and Dinah’s lip curled, slightly. A flash of bared teeth, white in the shadows.

“My puppets?” the tall mare asked, the words mild but the tone cold, barren. She snorted out a brief, quiet laugh that was utterly devoid of humor. Oren ruffled his feathers imperiously, as if he too were indignant at the implication. “We have no hierarchy. If equines follow me, it is their choice. I ask no fealty. We are united in our beliefs only.” But he wouldn’t understand that. How could he? A child of corruption. Frightened, angry, proud, clinging to the institution that favored him… at the expense of others. A privileged youth, dangerous in his complacency. Like all of them.

“You could be very useful to me,” Dinah contradicted him calmly, coldly, flicking her tail. “Indeed, to your fellow equines, those who need help the most.” An Aodhian, one who frequented the capital, who could navigate the cesspit of Valore and pass vital information.. He could changed the whole nature of this business, refine the blunt swings of the Vindicator raids. He knew that, of course. Dinah was not surprised he did not offer the bargain; again, she noted the pride in his half-wild eyes, and again, she fought to control her curling lip.

“Or do you only care about those of your fellows who do not wear bits?” She shook her head slowly, bitterly. “Who taught you that? Were you born with such thoughts, just as you were born without a bit? Have you always delighted in delivering equines to a life of slavery? Or perhaps… you do not enjoy it, yet do it regardless?”

She leveled a mocking stare on Axenus, her tone hardening, sharpening, a shard of ice. “And you speak to me of puppets.”

Interesting, Dinah mused to herself as she watched some of her words hit home, watched the stallion's gaze flinch away from hers. Never for long- it seemed a point of pride indeed to the stallion, that he face her. The violence that simmered just below the surface had not abated; indeed, Dinah thought it only a matter of time before he exploded, seeking an outlet for the storm that so obviously trembled on the barest edge of his control. She could push him over, if she wanted to. It was nothing she hadn't done time and time again, as she spilled blood on the hot sands of the Crucible, cheered on by a faceless, fickle crowd. But Dinah hadn't done it for them, nor the satisfaction of defeating her opponent, for they too were a slave. She had done it to survive another day.

Dinah's eyes flashed in the flickering light as she stared quietly at Axenus. She could push him over that edge. Could, but wouldn't.

She wasn't that mare, wasn't that slave anymore. Nor was the bristling, furious stallion before her a slave, no matter how much he seemed to have seized upon the notion, let it fill him with a righteous rage. Clearly, he saw it as a turning of the tables, an irony that Dinah herself must be unaware of. But Dinah, who had known the taste of a bit, the unwanted touch of an owner, the sight of her own daughter in chains- Dinah recognized this situation as it truly was: one Axenus had gotten himself into. And one far better than he deserved.

And yet... and yet, her words had registered, perhaps against his will, perhaps painfully, but they had registered. He had reacted.

Oren hissed, flaring his barred wings threateningly as Axenus slammed into the cage bars, hooves scraping the metal as he vented his frustration. The Paladin however did not move, did not flinch, but stood as a statue, head high, head tilted, watching as Axenus landed and backed away again. He was struggling with himself as much as with the situation, and Dinah wondered why. A chevalier who flinched at her accusations, who remained in the employ of a herd he seemed to disdain, perhaps despise. Was it cowardice, laziness? Dinah eyed the furious stallion, his sides heaving as he glared at her, and she didn't think so. So what, then?

"You were apprehended delivering slaves," Dinah said slowly, making each word a weapon, a dagger aimed at whatever part of him had flinched at her words. "Where they would be sold, ripped away from any remaining family or friends. Where they would be forever subject to another's will. Where any children they had, willingly or not, would too be subjugated." Although quiet, the pointed words gained an edge, as they always did when Dinah thought of Magdalene. "Sold, beaten, assaulted, broken." Each word, a blow. "And delivered to this life of hell by you." Dinah stepped forward and stopped just out of reach, looking at the stallion, her voice still quiet but her eyes blazing, her ears flat. "But because you only do as you are told, because you do not force the bridles on their heads or shut the doors of their prisons, because you can walk away from their pain, you're innocent?"

Contempt seeped through Dinah's words despite herself, and she tilted her head, letting the side of her face catch the light. Letting the scars on her mouth and lips become visible, harshly outlined in the lamplight. The scars of a bit. Yes, the gesture said. Yes, I speak to you of slavery. Dinah lifted her head, the scars falling again into shadow.

"So tell me then, soldier who regrets, puppet who would ignore his strings, see them on everyone but himself. Tell me why you do it." Dinah wondered if he would tell her. Could he admit it even to himself, that hidden, soft part of himself that shied from her accusations? Decades and history told Dinah he would not, but her own hidden softness, the part of her that could never quite give up, that part of her hoped. Hoped he would. You could be so much more, Dinah thought, staring calmly at him. She waited.

Dinah did not answer the Chevalier's question, not right away. It hadn’t been a real question, anyways. They both knew it, knew that the stallion had already answered it. The Paladin was quiet, head still slightly tilted as the shadows played over her form and lent the illusion of movement to her quiescence. The stallion’s fury, his pride and passion and strength, had all melted away under Dinah’s words, and the captive appeared smaller, somehow. Beaten. Dinah did not feel satisfaction at the victory, or at least it was satisfaction without passion, perfunctory emotion for a job completed.

Just as in the pits. Sometimes it felt to Dinah that her life circled ever back to that, an orbit she could never escape. Drawn back, time and time again, shaped by that which she wanted to escape. Circles within circles, with freedom (of body, or mind, or soul) only a clever illusion, a lie. Dark thoughts, for a dark corridor. Dinah turned resolutely away from the lure of those thoughts, a well worn path. Circles within circles.

Painful words at spilled from the Chevalier, slowly and halting at first before tumbling into a torrent, all ragged edges and layered regret that threatened, it seemed, to drown him. But for all of her contempt, Dinah didn’t want him to drown. (Or if she did, it was a carefully denied part of herself, one she acknowledged without indulging because her desire, her rage, her life was not just her own, she had decided that long ago and it would not be undone by this stallion, nor any other mortal.) No, Dinah wanted Axenus to rise above the filthy currents of his own making, and not be pulled along, pulled under. You could be so much more. But Dinah could not decide that for him. A soul was a solitary burden. Most things were, in the end.

And this stallion’s burden was crushing him. Dinah let it, let the silence between them take shape, take life. There were many types of silences, and they could do much more than words, sometimes. She wasn’t being cruel, or at least cruelty was not her goal. It could be a side effect, certainly. There were many types of silences, after all, and not all were gentle or kind. This silence was not cruel, nor gentle, kind. It was hard, as if a reverberating sheet of glass hung between them, connecting them. A mirror, which showed truth, a soul’s burden laid bare.

So what would Axenus see in it?

“Why,” Dinah repeated finally, quietly, her voice nonetheless reverberating in the dim room, resonating between captive and fugitive, “why, then, do you continue to carry the weight of Valore on your shoulders?” Another silence followed the words, a sharper silence, full of potential paths, circles within circles. It was a waiting silence. “You do not have to carry that weight,” Dinah said softly, but with intensity. “You could do more, be more.” The Paladin hesitated, her shadowed eyes catching the lamplight indiscriminately as she looked at Axenus.

“You could cut your strings, and join us,” Dinah said slowly. “You have no power to help your friend, as a puppet of Valore. They will mark her, again and again, and so long as you accept Valore’s burdens, you cannot save her.” Dinah looked away, back the way she had come, towards the shadowed stairs out of the bunker’s depths. Towards Eithne. She always knew where Eithne’s borders stood, in relation to herself, as if a compass needle trembled on her soul, aligned her always, an orbital pull she could never truly forget, only accept.

Dinah returned her attention to Axenus, a sharp turn of her head.

“Free yourself from the burdens you should never have accepted, and you can help her. You can help them all.” The Paladin allowed one of her scarred lips to quirk, slightly. “It’s what we do, here.”

Dinah listened to the Chevalier’s impassioned words, watched the multitude of evershifting emotions flow across his dirty features, and had to suppress a wry snort of amusement. He wore his every thought on his face, this young stallion, and then had the arrogance to wonder aloud how Dinah could proclaim to know his heart? It was the arrogance of the young indeed, and it almost made the older mare smile. Almost. It was too serious a conversation, too grim a situation, for any levity. So Dinah was quiet and her features neutral as she listened to the captive’s reply. From his place on the crate, Oren cocked his head and turned his bright gaze to Dinah, as if he too waited for the Paladin’s answer.

“I’m offering you a way out of that cell, and you’re questioning the wisdom of it?” Dinah asked dryly, one of her brows twitching as she looked steadily at Axenus. “That alone is a testament to your sincerity.” That, or he was incredibly subtle, but Dinah didn’t think so. She knew desperation when she saw it, knew how it sit on a heart to watch Aodh claim someone you loved. The Chevalier’s pain and turmoil were real, just as real as his contempt for his herd. So was it enough? He was young, and used to a life of leisure (compared to how the Vindicators lived, almost all lives were leisurely) and perhaps most worrying, he was emotional. Passion could be useful, if channeled, but more often it was a dangerous liability.

Would Axenus reject the chance to join the team and help strangers, so that he might protect one friend? Would Dinah have made the same choice, if it had meant saving Magdalene?

Of course she would have. Without hesitation, without remorse, without a single thought for anyone left behind. Liabilities.

But she had not saved Magdalene, and Axenus did not have to make that choice either. Indeed, he had more choices open to him now than Dinah had, all those years ago. The Vindicator’s failures were far more known than their victories, at least to the general public- Dinah had made sure of it. He didn’t know the extent of the spy network, nor the numbers and success rate of slaves quietly freed. The numbers were small- but the success rate was high. Dinah shifted her weight off of her bad leg, considering the stallion in front of her. He hadn’t said no, nor had he agreed too readily. Good.

“You could join us,” Dinah repeated, finally. “I trust that you want to help your slave friend, that you wish to cut your strings and fight your own battles, choose your own burdens. I trust that you have sufficient wit and motivation to not get caught, if you began acting as a Spy, or if you wished to slip yourself and your friend from Eithne’s grasp.” Dinah’s eyes hardened, as she stared the captive. “I trust that you cannot continue to live as you have, benefiting off of the oppressed, their blood on your hooves. Not forever.”

The Paladin looked away, head swinging again towards the stairs, towards Eithne.

“We risk exposure and betrayal every time we raid, every time we accept a new member.” Dinah stomped a hoof dismissively. “You would not be the first Aodhian to defect, nor the most dangerous potential risk currently among us.” The Vindicators were a small group, but they could only survive on trust, every member’s life in the hooves of each other. Liabilities could also be necessities. Life could not be stifled.

“You are only our enemy if you intend to betray us, and our cause.” Dinah tilted her dark head, her eyes alone catching the light and glowing in the shadows. “Are you our enemy still, Axenus?”