writing adventure 36- C.O.o.t.P.: Bagveina and Duena

This is a tie-in to a larger story I wrote, which is called Climbing Out of the Pit. It is about two young adults (about 20 in this spot) who are stuck in a world they don't wish to inhabit. One is Bagveina: a newly crowned emperor of Ickant that never wanted the throne or the responsibility that comes with it (his older brother dies and leaves the throne to him). The other is Duena: an orphan of Pittopia that goes by the code name Small One to protect a country that has given up on itself.

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     She doesn't understand. This is what he'll say when she grabs his hand and tells him he can't go. She might cry, but it will be dark and tears from hearts that he broke have never affected him before. This is different, though. He helped her when she was just an orphan, and she helped him when he was just an angry and neglected son. This frightens him, makes him question his decision to meet her. He's leaving her, knowing that she'd never do the same.

     Small One never leaves; she is a ghost tied to Pittopia, tied to a love he never fully reciprocated but could never fully forget. But he must go on, because Ickant is killing him in a way he hadn't thought possible, screaming at him to be a brother he always hated and rule a country he never loved.

     The moon scowls at him but falls gently on Duena, who is waiting by the sign that used to say "Marimba, Pittopia" but is now littered with gang signs from the EMP. She smiles at him, and they embrace, and his throat catches with the memory of the last time they were in Pittopia together. He had crossed the border as only an emperor's reckless brother, and she had saved him from the king's men.

     "I'll die before I let Jacob get to you," she had said then, and she will be right. He had told her he loved her, and she had repeated those words, but it had never been real. He always laughed right afterwards, and she always smiled with sadness and looked off into the distance. He always went back to his country above ground, and she always stayed in the Pit.

     "I'm leaving," he tells her, and doesn't watch her face fall. 

     Duena fights the urge to kiss him, embrace him, shackle him to the dirty sign, and instead says, "If that's what you need, I can make sure no one finds or follows you."

     He hesitates, but doesn't look up. "No one will find me," he says, and begins the journey back to Ickant.

     "I love you, Bagveina. Not in the way we've said before. In the way that, some days, this place means nothing to me. Some days, I want to fall asleep in your arms and stay in the east. I can't be more than a Pittopian, Bagveina, but I can love you like you need."

     He stops, and finally realizes that he is lost without her, but she is only lost when he is there. "Love," he sighs, and doesn't turn around before continuing. "You are the daughter Pittopia doesn't realize it has. I am the son Ickant doesn't realize it's killing. Tell me, Duena, where did love get us?"

     She is silent for only a second before he begins walking again, away from her.

     Maybe, he thinks–hopes, even–that two years down the road they'll be able to look at each other and not wonder if they would be happy together. Maybe he'll have someone who hasn't seen the worst of him, and she'll have someone who is better to her than he ever was. What he doesn't know is that two years from now she will take a walk and never reach her destination, and he will look up from his work and find death waiting for him as well.