Prompt #6: Onerous
The sun had just slid past its apex by the time Aislinn found her way to Black Brush. The lack of rain in Thanalan contributed to a trail of dust that hung in her wake and a red dirt coating on Barnabas’ muddled gray feathers. She’d almost forgotten about the dust. How the grit got into everything.
Black Brush was nothing more than a dot on a map sitting just on the outskirts of Ul’dah. Blink while traveling on the passing train and you’d miss it. It had exactly two roads and one rickety tavern. Reining Barnabas in, Aislinn dismounted from the considerable height with the practiced lightness of habit. The chocobo was a beast more fit for a Roegadyn than a runt of a highlander like her. But beggars couldn’t be choosers and she had obtained Barnabas at a time when she was definitely a beggar. Maybe obtained wasn’t the right word. Maybe liberated. Stolen seemed a little harsh. Can a person steal from a dead woman?
She hitched the bird to the post in front of the tavern, far enough away from the only other chocobo there, a rangy thing a brute like Barnabas would stomp because he felt like it. For a moment Aislinn only stood before the tavern and squinted up at the building’s weathered frame. The Coffer & Coffin. No one had fixed the bullet holes in the sign. More than likely no one ever would. She didn’t want to be here. Her life wasn’t in this scrubland desert any longer. It was across the sea and in the skies.
We need to talk. It’s about Stark Oak.
“Godsdamn it.” She swore under her breath as she kicked the dust from her boots on the uneven steps and brushed the day’s ride from her brown leather duster as she made her way inside.
Blinking the sun from her eyes, she crossed the floor to the bar. This time of day the tavern was close to empty. The miners would fill the place up come sundown. For now it was just her, the bored bartender, a few barflies down at the end and the man at the table in the corner. She could feel his stare right there between her shoulder blades but when she got her order of whiskey and turned, Sterling was staring out the filmy windows.
Wordlessly, she made her way to the table and pulled out a chair.
“Is that ornery bastard still alive?” He asked, staring out at Barnabas, his black brows drawn low over his eyes in bemusement.
“Bastards tend to do that.”
He turned from the window and seemed to stare right through her, slouched in his chair with an uncanny ability to look either the shiftless vagrant or predator at rest. Like one of those paintings in which the composition changed depending on where you were standing. “So that’s how you want this conversation to go?”
“Ain’t really about what I want, is it?” She took a swallow of her whiskey and told herself it was because she wanted to and not because she needed to.
He eyed her with a shrewdness that she knew meant he was busy amending what he knew of her. They did this every time their paths crossed. Catching up to how time had carved a few more edges off but left others.
“You sending out letters in the cartel’s name now?” She asked, focusing on the warm burn the whiskey left down her throat and not the rabbit-quick, double pace of her heartbeats. Counting down until this conversation was over.
A smile slid across his face as sharp as a knife. “Hadn’t you heard? I run the cartel now.”
She hadn’t heard. Aislinn rolled this news around on her tongue like an unpalatable bit of liquor gone sour.
Reading her expression, the sharp edge of his smile blunted into amusement. “Looks like you swallowed something bad there, darlin’. You need help?”
Seven hells take him. The flash of her eyes said as much. “What happened to Cooper?”
He lifted his glass and scratched at the stubble along his jaw, those ice chip eyes narrowing as if he didn’t rightly remember and had to think back. It was all for show and they both knew it. “The Blades caught up to him. Messy business.” he said before taking a drink.
“I’m sure it was.” Aislinn would also put money on Sterling helping them along. He wore ambition like an old coat. “Suppose congratulations are in order.” She managed. Somehow.
He inclined his head to her. “Thank you.”
“Careful you don’t end up with two in the back like U’Rahna.”
“That a threat?” He drawled, flashing a toying grin.
“Just an observation.”
“I appreciate the concern.”
“So did you invite me out here to gloat or…?” She said, wanting nothing more than to put distance between them. Like two identically polarized magnets forced too close together, she felt the inexorable push.
“Kinda petty, isn’t it? What do you take me for?” Then, before she could answer, he shifted in his seat and leaned forward into the dusty motes of desert light spilling through the window casting the sharp planes of his face in a stark contrast of light and shadow. He was through with the repartee. “I told you. This is about Stark Oak.” He said flatly, his forearms coming to rest on the worn table’s edge. “The boys and I were out on a job not too long back. Out east towards Paglth’an. We skirted a little too close to one of those towers and ran into trouble. And Stark Oak. Raving mad as the rest of those tempered sods.”
“You’re lying.” She said, hating how her voice came out as a hoarse whisper.
“Why? What do I get out of that?” He stared her down.
She shifted in her seat in an attempt to loosen the fabric sticking to her skin, suddenly finding the desert heat suffocating. “Hells if I know but he’s dead. He died in the Calamity.”
“You know there was a time we thought that about you too.” There was a pause and then he leaned back in his chair as if pushed. “I’m not a bastard, Aislinn.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” The reply was right there on her tongue and ready.
His jaw worked itself back and forth for a moment like there was something he wanted to say but he thought better of it. His eyes fell to the wicked scar that carved a jagged path just under her eyes.
And just like that the air between them crackled with old, unresolved tensions. For a long, stretched out moment neither one of them moved. And then with a deliberately slow motion, he reached for his glass. Probably smart on his part. She was strung as tight as a harp string and the iron on her hips was no more than half a breath away, as quick on the draw as she was. She watched him take an unhurried swallow of whiskey in a move that told her he was buying time. He pointedly glanced at the bartender and the scattering of grizzled old men, silently reminding her they weren’t alone.
“I know what I saw. If anyone else had told me I’d write it off as bullshite. But I saw him with my own eyes.” He stated. “I wrote because I know what he meant to you.”
Stark Oak had taken her under his wing. Taught her how to shoot a gun, how to defend herself, how to fix machines. He kept the boys of the cartel away. He was a father figure when hers was busy drowning himself in alcohol.
“You can decide what you want to do with the information.”
That couldn’t be it. Sterling didn’t have an altruistic bone in his body. But it was all he was going to give her. He drained his glass and pulled his riding coat from where he had slung it over one of the empty chairs.
The scar prickled and she resisted the urge to reach up and scratch at it.
“Why?” Why had he done it? What had she done? She had never asked him. She couldn’t remember why she never had. Maybe it never mattered. He had scarred her inside and out. Maybe there was nothing he could say that would satisfy her.
“You know why.” He said as he rose from his seat.
“I’m not talking about Stark Oak.”
He stilled for a scant moment, frozen, before he got on with readying to leave. “You know that too.”
“Do I?” She asked.
“You seemed to. As I recall you weren’t shy about telling me why I did it after you picked yourself up off the floor.” Shrugging on his coat, he stared back and she felt that push, that repelling force crawling up her throat like she might lose the contents of her stomach right then and there. It made her glad the discussion was coming to an end. He straightened the leather duster, tugging just a little too hard on the front seams. Half of her wished for one of those annoyingly smug smiles that would leave her burning with the urge to put a fist in his face but there was nothing but the stark, icy gaze. “Let’s leave it at that.” And behind the ice, a rueful flicker. There and gone.
His boots echoed along the dusty floorboards at a leisurely pace as he made his exit. Aislinn stared unseeing into the corner and finished her drink, doubt swirling in her mind.
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