Alwyn tensed up, more than he had during the entire time at the bar or in combat on the streets, when he heard that knock on his door. Every son in the world knew by heart how their mother rapped on their doors, and even through the decades of training since he was a kit, it could still rattle him. As predicted, his mother walked in confidently, and, as predicted, made one of her cutting “educating” remarks intended to get him to reform his behavior, one of the possibly thousands she had made to him and his siblings during the times she actually was around them these days. And, as always, before he could make a snarky reply, such as “you would know best, mother” or “maybe we should ban you from meeting colonels given our shared heritage”, she switched gears into a more protective motherly mode and threw him off balance, despite her attempts to hide it. The same song and dance they had ever since the fateful day his father had returned from Amarone a traitor, and his own life had permanently changed for the worst.
I, maybe alone out of all of us siblings, still remember when things were not so…broken. When she and father were happy, before we returned to this place. Her ruffling my ears in the inner garden at Storm’s Peak after a training bout with Daniil. Father giving me advice. I…
He decided not to say anything in reply to her first searing comment, even if he could have made a cruel comeback to it. Somewhere, deep in whatever minuscule and deformed hearts his parents might still have, he believed they loved their kits. They were just...awful...at expressing that, not helped by the circumstances of their births. His mother’s comment was meant, in her own frigged up way, to be less cruel and more to try to get him to reform himself for his own good. But she did not...maybe could not...understand...even Daniil, being more emotionally perceptive, had focused more on the fact that he had threatened to give that old bastard todd a bit of his own medicine more than the fact his cousin was on the deep inside, despite appearances, a husk, a facsimile of the beast he had once known.
He took a long, deep breath to calm himself down as had been drilled into him, then let his training take over, replying likewise in more of a flat tone, and not the perhaps more fitting one of a damaged son confronting his equally damaged mother. That kind of conversation was one neither he nor Dusk were at all ready for and actively avoided.
“The mission was a success in the end…” he began, pulling from beneath his gown the ledger which he had guarded with his life “...this should put us, once the cipher is broken, one step closer to Reston, and by extension, one step closer to the family backing him and likely other Supremacist groups. The elderly todd we took in, with a bit of…” he trailed off, trying to find the politically correct words for the evil he knew must be sometimes done in order to prevent even greater evil “… ‘enhanced interrogation’ from you should help you crack it far sooner. The vixen, Veltra, knows what he looks like, and despite her claims, I thinks a softer touch and an offer of compensation and relocation in the end could be enough to turn her into one of your agents.”
He paused, returning his gaze to his mother’s. While he was good enough at bluffing to deceive more than a few beasts, even if he were not her son with all his “tells” memorized as his training had put it, she was too perceptive enough for him to deceive directly. After all, she was made the Minister of Misanthropy for a reason. Repressing a sigh, he continued.
“There were...complications...some that I should have foreseen, others that I could not. I should have scoped the building out more ahead of time to get a firmer grasp on all the entries and exits, known there was not a ground-level backdoor instead of assuming there was one. Should have been more indirect in my approach, befriending one of them ahead of time at another location, thus getting easier and faster ‘cred’ as they put it rather than having to prove myself. Spent more of the operational funds on a standby ‘team’ in the event anything went wrong rather than trying to...economize…” he coughed, trailing off on that last point and hoping his mother did not look too deeply into that. He had been planning to pocket at least fifty percent of the 2,500 gilders allocated for the mission to both restore his coffers from the month’s earlier mishaps with the three vixens from the Bowen Arrow and fund future adventures in that area and then fully spend the other half on “mission critical expenses”, namely, vixens and drinks at the bar.
“What I could not have foreseen was Daniil and Caden, yes, that Caden in my report, together outside of work, at that bar. I do not know why, perhaps Minister Grosvener sent them there in some miscommunication to do something similar…” the two had explicitly told him that was not the case, but, he could not be one hundred percent sure they had not been sworn to secrecy on that even to him, and, perhaps, deliberately entertained that idea so that he could deceive his mother with the “truth” as he saw it, something his family loved to do “...at any rate, I tried to ‘improvise’ and keep things calm. It seemed to be working, but the vixen, Veltra…”
He paused to take a breath, and to mentally reframe Daniil’s complete and utterly uncharacteristic public freakout that destroyed any chance they had of getting out of there without blood being spilled as something he could truth-deceive his mother with “...took something that Daniil said a bit more than he perhaps intended, and things moved far too quickly from there for me to find another way to deescalate with my more...limited...training in that area as a member of the Guard.”
Hopefully, his pivot to focusing on his own failures would take some of the heat off his cousin.
“A prompt and less...destructive...exfiltration, let alone the successful completion of the mission, soon became an impossibility, given the numbers we were facing. Once I realized that fighting would break out, it would occur in a closed area where the odds would be at least ten to one, if not more like fifteen to one. There was a severely limited limited ability to find favorable footing to limit the advantage of our foe's numbers or leave without drastic measures, and both Caden and Daniil were not equipped for a protracted fight even with better circumstances, and while I had somewhat better equipment…” he inclined his head towards the wound on his left arm, then towards the plate armor with a hole in at at the entrance of the room “...it was not the typical plate of the Guard except for the breastplate, which even then was a cheaper copy, given the role I was playing..."
He took a drink from the pitcher of water left near his bedside by one of the nurses to wet his dry mouth before continuing.
“In short, I had to ‘adapt' in numerous areas in the moment, including starting a fire as a distraction, to both accomplish the mission and protect Daniil and Caden. I…” he winced slightly , knowing that his mother never liked to hear the following words “did the best I could, given the situation, and my own lack of preparedness.”
A long pause continued as she studied him, and he averted his eyes and looked down towards the floor once more like a kit being caught stealing from a cookie jar, and said the hated words that felt like he was swallowing broken glass shards down his throat in order to further deflect blame from Daniil and Caden.
“I am sorry, mother.”
