A Family Argument (2/2)

Writers: Avery
Date Posted: 19th October 2017

Characters: A'kades, V'rel
Description: A'kades visits Vatirel for Turnover and it doesn't go well.
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 13, day 29 of Turn 8

He sounded so sharding compassionate. Like he was worried about Vatirel.
Like he gave the dung that came out a dragonet's ass. Vatirel didn't
want compassionate understanding, he realized. He wanted his dad to be
mad at him. He wanted to pick a fight and yell.

"You're not _here," he said. He meant it to come out angry, but it came
out a little bit angry, a little bit plaintive instead.

Now that the words were happening, they just tumbled out rapidly. "You
went to Dragonsfall and you're there with the rest of your family and
I'm just here and you asked me to come over there with them. But I can't
tell if you did because you actually want me there so you can have all
of your family together, or if it's because you think you ought to offer
it to me because I'm just the awkward child at another Weyr that you
only visit because you have to." By the end of it he was out of breath.

"Vatirel, I didn't know you felt like this - " A'kades started.

"Yeah, well, why would you? You're not here," he said again. He would
have crossed his arms but he didn't want to lose all of the fabric that
he'd just gathered up, so he started walking again, much faster than before.

"You were just a child when your mother took you to Rising Moons and she
had the right to do that since she was raising you," A'kades said,
falling back into step with his son.

"I came by to visit when I could, I took you on adventures, I tried to
be involved in your life. You always seemed happy to see me. I asked if
you wanted to come back to River Bluff when your mother moved to Dolphin
Cove next, but you wanted to stay with her. And I offered to bring you
to Dragonsfall last month. Isn't that caring about you? Trying to bring
you into the family?"

All of his words were true, Vatirel knew that objectively. He'd wanted
to stay with his mother because she was familiar and a constant in his
life, unlike his father, who was a figure who popped in occasionally,
made things exciting, and left. So he'd idolized his father, but found
his real comfort in his mother. And at 12, when he was figuring out
where he wanted to apprentice, he had wanted to stick with a more
familiar figure at a new weyr then go to a new weyr with a less familiar
figure.

He'd known A'kades would never leave River Bluff. It was just the kind
of person his father was. He was a stable, practical man who found a
niche and stuck to it. He'd Impressed at River Bluff and so he would be
a River Bluff dragonrider forever. Only being forcibly transferred would
have moved him away from there. Or a disaster like had just happened.

But he could have chosen to go see his father any time. He could have
asked to be brought to River Bluff, and his father would have picked him
up and taken him there to move in. He could have fallen in with his
other half-siblings via his father, and gotten to build a place in that
family. But he hadn't wanted to. He'd liked the family he had with his
mother and his half-siblings through her, and he'd moved when she made
him, and he hadn't wanted to give up the place he'd carved for himself
in somewhere he'd come to love.

"I knew you were never going to leave River Bluff. Of course you
wouldn't. So that was fine. But then that happened and suddenly you were
free to go anywhere. Anywhere you wanted. You didn't _have _ to go to
Dragonsfall. So why didn't you come here?" he asked, voicing again the
thoughts that had been bothering him for the last month.

Vatirel knew he'd asked his dad this already but the answer he'd gotten
just hadn't been satisfactory to him, hadn't soothed the pain he was
feeling about being abandoned by his father, not being good enough for
his dad to come spend time with.

"You could /between/ to Opal Cove just as fast from here as from there.
Your other family was going to come with you no matter where you went,
right? And I was here, and you don't have any family living at
Dragonsfall. So you could have come here with me and brought them and
then it could be one family and I could see you all the time. But you
didn't do that, you went to Dragonsfall. So how am I not supposed to
think that I'm not really that important?" he challenged.

"So I see that you're stopping in here to see me before you go back to
see the important parts of your family. But you didn't have to come here
just to humor me. You can just go back to sharding Dragonsfall and stay
there for all I care!"

And with that, Vatirel picked up his steps until he was running out of
the halls and into the weyrbowl, bolting back to the Candidate Barracks
with his burden, giving his father no chance to respond.

A'kades stood there at the edge of the weyrbowl, staring after his
retreating son. He'd never imagined Vatirel felt that severely upset.
He'd thought he was just mildly bothered. Now he didn't know what to do
about it...and he still had the rest of Turnover to get through.

Last updated on the November 2nd 2017

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A Family Argument (2/2)