What Thoughts He Owns and Doesn't || Ajax
The King of Dystrka, they say, born and raised by wild beasts in lower lands. They would be right.
No, he doesn't think when he kills another person, dressing the body with bloodied rags and sword marks. He doesn't stop for a second to understand it is a life he is taking into his own hands. He doesn't know how to, because he wasn't taught to.
He barely realizes that he was only a boy when his father stole him from youth, from becoming knowledgeable, and thrusted him into the ring. His mother, his own personal healer, would sit for hours rubbing away the caked blood and renewing him for the morrow's duel. There was a routine they had and it shaped him into the perfect fighting, killing, and senseless machine.
Yet, even now, he looks back on his first taken life poorly. He remembers vaguely the morning air when his father opened his door and threw down an outfit he had never worn. The feel of leather made to protect someone made him feel uneasy. He was nine and he wanted his comfortable set of clothes he climbed trees with.
Unfortunately, his father held a temper and the boy worked around it. He knows when he got to the ring that afternoon that he could tell something wrong was about to happen. He asked his father two questions the whole night. Just. two. The first was: can we go home? To which he recieved a no and observed other fighters go first, matching their movements with some his father had instructed him on.
And when the sky was jet black, except for the crescent moon and the lingering grey of the lit torches' smoke, he was nudged in to partake in the deadly games. A son came forward as well, equally as nervous, and he backed away with the dagger in his hand. He couldn't. His father insisted he could and his legs worked on their own, drawing hin bear to the boy. They parried and parried - it was against law, no doubt, and the sound of shouting and cheering added to the horror - but at last, the boy's sword gave way and he hit his mark.
He recalls wanting to scream until his lungs filled with as much blood as the boy's, but instead he's whisked away so that the following days he can feel less and less of a human boy and more and more of a savage beast. Eventually, that night, he asks his father the second question as the man starts to close his bedroom door: will I have to again? His father's confirmation doesn't surprise him.
Never seen you smile as wide as that before, his close friend Ashke had teased. They looked on and saw Rose and their pups hunting for game on their horses.
He does think when they all sit down to eat dinner. He wonders what their day has been like - if it was good or bad and why. He asks sometimes if he can do anything to make it better. He thinks they're perfectly fit for a family. He thinks he and Rose are one soul split two. He sees his pups and their struggles, but their accomplishments heavily outweighs them. He congratulates them all the time with a grin and a festival of feasts.
He believes they make him happy. His heart is often cold and stone, but it melts instantly when they talk with him. He eyes them with favor no one else in the world would ever know. He's been told he was foolish for letting love and family become him, but he thinks it's the one thing he could not go without. He'd give up fighting to save them; he'd give up his own life.
Because when they grin back, or when Rose kisses him and he feels her smooth body flush against his, or when they all share in on a laugh or a good time he thinks that's the heavens he's been told that exist for the gods. He thinks he's blessed. He knows he is.
So, yes, he does worry. He does have a weakness, or a few. He does put himself at risk, but he doesn't think about himself. He thinks about them. And that's alright.
