RP:Priorities, They Are A-Changin'

Part of the The Day I Tried To Live Arc

Summary: Brand and Onyx discuss 'priorities'.

The Tranquility, Cenril Wharf

Brand shared the situation room alone with his first mate, as he did most evenings. Tonight, however, he could not find his focus. He must have looked over hundreds of figures and charts representing the day’s changes in inventory, and yet he had not absorbed a single one of them. The maps, too, all seemed unintelligible. He’d been fidgeting with the same apple for an hour without taking a single bite of it. And now, he couldn’t even manage to sit still. Instead he was bracing his feet against the table, endlessly rocking his chair on its hind legs.

“Onyx.”

The undead’s focus was ironclad where Brand’s had faltered. Their eyes marched relentlessly across the tome that graced their lap -- so much so that Brand began to consider throwing his apple in order to disrupt them. He was almost disappointed when Onyx instead roused slowly from their work. “Yes, captain.”

“I’ve been thinkin’. You said you’ve lived through five millennia, yeah? How the frak are you not king of the world by now?”

“ ‘King of the world?’ ” Brand had spent enough time studying the subtleties of Onyx’s expressions to recognize incredulity.

“Royalty. Whatever. If you’re that old, you must’ve seen damn near everything that exists by now. Not livin’ up to your potential by bein’ here, some would say. You could be a ruler of some country somewhere, or an archmage, or a respected scholar. And yet here you are, on some nobody’s ship, researchin’ Chartsend contraband laws.”

Onyx thus far seemed more interested in the aforementioned book of law than in conversation. Their gaze remained steady but hungering on the text before them. “You already know how I came to be here.”

“Aye, the business with the necromancer.” Brand tilted further back in his chair, forward again, further back still -- and almost toppled. He thought better of rocking after that, and set his chair back on its four legs. “I already know what you did. I’m askin’ why you didn’t do literally anything else.”

“Is that what you would do with eternal life, then? You would seek to become a king?”

Brand was flustered to have the question turned back on himself. “I… well, I dunno. Never had reason to think about it. What else does a person do with that much time?”

“But you’re thinking about it right now,” Onyx pointed out, heaving a sigh like they’d been asked one too many times why the sky was blue. Nonetheless, they placed a mark in their book and snapped it shut. “And you insist on dancing outside your true thoughts, though I would welcome them -while- you have me off-task more so than after.”

Brand bristled. “Gorram it, Onyx, is it that hard to answer one frakkin’ question? I’m tryin’ to procrastinate, here.”

“You’ve just acknowledged your time is short, and yet you put off what needs to be done. Why? Perhaps when you give me your answer, you’ll receive mine in return.”

“Fine.” Brand frowned, then shrugged. “Mind’s elsewhere. There are days I’d rather be scrubbin’ the gorram decks. Who knew captaining a ship involved so much paperwork?”

“And ‘king of the world’ would involve less?” Onyx rose from their chair, dark gaze poring over Brand’s papers. “Leave the rest, then. I’ll have it prepared by the morning. My truer advantage is not needing sleep.”

Brand began to look grateful, but Onyx wasn’t finished. “You should understand, sir, that I am a sentient undead, a soul forced by ritual into a body. As such, I live on time I should not have been given. There is a debt incurred that must be paid. So if I were called to be a king, there I would sit on the throne. If I am called to kill some far-off necromancer, that is where I go. Else I make myself useful here and await the next call, as I do now. And I do not procrastinate on lesser tasks as you do, because each moment I still live is deserving of the utmost respect. Does that answer your questions?”

Brand nodded, though the answer had him overwhelmed -- and a bit flummoxed. A debt that must be paid? Khitti had never spoken of necromancy quite like that. “Well enough, I guess. Might’ve just done the work if I’d known the guilt trip was comin’.”

“And where -is- your mind, that you fail to bring it to your tasks?”

Brand didn’t know where to begin. He had a thousand concerns -- most of them involving Khitti -- and all of them seemed of dire importance. Yet while his mind was stuck on which burden to mention, words rose unbidden from deep in his gut: “I’m puzzlin’ over the last few months. I barely recognize myself anymore.”

Onyx blinked in their slow feline manner. “You look the same to me, though I expect you don’t mean physically.”

“Yeah. No. I mean…” Brand leaned back against the table, gathering his thoughts. “A year or two ago, you wouldn’t have known me. I was a completely different person.” Two completely different people, technically. “Might very well have aspired toward ‘King of the World,’ back then -- or maybe just King of the Ashes. Was certainly angry enough for it. Now, I look back and don’t know myself. Weirdest part of it is, I dunno quite when it happened or why.”

“Well, there aren’t that many things that change a person! You must have run into one of them.” If Brand didn’t know better, he’d swear Onyx had been expecting this conversation. The response rolled quickly off their tongue, and with a hair too much enthusiasm. But then, Onyx was always a talented problem solver -- and that was chief among the reasons Brand had made them First Mate.

“Nah, I feel more like someone else has slowly been takin’ over my brain. Only, they haven’t. I’d know.” Brand had reason enough to be confident in that, after everything that had happened with Dominic.

“Well, that makes sense enough. Love, I’m told, does that to a person.” Was Onyx… smiling? The corners of their lips had twitched in a most peculiar way.

“Not me.” Brand scrunched his nose and folded his arms tight across his chest. He was past the point of denying what he felt with Khitti, but that didn't mean he liked having it stated outright. “Love is one thing, but this is entirely another. I'm not someone who’d let it manipulate me like that.” He was less confident in the statement than he sounded. The realization only soured his expression further.

“Not manipulation, necessarily. Your priorities have changed. To the best of my observations, your most important one is pleasing and supporting Khitti. That has been the case for a while, though you do seem more extreme about it lately. Even the ship comes second, and it’s as much your progeny as what grows inside her now.” That ghost of a smile, if in fact it had ever been there, was certainly gone now. “Speaking of which, have you given much thought to your problem? That child’s tied to a dark curse, in case you had forgotten.”

Brand had very much remembered. But-- “Is it even a problem at all?” That question earned him a stark look, the same one that often made Brand wonder if Onyx could see through walls or melt brains. “Alright then, s’pose it is. Sounds like you have more ideas than me, at least?”

“I’d propose getting rid of it entirely. No child, no curse. But since you’re not preempting me with that solution, I assume that’s off the table.”

“That it is.” Brand had refused the thought more than once by now, but his objection still jarred him as much as it had the first time. Every time he dwelled on it, he felt frozen as if on top of a wintry tree with a jagged, tapered height and a full view of the canopy below. He warred with himself there, laboriously weighing the outcomes for whichever way he fell, but in the end he always toppled the same way. Only this time had been quicker than the others. “Gorram it, Onyx.”

Onyx cocked a silver brow. Brand was, for once, certain he’d seen the movement.

“Yeah. Must be somethin’ to your theory, and I kinda hate you for it right now. Months ago that decision would’ve been obvious. Didn’t want kids! Didn’t want the curse! Solution: get rid of the frakkin’ baby. She was even frakkin’ on board with it, Onyx! You realize how much that must’ve meant? She’s Queen of the gorram Fairy Tales and she gave up half her idea of Happily Ever After to be compatible with mine.”

“Hmm. She is, indeed, a far more intricate woman than I initially gave her credit for.” Onyx’s eyes possessed a nefarious twinkle, like Brand was the butt of some joke he didn't know was being made. Or maybe that was malice. Did they even -have- a sense of humor? Brand wasn’t sure. “I suppose, then, you -do- know what you’d make of an eternal life.”

“I’m… not followin’.”

“You seem to think your greatest trial will be enduring parenthood. But you might condemn a soul, or souls, to an eternal wasteland for the sake of Khitti’s happiness. You’ve decided it has that much worth to you.” Onyx shook their head. “I can only conclude that love is folly.”

“And I s’pose you’ve got no time for it,” Brand retorted, “given your anti-necromancer code or whatever it is that keeps you here. Haven’t forgotten the time you almost shot her, y’know. So I guess I’ve gotta ask, you’re not gonna just… kill her or the kid in their sleep, are you?”

“That would be antithetical to my ‘code,’ so no.” Onyx reopened their book and dislodged their mark in it, replacing it momentarily with their thumb. “But if the two of you cannot be convinced otherwise, I expect I shall be needed to help right things once they go awry.”

Onyx’s gaze resumed its march across paragraphs, clearly dousing further conversation. Brand debated with himself a while, but soon thought better of reigniting it.