A Little Rant

Nils was still glaring when he finally pulled Connie aside. "Why did you-how could you? Really, how could you?" He made a motion to do something, though it was not clear to either of them what he was trying to do. "Don't you trust me at all? You know I can act. You know I could have kept this secret."

Connie sighed through her nose and managed a sad smile. She had known from the start that this would be painful, but she'd always hoped for understanding. "It wasn't a question of trust, sweetie. It was a question of timing and tactics. As a large cohesive unit, we were very high profile targets and few of us were combat capable. Aimee had already brought up the idea of going our separate ways for a while to become more powerful, but everyone said it needed to be discussed and basically blew her off. It needed to be done, quickly and in a way that would be believable enough to take us off the collective Titan radar. We wracked our brains till we were blue in the face; this method held the best odds."

"You never would have agreed to it in any case, family is too important. You would have dug your heels in and insisted that we talk it all out with everyone, then you and Simon would have kept going back and forth trying to find other options while the window of opportunity closed. We couldn't let that happen."

He shook his head. "That's not... You two don't just get to decide what's best for us! We're not your fucking toys or pets or puppets. We're your friends. Were your friends, anyway. This is not how friends act."
He bit his lip, irritated to find that there were tears in his eyes. "I trusted you. Both of you. With my life, with everything I had. For years. But you couldn't see fit to trust me. You lied about everything."
Nils started pacing, finding he couldn't look her in the eye. "The three of us were a unit. I'm not claiming to have EQUAL stakes in your relationship, but I had a damn sight more than anyone else out there. Did you even consider that? Did you even fucking care?"

"And we trusted you to not try to drink yourself to death a second time." Connie sat on the back of a couch, swallowing hard and clasping her hands to keep from doing anything rash. It really wasn't fair of her, she'd had a whole year of weighing the odds to convince her that it really had been the only viable option and Nils was still running through the initial stages. Erasing the bite from her voice, she returned to a calm tone but couldn't quite exclude the sadness. "I'm sorry, that was uncalled for. Of course we care. That's why we tried so hard to find a way around this whole mess. If we hadn't cared, then we would have taken advantage of the most opportune moment and had it out in front of everyone right there in the Labyrinth. We wanted to tell you but they were still keeping tabs on us; the only reason this worked was because Aimee and I broke each others' hearts and stayed the hell away from each other. If we had told you early, then we'd just be having this same conversation while the others were vulnerable and rocketed us all right back up the wanted list in the process. They would have gone after the solitary ones first, Nils, that means Bea and Simon and Ronnie. At least one of them would have been dead before we even knew they needed help." She didn't even notice that she was holding the more powerful name for last where the human mind would automatically place more importance.

"I'm not proud of it, but this is how friends act when there's no other choice. We may be princes of the universe, but we are not the center of it. Our feelings are inconsequential when compared to the lives of all those hundreds and thousands of people we saved by spreading out. Can you look me in the eye and tell me truly that we did more good in that first year staying here in College Station then in the year we spent traveling? If you can say that and actually believe that you are more important then every person you helped then I will gladly kiss the ground beneath your feet and proclaim that I was wrong for all the worlds to hear."

His face froze in an angry expression. He wheeled around, hands clasped tightly in fists. "Now I know you're not the same Connie you were. Back when you were someone I recognized I could have counted on you not to use that as a weapon against me." He laughed bitterly.
"I've spent the past year fighting my demons and winning, against the thought every day that everything I cared most about had fallen to pieces. Stupid me, I held it together because I wanted to be the person I ought to be when I finally managed to bring you two and everyone else back together.
Do you know how much time I've spent battling that shit? How much time of my life I've spent in crowded bars and clubs where everyone has a drink but me? No, I don't expect you do. I never made a fuss about it, because what I was doing was more important. But how dare you. How fucking dare you compare a willful decision to control all of our lives to a fucking disease that I've spent all of my time fighting."
He didn't acknowledge the apology. "Yeah. But you didn't care enough to treat us like people. I'm sorry you two had to stay away from each other all year, though apparently you were in touch somehow. Break my fucking heart. You made the decision. You made a conscious decision not to trust any of us. Clearly you were the only one who could be trusted to keep us safe. None of us have any free will or intelligence to make our own fucking decisions." He wiped his eyes angrily.
"NO. Don't delude yourself into thinking you acted as a friend. Maybe you acted in our interest, but the moment you decided you were better capable of making our decisions you stopped being a friend to any of us."
He turned back to her swiftly. "This isn't about the good we've done, the people we've helped. I don't regret a moment of that, and don't try to act like that's what this is about. You didn't talk to us. After the Labyrinth, I think we understood. We would have done what we needed to, and if need be, we would have even faked some big blowout. We could have done this if you'd respected us and our right to make decisions. Who was it that made a point of visiting all of us that could be found? Oh, that's right, it was me. I went to talk to Simon, I went and held Esperanza as she mourned for all of us. I did what I could to ease the pain of the break up for both of you. Because there is literally nothing on earth that I would not have done for you. Do you understand that?"

Sitting with patient sadness and a steadily engulfing irritation, Connie let him ignore the obvious and rant away. Of course she wasn't the same as she was a year ago, none of them were. And of course he didn't realize that she'd raised a mirror to him instead of a weapon. Oh, Frigg. It was as if he thought the entire purpose of the plan was to wound him specifically.

She smiled with just a hint of chilly steel spine once he paused for rebuttal. "Oh, I understand. I understand that the Child King of Hypocrisy is the only one allowed to have delusions. I did not say 'talk it out in the Labyrinth', I said 'have it out', which as you may recall is a vernacular phrase meaning 'fight'. Talking was never an option. You would have tried to keep the debate going until it was a moot point. Simon would have been paralyzed with calculating every possible variable combination. And since we couldn't talk to the two friends who matter most to us, we certainly couldn't talk to anyone else."

"Do not pretend that you were the only person visiting, we both know that is false. We both know that we have all changed, we both know that there are some things you simply will not do for us, and we both know that I am holding a mirror to you and not a weapon. It doesn't matter if you don't like what you see, I will have my say and then this conversation will be finished for the day. You. Broke. Trust. First."

Sliding to her feet, Connie continued without pause, frustration and pain lurking beneath the surface calm of her expression. "You'd had one foot in a bottle since the day we met, but when we all had our worlds turned upside-down and shattered and needed each other most you made a conscious decision to shun your friends and drown yourself in drink. No one could possibly understand a fraction of the pain that the great Nils Anthony suffered, no one could sympathize, no one could give solace or help. No matter what anyone said or did, Nils Anthony knew better so onward down the rabbit hole until Aimee dragged you kicking and screaming into sobriety. You had beaten the demons THEN, you had won, but the instant something untoward happened you dove deeper into the bottle then ever. We were ecstatic when you cleaned up for Mary's sake, everyone has things that they will not do for anyone but kin, but there was no way to know if you could keep it up or if the next bump in the road would undo you completely again. That is why trust was never in question, Nils, because you hadn't rebuilt enough of it for us to know that you would see the plan through. It was almost a moot point anyway, I was dead certain that you and Simon had seen through the ruse from the beginning and were playing along because you understood that the 920-something Million souls on these two continents are more important then a mere eight individuals."

"Now that we are both aware that we have wounded each other deeply, I shall leave you to your fuming. If it makes you feel better to cast me as the villain of the piece, then by all means do so. But until you've calmed down enough to think with your head instead of your heart, neither of us will understand the others' viewpoint well enough to offer a sincere apology. Until that day, Your Worshipfulness, adieu."

Without another syllable, Connie turned on a well-crafted high heel and hastened away with metaphorical quills bristling. It was beyond pointless to try and talk to him just then, all he would do was dig his heels in and spew vitriol in an attempt to make her feel as hurt as he did. She certainly wasn't going to apologize when he was being such a child. Abruptly turning a corner, Connie strode into the library and closed the door behind her in order to locate Aimee with some measure of privacy. She needed to know the gist of the conversation, it would not be nice to let her get ambushed by Nils when he was like this.

((End for moi, thank you so much for an enlightening rant. ))

Nils' immediate instinct was to haul her back and make her listen, or punch her or something. He was annoyed to find that he was crying hard now, and he was equally furious. For the first time, he wished he shared Bea and Aimee's ability to throw cars. It would be really satisfying right about then.
For the billionth time, he wished he could get away with diving into a bottle, but the last thing he wanted to do was prove Connie right. Even if the idea of her feeling guilty over driving him back to drink was appealing. He didn't want Connie and Aimee's stupid decision to hurt Esperanza and Mary any more than it already had.
He swore ineffectually at the sofa for a moment before turning and heading for his room, claiming Watson on his way up. He needed a good cry, a cuddle with Watson (which was much more satisfying with Watson this size), and to make a blog post. Then he'd go talk to Aimee and hopefully get a little more rational response from her. She didn't pull her punches, but she'd never been cruel, like Connie had turned out to be.