Brave, Young, and Chosen

The small tavern is still bustling now that the sun has set. The clientele is respectable, all wearing ties and button-down shirts. The upbeat music and loud conversations help to drown out the whispered dealings in many of the booths. A young woman enters the building, not drawing much attention. 

The woman, her name is Beth, carries an Electron Rifle. This is far from abnormal in this establishment; the majority of the patrons are armed, to varying levels of concealment. As soon as she enters, Beth makes her way to the front of the Tavern where she orders a Blood Tempest. She feels that the name is a bit over the top, but that was the passphrase she was given. 

The server smiles and tells her there isn’t any in the front, asking if she would be so kind as to join him in the back. The server is well practiced in this, for even though he hasn’t met this woman before, the tavern’s hands-off and enigmatic owner often arranges meetings with an eclectic list of clientele. Although, he wonders at the woman who appears, upon close examination, to have the emblem of the Ghosts sown above her heart–he does not, however, wish to sate his idle curiosity. And so the server leads Beth to the room. Ushering her inside before closing the door behind her. 

There is a man sitting at a table, an array of food laid out before him. The man is well-dressed and covered in scars. His suit, though well pressed and ironed, has a hole burned into one of the sleeves. Beth doesn’t know what to say to him and stands there for a moment. She has exchanged letters with this man, her uncle, Lord Absalom before. But this is her first time meeting him in person and she is afraid. 

He turns to her with a smile and gestures for her to sit down across from him. “Hey. Look at you. It’s my little Beth. You’ve become quite the hero I’ve heard.”

She sits and looks into her uncle’s eyes. She finds a kind of courage as momentarily forgotten anger flows back through her. “So you’ve heard. Because you weren’t there to see any of it yourself.”

“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t think you’d want to grow up always lumped in with your traitor of an uncle. I was planning on reaching out to you later when you were older. But you joined the Ghosts, and that’s the one place you can’t go back to.” He feels a kind of regret. But his words are careful. He believes that he was right.

“You might be the most powerful man in the world. If you had really wanted to, you would have met with me sooner. Was it too inconvenient for you to deal with me? Or were you just too cowardly to talk to the niece that you abandoned, even though you’re the only person I have left? That’d fit with the other things I’ve heard about you.”

“Maybe I am a coward. You probably will be too when all of this is over. You can’t see all of the things I’ve seen, all the things you’re going to, and not be scared out of your mind.”

The sliver of a smile lined the hard edges of her voice. “It sounds like you spent a lot of time creating reasons for never talking to me.” 

“Maybe I did. But I’d like to make up for it now.”

“Make up for it? You think you can just call me here after all this time and make everything right with a few words? Do you know what I’ve been through?” Beth looked and watched the saddest smile she’d ever seen roll across her uncle’s face before fading.

“Yes. I do. I’ve followed everything you’ve done; I’ve watched over you from a distance. And I understand it better than anyone else. I lived it, after all.” He doesn’t want to think about his time with the Ghosts, but the memories are coming back to him now, forced to the forefront of his mind by the emblem on his niece’s shirt.

“You’re the only family I have left. I don’t know if I can just let you in. It’s not that simple. Trust isn’t built overnight, especially after so many years of abandonment.”

“I get it. I’m willing to do whatever it takes. If you need time, I’ll give you time. I just don’t want to lose you again.”

A peel of sad laughter breaks forth from her lips. “Lose me? You never really had me in the first place. But fine, we can try.” Beth takes a plate and finally begins to eat. Abasolm is quite noticeably cheered by this. “Why are you talking to me anyway? After 19 years with only a few brief notes, you didn’t set up this meeting ‘just cuz.’”

“I did want to finally see you,” he begins, though he winces at the look on her face. The conversation hasn’t gone quite as he had planned and he wonders if he should have broached the idea in a letter. But then, she might not have come. “But, you’re right, I didn’t just ask you here to say hi. I wanted to offer you a chance to leave the Ghosts.

Beth’s face hardens considerably, her willingness to hear him out vanishing. “I should have expected something like that. But I’m not a coward like you are. I’m not going to run away and abandon my duty. The Ghosts are trying to save the world. No, we are saving the world. We stopped the air raids on Manila. We felled the Sea Serpent off the coast of New Zealand. We are turning back the tide. The Ghosts, they give my life meaning, the greatest meaning it could have: saving so many people.”

Beth’s voice catches as she speaks. “Joining the Ghosts is the only way I can fight back against all the threats…  I’m Chosen; I have a duty.”

“Yeah. I know that feeling.”

Beth doesn’t believe him. No one who had felt that, no one who cared about the countless millions suffering, would abandon the Ghosts as he had. “Then why would you leave? Why did you abandon them, us, everything we’ve worked for? Don’t you want to save the world, or are you just that cowardly and selfish that you would let everything burn.”

Absolom lowers his voice, not fully knowing the words to say. “Everyone always talks about saving the world. It’s the same dream the Ghosts sold me on when I was younger. They said I was Chosen, that I had a duty and a destiny. I was young and naive—not even half the hero you are now. It took a few years for all of that to get beaten out of me. But the world’s a big place. It’s not just Earth, but cities on the moon and satellites with populations, right? It’s a lot for one person to protect. See, the Ghosts, they always tell you that you’re winning and that you’re an integral part of that. 

“But you’re not. Sure, you’re doing good, you’re helping so many people. But you’re also losing. After every victory, the enemy just regroups, there’s another battle. How many grand victories have you had? How many will you have before you realize this isn’t going to end?

“It took me a while until I could see the grand picture like that. The Ghosts, they sell you on this grand image of your importance because they need soldiers to fight their battles. But they don’t need you.”

“They’re using you as fodder, you get that, right?”

“How can you say that? We’re Chosen. There aren’t many people that can do what we can. One of us is worth almost a hundred ordinary men.”

He had heard those words before, said those words before. “That’s repeated almost word for word from your instructors. But if one of the Chosen leaves, they’ll find another.” He lowers his voice and lets slip some of the malice bubbling inside of him. “When I left, they took my niece. I will never forgive them for that.”

There is a moment where nothing is said. Beth pauses eating, considering her uncle’s words. She doesn’t quite think they’re right but doesn’t want to argue the point. She can see the anger writhing within him. His time with the Ghosts left him with scars. And, though she won’t admit it, she has her doubts. She speaks carefully. “Well, it’s still something that needs to be done, even if the things you’re saying are true. And, well, at least they’re doing something. I don’t know how well that remark of yours holds up; I’ve seen many of the Ghosts give their lives for the cause.”

“Oh, most of them believe. Back when I was the member, tyrant though he was, believed in what he was doing. He believed it enough to die for it, to send others to die for it. It was everything for the Ghosts, for humanity. There’s a reason not many people from the old days are left.”

“At least they believe in something.” She murmurs.

“I believe in something too. Just because I don’t align myself with the Ghosts anymore doesn’t mean I have no convictions. I left because of my convictions. I buried too many of my friends that should never have fought. Eventually, I decided that the Ghosts weren’t worth supporting anymore. Too many died for their greater good.”

“And now you spend the rest of you’re time and energy doing nothing worthwhile. Your one great act was to turn against the only organization that has any chance of saving us, of turning back the darkness, and instead joining a group of marauders. Maybe if you did something positive, the first time I’d be seeing you wouldn’t be a clandestine meeting in the back of a tavern.”

He’s quiet for a moment before he says, “When everything has gotten this bad, you need people you can depend on, people who will look out for you. I’m not going to pretend the marauders are good people—most are no better than I—but we look out for each other. Many have children that they need to provide for. You and the Ghosts talk about saving the world, about sacrificing everything to take on the big threats. But, well, the world is worth saving because of the people in it. Many of the marauders have children, many are wounded, many permanently. You’ve called me a coward three times now. And you’re right. I don’t see any way out of this, anyway for us to fight everything that’s going against us. So we don’t, we just do our best to provide for ourselves and hold on for as long as we can.”

Beth’s voice raises to a shout. “No, you don’t get to pretend to be the old tired philosopher who sees the truth of things. You don’t just get to proclaim that everything is hopeless and that you might as well just look out for yourselves. In the face of the end of the world, someone has to stop it.”

“Even if that’s true, it shouldn’t be on you. None of this, none of this should be on your shoulders. You’re nineteen. It’s too much for a teenager, to bear the weight of the world on her shoulders. It’d be too much for most people but it definitely shouldn’t fall upon a teenager.”

Her voice now provides a sharp contrast to her previous tirade, being just about a whisper. She sounds so tired and scared. “Maybe it shouldn’t have to be me, but it has to be someone.” Tears begin to fall. “And we’re- we’re, We’re all hanging on. 

“If you really wanted it done by someone other than a teenager you’d resume your post. You know that’s why I’m here right, because you gave up, on all of us.

“They said that you were the best of us once. Throughout my time at the Ghosts, I’ve heard people talk about you. You were the greatest among them, a Chosen among other Chosen. And then you left everyone for a group of marauders. I was never able to figure out how to feel about you, whether I should try to measure up to your example or else atone for your missteps, and prove to everyone else that I wasn’t like you. And the one thing I knew was that, even if I didn’t know you, I missed you. I wanted to meet you, either to give you a piece of my mind or else just to talk to you.

“Now you’re here and you’re asking for me to give up, to abandon the Ghosts, to play the Wormwood to your Screwtape. Maybe you’re right that the Ghosts are corrupt, that they’re using me, that I’m just their doomed champion. But the Ghosts did show how bad things have gotten, the untold hundreds dying as storms and armies tear across the planet. Even you admit they’re right. I can’t just look out for a few people. I’m willing to risk everything if it means I can put a stop to this. I’m willing to risk it for even a chance.”

Absalom looks resigned. Even before he began this conversation, a part of him had known this would be how it ended. “Fine. But I want you to remember that the world is a better place because you’re in it. Don’t think that you only have value as a Chosen or for the Ghosts.”

“I don’t. But I can help like this in a way that not many others can,” Beth replied.

“I used to think like you. And I don’t know if anything would have changed my mind then. I just wanted to talk to you, to give you a chance at a life.

“Maybe you’ll be the hero I wasn’t. Maybe you will finally win.”

“We’ll see.” She stands. “I have to go now. We don’t want the Ghosts coming here and finding you do we.”

He smiles. “No, that would be inconvenient.” And then he tosses her something. Surprised, she catches it. “It will let you talk to me whenever. If you press the button, wherever I am, I will hear you. If you, or your friends, are ever in trouble I’ll be there, Ghosts or not.”

“Thanks. We’ll see each other again.”

“We can only hope.”