“It’s fine, I don’t want to go swimming,” the words came out in a deadpan, like a statement set in cold stone. The conversation was beginning to feel hollow in his ears as he watched the waves lap gently on the shore like teasing beckoning fingers.

“Oh, but I want to swim!” The temptress pouted, drawing close and touching his arm. “I promise I’ll be gentle. It’ll be fun.” She purred in his ears. Jack didn’t move, but continued to watch the waves ebb and flow with only the occasional splash of two waves meeting to break the comforting pattern of the sea. Of course it was a trick, he knew it was a trick. Long before he even spoke with Aser, he knew the sea was a fickle mistress.

“I haven’t gone swimming in a long time,” he heard the words in his voice as he continued watching the water even though he hadn’t intended to speak. He wasn’t really paying attention to the conversation anymore. He didn’t actually care and there was something pulling at his thoughts, something old and half buried. He felt it just out of reach, as if the thought would come and go with each wave.

“Oh fun! I’ll teach you again!” Aser hopped excitedly for a moment, but stopped as she apparently finally noticed he wasn’t paying attention to her, or at least not in the way that she wanted. She reached out, drawing her fingers along his jawline. Her soft fingertips brushed his throat as she pulled his chin toward her. Their eyes met. Hers enveloped him, deep pools of blue around a ring of gold. He lost himself to those pools for the barest eternity before he looked away again, turning his gaze back toward the water. “What’s wrong with you?” Aser frowned. Empathetic whitecaps began to leap from the waves and bubble away, left behind in the sand. Jack met her frown with his own. The old lost thoughts floated closer to consciousness as the stinging bilious feeling of anger welled up in his stomach. He brushed her hand away and took a step back finally tearing his attention away from the water toward her again.

“Nothing!” he snapped, “I’m a human being! I can just not like things if I want to. I’ve still got a soul remember?” Her eyes flashed a second before she smiled again. It was her other smile. This was the one he’d learned to hate. There was no good way to describe it for someone fortunate enough not to have seen it, at best he could just call it her cracked smile. There was just something wrong with it. It was perfect physically, just like the rest of her all the time, but some part of the smile just felt broken. She stepped up again and as she did so Jack found himself taking a step back to avoid her getting uncomfortably close. Water tenderly brushed his heel as he came to the waterline.

“I think I hit a sore spot” she giggled. Harmonious, tinkling laughter that made his skin crawl with the force of nails on a chalkboard. “You’re trying to hide something from me.”

“Well maybe I am,” he replied stiffly. “So what?”

“I hate secrets,” she frowned again, jutting her bottom lip out and pouting for merely a second before she cracked her broken smile. She snapped her fingers. Even before the sound had reached his ears he felt a bolt strike his spine like a lightning rod. His limbs went rigid as his body betrayed him to stand at attention. His heart pounded, each beat pumping the burning sting of electricity that wrapped and danced around his bones. Aser sidled closer her fingers absent-mindedly trailing over his shirt buttons as she pressed into his chest. He could feel her soft warmth, juxtaposed against the constant rhythmic coldness of the sea water as it flowed around his ankles before retreating again. “Why don’t you just tell me,” she purred. Her words wrapping around his brain like a toxic fog.

“I don’t like the ocean because-“he felt the words tumble from the puppet apparatus that was his mouth. He clenched his teeth to stop it, but the sentence carried on despite him. The last few words ringing in his ears with each torturous syllable, “I. Killed. My. Brother.”

Another bolt to his spine, twisting his stomach into knots as his heart panged. There was nothing magical about this one as long buried grief welled up into his chest and caught in his throat. He swallowed past the lump as hot tears blurred his vision. His jaw relaxed as the story continued. The words poured from his mouth as tears spilled over.

“He was young, not very good at swimming yet. I was so resentful that I had to watch him. I just wanted to enjoy myself. So I convinced him to follow me into the waves. I was good at talking people into things, even back then, but it didn’t take a lot to get him to do what I wanted. Still he got scared, wanted to go back to land. I just found a sandbar and told him to stand there. I told him it would be fine if he just stood there and…and that idiot believed me. He completely believed me. He knew he wasn’t a good swimmer, he knew it was too much for him, but I told him it would be alright and he believed me. He actually stayed out, and then…a wave came. It was just a little too big. Enough to push him over, and then another came to pull him away. He screamed but it was already over, it happened in seconds. He swallowed too much water and was just…gone. The lifeguards were there. It’s like they appeared out of nowhere and got us both to the shore, but he just lay there like he was asleep. He was gone and I saw it, the moment it all happened. He looked at me so scared, just pleading, like he expected me to help, like he thought I could fix it. He died terrified and disappointed.”

Snap. His muscles relaxed suddenly and his knees buckled. Without the force of magic to keep him standing at attention Jack collapsed in the sand. His body trembled unable to move despite how much he wanted to walk away, or perhaps to throw himself into the water. He sniffed, pulling up the collar of his shirt to press against his eyes and use it as a clean bit of cloth devoid of salt and sand, to wipe away the tears. Finally he stood slowly, his feet wobbling beneath him and threatening to bring him down again. He raised his gaze toward Aser. She was just watching him intently, waiting. He watched back silently before pulling the shirt up again to wipe his face. “You said redemption comes readily, but not for something like that.” He mumbled into the cloth. “Fuck, how do you even redeem something like that?” Now that the story was out he couldn’t help but say everything. The magic was gone but he felt compelled to finish it. The grief and anger had receded leaving a dull cold emptiness in his chest.

“My family wasn’t…we weren’t poor but…the funeral just put a strain on things. A bad strain, especially after…after losing the kid of the family. I was pretty sure mom and dad were going to divorce. They fought so much that most nights I kind of wished they just would. I’m pretty sure my other brother did too. He was always gone. He took any chance he could get to be out of the house. Ended up in jail one night. Kind of easy to get wrapped up with the wrong people when your home life sucks and you’re out all night. Easy to make a mistake when you’re all just so…so fucking angry at your lives and there’s no escape. Anything becomes a good excuse to just take it out on something. Makes so much sense in retrospect. It got really bad there for a while, but mom…mom was always hopeful. I fucking hated her for that. She had the audacity to think things would be okay. She kept saying things happen for a reason and if you were a good person good things would come. I remember just wanting to shake her sometimes like somehow that would make her see the shit we were all in and then she’d be as miserable as the rest of us. The kicker to all this…” he paused and swallowed past the lump in his throat again. “I never told them this but, part of what helped pull things together was I hacked the bank records. An error in our favor, the bills and shit were a little less damning. Mom said it was a sign, that things were turning around, she actually believed them being decent people actually did something. Everything turned around from there though. My brother got his act together, did after school programs and whatever to stay busy, got into a nice school. Mom and Dad patched things up, and I…well I just sort of faded out.” He took a deep shuddering breath glancing up again. Aser was still watching him like she was waiting for him to do a trick. He frowned, anger swelling again.

“You know, I wondered what kind of…what kind of world did I live in where all that could happen. I was sure there were no gods, after all what kind of gods would let an innocent kid that didn’t know any better drown to death for no reason? What kind of gods would let good people suffer but let things work out from some nasty bastard like me? It was easier when I didn’t believe. Things just happen and you can’t really help it. Good, bad, doesn’t mean anything in the long run. But then you showed up and dammit! Dammit if there isn’t a reason, if there isn’t someone to blame.” He faded off with the last few words, he dug his toe in the sand absently. Aser cocked her head to the side slightly, like a curious bird.

“So you blame me for all of that?” she asked softly. He felt the anger boiling up again. Not just anger but white hot rage. Indescribably rage that filled up his entire person. A roiling, searing, acidic sense of hatred and fury pushing and clawing for a way it. It felt like he’d lose control and any minute and simply explode, leaving nothing behind but a single miserable carbon shadow. The rage would overcome him and leave nothing but an empty shell outline of the man he had been. He felt the wet stinging of his eyes again as he answered.

“No.” his tone was a measured calm, keeping the bubbling flames of anger held back in his throat. “No. I blame myself. I am the fuck up at fault for all of that and there is no redemption coming.” He finally turned away. His legs had recovered enough to allow him to walk away down the beach. “I’m already a wretch of a man, so I don’t know what you think you’ll accomplish, but good luck. And I’m not going fucking swimming!”