Ain't gon lie, this chapter had me in stitches y'all omg
I wish I could say I spent much time editing but I got shit to do today. I can't be this cut up
I'll double back on it later, lol
Enjoy, lovelies!
xoxo
P.S. I have had the entire ending laid out for like a month now, so y'all guessing in these comments brings me pure joy. Put on that Sherlock hat and sleuth away, lovelies. Nancy Drew tf outta this one

P.P.S. I just updated the playlist again and added the song above. I know I done already made y'all cry but like... let's cry even more together (I'm sorry)
But Adele did her big one with this

Caspian

Alistair and I sat in silence in this otherwise now empty home.

Words had far since escaped me, for I was still trying to process what exactly Dreska had revealed right before he was forced to take his leave.

I was still attempting to understand that not only had Hodrus lived... but he had joined the very thing responsible for the slaughtering of our family.

Our own mother and father... our bloodline... let alone the burning of what we once called our home.

I couldn't determine what emotions were coursing through me any longer. I didn't know how or what I should feel now, for I had just discovered that my only living family had sought comfort in the very thing that betrayed everything once held beautiful about the Lockehearts. And the Lockehearts themselves. He shared part in the responsibility for destroying the very land our family had built themselves, and for us nonetheless. For our children's children, and the children they would bare.

He had contributed to the destruction of this nations future. Of its peoples own tranquility and peace, the only thing our father and mother wanted for the citizens of Azultia.

At first I simply couldn't believe it. The only question I had for Dreska as he prepared the items he needed to bring to the coliseum for the selection ceremony, was simply... why.

Every last shred of me begged for there to be a reason. Any reason. Something that could make Hodrus turn like this, and that could fill that once curious mind with so much hate.

Yet even I knew by the look on Dreska's face, by the sheer pain held in his eyes, that whatever reason Hodrus had for turning... it was not something that could justify this. It couldn't justify what The Holy Men had done to both our parents and our home. Dreska promised he would explain more once he returned, which he assured us wouldn't be long, before he eventually took his leave, and so this is where he left Alistair and I.

Sitting next to each other in complete silence as our gazes fixated themselves forward towards nothing in particular. Just the plain stone wall that was looking back at us.

Then of course there was Alistair, I thought to myself. Not only had he learned about my true identity, he had just been told that it was my own brother that wanted him dead.

I didn't even have the words to start a conversation for that. What would I say? What could I possibly say, when even I myself couldn't find an explanation for it? For this. For Hodrus.

I wasn't sure how long we had sat in silence like this, with my mind spiraling itself straight into oblivion, but it took me by surprise when the first words to break this silence came from Alistair. And the two words he spoke made me turn to face him completely.

"Come here." He spoke, stretching his left hand out to me.

I looked over at him, my eyes quickly finding his, before they cast down to the hand outstretched to me... then raised up to find his one once more.

In response to that, he only stretched his hand further, beckoning me to take it.

And well, my mind was already so broken, I eventually found my own hand stretching to his. As soon as my right hand placed itself into his, he yanked it forward, forcing me out of this seat, before I stumbled far from gracefully into him. He was quick to separate these wobbling legs until I was forced into his lap, both legs bent and resting on either side of his, with them wedged right against his and the arm rest of the chair.

"A-Alis-" his name started to fall past my very lips in surprise. I wanted to tell him no, that whatever this was surely wasn't the time, but when one hand found itself at the small of my back, and the other slipped around to the nape of my neck, he gently nudged my head into the crook of his. That very familiar space connecting his head to his shoulders.

I could hear his heartbeat now, I could feel its pounding against the bridge of my nose.

It was the calmness of it against the raging of my own as he held me, that took me further by surprise. And he was doing just that. Holding me. Nothing else.

"Let's just sit like this a moment while I think."

Even through all this.

Through revelation after revelation of information that had practically broken me to shattered, scattered pieces... this man still made it possible for me to draw from my lips a slight smile. I thought sitting and thinking were what we had been doing for the countless amount of time we both stared at that stone wall, but apparently it was not.

My body acted before my mind could command it, wrapping my arms around his neck and broad shoulders as I welcomed the steady calmness of him. Of his heartbeat. Of everything down to the slow breathes he took in comparison to my short ones.

"I'm sor-" I found myself starting to whisper into the softness of his neck, but Alistair gently hushed me.

He had meant it when he said we were to sit quietly like this he could think, and so that's just what we did. Every single breath he took started to somehow calm my own. His heartbeat beating against the veins that ran the length of his neck, started to slow my own.

My world had so suddenly gone to shit, falling apart in front of my very eyes from just a simple tune I had recognized at that market. A lullaby my mother used to hum to both my brother and I... yet whatever reaction I was to expect from Alistair, this one hadn't even begun to cross my mind.

Alistair had never been this calm before. So much so that I wondered if I should be more terrified than I was. Or rather, terrified at all... because I wasn't.

The next choice of words he decided upon, the ones he whispered close to my right ear, made my arms around his broad shoulders and neck slightly tighten.

"How old were you?" He asked me. "When Azult-... when your home burned?"

His question brought my mind back to that chaos, but his arms kept my body tethered here. To him. It made that emerging memory, and that pain that always quickly followed it, less terrifying.

"Fifteen years."

I felt the hold Alistair had around the small of my back, and the nape of my neck, tighten itself at those words.

"I'm sorry." He whispered, to which I felt that familiar sting return. The threatening promise of salt water that had already started to push against the barriers of my eyelids.

"Please-" I caught myself a moment as my voice had started to waver. "Please don't apologize. I was the one who lied."

Alistair shifted himself slightly to push more of me against him. For a position such as this one, I didn't understand how I could find so much comfort. It felt like we were back on his ship again. In the privacy of our chambers again. In his bed again.

"Did you?" He asked me, forcing my head to turn slightly in the crevice of his neck to hear him better. "As I recount every word you've ever spoken to me, I'm struggling to find more of the lies that I thought were once there when I heard the words of Dreska." The hand still holding the back of my neck had used its fingers to gently start to massage the delicate skin there, slipping those hands slightly upwards towards the start of my scalp.

I drank his hushed words slowly, truly hearing everything he was saying now. These words were so hushed, I wasn't sure whether his lips were moving at all as he said them. It felt like he was speaking directly to me.

"When asked about your family, you told me the truth. I didn't know you were a Lockeheart, for you didn't reveal your true identity then, yet you were honest with me by revealing something you didn't have to. There was truth to your words when you said they were all dead. That pain you held in your eyes was real. You didn't know your brother was alive at the time, therefore that wasn't a lie. Omission of some truth, sure, but not a lie."

Even through this thick cloak, I felt the hand on the small of my back gently start to move itself up and down, soothing me further.

"And perhaps you did lie about your family having been from Gatvia, but something about that island has ties to you. Gaia may not have confirmed what it was, but she knew who you were. And she was willing to make a deal with the devil himself to keep you there. To keep you safe."

I felt myself pulling back, the words Alistair was saying had taken me by surprise, but his hands held their place firm, keeping me against him. Tucked into him, for he wasn't done yet.

"I'm starting to understand something so utterly gut wrenching, I wish I never took us to this shit land to begin with." The tone in his voice made my heartbeat quicken again. It held a type of rawness I've never heard from Alistair before. "That unsurety in your eyes. The hesitancy with your magic... I had spent so much time wondering who it was you were, that I'd never once stopped to think that I may know you. That I may know more about you than you did. At only fifteen years living, this world... your own people... they had fed you to the wolves."

He took a pause before he spoke these next words directly to me.

"And If I had lived through what you had. Seen the beauty of your family and home stripped away like it was nothing. Like it meant nothing... I would have very willingly welcomed death myself."

I held Alistair even tighter, those words of his seeping through me as the salty water threatening to breakaway finally did. I was sure he could feel my tears pushing past the material of the thin shirt he wore under this thick cloak, but his hold never eased itself on me.

"And so for that," he continued. "For that, I never want to hear an apology fall past your lips again."

Alistair's shirt was quickly growing more wet, these tears now falling all too freely, but I couldn't move. And I didn't quite think I wanted to anymore.

"Now as for your brother, I have no qualms about him. No outstanding wrongs needing to be righted with Hodrus Lockeheart. The man I'm hunting down is Zirion Khan... and I'm going to leave it for you to decide who now owns that soul you once knew as your brother's. I want you to look at him with not just your eyes, and tell me whether or not you recognize the blood you once knew. With your answer, I'll act accordingly."

His words had... well there was no words to explain his.

He had left this decision to me.

He would spare my only living blood, if I could determine that the blood coursing through a man I once knew as my bother, was still mine. Was still worthy of the Lockeheart name. That within Zirion, Hodrus still lived. Even with what Zirion had done to Alistair... Even with the revenge I knew this Captain's bloodthirsty heart yearned for, Alistair was willing to spare this man if he was the only thing I had left. If he was still the brother I once loved.

"There is however one lie I will not forgive, if it is to be true. To be disingenuous." Alistair continued. "And that is where exactly your heart truly lies with me. Where it lies with my men. I know what my own heart believes, but I need to hear it come from you." I felt that strong hold he had on my neck start to ease itself, allowing me to finally lift my head from where he had tucked it.

And I slowly did, finally forcing myself to face a man I didn't feel deserving of. I didn't believe this world deserved him either, and perhaps that was why his arrogance was always so strong. So imminent.

Perhaps he knew this too.

"I know-" I spoke a bit shakily when my gaze found his. My eyes must've been red and irritated from my tears, as I could still feel the wetness on my cheeks, but I forced my eyes to hold his gaze. Even while this close to him. Close enough to see those ethereal features, with an eye that held a look that should've been hardened, but wasn't. It seemed to rarely ever be with me these days. "You may not believe me to be dishonest, but even omitting the truth felt like a lie for me."

I was being truthful now. Alistair may have been willing to overlook certain things, but I wasn't. Not now. Not with how I felt about him now.

"I just wish I had been the one to be honest with you finally. For the truth of how I feel about you now, it leaves the lies I once told, all the more bitter a taste in my mouth." I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek once I felt the familiar stinging return. I needed to get through this with no additional tears, for the words were hard to find as is.

I didn't need to add the blurriness from the welling of salty water, to it.

"Death once tasted just as sweet as that juice from fresh oranges." I explained softly. "I truly didn't fear it. I didn't fear its pain, nor its finality... for I wanted nothing more than to see my family again." Alistair's gaze softened at that, forcing me to pause a moment to collect myself. This was the first time I had admitted these words aloud, and they were cutting through me. "But when I'm with you. When I'm working or fighting alongside you and your men... I don't think I've ever felt the farthest from death. It's you and your men that are responsible for turning something as sweet as I once thought death to be, into something so bitter a taste, it mirrors the bitterness left from the lies I told you."

Alistair slowly slid his hand from the back of my neck, to the edge of my jawline, then further up the left side of my cheek. I felt him wipe away tears I hadn't even noticed were falling.

"Well then," he whispered to me, his words being the only thing he forced me to focus on as these ones did fall past his lips "why don't we worry less of what it is I didn't know about you then, and more of what it is I do know now."

And those were the last words he said at all before he gently traced his fingers down my cheek again. My eyes drifted closed a moment at the feeling of his touch, the feeling of the places his words touched without them falling past his lips, and the places they touched when they did, before he eventually returned that very hand to nape of my neck and nudged me forward, bringing my own lips down to his.

All I could do was wrap my arms even more tightly around him, allowing this as I felt the roughness of him move gently against me. Allowing it, and him.

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