139. Aiden and Ava
139. Aiden and Ava
Aiden POV
Wes was next to me, playing pool. “I can’t believe you took this place, it should have been destroyed.” He said and glared at my oldest living friend. “Dad, have you seen my bag?” I looked up to the door and saw my daughter in the doorway. “What?” I asked. “My bag, I need it we are leaving soon, and I need my purple bag.” She said.
“Um go ask your mother, I have no clue where you put it.” She huffed and I heard her grumbling. “Some good you are.” I yelled after her “Beatrix don’t talk to me like that.” She completely ignored me. “Think she may have a tough time at school with her name?” Wes asked me and I glared before answering. “It will be fine” I said.
“I still can’t believe you named her after well you know.” Wes spoke and I glared at him. “She was your friend too, and she died saving your ass more than once,” I reminded him. He knew it was time to drop the topic of Beatrix. She was gone now and no matter how much I tried to tell everyone that she was the reason we won in the end, no one listened. The only ones who really knew or believed me were Baron and Leia.
We had destroyed everything and everyone in Malachar’s precious order that night. That fucking night that I had to see the person I first loved die. Beatrix had changed and now even years later I knew it was inevitable that she had passed before her actual death. She was so lost in her trauma from the war, she hadn’t been herself, not near the end at least. In the end her death was more of a mercy than living would have been.
But it never stopped me from missing my first friend, I did love her. I trusted her even when Wes my next oldest friend said not to. She had Baron get both my wife and Wes back for me. She had sacrificed everything, and in the end all she ended up with was suffering, but with time it was clear that is what war left; it was always suffering.
I had tried so hard to clear her name, to tell everyone it was because of her, the world was rid of that particular evil, but no one listened. No one wanted to hear that she was more than a crazed power hungry vampire. That she died honorably. Not when her body was found next to a mutilated body. Not when her own body was deformed from vile dark blood rituals, just like Malachar’s was.
She was written into history as a betrayer of the Vanguard, and then a betrayer of the Order. That is all the world would ever see her as, they were so wrong. I eventually had to stop trying to convince the world of it. If I wanted to bring the world to a new age, a age she would have loved, I had to stop and let her legacy live on in another way.
When what to do with Astor Hall was brought up in discussion, many wanted it to be destroyed. I had stepped forward to claim it. I lied saying it was my right as the sole Vanguard left physically fighting and they gave it to me. Theodore Astor was not a friend, but he was honorable. He had died with Beatrix, and he had fought for her in the end. I didn’t think his home that had been around for so long should be destroyed. So, I took it to preserve it. Sometimes I would get flashes of the things that I saw happen here but mostly it was just a home to my family.
Naming my daughter Beatrix, was how I preserved my best friend. I couldn’t clear her name, but I could name my daughter after her. Ava walked into the billiards room. “Hey Aiden have you read book?” I looked up seeing her holding a copy of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’. My chest tightened. It was the last thing Beatrix read. “No, sorry hun” She shrugged. Ava had been trying to read all the books at Astor Hall, it was something she used to joke about in the war when we were at Vanguard headquarters.
“If we live through this, I am going to pull a Beatrix, and read for a whole decade, what is it she says? Novels let you be in other worlds?” It had been before Beatrix was taken, before we won. But Ava had kept her word, and she did read, she read a lot now, always novels, and moving into Astor Hall provided her with endless books to choose from. She had not fought me on naming our daughter after Beatrix, but she never wanted to talk about what had happened.
The war was something we never discussed, was it unhealthy, probably. But I understood, she saw someone once a week, to deal with things. I had not pushed if she wished to share what happened when she was taken, I would listen but if she didn’t that was okay too. Ava sat down and we waited for the clock to strike the right time before we headed to the station to take Beatrix to school.
The station was packed; I gave Beatrix a hug and kissed on the top of the head. I liked that the school was up and running again. There were lots of people around, it reminded me of the times I myself went to school. Then I saw them, Baron was with Leia a boy with wings hugging Leia. They looked up and saw me with my own family and it was just a small smile they shared silently with me.
They didn’t come over and I didn’t go to them. An unspoken look passed between the three of us. It was almost a bittersweet look. A look that said we are alive and have all of this, because they gave everything including their lives so we could live. The look lingered only for a moment and then it broke, and I couldn’t help but think of the sacrifice of war, was it all really worth it?
As my daughter said “I love you” I knew it was. War was inevitable, it always came, time would never change that, but love was always worth fighting for. It could be fighting because you loved your friends and wanted them to live. Or you could be fighting for a future in which you could find love or grow it. I smiled at Beatrix.