ORIGIN

The last couple weeks, he had lived and breathed human. Every step, every motion. Beatris' gaits. Her flexibility. Her strength. Her endurance. Her temperature tolerance. Her food preferences. Her wound-healing time. Her intelligence. Senses. Resourcefulness. Emotions. Nail and hair growth times. Stress thresholds. Sleep requirements. Water needs. Dehydration behavior. Starvation results. Disease resistance. Health.

And now... sickness.

She had been growing steadily weaker, more miserable, day by day. Despite Doctor's magic, her health was declining.

He had not been unnecessarily cruel--regardless of tests, he'd not beaten her, or threatened her, or withheld basic needs outside of testing. And he'd assured her, time and again, that these tests were necessary. And there was something else he'd done, with deliberate, manipulative planning.

He'd taken Beatris for walks.

The first time, he was certain Two thought that Beatris would die. Vargas had had to be stern. He would not kill the woman. They were just going for a walk. He had taken her through Canis, and yes, put her through her paces, some; then he had returned her. Twice more he'd done this, once carrying her to see Orion and, another time, to Pisces, until Two trusted him--he hoped; until she was no longer in a panic at Beatris' exit. Until Beatris, herself, accepted these walks as "not an execution."

Today was to be different: but neither of them would know that.

He had told them both that he would seek, now that Beatris had upheld her end of the bargain, a way to the surface. Warned them that it was unlikely. That, in all likelihood, he would be back here with Beatris in just a few hours.

Now he carried her--awkwardly, in the crook of one arm, unwilling to wait the hours it would take for her to cross on foot... and he doubted that she would make it that way, regardless. She was weak, occasionally losing consciousness, and pale. Something about the caves--about its magic--was killing her.

He was ready to begin his real work, and he had no reason to keep her alive--but even if he'd wanted to, he had no way. He pushed through Eridanus' jungle, feeling the ferns and smaller trees shoved away at his approach.

Magicka flickered out--and failed. Mentally, he cursed its weakness; even as a Master it did not answer to him as it should. He'd have to ask Astraea about that, if he had the chance. In the meantime, he'd have to use his physical senses to avoid interference--and to find a den of rats.

Beatris had no stone.

And he didn't want her bones cropping up later on.

...And, somehow, he didn't want to eat her himself.

"I am going to be killing you, today," he said, and he was surprised at the relative lack of response. She grunted some kind of assent, and he heard a quiet question--so that he had to stop, peering down, and ask "What?" to make it out.

Beatris' face was wan. Pale. Her eye sockets, hollowed. And it wasn't the tests that had done this, no; it was magic.

...A thought struck Vargas, then. If magic was so terribly deadly to the surface, what must the surface be like? Was there Magic Sickness here and there? Was that what his creation would be for? Curiosity flickered in him, but he pushed it away with the self-control of millennia. Not now. Later.

"I said... why..?" she managed, and he turned, sweeping forward again, toward the Eyes.

He'd shown her the Lagoon. Tenzin had not been there--Vargas wasn't sure if he was disappointed or relieved. He'd shown her Orion's 'stars.' Why? He could not have said. Or he would have: to reassure Two, of course. To reinforce his promise that nothing bad would become of Beatris.

A promise he was about to break; a lie he would maintain, out of necessity. Out of, perhaps, kindness.

"Because you are dying," he answered, gruff and matter-of-fact. There was no feeling in it. "And because my Lord ordered me to do so." There was a pause in his speech as he pressed onward, the lash of grass on violet hide. "I have no way to return you to the surface even if I wanted to."

Beatris murmured something. Again, too quiet to make out.

He carried Beatris to the edge of the Eyes, and set her down. She shifted, feet touching the icy water. "Repeat yourself. You are too quiet." The hulking Master took up position a couple yards away, sitting down on his haunches. Looming.

"And... what about... her?"

He looked at the human, frail, dying. He probably should have had a kind response ready, but he saw no reason to lie. "My Lord's orders are to kill her. But," he added, again matter-of-fact, "Unnecessary suffering is... counter-productive to my goals. I require her cooperation and therefore, her happiness. For now." Which is why, when I go back, it will be one return of many. It will not be the only journey out; it will merely be the only one from which you did not return.

Vargas looked around. Toxic eyes scanned cold water, ferns, flowers, tangled vines, the stone beneath. "Pick something for me to bring back to her. I will tell her you were returned to the surface. That you left her a gift. Unless you'd rather me tell her the truth," he added, and it came out a little more harshly than he'd intended.

Beatris winced at this, and Vargas eyed her, not offering the decency of looking away as she began to weep.

Was there hopelessness there? Grief? Fear, or--he hoped--anger? He studied her. This was his blueprint, after all... he had to know her utterly. But she offered no answer, and he gradually came to the conclusion that she was simply in despair.

Still, he watched her for awhile longer--watched her half-curled in the dirt, feet drawing back from the water, ragged clothes torn and stained--and he waited.

He waited, patient and implacable, and if that wasn't a metaphor for death then metaphors were shit and didn't even really exist.

She wept, for a time, quiet, shoulders trembling. Once she had the nonsensical urge, and acted on it, to try and flee but then collapsed--out of a change in mind, if Vargas was any judge, rather than physical weakness--after two swiftly-crawled steps.

"...It will be quick," he informed her, as if that were any reassurance, as if that held anything against never seeing her world again, never seeing any family or friends, as if it were anything against ceasing to exist. But it was all that he could offer her, and he had no intention of lying, not here. He would give her the truth, at least.

He'd rather have had truth, himself. But her-? Judging by her quiet breakdown, perhaps he should have told her he was taking her off to a farm, and then snapped her neck from behind. Ugh. But Vargas remained quiet, and he waited.

Eventually she fell quiet, and he was fairly certain that she'd actually fallen back asleep, that magic sickness, or cave air, or whatever it was, taking her. But before he could reach out to shake her, her head had come up and she was looking, weakly, around.

When she pushed to her feet it was with renewed, if miserable, determination and he pushed up and trailed behind, close behind but he gave her space--and she ignored him. She began what was a walk--a weak walk, tottering now and then, stumbling, staggering... but determined. Hands brushed plants as she passed. Fingertips paused to dwell on tree bark, and several times she knelt to smell Eridanus' flowers before moving on.

Sometimes, she sniffled.

Vargas ignored it all. He followed along, keeping close watch. His senses warned him each time a bird passed overhead; he watched the heartbeats of the cave mice that fled at his approach.

At last, Beatris knelt, coming to a halt beside a small, white sapling: a white tree, lit with little yellow leaves bright as fire that rustled like whispers. For a time she considered it, gently touching its tiny branches; and then she began to dig it out, roots and all.

Vargas waited.

Pale hands carefully scooped up more dirt than was needed to sustain it. Slender fingers plucked at a few worms clinging to the undersides, and let them fall away unharmed.

Vargas watched.

Beatris stood, and wobbled toward Vargas--and past him, back toward the water, toward the Eyes.

Vargas turned, and followed, dutifully patient.

"It's... pale. Leaves like her hair-... Tell her-. Tell her I hope she grows tall... or, no. Tell her--strong. Like the tree--ask her to take care of it-" and then Beatris was sniffling again, weeping, breaking down, collapsing against the dirt.

He waited, and when she showed no signs of gathering herself, he leaned one overly-large arm down to scoop her up. The sapling came with her, and he half-carried, half-supported Beatris back to the Eyes. He sat her down, again near the water's edge.

He did not tell her what was inside. He did not tell her how long he'd give her.

He simply... waited.

For a time they sat there--Vargas unhurried, Beatris miserable. He had no need to rush this: he could not return too early from an ostensible 'surface trip' and he had no desire to rush the end of the wretched human's life. It wasn't awkward for him, either, though; he'd presided over the deaths of uncounted beings. Rebels, weaklings, escapees; those too injured or too sick or weak to finish a Trial, dragging along through the desert, had often found Vargas' questionably-merciful bite at the backs of their necks.

He was no stranger to taking life, then--and sometimes he enjoyed the hunt; but he'd never drawn out a death, a killing, never deliberately inflicted pain. He took no pleasure in that; it wasn't that he was morally against it, so much as he saw no reason for it.

It was... sloppy. Animalistic. Distasteful, even. He was certain that when Beatris was ready, he'd know; and if she wasn't, then he'd lose patience, and do it himself.

He was lucky--or rather she was--in that she was sick. There was no final conversation, no awkward fielding of 'please don't kill the child,' no having to ask her to look away, or hold her breath. Her weakness, despite (or perhaps because of) the terror of her situation, had her drifting off to sleep without his even noticing.

Vargas paced closer in near silence, peering down, and listened.

Her breathing, there at the water-side, was slow and even. She was still pale--clammy, with dark-ringed eyes--and thin. But she was asleep, and he did not waste time.

It would barely have been noticed, by a passerby--one long violet arm reached down as if to touch her, and there was a movement, a quiet crack, and then nothing.

He waited, for a time. Her breathing had stopped. Her heart was gone--he could sense that; but he waited nonetheless, so that the creature's dreaming brain did not awaken despite its death, for a few seconds of horrified consciousness.

Because what came next, he did not want her to be awake for. He would have not wished that on even this meaningless human.

The sapling was parted from her, and set off to one side.

No prayers were said. No final words. No eulogy. He waited until her body was cooling, until the air was gone from her lungs. He spent the time to put a few rocks in her shirt, to tie it off--the weight was necessary; and then he strode to the water's edge.

"IS IT TRUE YOU ARE STILL DOWN THERE?" he bellowed, head tilting. Was what he'd heard true-? And was it as bad as he'd been told? A little bribery wouldn't hurt; and this was one surefire way of following his Lord's orders of proper disposal, at least without finding someone to burn the remains. "CONSIDER THIS A GIFT--A MEAL," he added, and then waded out.

He'd drunk his fill beside Beatris earlier; he'd felt the lurking presence. Now he set her body adrift at the center of the Eye, and stepped back, and watched the rocks claim it.

Slowly, gradually, it sank down: and then there was the brief flash of hateful luminescence, the shuddering thud of a claw-snap's powerful reverberation. It would have been sharp--gunshot-crack--at the surface but down there, deep down there, in the darkness of the Eyes, it was a rumble.

Vargas watched.

It took the body. It took his offering; and nothing came back up to the surface.

He backed up, and watched awhile longer, but gradually the silenced sounds of birds returned.

The Master turned away, at last, and picked up the little white sapling.

It was a long way back--but it would be faster now, alone.