32. Respite Part 2
General Summary
Penny for Your Thoughts
It's late morning, Marwa and Mika are seated at the top of the lawn. The grounds roll away before them, early summer sun mitigated by the endless Aurian winds which tousle the gardens. Mika has a stack of books beside him on the bench but they're closed for the moment. Marwa watches him from the corner of her eye as she sips her coffee. "So. " Her voice brings his eyes up. She continues, casual. "Been a few days you've been at the infamous Noor residence. What do you think so far?" Mika's quiet. He's holding his coffee mug in both hands, tapping one fingertip against the ceramic. There's a light furrow in his brow as he searches for words. Marwa waits. It's a delicate topic, one close to her heart in every sense, and she appreciates that he's being thoughtful about it. "Honestly?" He looks out over the grounds, speaking carefully. "I knew we came from different places, I didn't know how different. I hardly knew how to stand when we got here. It's been... it's been a learning experience, I guess." He's back to looking at his coffee cup. It doesn't seem like he's done. After a moment, he picks up again. "I get why you missed it. This place is... its huge, even the people here are larger than life. Christsakes, I knew you had a big family, I didn't know having a dozen extra people around for dinner was normal. But I see you racing across the lawn or laughing in the kitchen and..." he gestures vaguely, looking for words, "this place, dad's apartment, it's the same thing, you know?" Mika opens his mouth, holds his breath a moment, then closes it again. He taps his fingers against his coffee mug a moment before speaking again. "Anyway. It's very you. And you're pretty cool. So." He takes a drink of coffee to stop his own rambling. "Thanks. Means a lot." Marwa takes a sip of her coffee, looks over the grounds, thinking. "I think it's okay," she starts, then pauses. "I think it's okay for this house and your apartment to not be the same thing, you know. I grew up with... more than I ever needed, to be honest. Not that it needs saying. But the people here, at the end of the day, they're what matter to me. Not how many rooms are here, or that I get the best coffee in Auria every morning." Mika smiles into his mug, huffs a single-syllable laugh through his nose. "Boss's instant stuff is going to taste like fucking dirt for a while, isn't it?" Marwa sighs wistfully, swirling the bottom third of hers in its mug. "I don't know how I'm gonna go back, to be honest. Like, I know I'm going to have to, but I can barely stomach the thought." "Hey," Mika says, raising his own in solidarity, "at least misery loves company." "Anyway," he continues, "I get what you're saying. I never gave a fuck how much space we had. Home's where you make it, you know?" "Exactly!" Marwa smiles. "Exactly. I feel just as much at home on the road with all of you as I do here, to be honest." He glances at her sideways, tilting his head a little. "You know," he says, careful, "you said you started travelling for fun. You never said why you kept going back out. I mean, I know why I'm running around the realms and not chilling at home. Then there's Saeldor and Cri, both natural ramblers, and the boss is a worse workaholic than I am, except he likes his job. You, though." "Why does a girl who has everything leave?" Marwa looks thoughtful, but he shakes his head, waving a hand. "Nah, not like that." She tilts her head at him, frowning. He shrugs. "I dunno, I just never figured why anyone would go out looking for trouble unless it was, I don't know, necessary for something else." She gives a wry smile. "I maybe was born for trouble." He smiles, strained. "It suits you, to be honest." "First of all everything suits me, so jot that down," Marwa quips, immediately, then sobers. "No but seriously, I didn't expect to love doing this as much as I do. It started out as something to do. Something I hadn't tried before. But there's nothing else like it." She smiles. "Using my skills to help people I care about, who are... doing good in the world. What more is there?" Mika is listening, following, neutral comprehension in his face, quickly replaced by incredulity at her last statement. Marwa raises her brows at him, in a 'go on,' expression that he knows there's not much point dodging. "I guess I get most of that," he concedes, dropping eye contact in discomfort. "I've figured for a while that the jobs we take on are probably a better use of my situation than just sitting on my hands, so to speak, it's not like its the worst way to use one's time, but... well, I mean, sure it's not as noble as like, doing rescue missions, chasing off monsters, etcetera. But..." He shifts in his seat, looking at his hands around the half-empty coffee mug, a warm shade of red rising from his neck, "I mean, surely there's something to be said for more... I don't know, domestic pursuits?" The silence only lasts half a second before he blurts out, "I get this place has everything, but you really never wanted to find one of your own?" "...'Domestic pursuits,'" Marwa quotes, feinting amusement, "what an academic turn of phrase, Mika Benedict Oliviera." He snorts. Marwa grins wide. "I nailed it this time, didn't I?" "I don't have a middle name," he reminds her, smiling downward, "unless the one I'm currently using counts." "We should-" Marwa catches the thought halfway through, and clamps her mouth shut. "What?" Mika glances at her, intrigued by the cutoff. "Um, nothing." Her turn to drop eye contact. "Well now I'm really curious," an impish smile growing on his face, he lets the silence grow as she opens and closes her mouth, before huffing in frustration. "Oh - okay fine! I had a dumb thing I was going to say about the fact that if you didn't have a middle name, we should get to give you one. But then I remembered names are really important to you and your family and I'm not that much of a dick, so. There." His expression softens. "I see where you're coming from, and it's a nice thought," he says, "You're right that it's a no-go, but also" he shrugs "naming yourself is also like, insanely crass, yet here I sit. I mean I had to call myself something, so I don't feel that bad about it, but you know what I mean." "Yeah, I get it. There's something powerful in the name my family gave me, and something just as powerful in the name I chose for myself. I think, anyway." "You're absolutely not wrong," he concedes. "But to answer your earlier question - yeah. Of course I think about having a family, a home someday." Mika startles, but he's looking at her again, listening. "It's just not something you go out to the store and buy, you know? So I'm enjoying life where it leads me, and for right now, that's with all of you idiots. Finding Wishes." Mika exhales a laugh through his nose. "Yeah, fair enough." He smiles at his hands, "Lucky me, I guess." "Lucky for right now, but you know we have training later, right?" Marwa smiles, ominously. "Might not feel so lucky when Baba's whooping your ass." "Fuck, that's right," Mika says, genuine dread colouring his features, "He said he wants to move on to sparring today." "If it makes you feel any better, he's going to have me on my ass, too, so we'll both be sore tomorrow," Marwa offers. "Hopefully sparring with Ta'lok will keep him occupied and we can skip out early." "Fingers crossed," Mika says, in a voice suggesting he feels this is probably not a sufficient number of good-luck-charms for his needs.Training
Alejandro didn't know what the warlock said through his shit-eating grin, but the bright shade of pink that flooded across his daughter's face in response was impossible to miss. He tossed her her sabers as she stepped into the sparring space. "Begin," he snapped, beginning to circle. He watched Marwa shake off most of her fluster, let her take the first attack. She went for a running charge, sweeping in from the side. But she began the move to early; he raised to block it, stepping aside, but her correction moved the trajectory of his parry toward her unarmoured forearm. He flipped to the flat at the last second, but the blow still weakened her grip. She fumbled, nearly dropping the blade. "Change your move to counter or defend," He reprimanded, lowering his weapons as Marwa glared at the other student over her shoulders, "not to create a new opening for your enemy." She nodded, still annoyed. "Think on it," he says, waving her to the bench, and suppressing a twinge of satisfaction at the fading of the smirk from Mika's features as he stepped in for his own turn. Alejandro studied the kid as he walked the circle, conscious, still struggling to focus on both keeping even distance and maintaining a guard. The caster was still fighting mundane. He'd been told, from day one, to use all his assets, to treat this training arena the same as a battlefield, or it the former would be useless in the latter. His face had taken on an inattentive passivity before the admonition was even finished. "Bad idea," he'd said, blunt. "My stuff doesn't have a nonlethal setting." "You could use the blurring thing, though," Marwa had offered, to which he tilted his head in begrudging concession. "I guess." It wasn't only that he'd dismissed the idea out of hand that bothered Alejandro. Realizing he'd overlooked an advantage hadn't bothered him - hadn't even interested him. He showed up to training and he wasn't daydreaming during Marwa's turns, but Alejandro knew how to tell the difference between someone watching and someone studying. He'd only had a handful of lessons, and his improvement had already plateaued. He seemed as uninterested in correcting this downturn as he was in everything else. Alejandro waited a quarter circle before breaking step for an upward slash. Mika knew the guard to block it, but while the blade's position was right, his wrist was wrong. The guard was weak, and knocked his own blade sideways. Alejandro seized the opening, and shorter reach or not, Mika had time to parry it if he'd just position for where his enemy's blade was going to be instead of where it was. He stopped the blade an inch away, and did not linger on it. Mika muttered a curse, lowering the training daggers in concession. "If you do not learn to predict," Alejandro reprimanded, "You will never get off your backfoot. No," he halted Mika's retreat and got a look too studiously plainfaced not not to be hiding irritation, "You can pracice on the striking dummy during Marwa's turn. Go." Mika's bow-shouldered posture was neither chagrined nor defiant. Alejandro watched him go. If he thought he was being mistreated, he gave no sign. But no amount of enouragement or reprimand was managing to engender motivation in him. This was a problem in any student, but especially one who intended to continue fighting alongside his daughter. I cannot prepare you for a real fight if you refuse to treat this like one. He shook the issue aside, for the moment, as Marwa reentered the ring. He nodded, pleased at the improved focus in her face and posture as she began to circle. She waited for him to make the first strike, a versatile guard held at the ready. He feinted from the left side, then pivoted on a backstep to a downward slash. Her high guard was up in a blink, and her subsequent stab into the opening his high arm created was fast enough to force a sidestepped retreat. She's gotten faster, he noted, pleased. It was an improvement, but not, he thought, her maximum. She had the wind in her blood, the lightning. He would not allow her to rest on her laurels until her movements were instant. When they clashed again, he launched two near-simultaneous strikes. Her guard was good, but her indecision over which to parry first, or perhaps her uncertainty in estimating the speed of the strikes, cost her the parry. "If it is too close to be sure," he reminded, "Then it is close enough not to matter. Again." She nodded, and he gestured for her to take up the same posture. They drilled the move on repeat, varying the direction and the specifics of the timing - though not the speed - until her parries were consistent. "Good. Circle." He waited out her first strike. Watched the calculations as she measured his distance, watched where he was looking. Here, in the open arena, her usual tricks were less viable. There were no shadows to occlude her, no rafters to leap down from, no cover to duck behind. There will not always be, habibi. You cannot play only to your strengths. She stepped forward in a simple slash from the side, keeping a flexible guard over the opening with the opposite blade. He expected a feint, but her followthrough was immediate. As it connected with his guard, a static shiver ran through his fingers and into his wrist. It was not enough to loosen his grip or his defense, but even as Marwa frowned in disappointment, he smiled in a flicker of pride, noting the streaks of electricity fading from her forearm. "Good," he said, drawing her eye as they resumed the circle. "Use everything, not just the blades. Practice the move until you can scorch the wood," he gestured toward the training dummy, and Marwa grinned, snapping a salute as she bounded toward it. The warlock's turn, again. With warmups concluded, Alejandro changed tack. He opened with a straighforward stab from the front. The sabers were slashing weapons, but it would suffice to provoke a guard, which would necessarily create an opening. If Mika could make at least an attempt toward the multi-sided opening his forward strike would create before he could launch a second strike, he'd consider it progress. Mika's block was in the correct place, but his parry was absent. Alejandro didn't wait for it, launching a second strike upward from the unguarded corner, which landed clean. "There is no way to extend one's reach without creating an opening," he reminded, sharp as he stepped back in to a tighter circle, "Low if from above, Right if it comes from the left." Mika shook it off, stepping back into the circle, scratching irritably at the scars on his jawline, distracted. "If you don't start putting even half the effort you give sideline jokes into your training," Alejandro reprimanded, "someone is going to give you a matching set." That drew him a glare, but the venom in his student's face was not enough for him to miss the uneven footwork. 'Keeping a stable footing is lesson one. He's not only unmotivated, he's uninterested. A familiar irritation sparked along his spine as he flexed his fingers around the blade hilts. It didn't have the same tang of defeatism, of placid acceptance, but the kids eyes were elsewhere, he was hearing but never listening, never attending when given instructions that could save his life, or the lives of those around him. As their circling strafed, he kept his focus on Mika, but the blaze of colour on the sideline was impossible to occlude from his peripheral. Are you also going to burn your throat trying to reach someone who doesn't want to be saved? Or will you follow Julius into the rabbit hole, until your eyes are bloodshot and your hands are shaking and you are forced to surrender to the unknowns. Neither were the fates he wanted for her. But he knew better than to try to change the mind of any child of Lydia Noor, and the flippant, sarcastic, reticent warlock debating between guards - Choose one, any one, you cannot do worse than nothing - was not leaving this one many other options. It was a straightforward high slash. Not telegraphed even the half-second he would usually give a novice, but wide, a simple counter, its weight more deadly than its direction. Mika's early, clumsy block knocked him aside. Instead of widening his stance for stability, he stumbled back to a knee. His eyes were wide, and he was breathing harder than the exercise could justify. "Confusion in a melee will be your undoing," He reprimanded, "Focus!" But his student's eyes were on his hands. He didn't seem to have heard, even in the literal sense. "Baba, what the fuck?" He glanced over his shoulder. Marwa was standing out of her chair, incredulous, her hair whipping a tempest. "I didn't hurt him," he dismissed, turning back to his student, "Get up. Again." Unresponsive. Clenching his jaw at the sand. "Ag-" "Will you shut up and let me concentrate for fucks sake?" Alejandro shut his mouth. He was pissed, and watching the kid, but he stopped talking. Mika's eyes were unfocused, his brows pressed together, his hands and jaw tight. After a minute, he exhaled. "Okay." He straightened up again, meeting Alejandro's eye. "Again." It was closer than previous matches - much closer. Alejandro opened with a similar strike, and Mika's counter was white-knuckled effective. He failed to counter the next one. Wasn't watching that side. They repeated the same combination, shuffling direction angle, until he could block both parts. Then Alejandro wordlessly gestured him to get over to the side, watching him carefully, scrutinizing as Marwa traded him places. Their match is quiet, fast. Focused. No more fucking around. Alejandro's victory, but only slight, eked out point by point. Marwa walked back to her seat as Mika walked back in. As he's passing her, she whispered, “Back right leg. Old adventuring injury he forgets about.” Mika glanced sideways at her without moving his head, but that was the only sign he heard her. The last round of sparring was the first that wasn't decisively Alejandro's victory. On a dodge, Mika forced a backstep to his right leg, nearly landed a strike in the slight delay. Alejandro made the block, but it was a close thing. Alejandro dismissed the both of them, watching them leave after putting the equipment away. He wanted a word with Mika, but not with Marwa there to distract or chastise, and not now. Later. --- Mika was reading in the same room they'd used to meet with the Teeth of the Wind a few days ago. Journal seven of eight. He didn't look up until Alejandro took a seat across from him. The fighter wasted no words on preamble. Spoke with the certainty of experience, the authority of earned respect. Told him if he was going to train, he had to mean it, had to find a reason. That it would be necessary to get his brain and his muscles prepared to move reflexively, because in a real fight, with real life at stake, there would not be time to think, only to react. "If you want to stop, that's fine," Alejandro continued, his stern expression not shifting in the slightest, "No harm, no foul. But if you step back in that ring, you need to have a reason to fight. It isn't only your life on the line out there." Mika listened to everything he's saying, the journal open but ignored on his lap. His frustration showed on his face. Alejandro waited, watched as the human debated. It was long-form, but his question was essentially yes-or-no. Yes-I'll-start-giving-a-shit, or No-I'm-out. He was waiting to hear one or the other. But Mika's responswe was neither. "Sir," he said, looking at the surface of the low table between them, "can I ask you a personal question?" “Yeah.” "You did the merc thing," Mika pointed out, frowning slightly, "Why'd you stop." “My spouses said no.” Alejandro chuckled. Mika nodded. "And why'd you start?" “I was a soldier first," Alejandro answered, leaning back and crossing his arms, "Decided I wanted to pick who and what to fight for.” Mika nodded again. No wonder he got along so well with the boss. He tried to imagine wanting to join up, wanting to be part of something bigger than a neighbourhood. Wanting to fight things too far away to see from a front window, to make sure they never got any closer. Understanding was academic, empathy elusive. "Kay." Mika pushed off his knees to sit upright, dragged his eyes up to meet the figher's. "So here's my deal. "I do have a reason to fight. I wanna go the fuck home. I want my worst fear to be a missed deadline again. I'm trying to get to where I won't need this shit anymore." He punctuated the sentence with a gesture in the direction of the training arena. "I don't know if I can give you motivation beyond 'not going down before I can pull that off.' You want me to have a reason, 'Better odds of survival' is what I've got. So I can try to focus if you can understand that making a career out of this stuff sounds like a goddamn nightmare to me." Alejandro’s eyebrows rose, intrigued. “You just told me your reason to fight," he said, "And it’s a damn good one - to go home. To survive.” Mika pressed his mouth shut, found himself looking down again, uncomfortable. “If you are open to sticking this out for the next few days," Alejandro continued, "I want you to train like everyone you have to fight is standing between you and your mission - home. Next time you and I spar, think of me as an obstacle on your journey home. And act accordingly.” Mika looked up. Visualizing the entity behind the door was an an exercise he actively avoided even attempting, but he was pretty sure it didn't look like the fire genasi before him. Some things we substitute for metaphor, others... "Deal," he said, decisive. Alejandro held out one hand. His handshake grip was merciful, given the power in his sword arm. "I'll let you get back to your reading," he said, standing. "Be sure to rest before tomorrow's training."
Report Date
07 Apr 2025
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