Difference between revisions of "Logs:Brother, Kept"

He knew the moment they returned home, from the bag left conspicuously at the entrance to the weyr. This was the last thing H'kon wanted now. He hadn't the energy for this. He hadn't the patience.

He left Arekoth's side, no longer able to be concerned if the brown should go find his most recent mate or not. He nudged the bag (it was open) with his toe, saw little inside. That, at least, was something. He felt stretched, exhausted, taut. Still little sleep, still, certainly, no relief, a day after the flight, and days after the soup. And, even with the bag empty, this was the last thing H'kon wanted now.

"Brother!" Kairek spread his arms wide as he got up from his chair - one of the new, tall ones - showing his irrepressible smile. H'kon thought, for a moment of which he was not proud, of punching it off the older man's face. But he attempted a smile, and set about hanging up his jacket as if his weyr had not been invaded by Haeron's eldest.

Kairek didn't seem to notice any of this. "You know, I waited around Tillek for nearly a full day after I heard about you."

"Did you?"

"Normally, you'd've come home for your whipping. After doing something so wrong."

When H'kon looked back to his brother, the man's face was mockingly scornful. H'kon sighed, took off his riding belt, and tossed it to his bed. "I've been unable to get away."

"Hah!" Kairek pulled out a chair, the short one, and set to pouring a glass of whiskey. "Truer words, Hali."

H'kon glared at him. "Nothing is settled here." But he took the chair. "Still." And the drink. He imagined this bottle was probably his. Kairek also sat, took his glass, mostly finished already, and swirled it, staring at H'kon all the while.

"You know, I'm going to sit here until you talk to me."

This was the last thing H'kon wanted now.

"Tragedy so often serves to unite a group to a mutual cause, but Iolene's death... it was not like K'vas. There were those," those, indeed, "who were glad of it. There are surely those who have learned a new means of action from it."

Kairek refilled his brother's glass. Again. "The world's not so black and white as you and dad want it to be, Hal. There's always division in groups, you know?"

H'kon shook his head, raised his glass. "Not like this. Kai, the Weyr needed a bronze flight, one leader, clear, irreproachable. Some stability from the top down. It needed this." He put his glass down. "I tried to give it that. I took Arekoth away, and now I am grouped in with the idiot woman who let her brown chase in a leadership flight?"

Kairek was watching him, grey eyes soft, like their mother's. H'kon knew, vaguely, that it was in part the drink that made that comforting.

"It was some poor luck only that Arekoth and I were at the same place. And even that- no. He may have known, have guessed, when we chose where to go. And even that we were there may have proven better than not."

"You've lost me." But he extended a long finger to point to H'kon's glass, and H'kon, obedient to his older brother, lifted it to his lips.

"We at least were from her Weyr." It came out too breathy. He'd tried to speak too soon, and could feel the vapours of the alcohol in his throat and nose. "She was-" H'kon gestured and his drink sloshed a bit over the lip of the cup. "We at least were from the Weyr."

Kairek was watching him with that expression he'd learned so well, from their mother, from the harpers. Tell me more.

H'kon had not drunk so much he would go on that topic. And when his brother still, minutes later, had said nothing, still was looking at him, he offered only, "We need legitimacy. And there is none to be had here."

Kairek sipped his drink frustratingly slowly and calmly. "Do you think you'll get that, from without?"

"When there is faction, chaos even, within, what other choice is left?"

"Halikon." Kairek's smile turned softer, his voice gentle and didactic, as if H'kon was once again a child. Wouldn't he always be, to his brother? "H'kon. You're fucking weird." So gentle, still. "Most people don't like to be told what to do. Most people want some role in their own determination. It's called autonomy."

"And it should not be given to those who have no place in deciding. Do we let Naelli make decisions that would endanger her?"

"Do you think you're even in the same category as her?"

H'kon felt that usual sting, the want to jump to his sister's defense, protest that she was better. Protest his brother's abandonment of her, of them. But hadn't he brought this up? Couldn't you love just as fiercely, knowing what was broken? More so, even?

The jar of Kairek's kicking his boot roused him. Perhaps H'kon had had more to drink than he'd realised. "Arekoth is a brown."

"So?"

"Brownriders have no business as weyrleaders. This will not be accepted."

"So you are a weyrleader."

"If Brieli is a senior weyrwoman. And there should not even be an... 'a'. There should be one. We need Council."

"And if you can't get that?"

"Then there will be further division."

"You could abdicate."

"I could not. And leave that woman? To ruin the Weyr, or to be killed by her opposition?"

"You think that would happen?"

"The door has been opened. If things do not occur at a table, they will occur in dark halls."

"So find a bronze. Abdicate."

"And legitimise Brieli." No.

It was when Kairek didn't say anything that H'kon looked up from where he'd been staring, he realised, at his boot. His brother was grinning. H'kon pushed away his glass, and the remains of the whiskey in it.

"You're in a mess all right, Hali. Apocalyptic."

H'kon once again wanted to strike him. He felt a giddiness rising up through his gut.

Kairek's grin had grown wider.

"What makes this worse?"

"What's that?"

H'kon had started to giggle. It was uncontrollable, it racked his whole frame, it made him gasp for air. It took him three tries to get out, "I haven't even managed to have either goldrider. Even," and another fit interrupted him wholly, "in the flight."

Kairek had started to laugh too. In time, H'kon would double over. In time, he would feel his older brother's hands, vaguely, through the haze of whisky that had settled on his brain, guide him to his bed. And he would still be up in time for drills, the next day.