Legacy

Chapter 2: A Stranger's Smile

The Before

"You look like shit," Valeryan complimented me with a grin as I trudged into the Waiting Room. There were already huddled groups of us in the white-walled room, a handful clutching flasks of crimtane like life-preservers. Cold silver would also have graced my palm if I hadn't snuck out of my house before my father woke up. 

"Ah, but you always look like shit," I told him, my voice riding on a sigh. It sounded like my voice had been dredged through sludge and my appearance wasn't much better. Valeryan actually looked annoyingly well for the early hour - though he could do nothing about his messy-brown hair that he raked his hands through consistently. "God Valeryan, he was at it again last night."

"Let me guess," he suggested, his eyes bright as always. There was so much life in them - but with that he was unable to hide any strong emotion. I knew when he was pissed just by looking at him - but the talent was exclusive to me. His body language was written in handwriting only legible to my eyes. "Your father has been raiding the fridge again. The horror story of our city."

"Oh, fuck off," I groaned, rubbing my eyes as if sleep would flee from my exhausted body. It only served to make me crave sleep as much as I did the hit of crimtane. I was on the edge of asking Calais Wentworth for some of hers but then again, she was a snobbish bitch who would probably reject me because she could. "Jesus, Valeryan. He was screwing some office whore again. I could hear them through the fucking walls all night."

And so could my mother, I added to myself. I'd assumed so, anyway. When I'd walked in, her future had rushed towards me, a frantic ghost. For half a minute, all I could hear was her screaming. For the next five, all I could see was blood on the floor and a greying outstretched hand. I'd pushed the future away before the vision could follow up the curve of her arm to my mother's face.

"And my parents were off killing people," Valeryan said cheerily. "They count their kills and have no regard for human life. You think your parents are the only screwed-up people in the universe? They're not. We're all trapped in this war and we all have our own ways to fight a bloody path out of it."

"That's exactly what I wanted to hear," I said after a moment's pause. "Really, the knowledge that every single person in this room is being trained for a bleak future where they'll lose any kind of morality is what I desperately wanted to be pep-talked with. Shadows, Valeryan, I don't even need to forsee anyone's future to know that's what's going to happen to all of us."

"Morality is to war what fidelity seems to be to your father," he shrugged. "In other words, completely useless. In war, one side's objective is to kill as many of the other's until that opposing side concedes. In this, the Light will destroy legions of the Shadow: men, women and children, using about as much morality as you can fit in a matchbox."

"Naturally," I murmured. Sol, I have such a bad head-ache. The room was gradually filling up, figures of colour gradually painting this bleak, white prison. The chatter of voices filled the air, grating on my ears as if they were trying to shred them altogether. I hadn't spotted Alaysa or Tatianya yet either which was strange knowing the both of them...

"On that topic," I muttered, raising my voice. "Thanks for hitting on my ex-girlfriend just hours pre-break up. You really know how to be sensitive, Val." 

"Hey, one man's trash, another's treasure," he said with one of those wide grins: childish, immature and addictive. "Tatianya has the best legs in Twelfth and I thought them such a waste on you."

"A waste, right," I scoffed. "I thought you were dating Cam Phillips anyway. He's not so bad-looking, himself. Couldn't you keep your eyes away from my ex-girlfriend's legs and back to his... well, I'm not going to say legs but it's in that general area?"