You Can't Go Back
Dragonsfall Weyr
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Elsewhere on Pern
NPC Weyr (NPC)
River Bluff Weyr
Seacraft Hall
Writers: AmajoS, Estelle
Date Posted: 8th June 2019
Characters: A'chas, L'keri
Description: A'chas gives L'keri some advice on his relationship with Benna
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 11, day 2 of Turn 9
Notes: Mentioned: Benna, Paetri, R'axe, Ariadne
L'keri pushed his green salad listlessly around his plate with a fork.
He'd considered abandoning the diet altogether and getting a hearty
helping of pie, tubers and gravy like the rest of his wingmates, since
he felt so indifferent to life that even getting in trouble with the
Weyrhealer hardly seemed to matter. The truth was, he didn't feel
hungry, despite the long drill they'd had this afternoon.
**You did the right thing,** he told himself. **Go and get a beer. You
deserve it.** But he wasn't convinced. Maybe later, when the others
started drinking.
"Sticking with that diet, I see." A'chas said as he sat down at the
table across from his wingmate. He'd noticed the younger man sitting
alone and looking rather more morose than usual. The promise he'd made
to keep an eye on is wingmates as well as L'keri's own kind words
prompted him to come over.
"Yes, I suppose so." L'keri speared a leaf with his fork and chewed it
without much enthusiasm. "I've been on it for nearly a month now. Think
I've forgotten what real food tastes like."
A'chas couldn't help a small, amused grin at that. "Well, there are
worse things, I suppose. For instance, whatever has you brooding here by
yourself. It can't just be about your salad."
"No. Though it isn't helping," L'keri said with an effort at a smile. He
poked at another leaf, and considered making a joke of it, or offering
the other man a drink, or any of the other tactics he might have used to
fool them both into thinking that there was nothing wrong. But instead,
he sighed. "It's just been a tough month, you know. First Paetri, and
now R'axe." He'd seen some nasty injuries since the Pass began and was
no more squeamish than any experienced rider, but that one sent a shiver
of dread down his spine whenever he thought of it, which he tried not to.
Nodding, A'chas took a bite of his own food and chewed it before
speaking. He wasn't particularly good with this sort of thing, but he
liked his wingmate and wanted to help, "It has been a bad turn and a
bad month. This is not my favorite time of the turn anyway, but this
one is proving more difficult than usual."
"You'd think we'd be used to it by now. Losing people," L'keri said, a
bitter note in his voice. "But it doesn't get any easier, and the only
thing that seems to help, I'm not supposed to have." At least, talking
to a wingmate was a distraction from thoughts of how much he'd like a drink.
"Losing people is never easy," A'chas replied, his voice a quiet rasp.
"But, the people we still have help." He felt like a bit of a
hypocrite saying this, as it had always been his way to mourn alone.
But he was self-aware enough to know it had only ever made him more
miserable.
"So they say." He sighed and put down his fork, losing interest in the
salad. "Do you ever think...about what would happen if it was you? How
you'd want it to be? I mean, I'd want the Wing to have the biggest,
loudest party ever and get as drunk as harpers toasting me and all the
stupid, funny things that I did while I was with them. But after that, I
don't know. Would I want people to remember me? Or would I want them to
forget, if it made them happier?"
A'chas considered the question for a long moment, as he ate his food.
Finally, he replied, "Memories are all we have in the end. And yes,
they can be painful," how he knew the truth of that statement, "but
without them, the person we miss is truly gone forever. At least in
memories, they live on. Would you really want to forget your lost
friends? To have them as much as never having existed in the first
place?"
"I suppose not." L'keri thought back to the friends he'd lost over the
Turns. One of the weyrlings in his class, a fellow brownrider who'd gone
/between/ in drills and was never seen again. The wingmates he'd lost in
that first Fall, and since. All those who'd died in the earthquake at
River Bluff. Ariadne. Even after all that had happened, those memories
were precious.
His mouth twitched into a smile, the dreary mood easing at last. "Seems
like the best course is to make myself unforgettable. By one means or
another."
"Well, being unforgettable for the wrong things isn't great either,"
and that reminded A'chas of something. "For instance, you've been
having a lot of fights in dining caverns and corridors with a
particular greenrider lately. What's going on there?"
L'keri had the grace to look embarrassed. "Oh, that. That was my fault."
He wondered how much gossip was going around about him and Benna. The
least he could do, he thought, was set the record straight so there
wouldn't be any nasty talk about her. "We were supposed to go running
together, but I, um, overslept, and naturally, she was annoyed about it.
I was angry with myself. I didn't react well...and we argued."
"Well, that seems like an easy enough problem to fix. Take her something
pretty when you talk to her," the older brownrider advised.
"I'm not sure even the prettiest gift is going to help me now." He tried
to make a joke of it. "She'd also heard some stories about what I got up
to back at River Bluff in the old days, and she wasn't impressed. It
seems I'm forever doomed to have my past coming back to haunt me."
A'chas nodded. He'd heard some of the 'past' that L'keri was likely
talking about, and it wasn't pretty. But still, "Ah. Then take her
words as well as something pretty. Explain everything to her and hold
nothing back Be honest. Honesty is the best way to kill those ghosts."
"It's not so easy to explain." He could talk his way out of most
scrapes, but not this. "If I tell her all of what happened back then,
she'll never want to see me again. And I wouldn't blame her."
"Or you could tell her and let her decide for herself," A'chas
countered. "You need to ask yourself if you care enough about her to
take the risk. To risk that she'll do what you fear. Because the other
side of that risk is that you're wrong and she cares enough about you to
want to work through it."
He thought about his own mistake in this area. Of how he didn't go to
the woman he loved, bitter that she'd told him to stay at Dragonsfall
when she'd left. She might have sent him away again, or she might have
let him spend the time she had left together with her. He would never
know and the regret of that missed chance hurt him as much as her
death. He hated the idea of his wingmate making the same sort of mistake.
"Maybe I care too much to risk it," L'keri said miserably. For days he'd
been trying to work out how to reconcile his duty, his growing affection
for Benna, his past and the dangers of getting too close to anyone, and
suddenly he just wanted to tell someone.
"I keep thinking - we all saw what happened in that Fall. If Paetri
hadn't cared so much for her mate, maybe she'd be alive today. And then
I wonder - it's stupid, no-one would feel that badly about losing a
feckless idiot like me, but what if..." He looked at A'chas, helplessly.
"What if I went /between/ for good and she tried to follow? She's so
young. I don't want her to waste her life. Maybe it's better this way,
that I let her go."
A'chas sat back and regarded the young brownrider for a moment, trying
to decide which of the many issues he'd picked up from that statement
to address first. Deciding to stay on topic for now, he said, "No two
people react to loss in the same way." He felt like half a hypocrite,
trying to help someone with the idea of loss and grief, considering
his own emotional state, but then again perhaps he ought to use that
insight.
"Two turns ago, this month, the woman I loved died. It wasn't the same
sort of situation, of course. She didn't die abruptly in Fall, she'd
been sick for a long time, and we hadn't actually seen each other in
turns when it happened. But still." He had to stop then, to let the
quaver in his voice settle. After clearing his throat, he continued.
"I miss her every day, but never once have I thought of joining her. I
have my children and my wingmates and, most importantly, I have
Noreth. Paetri was a tragedy but she was also an anomaly. It isn't
usual for people, especially dragonriders, to react that way to
someone dying. It's unreasonable to assume that your greenrider would
do so, especially without having spoken to her about it."
L'keri listened to his wingmate's words, thinking of his own loss. He
thought he'd got over it, drowned his grief in drink and wild parties
and the punishment duties that inevitably followed. It was true that
even in that terrible moment when he'd realised Ariadne's name was not
in the list of survivors from River Bluff, he'd never even considered
going /between/ with Rhalith.
He reached out and touched A'chas's arm in a gesture of sympathy. "I'm
sorry. It's hard when..." He hesitated. "When you wish you'd done
things differently. But you can't go back and change what you did."
"No," A'chas replied, his voice barely above a whisper. He appreciated
the younger rider's words and comforting gesture. He cleared his
throat and continued, "You can't go back and change what you did. But,
you can own up to it and make up for it." He hoped, in some small way,
he was doing that now.
"Yes. Perhaps...I'll try." L'keri knew he could never ask for
forgiveness from to Ariadne, not any more. But he could make it up to
Benna for his unkind words when they'd argued. If nothing else, he owed
her that.
Last updated on the June 16th 2019