Another simple question. One he had no answers for. The silence elongated, tense with an energy uncommon for them. His head fell for a minute, the realization that he really did nothing of considerable interest settling in like excess sugar did in the base of a teacup. A simple stir and it would go back to being in the suspension, awaiting a similar fate when the spoon was removed or stilled.
He hated that. He hated that his options were to say that he did classwork or wandered about the halls or watched people. They sounded like droll things to do, even in his own head. The only thing that ever sounded enjoyable in his head was going to the stables, but as it was, it had been a while since he’d been near the larger birds. Just the small one in his arms had any contact with him, which wasn’t so bad, but Ace never really played with him either. Something told him not to, in the back of his mind. Something that crippled his senses with fear of why. So, he’d set a ball on the floor or hold the end of a rope, but in the end, Chirifuda played by himself.
Teeth ground against themselves anxiously and furrowed brows intensified as he stood there. Eventually it became too much and he knelt down to let the bird down in a speed that highly suggested he was uncomfortable with the question posed at him. He didn’t want to worry her. He didn’t want her to know that all he ever did was wait to be called back to that battlefield or do reports all the time, that he was just a pawn in a war and frankly, he was alright with that because it was what Mother wished of him.
“Neh, Naminé. You should explain what Struggle is again. I forgot what it was.“ This time, Ace diverted the topic elsewhere. His princess wouldn’t know. That was that. With a forced sense of relaxation, but an ever faltering ability to keep eye contact at this point, he paced off to sit on his mattress and stared at the ground again. His hands now laid in his lap, grasping onto his pants to keep the fact that even though he had dreams and she viewed him as somebody that was innately good, that his mantle, the color of blood and fire, meant that he was an elite at sin.
Magic was a powerful entity, one of mystic prospect and when used in certain ways, could be quite beautiful. It seemed he’d never used it that way, though. He was Ace, the first of the class and regarded as one of the best when it came to magical potential and efficiency, and all his magic focused on, or so it seemed, was how to hit people and avoid getting hit. Even Deuce, who laced notes of music, a beautiful symphony, sometimes, with her own magic, used it to attack people and help her allies. It was a heavy burden to wear, though he never really felt it. He had nothing to be ashamed of, as normally,he would speak of killing as if it was similar to what one had for breakfast. Yet, whenever he got around Naminé, he never wanted to talk about it. It was taboo. “It’s a sport, right?”
Avoidance. That was avoidance, plain and simple, and she knew it, though it wasn’t very subtle. Anyone would have been able to tell that he was trying to avoid the subject that she had touched upon so lightly, a blatant changing of the subject. Surely he had to have some sort of thing that he did at times that was not reading or waiting to be called to the battlefield, there had to be something. Anything would have been acceptable really, anything at all, but it appeared that there was nothing. Nothing that he desired to tell her, at least.
The thought made her inexplicably sad. Then again, it was clear why it would make her sad—Ace was her friend. Practically her only friend in the world, the only person who would remember her when it was time for her to fade away, and she was the one who would continue to remember him. They were made to forget, to be forgotten, and the idea that he did not pass his days in any other way than waiting made her sad because it seemed to make him sad. Or distressed, at the very least.
To begin with, friends were not to desire to see each other sad, and she wanted to make it so that he was no longer sad. But apparently the only way to get there, the only way to lift the tension of the mood that had settled over them so suddenly, was to continue onwards down the path that he had made for their conversation. So she would just have to go along with it, comply with it, because she did not want to see that expression on his face for any longer than she absolutely had to. Worry ate away at her while she stood there, unable to do a thing about how he was feeling in that moment, so she smiled softly and sadly and nodded compliantly.
The princess was not supposed to protect the knight.
Considering that she had never participated in Struggle herself and rarely ever watched a match her knowledge of the sport was limited but enough so that she could talk about it without there being too many issues. ”It’s a silly sport, really,” she began, trailing her fingers along a shelf on the bookshelf once more, not looking at him though she was certainly speaking to him. ”The objective of it is to knock as many orbs off of your opponent as possible in a minute with foam bats,” a vague explanation at best, but it was true anyways. The sport itself was simplistic but exciting enough in tournaments to get the entire town to watch willingly, and she conceded that it was adrenaline causing.
Quietly she launched into the rules, the timer and where the players were and were not allowed to hit. How reinforced bats were not allowed after a particular incident and how a lot of the participants in the tournament tended to get incredibly competitive, especially when it came down to the last two for the title of the champion. And as she spoke inanely about the sport of Struggle she wondered if her words were helping him space himself away from the thoughts that plagued him and worried him, if there was any way at all that she could help. Could stop being useless. The princess was not supposed to save the knight but—
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