Active The Field Trip

[Ethan Edwards]

Ethan's eyes were like chips of ice. Water dripped from his damp hair, and a tiny rivulet rolled down his cheek to fall from his chin. It might have seemed as if he were staring straight into Cassandra, looking at something, studying it. He cocked his head slightly, leaning a bit closer. His voice was even.

"Do you really think I'm that much of a boy scout? Am I, or what I say, something laughable?" he paused. "I know you're a Templar, I know your a soldier, and I've heard rumors about all of your wonderfully, colorful side work... None of that proves me wrong." Ethan continued staring at the young woman --- and for a moment, she caught a hint of just how old he truly was, a taste of how much blood he had bathed in.

"It just shows you believe in something so strongly, you're willing to do great but terrible things to support it... You want to go back? Be a kid again? Walk around never knowing there's something waiting to tear you apart while it sings to you...?" Ethan frowned. "If you were that type of person, you'd have never been stung, never been a part of whatever-the-fucking-plan is."

"But you want to laugh when I say to you, that I think there is nothing truly wicked in your heart? That you believing there is, is just another method of dealing with the horrors we face, and armor if you will?" His voice trailed off for a moment, and he was no longer talking to Cassandra. "How do you know that my trying to believe that, that there's good inside of you, isn't something I cling to as a way of having some sort of Hope in my life...?"

Ethan looked out toward the trees. "Even monsters need a little Hope."

 

[Requine]

The laughter dies out.

For a long, long moment there's nothing but silence - wind in tall trees and the water lapping at the docks.

Cass leans back. "I don't got any fuckin' hope." She admits. Ah, this is it, the crux of the problem. "I don't know, man. I've seen Templars who... they will burn down a city. For one demon. You know? And... they're insane to me. Monstrous. But they keep lookin' down at me, 'cause compared to them? Compared to a whole fuckin' lot of actual mundane folk? I'm just a kid. And it scares the shit out of me."

She lies on the deck, feeling the sun against her skin, eyes closed, tracing one toe in the water while letting the sun soak into her skin. New freckles slowly pop up as she thinks. "And, y'know, I talk a lot about 'red 'til I'm dead', right? Because I love the Order. The Order saved my life. But... what happens in two hundred years? Do I become like them?"

She opens her eyes and sits up slightly, eyeing Ethan Edwards.

"You've... got a lot of stories in you, don't you, Mr. Edwards?" Despite using his last name, her voice is... soft.

 

[Ethan Edwards]

"You've... got a lot of stories in you… “

It would be so easy.

Ethan rolls to his right, left arm moving to a rounded hip as his face closes in on hers. His eyes close as their lips meet, and his heart feels like a hammer. The man’s hands slide slowly along Cassandra’s body until they are filled with her auburn hair…

It would be so easy to give in to his needs, his wants, to let his heart feel someone else’s near it, if even for a moment; to take a chance and discover what her lips felt like against his own, to learn the taste of her mouth, what it was like with her skin pressed against his own… It would be so easy.

“… don't you, Mr. Edwards?" she asked.

There ain’t no easy life, Ethan, you know that.

The young-old man turned his head slightly, looked at Cass, looked into her eyes as they peered over the edge of her sunglasses; heard the tone of her voice and basked in the feeling of it softly saying his name. He knew what he wanted to do… knew what he was going to do.

Ethan nodded. He looked up at a limitless sky -- and knew his own limits. “I’ve got lots of stories, and lots of time to tell them to you… but maybe we should save them for another time? Get you cleaned up and back home… I can’t be so greedy as to keep you here all day, can I?”