Chapter 115: Pointing the Finger

Sophia didn’t let him speak. She knew if he did, then he would go back to swimming in guilt. She had the opportunity to change how he saw things now so she kept on talking.

"You’re not the one to blame," she said, each syllable slow and clear. "Do you hear me? You are not the one at fault for what happened."

Orion’s jaw tightened. He opened his mouth to protest, to cut her off with the habitual defense that had kept his chest knotted for years but she didn’t let him. She moved her fingers to his lips, shutting him up.

"No. Listen to me, you were a child," she said. "A stubborn, infuriating, unreasonably brave child who thought he could change the fate of your people. You didn’t have the maps of politics in your hands, you didn’t have the weight of treaties on your shoulders. You were a child who loved his family and hated the idea of them sick and dying. You did what every child would do when you thought there was no way out. Gods! I would have done the same thing you did."

Orion closed his mouth. He listened because her she wouldn’t let his mind spiral not with how much she was staring directly at him like she was speaking into his soul.

"Who shut your father out?" she continued. "The Enclave. Who closed their doors while people begged for help? The Enclave. Who knew they had fucking herbs in their pack but refused to give you guys? The Enclave. Who sent people to raid your pack and destroy homes and families? The fucking Enclave. They had power and a duty to govern and protect and they used that power to brand you and your people as enemies and traitors instead. They chose to march in like conquerors instead of healers. They chose to burn. They chose to kill. That’s was all them and not you."

Orion stared into her eyes. Amidst the pain and sadness and even the tears was anger. Anger at the enclave. Anger that she now shared with him. She wasn’t there when it happened but it felt like she was. Like she had seen the massacre and how people had been torn from their families.

"They didn’t raid because of your actions, Orion," she said, voice low and hard. "They raided because they wanted to. I’d bet my full memory that they were waiting. They wanted an excuse to take your land, to make an example, to seize the packs who defied them. And when a child did exactly what any frightened child would do, when he and his friends stole herbs to save their families, the Enclave used it as cover. They cloaked their greed in your mistake. Do you understand that?"

Orion’s face was an unreadable mask for a moment, muscles working around a mouth that had ached for years.

He wanted to interrupt, to tell her about the nights he had dreamed of the smell of burning wood and the way Ryker’s laugh turned to ash, but her words were mercilessly honest and, for once, he let them settle.

Sophia’s next words came softer, but they were no less fierce.

"You think the leader of the Enclave is anything but a demon?" she asked. "You want to blame the child because it’s neat and small and human and because blame is comfortable when it’s aimed at a person you can see? Fine. But the real cruelty, the calculated, patient cruelty sits in the halls where men and women signed their names and closed their doors while people died on the other side."

She leaned forward, removing her hands from him as she placed her elbows on her knees, eveb with how sad he was, Orion couldn’t help but wish her hands were back on him but he shoved the thought deep down just as quickly as it came.

"You carry the weight of everyone who died," she said. "But you did not pull the weight onto yourself. You picked up a little of what you could, and you tried. You bled doing it. You broke trying to fix it. That does not make you a villain, Orion. It makes you...human." Her mouth softened then, and the single word carried an odd, warm light. "It makes you someone who chose to act rather than bow and wait for an answer that never came."

For a long moment the only sounds were distant drums and the rustle of leaves. Orion’s breath fogged in the night air; his hands unclenched slowly.

"You told the pack to make noise instead of folding into silence," Sophia said, a small smile ghosting her lips before she snuffed it. "You told the children to sing. You told them to laugh. It was a small thing ... a song written over graves... but it was yours. Even then, when you were nine. That was a leader’s instinct. Not for glory, for protection. If the Enclave did try to make a lesson of you, you turned it into a defiance that taught everyone to live."

"Maybe I wanted to drown my own fear with noise," Orion muttered.

"Perhaps," Sophia agreed. "Maybe you wanted to drown fear. But you also taught people how to keep living. That’s not cowardice, Orion. It’s not childish either. That is the kind of stubbornness that saved folk when the strong hands turned away."

He watched her, something in him loosening like an old knot. Her conviction wasn’t empty. She was making him do what he had not done for himself: look in the direction of the enemy and name it. Point fingers at who was to be blamed.

"Would you rather they had opened their gates?" she asked. "Would you rather they had come and offered help?"

He couldn’t answer because the image of his father kneeling on the cold stone outside the Enclave’s door was lodged behind his eyes, and when he closed his mouth the memory suffocated him. To be honest, he had no answer to that question. Because a part of him knew that if they had opened their doors, maybe his pack’s downfall wouldn’t have happened then, but it would have happened nonetheless. The Enclave wanted them out.

"I...I don’t know." He told her truthfully.