Runelords 07.2 - Failure to Break Up

Virgil sat on the lawn by the ruins of the Sandpoint lighthouse, holding a beer bottle and a cigarette in one hand, alternating which one he brought to his mouth. The three ravens that had taken to him hopped around cawing, confused. He cawed back at them, equally frustrated. “Fuckin’ birds. Better when I couldn’t understand ‘em…” he muttered under his breath before cawing instructions to them once more. His eyes glanced up as he heard someone walk over; with a nod of his head and a good morning, he greeted Shadliss who slunk down to the ground beside him. He cawed again, and shook his head.
Shadliss looked between him and the birds. “What are you doing?”
“Starting to train them to go where I want them, if they can get the concept of ‘there’. Trust me; being able to hear animals is not a benefit sometimes,” he said dryly before crowing at them again.
Glancing back and forth again, she said, “Here. You should bait them.” She took one of the biscuits he was treating them with, and held up a piece, gaining her the attention of the three birds. She offered it, and they all hopped in with Virgil’s assurances. Then, she took another hunk and tossed it towards a particular rock, where they immediately flocked. She repeated this a few times, before she instead only mimed throwing the biscuit to the rock; they still flew to it, and returned to her for their reward. Virgil chuckled as he relayed the birds’ grumbling complaints to her about the trick. She smiled and repeated it a few more times before running out of baked good, dusting the crumbs off her hands. “There. Like that.” One of the ravens hopped up to her and pecked gently at her pockets, brazenly looking for more to eat.
“Heh,” he smiled, “Thanks. I have done this before, but it’s been a while. A druid taught me basically everything I know about animals, but I was a lot younger.”
Shadliss gently shooed away the bird, who appeared loathe to move, and looked at the man in measured disbelief. “A druid?”
“Heh, yeah.”
“An actual druid.”
“Yes, an actual druid.”
Shadliss looked somewhere between disbelief and intrigue as she said, “Druids are hermits who live in the woods and wear moss and protect animals. Where did you meet one?”
Virgil laughed through his nose before taking a drag from his cigarette and replying, “Well, he maybe wasn’t the most fashionable man, but he didn’t wear moss. He didn’t live in the woods either; he was always more about getting civilization and nature to work together. Better farming, promoting green space in cities, sustainable practices, those sorts of things. And I guess I undersold that a bit: I didn’t meet him, he helped raise me. I grew up with him.”
Her eyebrow raised again, “So, your dad was a druid?”
“No, my father was a diplomat and an adventurer. His husband was a druid. I lived with them, my three sisters, and my uncle.”
“And your mom?”
He snorted, “I told you, I don’t have one. I was made by fey.”
“And what about your sisters?” she asked defiantly.
Virgil replied flippantly, “Oh, they were all adopted.”
His response left her to blink a few times with a dry expression. Eventually, she patted his arm, “...You were adopted too.”
The topic was obviously still funny to him as he replied, “I really wasn’t. I looked exactly like my father, so I really wasn’t just adopted. Everyone agrees that’s how it happened, up to and including a fey raccoon who wears pants, who I did meet. If it’s some huge elaborate lie, I don’t have anything to prove it wrong.” She rolled her eyes and folded her arms, off-put by his nonsense. He sat back a bit and looked pensive as he smoked, looking off into the distance.
They sat for a little while longer before she stood up, saying, “Well, I should get back to work.”
“Yeah…” Virgil said, still looking distant. When she got to his feet, he said, “You know, right?”
“Know what?”
“Know that I’m an adventurer. I’ve killed people, and I have a past you don’t want to get tangled in. I wander around and I’m not ever going to stay anywhere for long. I’m going to leave. Not right now, not for a few weeks or months, maybe, but I’m going to leave. And you shouldn't care when I do.”
She looked confused, “Are...are you saying you don’t like me?"
“I...no. No, I’m saying that I’m an awful person to get attached to, and that you shouldn’t get involved with me.”
Her slightly hurt tone turned to a hint of anger, “...Are you asking me to break up with you?”
The question took him off-guard slightly; he blinked as he considered this, before replying, “I...I guess I am. I hadn’t thought of it like that, but I guess…ah!”
Shadliss kicked him in the leg. “You’re being an idiot! Sit here with your birds then. Tomorrow, you’ll come and apologize, or else you’re an even bigger idiot.” With that, she turned and stormed off, leaving the man sitting in the grass. He frowned; that didn’t go particularly well, and wasn’t likely going to absolve him of his earlier evils. Odder still was the taste of her emotions as she had stomped away: a curious taste he didn’t recognize, but satisfied his extraplanar need for sin. How had this made her feel pride, or adoration? He pondered over the encounter as he returned his attentions to the ravens, and wondered how he could make it right. 
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Virgil hung about the town center, giving his ravens only most of his attention as he waited. He hadn’t gone to apologize the day before, like Shadliss had told him to, but after another day passed, he decided he had to say something, as he didn’t like how it had been left. It hadn’t seemed final, and he realized he hadn’t been direct enough, or taken enough responsibility.
Eventually, he saw Shadliss walking past, brought to his attention by one of the ravens flying over to her, crowing for treats. She was holding some wrapped packages, on a delivery run for her father. He got up and strode over to her. “Good morning,” he said, giving her pause, “Can I speak to you for a minute?” 
The young woman turned her cheery attention from the bird; her mood flattened when she saw him, and she frowned slightly and tossed her hair. “Fine. What do you want?”
“I want to apologize. I threw that topic on you at the end of the conversation, when you were leaving. That was rude. I also put the onus back on you, when really this is all me. I know full well that I shouldn’t be in any sort of relationship with anyone, so I should be the one saying it.” He made animate hand gestures as he said definitively, “We aren’t a thing”
Shadliss crossed her arms, “So, you’re breaking up with me?”
“You see? See, this is exactly the problem!” he said. “This was never supposed to be a thing, but apparently, we’ve gotten to a point where the phrase 'breaking up' can be used. When we started doing this, it wasn’t ever supposed to go anywhere. I didn’t want a relationship or anything, and apparently that where this is going. Was this where you wanted this to go?”
She looked at him with an eyebrow raised. “You are the least straight-forward man ever.” This statement confused him, and he blinked. After a beat he sighed. She shrugged, “What, what do you want? Me to say we aren’t a thing? We aren’t a thing.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” he retorted. With another sigh, he explained, “I don’t want you to get attached and getting hurt when I don’t come back one day. Because eventually I’m not. I’m not leaving right now; it might be weeks or it might be months, but I am going to leave. And on that note, I’m leaving tomorrow, since you wanted to know and I said I’d tell you. We’re going out to wander the forests, question goblins and see if we can track down Tsuto Kaijitsu. I might not come back from that either.”
“So what? You want me to not be sad when you get stabbed? Fine,” she said flippantly. As an afterthought, she said, “As long as I get your stuff.”
Virgil rubbed his eyes, “Well, besides the fact that when adventurers die, they don’t usually leave their things in very accessible places, they’re usually just picked up by their teammates. So you can take it up with them.”
Shadliss looked at him flatly for a few seconds before swishing her hair back again. “I don’t know what you’re going on about. This isn’t anything but some fun. So, if you want fun, I’m going to be down at the docks tonight.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked away, leaving Virgil more confused and unsure of the situation than he had been before he had spoken to her.
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Virgil sat moodily in the secluded area of the dockyard, drumming his fingers. It was well into the evening when Shadliss arrived. She smiled when she saw the man had shown, and quickly slid down next to him, nestling into his shoulder. He frowned, trying to gently push her back some. “I didn’t come for that. I just thought it wasn’t right for you to be hanging around here on your own, and it’s rude to stand someone up.” She resisted his efforts to move her away, and she slipped over and around his arms to keep pressed against him. He sighed, “What do you want? Actually? This obviously isn’t just nothing. I’m a lot older than you, I’ve been in a lot of ‘nothing’. If this hadn’t become something besides sex, you would have told me to fuck off a while ago and wouldn’t have cared. This wouldn’t be happening, here. So, what is this to you, really?” In lieu of responding with words, she slipped around him again and pressed her lips to his. His attempts to gently remove or dissuade her were wholly unsuccessful as she climbed on top of him, sliding her tongue between his teeth. “This isn’t...This can’t be the right thing to do…” he muttered, his hands doing something between a shove and a caress. “We shouldn’t be doing this…” Shadliss kept her mouth on his, her response to his weak protestations an attempt to silence him. It was easy to see that he wasn’t putting up much resistance. “You’re making me a terrible person, and I don’t think anyone is going to accept that you’re the reason I’m terrible.” She kissed him harder. Eventually, he gave up.
Though he ensured that the woman was well-satisfied, Virgil deftly prevented her from disrobing him, or returning any of the favours he showed her: he hadn’t met with her tonight for his own satisfaction, and he figured he would at least maintain that. As she lay in a haze of contentment beside him, he had a look of more serious contemplation as he placed his jacket over her to protect her from the chilling autumn air. When she picked herself up and straightened her appearance, she complimented his skills. “I’m going to have a hard time walking home straight.” 
He muttered, “I don’t know what the right thing to do there was, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that.”
She smiled coquettishly, “I’m definitely the right thing to do.” She made a few hand gestures repeatedly, frowning slightly with effort. After a few tries, Virgil held up his hand and cast Prestidigitation for her, completing her rearrangement. “Thanks. I’ll get the hang of it.”
“Keep practicing.”
Grinning again, she added, “See you,” before walking away without a backwards glance. 
Virgil continued sitting on the docks for a long while after. He honestly had no idea if he had handled this correctly, if this had absolved him of what he assumed were his earlier actions of evil towards her that had shifted his alignment. Further, even if he had definitively known that what had happened was wrong in the eyes of the universe, he wasn’t sure if he would have acted differently. He didn’t want to act differently, in that situation. He didn’t want to refuse sex with a willing partner, for whatever abstract reason the world had decided made it wrong. He’d just try harder in other areas, he supposed, and continue to make as much of the truth blatantly apparent to Shadliss as he could. He was a slut, certainly, but was never trying to mislead her or hurt her. That had to count for something; he wasn’t really a bad person.
This wasn’t the only thing that preyed on his mind, as he listened to the water and watched the moonlight dance on the waves. Something about the whole encounter had felt wrong. It wasn’t only that he had refused her advances and left himself aroused without a satisfying release. There was something else, and it took him a while to realize what exactly it was: there was no emotional reward from it either. The wave of adoration, of attraction, of the base exaltation of his skills that his partners inevitably felt when he had sex with them, was missing. She had been more than satisfied with the experience, that had been obvious from her expressions and body language, but her emotions hadn’t fed his innate desire for his pride to be stroked. Had she been faking it? Was it something else? He didn’t know, and the uncertainty combined with his physical dissatisfaction became a deep and surly frustration in his mind.
Category:Rise of the Runelords