Alicja
Ocean looked ... healthy, and at ease. But then he always looked that way.
I hadn't pictured him appearing well, when this moment arrived. I thought a hint of trepidation, but there was nothing of the sort. He almost felt ... amused. Or perhaps simply in a good mood.
I was sitting to the right of Victor, and Uncle Max was in a chair to the left. We were on a love seat of sorts, I was feeling feline and resting against him. Looking up, I saw that Victor was perplexed with Ocean as well.
"You rang, sir?" Ocean asked.
"Yes, I'm having just a moment if you please," Victor said slowly. And then he adjusted himself and met Ocean's demeanor with a confidence of his own. "You are the one who really killed my father."
"A fact I've taken great effort in hiding from you sir," he said with a nod, and slight bow of agreement.
"Yes,..." Victor said, stumbling a bit, "I acknowledge your efforts."
Now Ocean did bow his head, "I thank you sir."
"You are concerned I found out?" Victor asked.
"Well, of course," Ocean answered, "If I may be so bold it was the only step I screwed up on. Everything else has been to the letter."
"I'm not sure I follow..." Victor said.
"It was part of the order, that you should not discover the truth of action, sire. I was told to arrange it so that you wouldn't have suspicions toward me or start a war of any sort. Those were terms, which were stressed several times by the king and by your Uncle. Obviously, I have screwed the pooch as they say, and failed in that regard."
Who says that? What kind of people say things like that? I asked myself.
"Myself," Ocean continued, "because I'm your protector and you might object to my service if you knew the truth of the matter â and we didn't think you being newly made king and going to war in the same month would be good for the country."
"Thought I might object? Ocean you killed my father," Victor said with deep exasperation.
"Yes, sir. I thought we had established that," Ocean said, his head lowering his eyes searching the floor and then suddenly he bellowed in a roar of pain, "You think it didn't hurt!"
The pain in that cry was deep and damaging. Pictures fell off the wall. The doors burst open and guards poured into the room. Ocean stood straight and lowered his eyes, "My apologies, sir. I let that slip too far." Now his voice was calm, quiet, almost humble.
"We're alright, thank you. Please give us the room," Victor said, to the guards. He was rather calm, I felt. He was just telling me how powerful Ocean was. Was he relying on me to keep him secure?
"So you have regrets," Victor said.
"Regrets? No sir. I don't regret a thing except perhaps the failure to keep you from this grizzly mess," Ocean said.
Victor glanced at Max, "Uncle, where did you and my father... where did you seek Ocean out?"
Uncle Max cleared his throat and sat up, "In the demon dimension, sire."
"I think I knew that much, thank you. And you came willingly Ocean?"
"As willing as the tormented can be, sire."
"So you made a pact with my father, yes?" he continued.
"A pact? I suppose that's what it was, yes. I never thought of it in those terms, but yes."
"A geis?" Victor tried.
"No, a geis is temporary, tradition says it is for a year and a day, or you are put on a quest to perform a task. But it is singular and once completed the gies is fulfilled."
"And that's not the case, here, I'm guessing," he said.
"My main task is to be your protector until the end of your natural life, against any and all foes who would seek to harm you. That was the first agreement, in exchange for getting me out of that place."
"So, if my father got you out, you had to agree to protect me," Victor surmised.
"Well, no, not quite. See, he already got me out. We were in this city before we made this bargain. He was sitting where you are now. His wife where she is, and Uncle Max where he is now â again. I was here, as I am now."
"You were already free of your struggle, and you still made the bargain for a life of servitude?" Victor asked, sitting forward, forcing me to sit up. "Why would you do that?"
"Because he asked me to," Ocean said, almost helplessly.
"That's it?"
"That's it?" Ocean returned with some disorientation. "That's it? Your father was good to me. Understand? He was everything to me. He pulled me out of hell, literally, and then asked me to watch over you. That's all he asked of me, and one other detail which came up later, but that one wasn't required for me to remain here. In the manor house.
"You were ten!" Ocean blurted out in a laugh. "You had your nose in books and alchemical experiments. You were more of a nuisance to the librarian than to anyone else. I could do as I pleased, all day long. I could woo milking girls and chase barmaids to my heart's content, and I did." Ocean sobered. "So, yes. Because your father asked me to. No one, not even my dear ol'mom, treated me with more respect and dignity."
"Yet..."
"Yes, I killed the old man," Ocean snarled. "He asked me to. He begged me to. He had just wiped out a small village which had no guards, no soldiers and no one to protect it. It wasn't a threat to anyone, and he killed them all in his madness. But his madness made him remember it all and relive it over and over and over. Do you understand, sire? Do you understand the position I was in? The torment he was in?"
Doors opened again, and Victor raised his hand. Ocean turned away his hands on his hips, and took several breaths. "What do you want of me? Give your sentence or state your penalty but don't put me through this anymore. Please."
"Why did you kill those men? The ones at the house?" Victor asked, undaunted.
Ocean looked back over his shoulder, then turned around to face us again, "You haven't figured that out yet?"
"To keep them from outing you?" he tried.
"Partly," Ocean said with a half shrug of his left shoulder. "That and to keep them from killing you when you showed up, which I knew that morning you would. I've seen her cousin's work before. They are quite skilled at that sort of thing.
"I knew you would find the house soon. And then you would come walking up to the front door, to bring them all in alive and they would fill you full of holes and lead and grenades as soon as they saw you. You would be a bloody puddle, and your new lady friend would be right beside you. Or in the van waiting to be raped and then killed."
I looked at Victor. He looked angry.
"Come on," Ocean said. "You don't really believe you could have walked through a hailstorm of bullets and explosives, do you? Did you even look at the weapons they were carrying?"
Victor's eyes showed a hint of doubt, and then more. His jaw unclenched. "You may be right about that. No, I didn't. I was..."
"Thinking of other matters," Ocean told him. "You weren't worried about them, you were worried about how to get them across and how to set the trial, and under which laws, and all of the other details â which came after you went through a storm of bullets and bloody death. I know. That's why I killed them."
"How did they get involved?" I asked, and then looked apologetic to Victor. "Sorry."
He nodded for Ocean to answer.
"I involved them of course. They were the decoy, the scapegoat as you call them. The ones everyone would say must have done the deed."
"So you could keep the story from Victor, of course. I apologize for intruding."
"Mistress," Ocean said with an acknowledging nod.
"You brought them over through a door, then killed my father in single combat, and then got them back over to the other side."
"Don't forget orchestrating the Sidhe involvement. That worked out much better than I hoped for," Ocean said with a touch of pride.
"Yes, it did â didn't it," Victor said. "The Sidhe were wounded defending our king, which eased the tensions that were building up along the border. Yes, that ... that was well done..." his voice trailed off, remembering that the 'done' part was his father. "He couldn't be helped? You couldn't ..."
"Sire," Uncle Max interrupted. "No. There was nothing. He was getting worse by the hour. We couldn't even bring him home any longer. He attacked everything except for me and Ocean."
Max adjusted himself, "I couldn't believe that Ocean put this together while keeping him from tearing apart his country. But the Hunters appeared, just as he promised. And the Sidhe came over the hill, just as he planned."
"May I ask, what tipped you off?" Ocean asked.
Victor studied him, then said, "Jake. It was that man, Jake. He called you by name in the house, just before you killed him."
Ocean looked up at the ceiling and sucked air between his teeth, "Never did like that little weasel."
"You don't feel bad about him?" I asked.
"What? No, why would I?" Ocean asked, his eyes narrow, darting back and forth with confusion. Then they took on a more direct quality. "You know, this is something which happens a lot with you sire, and those in your company. I think I need to tell you, I am a demon. A fact which you are frequently at ease in telling others, which you never listen to yourself. I don't possess the same ideals you do, in any shape or form. We are very much different. I can't explain it more because we are so very much different. Understand?"
We sat... and stood... in silence for a time. I thought of the wrong he did to me â which has turned out to be the most fascinating time of my life. And it opened a way to be with the love of my life.
I couldn't see a way it would have worked out, with us back in my world. Not after the bonding. The bonding was too much of a barrier for us to get across. It was the wall between our worlds. Ocean dragged me across that barrier, kicking and screaming. But he never sought to hurt me. He was just unwilling to fail.
But... like he said, he is a demon.
Then Victor said, "I don't know what to do from here. You killed my mother â under the same circumstances, I'm sure. You killed my father. You forced Alicja across the barrier â saving her life in the process â and I'm at a loss. I'm in pain, that's all I know right now. And you are the cause when I ask my heart."
"Perhaps," Ocean said, his voice thoughtful, "some time apart. A leave of absence, per se. I believe a year and a day is traditional. It would allow you to find your own feet as king. Find your new life with Alicja. Find your heart with what has transpired. And we will meet here, a year and a day from tomorrow night to finish this discussion?"
"Tomorrow?"
"I have some things to tend to, a tryst I would like to leave in good standing, and some other odds and ends, gambling debts and the like to see to," Ocean said in a ramble with his finger on his chin while looking up at the ceiling.
Victor leaned back, with a breathy swoosh from his lungs. "I guess, I agree. So shall it be, then."
Ocean bowed, "Until then sire, may your time be prosperous."
Then he strode for the front door.
"Ocean?" I called after him. "The slight I perceived, I forgive."
His smile was sad, but touching, then he put his hands in his pockets and walked like he had no burden in the world, out the front door.
...that's the way he always walks.