Journey of the Son of Ares

"Tell me, Aurelius. If someone killed your entire family, what would you do to that person?" Balgair asked briefly after they sat down in a mostly empty café for breakfast.

Aurelius scratched at the cloth on his head with a dubious look. Then he looked toward Cade, who was sipping her tea peacefully, like she hadn't just heard what Balgair said. She looked back at him.

She was a hard person to read, but when she wanted to, she could communicate her emotions without words quite obviously. This time, her eyes seemed to say, "Do not get me involved."

After the clear rejection, Aurelius turned back to Balgair, and with an expression twisted by uncomfortability, he answered, "I would kill him."

"Yeah, of course, but how? You'd make it painful, right? Do what he did to your family times 100."

"Eh, I don't think that would be necessary. I'd just make sure he never hurt anyone again."

Balgair sighed and threw out his hands. "You're thinking too logically. Imagine the situation. Imagine the anger. It's not just about who died. It's about how," he said as he wrapped his fingers to form tight fists.

Aurelius' lips twitched slightly as he opened his mouth again. "So then what?"

"Torture... You know, cut someone's fingers, toes, limbs, and all that before they're dead," Balgair said, relaxing his hands and pointing one open palm up, as if what he was saying was obvious.

Aurelius grimaced and grabbed a hold of the table. "What? No! You can't do that to a person."

"I can't?" Balgair laughed. "Sure, I can. Humans can do anything they can imagine to another person. The universe has no safeguard for such things. It could happen to your loved ones too."

Aurelius grabbed Balgair's hand that he was holding out. Balgair expression then proceeded to twist as Aurelius squeezed. "Stop talking," he hissed, his gaze firmer than anybody would've thought possible just roughly half a year ago.

Balgair gritted his teeth, but didn't make an effort to pull his hand back. Instead, he just tightened his hand and endured with an annoyed look on his face. "Face reality, Aurelius. It could happen to you. It doesn't matter if you don't want to think about it. So tell me, if someone you loved was tortured, would you not seek vengeance in the same form?"

Aurelius huffed and let go of Balgair's hand.

"Come on." Balgair turned. "You understand me, right, Cade?"

Cade shoved some scrambled eggs into her mouth and shook her head. After she got the eggs down, she then answered, "To me, it just sounds like you're trying to get Aurelius' validation. I don't care who you so righteously tortured to death, but let it go. Stop bothering Aurelius with your mental health problems."

Balgair let out a hmph as he turned back to his food and stayed silent.

Aurelius crossed his arms and sat back, his eyes on the roof of the café. What was Balgair's intention? Seeking validation. Was Aurelius some sort of guru on morality to him? Someone whose words you could trust and take solace in if he validated your deeds.

Aurelius sighed and did something akin to a long blink before saying, "Well, what would I do? I'd be angry, and I would hunt that person down. But beyond that, I don't know." He looked at Balgair with a tilt of his head. "These things are impulse decisions, right. No one in their right mind would torture someone. It's always overwhelming emotions. So if you're trying to say it's somehow right to do if everyone would do it—even me—then I would say that you're just wrong because everybody doing something doesn't mean it's right."

Balgair prepared a quick argument and said, "Yeah, but it's about accepti—"

Aurelius raised a hand. "I'm not finished." He laid his hand flat on the table and leaned slightly forward, not sure what was going to come out of his mouth next, but somewhat knowing its core substance. "I know this quote. Yes, it's from my notebook. It's, uh... something like 'anything that deals with the word 'over' is often negative, even if it doesn't seem like it at first glance'. I don't know if it's exactly that, but you get it, right? Everything that goes over is not a good thing. Now, I'm not sure if I agree. Gabriel is a really reserved person, and he did say that his words were flawed, and I should think things through myself. I've been seeing that lately, too. But I think doing something simply because you're overwhelmed with emotions is never the best possibility. Especially when the emotion is something as negative as anger. So what I think would be the thing to do is just think about what the person harmed would want. Would a loved one want for her... or him to be revenged in such a gory way, costing the one who loved them their sanity, purity, and humanity?"

Balgair leaned his head into his hands limply and scratched at his scalp. "Geez. How do you sound so idiotic and wise at the same time?" Balgair then squinted and shook his head. Aurelius thought he recognized the emotion as dissatisfaction.

Aurelius was slightly amused by Balgair's comment, but didn't take the time to chuckle or laugh. "I'm not really..."

"Hey, it's good to have these conversations sometimes, but please... I'm having breakfast right now," Cade cut in after Aurelius' words faded. "Can you talk about the morality of torture some other time?"

"You want to just sit here quietly?" Balgair asked as he twirled with the mug in his hand.

Cade tilted his head and asked, "Would that be so bad?"

Balgair clicked his tongue and turned his attention to his food.

Then Aurelius remembered something he'd been meaning to ask. "Hey, about the kidna—"

Both Cade's and Balgair's eyes went open as they shushed him. Aurelius' lips parted to reveal his clenched teeth as his brows flew up. "Sorry," he whispered as he looked around. There weren't many people close to them, but as he sat with his back toward the path to the exit, he could never be sure.

Aurelius cleared his throat before rephrasing his question. "I have a question about the thing we're going to do. The two people. If they are postered, you know. Wouldn't that make it apparent to the other bad people that the thing we do is not real?"

It was tricky trying to ask in a café if the people they kidnapped were going to get reported, so that their framing effort would be figured out after they planted the false evidence at the sight of a branch of a country-wide criminal organization that they would destroy.

Cade and Balgair didn't listen to half of it, though, as their attentions were drawn to the door of the café while Aurelius was posing his question. Their eyes then followed something as if they were in a trance.

Aurelius didn't care to look. He was just annoyed. "Hey, did you hear me?"

Cade and Balgair snapped out of it, and as they didn't seem to know what Aurelius had said, he repeated himself.

Balgair's face fell. "Aurelius, come on. Do you think the bad guys are going to report to the authorities? Or to anyone for that matter? Why? Why would they do that? And before you ask your next question, no, they will not be able to convince the other bad guys it wasn't them. It's not like they can just say, 'oh, no, it wasn't us. The guys you found at the scene actually just disappeared a while ago.'"

Aurelius scratched his head with a light laugh. That was going to be his next question. But now he felt relieved. Balgair and Cade were super smart. They had it under control. Aurelius rested his hands on his head and leaned back to gaze at the roof.

Then someone walking to the door bumped into him and there was a splashing sound as coffee slapped the floor.

Aurelius turned to a man hissing in pain as he rushed to lower the coffee mug in his hand onto a nearby table. "I'm so sorry. This is my fault," Aurelius said with his hands in front of him as he grabbed napkins and shoved them into the man's hand that had hot coffee all over it.

"No, no, this is my own doing. I'm so clumsy. You're not to blame," the man said as he wiped the coffee off of his hand. He wore simple black and white clothing that didn't attract much attention, but even if he would've worn brighter ones, surely all the attention would have still gone to his face.

Aurelius couldn't help but to notice the piercing marks on his ears and the lack of earrings, as well as a single long, fine scar that ran through the man's face. The scar went diagonally from the left side of his forehead to the right corner of his mouth. From the look of it, the cut had been quite deep and very precise. Carefully made, even.

"Please let me buy you a new coffee as compensation. That's the least I can do." Aurelius said, quickly glancing at Cade and Balgair who had unreadable expressions, wary gazes, and tense postures for some reason. Then he looked back to the man. "You can sit here with us while we wait for the order."

The man looked up at Aurelius with his light-silver eyes that were slightly covered by straight auburn hair that flowed down freely. Then, with a wide smile on his face, he said, "Oh, I would love that."