[Can’t Opt Out]

“I don’t blame the others for thinking me a monster,” Porsq said into the warmth of Olivier’s chest, his heart breaking because when he looked up, he was certain he would see fear and loathing and revulsion written over the man’s face just as he had seen it on the faces of so many of the adults he had spent the last years of his life among. Olivier had promised to keep him safe—to get him somewhere where he could be safe, even if Porsq didn’t think that possible because he was a monster and what criminal or government wouldn’t want him working for them?

No matter where he went in this world, he would always be a creature to be feared and coveted—something to be valued in war and espionage and kidnapping. Fräthk had made a monster of him—had made sure that by the time he fully grew into his abilities, he would be someone capable of cutting through the mental shields of virtually anyone. Porsq could spent the rest of his life refusing to use his abilities, but he would always know they were inside him, growing and reaching out towards everyone who came within the full sphere of his influence—and really, he had long since reached the point at which he could implant beliefs and thoughts so deeply that, even once the person left his area of influence, he would remain within them.

It was horrific, but at least those abilities he had been able to use for good things, despite their horrific beginnings—and what captive of Fräthk’s didn’t have a thousand origin stories for their abilities, dug into their soul irreparably, each one a threat of this might be the one to break finally break me?

Crack me to pieces.

Finally convince me death is better than this.

Shatter my heart and soul until nothing is left but to die or rise into the horror that was Fräthk’s loyal.

For him, it had been the kidnappings that had broken him. Part of him had known they would come eventually, even if he had refused to fully let that fear form in the months between when he first began learning to use his abilities and that day when he had first been told to make the parent leave and not turn back—to make them not care their child was gone from their care for as long as he could manage.

“How long can you manage to make a thought linger?” Olivier asked, and while Porsq had continued on with his story of how he had decided to run from Fräthk, despite knowing the man must be disgusted with him and would only grow impossibly more disgusted, he heard nothing of the sort in the man’s voice.

When he dared look up, Olivier wore no shade of hatred on his face, nor was there even the mildest flicker of such a thing within him. Instead, where the Baalphorian man should have been concerned to be in the presence of something like him—a monster, a despicable creature, a kidnapper hiding in a child’s body—the man was all balance and calm and concern for him, a small frown pulling at his lips.

Porsq shrugged. “I don’t really know anymore. Making a thought stick is… complicated. You have to dig it deep, for it to stick, but how deep is the question. Minds are a tangle of thoughts and relations. A single mom with only one child and no family or friends to ask where her child went? They might notice something is wrong if they go home and see all the kid’s stuff, but then… then I would just dig another thought in? Something like, ‘Your child died, and you haven’t gotten rid of the stuff yet?’ If no one is around, who can tell them that isn’t right…”

“But if there are people around who will question it…?”

Porsq’s lips twitched as he admitted he had never tried anything so deep on any of the parents—by the time he had been able to do this particular trick, he had been forbidden from leaving the holding cells, due to his flight risk—but he could implant ideas of paranoia and a lack of trust within someone. “I did it with one of the guards who deliver our rations. I convinced them that one of the other guards they work with isn’t consistent in delivering our food, and instead eats it himself. They rotate with a few guards, but when that one guard is on duty, he always gives us another round of rations—he’d get in big trouble if we actually starved. Only ever been able to get the one guy to do it—some minds are just more prepped for that sort of manipulation than others. Being around the guards so much, though, I was able to figure a few of them out. There are a few guards who are gentler with Izurial, just cause I implanted—or maybe more amped up—their sympathy for him?”

“You have been able to use your abilities to do good things, then,” the man stated, as though it were that simple—it wasn’t.

“I’ve done lots of terrible things—more terrible things than good things.”

Olivier had nothing to say to that—for a moment, at least. Instead, he leaned down and brushed his lips to the top of Porsq’s head, and Porsq knew they all smelled gross. They were covered in grime and germs and were rarely allowed more than the most basic of showers. When he had been allowed out of the holding cells to train, he had been given more showers than most—he had to sit in public for a long time, after all, and it wouldn’t do to attract attention from the people walking around them. That was only at first, though. Later, he was expected to keep anyone from looking their way. Occasionally, someone would still see them, but it was rare, and while at the time, Porsq had had no idea of how to interpret the reactions of his teacher to those people, he now suspected they were part of Gëon’s organization—people who were protected by the man and his abilities, which Porsq could so often feel slithering through the city.

Gëon’s abilities were… odd. They weren’t something Porsq could explain, but they were both a little insidious and a little not. This was odd, as in his experience, while the emotions of someone’s mind could be confused—selfishness with a sense of self-preservation often went hand in hand, conflicting with one another—the mind generally knew the truth of where the line between the two lay—knew whether the mind itself thought its actions justified or if its ideas of self-preservation were just an excuse to be selfish. The power that Porsq so often felt slipping through the city, feeling out the world and the people in a way that he had only ever seen Rayleen aware of, was something truly in between evil and not evil, and it was strange for a mind to manage to exist in such a middle ground.

Gëon was terrifying. At the same time, Porsq almost hoped to be able to meet the man one day—to feel his mind itself out, rather than just feel his abilities.

“You are a child,” Olivier finally said, pulling Porsq away from his passing thought that currently, he couldn’t feel even wisps of Gëon’s abilities around them—that was almost too bad, as the man may very well have come to their aid, hoping to grab some of them up for his own organization. “If anyone is going to judge you for not pushing back against what was demanded of you—something it is clear that the majority of adults have been unable to do so when it comes to Fräthk—then they are not worth enough respect to let their opinions mean anything.”

He said it so easily—so confidently, and Porsq still hated himself for all the harm he had caused, for all the bodies he had left in his wake. All the parents, their relationships with their own mind and body and their child fractured by his abilities. All the children, now tucked away in holding cells of their own—perhaps even stuffed into the torture chambers to become experimental, doomed monstrosities.

“From what you’ve said, it sounds as though he tried to escape soon after you were asked to help facilitate kidnapping children?” Olivier asked, and Porsq had to bury his face back in the man’s chest to suppress his laughter as Xavier softly asked what facilitate meant, the syllables coming out sloppy over his young tongue.

Really, it was easy to see that the man had spent very little time around children due simply to the number of big words he used. Maybe with another child—like the little nameless girl—they might have stayed silent and not demanded to know what the word meant. When Xavier was a little older, Porsq was sure he would be some mix of a child with an unending number of questions and someone who was capable of figuring out what words meant based on context alone—well, he was already something like that. Facilitate was just a word that was hard to understand… in Lüshanian, at least. The fact that Olivier didn’t speak fluent Lüshanian seemed to partially be the issue—apparently, in Baalphorian, his sentence would have been easier to understand from context alone.

As the man seemed confident in this assessment of the differences between this single sentence in their respective languages, Porsq was inclined to believe him—and really, he was inclined to believe everything Olivier said. The man was all good, if somewhat naive, intentions. While Porsq still doubted he would ever find somewhere truly safe—Rayleen’s ability to locate people like him was in no way unique, he knew, Izurial having learned several years previous that Jinkai had someone with a similar ability, which they used to both hunt down threats to the current regime as well as find new recruits to their elite forces, even across their borders. No matter where he ran, someone would always be looking for people like him, and if he were being honest, Porsq thought there was a possibility Rayleen had never told Fräthk about him because of how dangerous he was.

He was dangerous, not just for his abilities but for the danger he put everyone around him in—for the reality that someone might one day cut anyone between them and him down, seeking his power for themself or to outright erase him from the world.

“We will find a place where you can be safe,” Olivier assured him again, his voice a soft whisper against Porsq’s hair as he pulled all three of them into his warmth. “I will try my best to make sure anyone who stays with me finds somewhere they can be safe and happy.”

The way Xavier’s mind flickered, Porsq knew he had pegged the meaning behind Olivier’s word choice as well: with the little nameless girl’s parents still out there, it was possible he wouldn’t be able to keep her safe. Knowing how… strange and selfish they were, Porsq doubted her mothers would stay with their group, if they ever found them. Part of him was tempted to keep a lookout for them—to make them stay away, if they dared come close.

It wasn’t his decision, though. As much as he thought staying with Olivier the better option, the man’s sincerity and unending hope like a drug to his mind, Porsq couldn’t force anyone to choose to trust him.

To do such a thing wasn’t right, and in the end, he would feel less guilt if anyone died due to their own volition than he would if they died due to a forcing of his will upon them. It was one thing when it came to the people he had encouraged away—they had been a risk to their group, after all, and really, it was all just too much for his mind to handle.

All the guilt.

All the what ifs.

Just… all of it.

“I will take the guilt from you, if things go wrong,” Olivier told him, solemn in his words, even if he doubted Porsq would be able to fully relinquish his guilt if the plan the man had laid out for them went wrong.

It was a good plan, Porsq thought—a much better plan than sitting there and hoping that Hwris forgot about whatever had attracted his attention this way, much better than attempting to sneak out of there when a single stumble could send sound cracking through the air towards one of Fräthk’s most dangerous little bugs and alerting him of their presence.

The problem with the plan, however, was the danger it was going to put a whole lot of innocent people in. Generally, Fräthk’s people tried to not kill too many civilians—the Drinarna might be corrupt enough to allow the occasional murder or kidnapping of someone who would likely cause them problems one day anyways to be covered up, but a massacre on the streets would be too much, even for them—but with so many of them having escaped, it was impossible to guess how desperate Fräthk and their people would be to get even a few of them back.

“I’ll try to let you take the guilt,” Porsq told Olivier, telling his mind to reach out through the aether, hundreds of pinpoints of minds appearing within him as Olivier’s earlier words flowed through him: “It has been years since you tried to escape. It is perfectly possible you did not forget the mind of the Hwris who existed then, but I’m sure you know that people are not static. They change, year to year—sometimes moment to moment. The person who exists in one situation might not in another, their mind pulling on different aspects of their personality to deal with what is happening around them. Do not second guess your abilities based on knowledge from years ago no longer being true—it was not something that would be true even were your abilities fully formed and trained. The fact that you have so much confidence in your abilities at your age is a blessing—do not allow this small reminder of what it is to be an ever-changing human throw your confidence into disarray.”

The man was right, of course—even without feeling the overwhelming confidence in his words, Porsq knew them to be true.

People changed and grew—Porsq felt that every time Izurial was taken away, his mind falling cold and flat before it bubbled back up once he was safely back in his cell. People experienced life, met new people, saw new things, lost people they loved. A million things entered the human mind every day, so of course Hwris would be different after all these years and Porsq would not let this break him.

He would not.

He would not.

He had survived so much, and freedom was so close.

All he had to do was trust.

Trust, and let his abilities split over the world—and split they did.