Page 12 of The Devil's Bargain
“I’m not,” Calix disagreed. “I’m not like the two of you, for starters. I don’t have an inability to feel. I understand and experience empathy, guilt, compassion…That last one especially. You don’t have that, Aodhan.” He tipped his head in Mercy’s direction. “You…might. It’s hard to tell.”
“You don’t have to figure everything out in one day,” their First reassured him. “Take your time. The bond doesn’t allow us to read each other's minds, only gives us access to current feelings and states of being.”
“Compassion.” Aodhan didn’t like the taste of the word in his mouth. “Sounds pointless. Bad things are going to happen to people no matter what we do.”
“Doesn’t mean we have to make it worse for everyone,” Calix insisted. “Like randomly murdering their loved ones because they were there?”
“And they were weak?” He snorted. “Only the strong survive. So what?”
“You say that because you’re one of the strong.”
“Bruce wasn’t weak.” Mercy stared him down pointedly.
Aodhan cursed. “Bruce trusted the wrong person. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just got unlucky. I don’t know.”
“Find out,” Calix demanded. “Because I need to. I need to know what happened to him and why.”
“Why?” Aodhan frowned. “So you can blame yourself for it? No. We’re not doing that. No more spiraling into self-deprivation. No matter the reason behind Bruce’s death, the person who killed him is the one responsible for it. Got that, Be’urn?”
He was sick of Calix’s victim mentality. Of how often their Third placed the blame on himself instead of viewing the world for what it truly was.
“You promised no more running. That means having to face your part in things, and accept when shit is out of your hands. I’ve killed for you? So what. Sister Grace had a family too, does that make a difference?”
Calix considered it. “No.”
“Good, it shouldn’t.”
“What our little killer is trying, and somewhat failing to say,” Mercy took over, “is you already spent most of your life excusing the horrible things Sister Grace did to you, even when all of that was her fault. We don’t want that for your future. Are revenge and murder generally frowned upon? Sure. Does that mean there are people out there who don’t deserve it?”
“Do you really think there are people who deserve to die?” Calix asked, and even with the bond, it was hard to tell what he was feeling.
Probably because Cal didn’t have a grasp of that either.
He struggled to understand his own heart. That explained why it was so easy for him to plan on leaving Aodhan the way that he had. He claimed he felt a full range of emotions, yet he didn’t possess the ability to decipher said emotions properly. Even Aodhan understood half of what he felt at any given time were trained reactions.
“Sister Grace programmed you,” he stated tersely. “She made you believe you were gross and vile for wanting the things you want. For feeling the things you feel. It was all about control. None of it was real.”
“Wasn’t it?” Calix disagreed. “We’re trained about morality at the Academy, Aodhan. I know right from wrong.”
“You know laws,” he argued. “Laws that were set in place by people. There’s no Light in the universe that can judge me for the things I’ve done. If anyone wants me to be punished for the lives I’ve taken or destroyed, they’re going to have to find me and get retribution on their own.”
“You don’t believe in Light?”
“Do you?”
Calix pursed his lips. “I used to.”
The orphanage he’d grown up in was a religious one, but Sister Grace was so far from what a holy leader should be. Aodhan didn’t have a problem with believers—hell, the religion practiced by Connects was deeply rooted in their culture, and Mercy still practiced certain aspects to this day.
He had a problem with how easy it was for someone to do awful things in Light’s name.
That was why he never bothered with excuses for himself.
If he did something,hedid it. That’s what choice was all about.
And if he took away someone else’s choice and forced them? That was still on him.
Accountability.
