The Irreversible Reckoning

  ***

  “Get it together. You hear me?”

  It was Commander Maxwell’s voice, and it was close. I opened my eyes and stifled a gasp. He was in the room with us, and Brynna was back, too.

  “Don’t touch me.” She said softly, but it was barely a command.

  “I’m not touching you.”

  She was trying to climb up the ladder to get to her bunk, but she appeared to be in some pain. That pain was not allowing her to move freely, so getting up the ladder was quite difficult.

  “Come on, I don’t have all night.”

  “You don’t have to stay here. Just go.”

  “Get into bed with me, my love.” Janna said softly, and Brynna, clearly exhausted from trying to climb the ladder, did not need telling twice. “James does not mind, do you, sweetheart?”

  “Why would I mind?” He asked irritably, but then he kneeled down beside the bed, let her entwine her fingers with his, and when she kissed him, he kissed her back.

  I was so confused.

  “Goodnight.” He whispered to her softly, and Brynna, I saw, was pointedly turned away.

  “Goodnight, my love.” She said back.

  “You stay out of trouble.” He barked at Brynna, “Do you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, sir!”

  “Brynna…”

  “She has heard you, James. Brynna, that is enough.”

  “Go hump your master’s leg for the rest of the night.” Brynna said, and she was turned back over, looking at him now.

  “Oh, sweetheart, you and I both know that you hump my master enough for the two of us.”

  “You’re right, I do. Why do you think he likes me so much?”

  “You mean why doesn’t he just kill you when you act up like he would kill anyone who did half the shit that you do? Believe me, baby, I’ve been asking myself that question for almost twenty years.”

  “I could have him kill you, you know. If I said that you tried to touch me like you used to, or that you said you still loved me.”

  James actually laughed.

  “Nothing you could ever do, including taking hold of me with your power, could make me say that to you. Nothing you could ever do would make me touch you again.”

  I watched as she squinted her eyes and all of a sudden, he was reaching for her.

  “I love you so much, Brynna.” He whispered breathlessly, “I love you more than anything…”

  “Enough!” Janna said, loudly enough to wake Illa. James had grabbed Brynna’s throat, and she moaned for a second, cringing the second his hands touched her. They all looked over at Illa and me, and I closed my eyes, trying to pretend like I was asleep.

  “The new addition to our dwelling is merely pretending to be asleep,” Brynna said, “Her mind is wide awake, as are her ears; she has listened to this whole conversation.”

  “I am so sorry.” I started to say, but James simply kissed Janna again and walked out. “I am so sorry, Queen Brynna.”

  “Did she just call me ‘Queen Brynna?’” Queen Brynna asked former Queen Janna.

  “She did, darling, but she does not know any better.”

  “Would you care to educate her?”

  “Certainly.” Janna turned over and looked at me, “Brynna prefers to be known as ‘the All-Powerful, All-Knowing Master of All Chaos in the Universe,’” Brynna whacked her lightly in the butt, “But if that is too much of a mouthful, you may simply call her by her first name.”

  “Thank you.” Brynna said, “I am going to sleep now.”

  “And now she is demanding quiet.”

  “Yes. ‘I am going to sleep now’ is my euphemism for ‘Shut up.’”

  “Did you have to kill that man?”

  I could not believe that I had actually said it, but it had been eating at me since the moment she had ripped his heart from his chest. She was not the benevolent leader my mother had told me about; she was a monster. Should I have blamed her? Did I honestly know her, know her story, know what she had been through? No. But due to the fact that she had clearly taken such joy in ripping away that man’s life, when she did not have to do it, I could not help but hate her. I was not supposed to hate anyone, nor was I supposed to judge anyone, but the disappointment I felt in meeting this person whom my mother had so elevated, had believed in so strongly, soured into hatred and judgment when I saw who she truly was.

  Maybe it was because I knew that my mother never could have loved her the way she had for all those years if Brynna had been this way all along. Maybe my disappointment was also my mother’s, because wouldn’t she be disappointed in her great friend if she knew her now? I was almost happy that she would never see Brynna this way, because I knew that it would break her heart, and the thought of that made me want to cry.

  Brynna was looking at me across the dark space between our beds. Janna was turned to her, so I could see the tense muscles in her back. She was preparing for Brynna to explode on me, and I was dreading the same thing. I should never have said anything. I should never have broached the subject. Brynna owed me nothing, but I could not stop thinking that she owed my mother. She owed my mother who had so believed in her goodness, in her ability to save us all from the Old Spirits tyrannical reign. She owed it to my mother to be better than what she was.

  “Your mother?” Brynna asked, and I gasped out loud and sat up.

  “How did you do that?”

  “Oh, have they not told you of my power?” She asked me, and even in the dark, I could see that she was smiling, “My dark and evil power. I can see into your mind, control your mind, manipulate your memories, change the laws of what is possible or impossible… So, if you were asking me if I had to kill that man because you are thinking that I could have just erased his existence in a less violent way, then I will say that I had to kill him because it was fun. If you were asking me if I had to kill him because you are thinking that he should have been spared, then…” Her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed, and then, she smiled again, “Oh, wait, my answer is still the same.”

  “So, you kill because it’s fun?” I asked, and I was horrified. I did not want to speak to her, I did not want to be near her. I wanted to get as far away from her as I could. How could my mother ever have loved someone so evil? How could I possibly have believed that she would ever be anything but this? I had never accounted for this possibility. I had always seen her as good.

  “Good.” Brynna repeated.

  “Stop it!” I exclaimed, covering my ears with both hands.

  “Covering your ears does nothing. I have been locked up here for a long time, my dear. Am I not entitled to some fun? Besides, I must indulge my animal inclinations some way, otherwise I might snap and murder every person within the confines of this metal trap without so much as lifting a finger.”

  “So you kill people?”

  “Yes.” She said, “One way or another, people die. I am very much like a Dionysian in that way; people die around me. I keep the order, the balance between empty space and the number of bodies breathing the air here.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “You are right. I made all of that up. The bottom line is, it has been twenty five years; I kill because it is fun for me, and because I enjoy being both the villain and the hero. Sufficient answer? Good. Now shut up so I can sleep.”

  Brynna

  I was not always so harsh and so brutal, as these re-tellings have shown. I was good, and righteous, and selfless, to a certain extent. Looking back on it now reminds me of my inherent goodness, righteousness, and selflessness, and I am glad that I have re-told all of this, because I had forgotten. After twenty-three years onboard the Lapsarian, I was by no means one-dimensional; I was still capable of kindness once in a while, but it was kindness in the form of mercy, nothing more.

  The Warden first appeared in the middle of my first week on the ship. James, Janna, and I were integrated rather easily into the general population, because to the former Old Spirits on the shi
p, we were from a fearsome, moral-less warrior tribe, and not only were we from it, we had led it. We were fearsome because of our high-standing with King Adam. I suppose some of their fear contaminated the imprisoned Unallied, because they found us formidable, as well. Of course, people stepped to us; they wanted to see if they could make the members of King Adam’s inner circle (his new wife, his old wife, and his new wife’s well-built former love) less formidable.

  I took many, many lives in those few weeks, because my body had recovered beautifully from my injuries, and Janna’s had not, and suddenly, I found myself unable to fathom allowing any harm to come to her, and I would certainly not allow it to come to James. He would not have done the same for me, and he made that obvious when three times, he allowed me to get rather severely beaten until I finally was able to gain the upper-hand in those fights.

  My poor James. I loved him with everything, and to this day, I love him still. The Contact shattered his mind, his personality, everything that made him the man I loved. His humor was gone, his gentleness erased; he became brutish, animalistic, enraged. Something was derailed, and the other inmates learned quickly (probably after he ripped one man’s head from his neck by barely flexing his muscles, or maybe it was after he broke another man’s spine in half with one hand) that he was not one with whom they should joust. His love for Janna grew as the years went by, and I diminished. Well, his love for me diminished; his resentment of me bloomed into hatred, and once his obedience and great strength were noticed by the Warden, he became a Commander of the prison guard.

  Never once did I beg him to remember us. Never once did I try to touch him. It was impossible. The slightest touch of his skin on mine collapsed my knees and left me biting through my lips to keep from screaming, and I inflicted the same pain upon him. I cannot tell you how many nights Janna held me in our cell, how many times she whispered that she was so sorry, how first it was simply her arms wrapped around me, and then my hands were holding her arms, and then, several months after we began sleeping that way, I turned over to look at her, and in the darkness, her pale white skin was so beautiful, glowing in the light of the moon that was able to peek through our tiny circular window. Her green eyes were able to grasp hold of that slight light and sparkle, and as the allure of her absolute beauty cradled me in its arms, my hand had come to rest on her face, and she had looked up at me, and her perfect lips had parted for my tongue even before my lips had come to gently press to hers…

  I was over top of her in her bottom bunk, and her hands were shaking as they had found the parts of me that my lovers’ hands always found first: my breasts, my butt, my hips… First, her hands rested upon my breasts and squeezed gently, as though she were simply learning the feel of them, and retaining that feeling in her fingertips and in her palms. I had pulled off my shirt, and her eyes had taken in the sight of me, and just like her former husband, who was now my husband, her eyes glazed over, and when I reached behind me to take my bra off, I saw that she wanted to kiss me there, she wanted to touch me, but that she was afraid to do it. So I had taken her hands, placed them on my breasts, and a very soft moan had escaped her as her eyes closed. Her head tilted back, she inhaled deeply, and her hips rose slowly to press against mine as her hands caressed my breasts and her thumbs moved slowly, back and forth, over my nipples. I came down to kiss her again, feeling her breasts heaving against mine as my tongue slid deeply into her mouth to move against hers, and as I had unbuttoned her shirt, she had begun to breathe even more deeply, her legs pressing together hard, her hips twisting slightly. Her shoulder had been badly damaged because though Adam had gently put it back into place after it had dislocated, it was still extraordinarily tender, so I maneuvered her out of her shirt as gently as I could.

  “Are you alright?” I asked her, and she had nodded.

  “I…” She said.

  “What, honey?”

  “I have never… with a woman before.”

  “Do you want to stop? We don’t have to…”

  “No.” She said firmly, “I…”

  “Tell me.”

  “I want you.” She whispered breathlessly, “I want you so badly that it hurts, Brynna. But I don’t know how.”

  She was so embarrassed, so ashamed. Her hands were so eagerly caressing me, wanting to feel every part of me, but she did not know how to go any further than touching, though I could see in her heart and mind that she wanted to go as far as we could possibly go. I kissed her very gently.

  “Don’t worry.” I told her, “I want to take care of you. Okay?”

  She nodded, and when my hands came around her back to unhook her bra, she lifted up, relaxing completely as I took it off of her because she knew that I would not hurt her. In the same way that I was thoroughly aroused by her, Adam, and James looking at me, she was thoroughly aroused by me looking her body up and down. Her breasts were smaller than mine, but somehow, they were more perfectly round, and because they were the first breasts that I had touched in a long time, I was momentarily overcome with hungry lust when I felt how soft they were, when I felt them compress perfectly under my grip, and fill my palm. As I squeezed her breasts, my hand began to slide down her perfectly toned stomach until it had dipped under the waistband of her pants.

  It had been a long time since I had been with a woman, but my time with Rachel had begun to teach me both how to be pleased by and to please a woman. Many memories from my past were seen through a haze, but my time with Rachel was crystal clear, and still is, all these years after, when she has been gone for so long. Perhaps I remember her so clearly because she was one of only two joys in my life before Pangaea, the other joy, of course, being Penny. I remembered the first time that we had made love, how it had taken months before I could imagine allowing her to see me in such a vulnerable state, and I had been just like Janna, lying on the bed, trembling, saying that I didn’t know how, but Rachel had shown me, first what I liked, and then, she had allowed me to find what she liked, remaining so patient, as she always was. So beautifully, impossibly patient.

  I started at Janna’s lips, and as I moved down to kiss her neck, her legs opened for me. When I began to rub her slowly, I found that she was sufficiently wet already, but when I came down to one of her breasts and licked her nipple with the tip of my tongue first but then sucked it gently, she tightened around the two fingers I had slipped inside of her, her back arched, and a moan so long and sensuous and beautiful escaped her that I almost came right along with her. Her body collapsed back onto the bed, and in her mind, she was so relaxed, so exhausted, and so perfectly fulfilled. Perhaps it was wrong of me to peek into her mind, but I had to make sure that I had not lost my skills some way, right?

  “I was very fast.” She told me abashedly, “I am sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.” I replied with a slight laugh, “Coming fast is not generally a female problem. It can be, but generally speaking…”

  She nodded, seemingly reassured.

  “You are very good at that.” She said, rather breathlessly, and with a tired yet totally content smile.

  “Well, thank you.” I said, and I leaned down and kissed her. Her head raised, pressing her lips to mine more firmly, and before I pulled away, she kissed me again and again. “I was afraid I had lost my skills.”

  “No.” She shook her head emphatically, “You certainly have not. Should I…” She reached down and pressed one of her shaking hands between my legs, and gently, I grasped her wrist.

  “No, it’s okay. We’ll work up to that. You’re exhausted. I can see it.”

  “I am, but it is not fair…”

  “I will be just fine, Janna.” I kissed her softly, “I promise. You need to get some rest.”

  Like me, she found it difficult to sleep. By then, we had seen Penny and Idan, so we knew that they were alright. They were in the children’s ward of the prison, which was not very populated at that point, but still, we worried about them being amongst the Unallied children who had been capt
ured, and the children from Adam’s other cities and villages. Neither of us knew for what the other children were being detained, and of course, we speculated that it had to be because they were miniature murderers. It is easy to imagine the worst case scenario once maternal anxieties begin quaking in one’s heart.

  I was telling her to rest because over the course of the previous week, she had slept perhaps three hours a night. Though I kept odd hours, I still forced myself to sleep for at least five hours per night, because I knew that I had to protect both Janna and me during the day. So now, I wanted to make sure that she fell asleep before me, because I knew she was beginning to experience the adverse side effects of keeping herself awake.

  “Come on.” I whispered, and I kissed her lips very gently, “Close your eyes.”

  She nodded, breathing softly now. Her hand came down to grasp hold of mine, and she brought it to her lips.

  “I have wanted you for so long.” She whispered, “The first time I saw you, even though I was so utterly enraged because I knew of Adam’s love for you, I…”

  She stopped, and I kissed her hand and urged her gently to continue.

  “I just thought you were so beautiful. Your gifts just seemed so plenty, I could see why he was so enamored with you. I thought that I was merely assessing your physical attractiveness because I knew of my husband’s affection for you, but I think I wanted you then, Brynna. I think I have always wanted you. But I did not know it.”

  It dawned on me that I had wanted her, as well, and that I had not known it, either. I just had refused to recognize my feelings towards her as desire, but goodness knows I had noticed her beauty, and her perfectly svelte, toned body, and those eyes… I had noticed her a million times, assessed her physical attractiveness a million more times, and always because I was jealous of the effect she had on men. I had wanted her husband, I had wanted James, but I had wanted her, too.

  “Isn’t it strange?” I said, “But even as all the events of the past year were unfolding, even as you and I were at each other’s throats every day, I wanted you, too.”

  And in response to that, she beamed her legendary smile up at me, and it was the first that I had seen it in weeks.