There any reason I should feel the same?
Ahh, so there was the real question; that was what John was really getting at. Assessing if he was a threat, still, if he wanted him dead - but really, if he, or Hicks, or anyone else in the near vicinity had wanted him to die, they'd have simply left him to wander in the desert, until he died of dehydration, or something found him. All the same, he doubted that answer would satisfy the man, and so he mulled over it; how could he prove he was not a threat to the man in any manner other than his actions? He had not attacked him while he was sleeping, he had not at any point showed any sort of real aggression towards him...But the full details of the story were not one he was ready to disclose just yet. Isaacs was silent for a while, and listened instead to the man's recounting of his time in Mars.
Some good men and women - he didn't miss the stress on the word. Then there were those who weren't so benevolent present as well; and indeed, this Sarge fellow seemed to have caused problems for the marine in front of him. He nodded quietly as he listened, but his expression twisted into a faint hint of confusion at the words; The dig should've never been reopened.
What was that about, then? What dig? Was the dig the cause of whatever disaster had befallen this man and his team? It was an interesting concept, to be sure. His eyes slid along the other, a pale shade of blue, quiet, contemplative. The other looked somewhat spent, tired still despite the small amount of sleep they had both gotten, and he looked...softer, somehow, than Isaacs had before realized - not soft in the same manner that children were soft, but more akin to...something like a reptile, perhaps, with armor to protect it, but a soft underbelly, and vulnerability hidden under a thin layer of scales.
John, Isaacs was beginning to think, was not half so strong as he was pretending to be, in anything other than a physical sense.
After a long moment of silence, the Priest spoke up again, voice quiet between them; and this time, he did not look quite at John as he spoke, as if he couldn't quite bring himself to face him, and his resemblance of the man he spoke of.
"We were both members of the clergy, and there was...an accident. I was not strong enough to help him, and we thought him dead - when we found him again, he was...bitter." The words came slowly, as if it took real, physical effort to draw them forward and offer them to the other man - Isaacs was not a man to bare his heart, and he refused to do so now. The bare minimum - that was what he would tell. "He had...changed, and not for the better, and he felt resentment towards me; and so, we fought."
He hoped that that would be enough to satisfy the other; if not, then it would be unfortunate, because he thought himself incapable of recounting more intimate details of that encounter tonight. Already he imagined he could taste the acrid smoke from the train mixing with the blood in his mouth in a sickening cocktail that made his stomach lurch to recall. Isaacs was white-knuckled and tight-lipped, his fingers curled together, the short nails digging slightly into the cloth that wrapped his hands, as if trying to find the tender flesh beneath, to scratch and claw in some odd form of brutal penitence for the shame of fighting with one he'd called Brother.
Had there been another option? At the time, the solution had seemed clear, if unpleasant, but now, sometimes, in the dark, he wondered if there had been another path, some unseen branch of the road he might have tread that might have saved the man - that might have saved them both. The conclusions were rarely pleasant, and often blasphemous, and he avoided the train of thought for now, eventually raising his eyes to look the other over once more in the almost sickly yellow glow of a lamp in the corner, spilling light that more of oozed than illuminated, pooling around objects and casting long shadows.
yousharknotpass
andulkaphoto
annaxmalina
snowghoul
kianamaiart
pixelskylines
kaledo-art
