The Siren & Her Demon King

Just A Weapon

We arrived to the second base soon after the ambush. When all was safe we held a small ceremony for the life lost on the way. 

I'd like to think that I wasn’t completely useless in terms of comforting those that need it. However, Kimora's ability to console and comfort was angelic in comparison. Though, I guess her abilities of empathy and the like gave her a significant advantage.

As the festivities of the after burial started, I headed back to my quarters to relax and use my remaining unoccupied time to rest. I pulled my jacket off and my shirt before lying down on my bed.

My gaze wandered up to the ceiling while my mind drifted off to all that had been going through my thoughts lately.

I was a twenty-three year old commander of a group of people that, while at one time was large, slowly and gradually dwindled into a group of thirty-five-not including small children. Thinking about this, I couldn’t help but consider the fact that if dad never left me-left us...it wouldn’t have been that way.

          “Not doing so well without you.” I mutter into the air, talking as if my father could hear me. Can he hear me? I wonder. “Why did you have to leave me?!” I find myself questioning with malice. 

    Sadly enough, my father and I hadn’t been on necessarily good terms since the death of my mother. After she died, he became even more cold toward me-harsher and merciless in terms of training and being out in the field in general. A part of me feels that he blamed me for my mother's death. Maybe he thought that I wasn't doing the duty that I was called to do-that I wasn't living up to his expectations. That maybe had I actually been what he thought should be, she would never have perished. Or maybe that was just my guilt talking. Regardless, he was harsh-brutal to me toward the end. And yet still, I missed him. I wanted him here. I needed him to guide me in the ways that I should go. I needed to know how he felt about my leadership. Surely, he’d disapprove.

    “Of course, you would.” I said aloud, thinking of how hyper critical he was toward me and everything that I did anyway.

    “Such negativity I feel in here.”

    The sound of my sister’s lightly accented voice startled my thoughts away from me. I looked at her for a moment before returning my gaze to the ceiling. Kimora and I hadn’t really talked since our exchange in the forest before we got to this place.

    “How’s the family holding up?” I asked, as she stood there in silence staring at me. I figured I’d break the silence since she didn’t seem to want to.

    “They are as well as they can be.” She said. “With my help, they’ll grieve and handle their loss accordingly.”

    I nodded. “Good.” I lifted my hands and placed them behind my head, silently wondering why my sister was still standing there. “I’m calling a meeting tomorrow morning on what our next move should be.” 

    I could tell that Kimora did not like the sound of this when I heard a sudden harsh exhale. I looked at her and saw that she had quite the fit upon her expression though, she tried to hide it.

    “Obviously, there’s something that I’ve done or said?” I said with only a slight hint of sarcasm. Obviously, I had something that she didn’t like much.

    Kimora crossed her arms and glared at me for a quick and silent moment before closing my door and approaching me closer.

    “The Wilsons are grieving Ki.” She said to me. “Don’t you think that you should give them time to grieve?” She asked.

    “I am giving them time.” I said. “Today.” I added.

    “For heaven’s sake, Ki, they’ve only just lost their father-her husband today! You really think that this is considerable enough amount of time?” She incredulously asked me.

    I sat up in my bed and looked at my older sister. “No, I don’t, Kim.” I stood from my bed, realizing that I would get no rest for that night and that it was a pipe dream to expect as much. “That doesn’t change the reality of it, however, does it?”

    “Reality? And what does that mean-”

    “Kim, we’ve went from eighty-five people to thirty-five, give or take forty within the past month of dad’s death.” I informed her, though she needed no such thing from me. She was there; she witnessed the losses that we were dealt. “The Demoi are always one-step ahead of us or very close behind. Evidence of that with the life that we just lost and the lives that we lost before him. I know that they are experiencing loss-”

    “Well then if you know that then give them time to process and grieve, Ki.” Kimora reasoned. She just didn’t seem to understand where I was coming from. “Kim they sensed your hostility in the forest. They weren’t too well- receiving in terms of your patience-or I should say the lack thereof.” She added. 

    “What are you talking about, Kim?” I asked, rolling my eyes. 

    “They felt your hostility during the fight, Ki." She said to me. 

             I turned around annoyed at what I was hearing. I mean, how could I not be?

"Of course they felt my hostility, Kim." I said cooly, masking my frustration. "I was killing people." I was quite aggravated at this point. I looked at my older sister. " I'd think that you would be the last person that I'd have to explain that to Kim." I said, hurt that I even had to point that out. “Or does my feelings on what happened not matter because I have to lead these people?” I asked.

Kim approached me and grabbed my hands, her expression in earnest as she spoke. “You know that not to be the truth, Ki!” She expressed. “You are my little sister. You are all that I have left and it bothers me that you, at your young age have been dealt such a hand as this.” She said. “I-the last thing that I want you thinking is that I don’t care about how you feel.” She sighed, her gaze turning away from me. “In truth…” She slowly said. “I am not sure that I can feel your emotions-not clearly anyway.” She confessed. I never realized this and in truth, didn’t know how to accept it. “That guilt eats at me because of all people, I’d think that I would be able to be connected to you.”

I could see in her eyes, that it bothered her-her whole character changed in that moment of her admittance. Seeing this, I knew that she wasn’t trying to be harsh with me when she told me about our people and their feelings. She just felt so hopeless in not knowing mine, relaying theirs to me was all that she could think to do.

“It’s okay, Kim.” I reassured, squeezing her hand in return. “It’s not like I’m normal anyway. So you shouldn’t stress yourself about that.” 

“Most of the suphumans aren’t normal, Ki, yet I can still read them. I can still console them-heal them.” Tears began to fall from her eyes. “You are the only one that has to live with your emotions and scars.” She sat on my bed, her face suddenly in her hands. “I am so sorry.” 

“Don’t be.” I said. “Dad had to live with his decisions too so-” Kimora looking up at me in confusion cut my sentence short. I was obviously mistaken in something that I said.

“He told you that?” She asked me.

The question alone, made me reluctant in answering her. The flashback in my head of probably the harshest training of my life-a few weeks before he died. “You have to live with the choices you make as a commander. I have to live with mine everyday...for the rest of my life.” I repeated verbatim what he had said to me that day. “That’s what he said to me.” I looked at her, anger flooding me again. I scoffed and rolled my eyes, I should have known he lied about that too. 

“Ki, please don’t do this now-”

“How much of his guilt did you wipe away?” I asked, cutting her off from her defense of our father. She didn’t answer me right away. “How much, Kim?!” 

She flinched as a small sonic wave emanated from me. It wasn’t easy to turn off my power when I was in an emotional state; especially, one of anger.

“Everything.” She hesitantly answered. “He-he said that he needed a clear conscious to make the right decisions.”

I didn’t know what else to say at this point. What else was there to say? So that’s why he always knew what to do. That was why he always knew the logical step. His mind was clear of guilt and emotion. He got to live a new slate in life every single day while I-I have to live with the hard decisions every single day of my life. How could he?

“Realistically speaking, on some level I know that this doesn’t change the hard decisions that he had to make.” I said. “It only changed the guilt behind them.” I leaned against the table in my room. “Must have been nice not to actually have to see all of those faces every night.” I could feel the tear dangling from my odd colored eye as I thought about those constant nightmares. “To have a peaceful sleep-even in knowing that you’ll have to wake up again the next morning to do it all over again. To protect a bunch people that cannot protect themselves-to live with the fact that you may even lose people along the way.” I ran my hands through my strawberry curls. “So busy training me-training his little secret weapon. If he would have bothered to at least train these people with the basics of self-defense-or atleast how to survive in the harshness that is this world now...maybe we wouldn’t have so many casualties.” I grimaced. “Then again, he was probably too hopped on what you were doing to his mind to think clearly enough on that point.”

Kimora stood from her bed. “So now its my fault?”

“Never said that.” I replied. “After all, of course you’d do whatever dad told you. You always were the golden child of both parents anyway.” I looked at Kimora. “I was only ever their weapon...and now I am only those people out there’s weapon.” I was becoming bitter at this point. “These people don’t respect me or the decisions that I make. No matter what I do for them-how many of their lives I save. I am a young and inexperienced kid who is in charge of their lives.” Resentment crept in as I thought about this. I cared deeply for these people and...a large part of me knew or at least felt that those feelings weren’t reciprocated.

“Ki, it’s not like that-” Kimora stood to try and reassure me but I knew otherwise.

“Tell me that I’m lying.” I said. “Tell me that I am fabricating everything that I have just said.” Kimora was silent for a moment, her expression suddenly incredulous. 

“How did we even get to this subject in conversation, Kieran.” Kimora said.

I scoffed. “Deflection.” I pointed out. “Clear sign that I am right.” 

Those people out there-they feigned care and compassion toward me because I was the general’s daughter-and most of all because they were afraid of me. As bad as my father and I’s relationship came to be, I still recognized the fact that his life was the only thing that kept me in good standing with those humans outside.

“You know,” I said, barely audible though I knew that my sister could hear me. “When I was younger-a little girl, I heard the adults talking to dad.” Thinking about that day wounded my heart deeply. “They said that some things should not be loved as a human but as a weapon for our greater good.” I scoffed as I thought about the harshness of their words. "Loving them as human...as a child will only give them room for emotions-we don't emotion-emotion makes a weapon unstable."

“You don’t know that that is what they were talking about, Ki-you don’t know if was even you that they were talking about-”

“She’s not your daughter, commander. She is a weapon sent to us from God.” I cut Kimora off. I knew she’d assume that I was assuming when I reiterated what was said. “She is not human-and she needs to be locked up until she is ready for use.” Ready for use? Such a harsh choice of words. “I risk my life every day for those people out there and they only think of me as a weapon.” I turned around and looked Kimora eye to eye. “To them, I am not human-I am not capable of feeling anything.”

“That’s because you stay locked up in this room during festivities. You don’t interact with them on the few days that you are out of your room. All of these things that daddy did, Ki and you-”

“Because unlike dad, I have to live with every single decision that I make, Kimora!” I snapped. “Unlike those useless humans out there, I do not have the fortune of having every bad memory-every risky or terrible decision made or the lives lost that I caused! I do not have the fortune of having that wiped from my memory-from my consciousness! You can’t do that for me! So no, I do not find myself mingling amongst them as if everything is alright. When I know that it isn’t.” My door shot open, my anger getting the best of me. I needed Kimora to leave. 

She started to open her mouth in a rebut, however, knew when my door opened that she needed to leave. Kimora resigned and headed out of my room.

“I am the youngest here,” I said. “Aside from these children. So it really disappoints me when I say that you-and all of your people need to wake up. We are not safe and I am only one weapon.” I said sarcastically. “The quicker they realize this-the quicker you all realize this, the better off we’ll all be,” I said. “The meeting continues on as planned,” I informed. “Let everyone know.” I didn’t even allow her to say another word before I closed the door.