Balk

Author: Seth

"Sometimes there comes a point where you've gotta draw the line."

A stiff wind blew across the bone dry dirt road, kicking up clouds of reddish dust. Coughing lightly, Mitsuyuki tucked his small necklace into his striped shirt before drawing the garment over his nose.

The blonde decided, as he blinked grit out of his eyes, that he infinitely preferred his last posting. At least the sea had fresh, clean air.

Not that what he wanted mattered all that much. Orders came, he obeyed. That was all there was to it.

Some of those orders could be… demanding, and obeying wasn't always easy, but then what use was a loyal servant if the things demanded of him were always straightforward? None at all, and that was the reason he held value.

He'd learned early on that the world was seldom kind to fools who faced the odds, and that to survive you had to have something that gave you worth. For him it was his ability to live more than one life, manoeuvre on more than one level, and it has served him well enough to land him in the service of those for whom the odds were very much in favour.

Even knowing these truths, even having received the great fortune to serve the Talons, he is still human and there are times when his heart overrides his logic. He's never truly betrayed those he serves, though. He knows better than to bite the hand that feeds him, but sometimes he falters.

His presence on this dusty, abandoned pathway is the result of one such attack of conscience. One that he has been struggling with for years.

Uncomfortably, he fingers his dagger. This silent battle between his heart and his head has gone on far too long; it's high time he made a choice. Failing to do so will lose him everything he has ever had.

Slowly, despite his wishes and better judgement his thoughts drift back to the Sorazame and the companions, the friends, the family (for there is truly no other word for it) he has there. He won't be able to return if he carries out his orders.

Well, that wasn't strictly true. He could return, would have to return, but it would not be the Yuki who'd sailed the seas with them for all those years who came back to them. His life with them would be a shell of what it was, he would be a shell of who he was, just as it had happened before.

He can't continue doing this, leaving his lives behind as so many empty shells, tossed on the surf. He knows this, and hates himself for it because it will get him killed. His undoing, orchestrated by his own ideology, is not an irony he wishes to experience any time soon.

His lives are spent; he has already left far too much of himself behind in the other two to do it again.

Ironically enough, it is his logic that finally provides him with an answer.

Alone, cloaked in whirling clouds of ruddy dust, Sanka pulls down the neck of his shirt and fishes out a simple necklace, a length of hardy cord with a small piece of crystal strung onto it.

It is a symbol, and a reminder. That he is a servant, always, of the Talons. But, he reminds himself, the whole clan pays homage to the royal family, and the monarch from whom he has received his orders has not always sat upon the Empyreal throne.

True, only half of their blood may be that of the highborn, but it is of the highest born. Even if his justification should prove unsound, they are not his only option.

After pondering for a moment his expression sets into one of resigned… contentment? And why not? His path is set; he doesn't need to make any more choices.

Smiling ironically the pirate sets off again in the direction he was initially traveling. It wasn't as if his plans needed much changing. He'd been planning on picking up a new dagger for ages now, and he heard that the weaponsmith of the Guild was the best. He wouldn't mind picking up a kasa while he was at it, the sun had been interminably hot this summer.