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She should have stopped him.
She COULD have stopped him, being the last one to see Ajax as she finished packing food and prepared to take it to the docks to give to their older brothers and father before their fishing boat set off and they’d be gone for days. It was in the early morning hours and their mother was still resting as the midwife had instructed she must for health of the baby. The twins, Tonia and Anthon, were sound asleep as well in their bunks.
It was only Taisiya and Ajax.
Him not wanting to come should have been the first warning that something was wrong.
Ajax was a penchant annoying at times with how much he admired their father, and usually he would have been impatiently tapping his feet by the door, nagging Taisiya to hurry up and grabbing too much to carry by himself just so that they could get to the docks quicker to be able to spend time with him before he would be gone.
But this morning he had been seated on an upturned bucket beside the door, grinning stupidly at an old shortsword their father had shown him the night before.
“I thought Dad said not to touch it without him here?” Taisiya frowned, tightly wrapping fish jerky into a cloth.
“Yeah yeah, I know. I just… want to hold it for awhile. Makes me feel like a real adventurer, ya know?” He was still grinning like an idiot, looking at himself in the scratched surface.
She should have pushed harder to enforce the rules, put her foot down as his older sibling and snatch it away and put it back into the locked case and stick the key in her bra or something so he couldn’t get it back…
But she hadn’t, because sometimes it felt like having each other’s back was more important than the rules, and why would this moment be any different?
Instead, her last words to him weren’t a firm declaration that he was coming along whether he wanted to or not; Just a simple ask that he put it away before Mom woke up, and then she closed the door and left Ajax with the sword and his fantasies without a second thought.
The weirdest part, remembering back to this time, was how nothing had felt abnormal.
Ajax was his usual bright eyed self where every other word was a delusional proclamation about his grandeur potential as an Adventurer, and she had been her usual self half listening to his ramblings while her own thoughts where on the fantasies in her own head and how she was going to write them and become the most famous author in all of Snezhnaya and move to the Capital where nothing smelled of fish and everything was beautiful and protected.
She had been skipping, humming happily like this was the brightest day in the world, while her dear younger brother never put the sword back, and by the time their mother woke up he nor the sword were anywhere in the house at all.
Both assumed all was fine, till Taisiya came back a few hours after dawn with no Ajax in tow.
In a coincidence of irony, Ajax left around the same time the rest of the men in the family set sail hours ago.
He was gone.
Apparently three days passed, though Taisiya couldn't tell them apart well. They were mostly spent the same.
Wake up, get Tonia ready while arguing with Mom and Anthon about how they can't come, Doctors orders, and leave with Tonia and the dog to look everywhere.
It felt like everywhere.
People from the village of course helped look, some even staying out late with their guns to search through the night, and their aid was apart of the cycle Tonia fell into each night where she would convince herself that tomorrow, tomorrow was going to be the day they’ll find Ajax. Of course it’d be! With all these people helping how could they not find her brother!
Taisiya might have shared in that mindset at one point, but she was older, and had to live in the cruel reality of the cold.
Ajax wouldn’t be found, because no one dared go up the mountain.
The forest surrounding Morepesok was vast and went over three mountains that separates the coastal city from the rest of the region, and even though Taisiya knew it was dangerous to go up them because of the wolves and constant snowfall posing the threat of avalanches, she also knew that was where Ajax would go. Him and his stupid sword and dreams would have aimed straight for the peaks. But no matter how much she told the volunteer searchers, they refused to go up the mountains.
Adults are ruled by fear she learned, and they cower behind the explanation of logic to abandon and shove aside the things they feared so they wouldn’t have to confront it.
That was what they were doing, Taisiya realized on of the nights walking back home with bleeding feet and a throat so sore she could barely talk and tears pricking at her eyes after having all of her words silenced by a man who used to be Fatui.
He dismissed her logic, claiming Ajax was a smart kid, that he'd know better, and others quickly followed his lead because he was supposed to be the man who knew what he was doing.
They were all talking like they knew Ajax better than she did. Better than their mom.
But watching him cast a fearful glance towards the peaks where the snow was packed thick was a revelation in Taisiya’s mind. It was not that he didn’t believe her, he was just scared.
And that cowardice would lead to her brother’s death.
It should have made her blood boil, but it was as if figuring out the reason for why everyone was acting the way they were brought her morbid curiosity instead of anger like she might have a week prior.
The effect fear had on adults who so quickly puffed out their chests was fascinating. The effect it had on everyone.
Even her own parents and herself.
Saying all three days were identical was misleading perhaps, for the second night when they arrived home, escorted by the Fatui man, they found their mother waiting for them with a steel look in her blue eyes and a stubborn set to her jaw.
She didn't need to ask if they'd found him, for Tonia was already at her skirt crying.
The man gave his condolences on behalf of the town, but claimed there was nowhere else they could look.
He didn’t answer when she asked about the mountains, he just excused himself and bid them night.
"Tonia, go to bed with your brother." She gently urged the exhausted girl, sending her to bed as Taisiya got the dog her food and drink by the fire.
She curled up there herself in front of the fire, hugging her knees for comfort as her mother joined her in the family room. She sat in the large reclining chair she had gotten for her birthday when she was pregnant with the twins, rocking gently with her hand on her stomach that was a small bump.
There was fear in her eyes.
A deeper, more raw fear than any of the others Taisiya had seen. Other than perhaps, what she saw in her own eyes. But of course she felt more, the others were afraid of something that could happen, while her mother and herself were fearing for something that would happen.
Ajax was going to die if no one went up to the mountain soon.
Instead of casting her eyes away from the peaks like all the others did, her Mother was staring up at them through the window with an unwavering gaze.
"Taisiya.” She finally broke the silence, the fear in her causing her voice to have an iron-like strength. “Tomorrow, we're going up the mountain.”
She looked away from the peaks then, and the fire danced in her eyes.
“I will not let my son die because others are cowards. Especially when he is so brave. Waiting for us to come find him.”
“How will we protect ourselves from the wolves?” Taisiya asked, knowing there was no point arguing that her mother could not come. She’d rather be put on bedrest for months than not go up the mountains herself.
“I went up those mountains all the time when I was your age, the wolves aren’t as dangerous as the townsfolk claim. All you need is to look tough enough, and they’ll leave you be. At least during the day. The night,” Mother relented, the blue of her eyes dimming as if she was recalling something. “Is a different story.”
She stood, gesturing for Taisiya to follow her, and obediently she did.
She guided her to the master bedroom Grandfather had built with his own hands when Mother was a little girl, and from underneath the bed she pulled out three long wooden boxes. Taisiya’s eyes widened at the sight of them, for one of the first rules ever drilled into the head of all the children was that these boxes were to never be unlocked.
Pulling out a key from inside her dress, Mother unlocked one of them and revealed an old rifle.
“We’ll bring guns with us tomorrow. That, and the dog should be enough to keep the wolves away.”
“But I don’t know how to shoot a gun.” Taisiya bit her lip, worried.
Up her mother stood, and placed her hands on Taisiya’s shoulders.
“I’ll teach you.”
Taisiya learned how to shoot a gun before any of her brothers did, and she’s still the best shot of them all besides- well, Military training was an advantage.
Part of why Taisiya shoots so well, is because every time she holds a rifle in her hands, she is taken immediately back to the night she was taught and the third day of Ajax missing.
There was a fear in her that morning when she trekked out with her mother and sister, Tonia holding the dog leash as Taisiya needed both hands for her gun.
What if she misfires and the crack of gunpowder cascades an avalanche down on them? Or what if she’d hurt someone if she was reckless?
What if they found Ajax dead.
So much fear at first made her knuckles white on the gun, but as they reached the slopes and began the climb, Taisiya looked to her mother and saw such an admirable handling of her own fear that it was impossible for it not to change Taisiya.
Taisiya didn’t want to fear like the people in the village who relented to it, she wanted to fear like her mother. Trudging in the snow and ice in her second trimester because the fear of losing her son kept her moving and level headed.
Motivated her instead of paralyzed.
Fear was a dominant emotion of humanity yet it didn’t have to make her hands shake. It could steady her aim, sharpen her mind. Make her more aware of what was happening.
She willed and shaped it to do so.
By the time of late afternoon, the gun was held steady in her gloved hands, and her heart pounding in her ears made her reflexes quicker as their trusted hound suddenly caught a scent trail and took off with a bark. Tonia released the leash to not be dragged off her feet and Taisiya grabbed on instead.
Holding the handle of the rifle and the leash in the other, Taisiya sped down hill over fallen trees and rocks as the hounds nose led her to a large fissure in the mountainside.
Her blood ran cold as she stared down into the never ending darkness, fearing that Ajax had fallen in.
But their dog was still sniffing the now rocky ground beneath their feet, and with another bark she continued along the crack, the sounds of Tonia and their Mother descending the mountain behind them.
Suddenly, there was droplets of blood on the ground- but she barely had time to process them before her eyes looked up as she pushed through some thick bushes- and there was her brother.
Sitting on the ground with his legs crossed, leaning against his hands like there was no care in the world.
Breathing calmly as if he wasn’t covered in cuts and bruises as he turned to look up at her, though he did seem a little dazed. His blue eyes unfocused.
“Tais?”
Taisiya hadn’t cried much the whole three days, but as Ajax stood up and brushed off the dirt, she couldn’t hold back a sob.
He had only made it halfway up when Taisiya knocked him back down with a hug, causing him to stiffen as she threw her arms around him, like he wasn’t used to being touched.
“YOU IDIOT!” She cried. “We’ve been worried sick, are you okay?”
“What?” He asked, like he was confused. “Of course I’m okay, why wouldn’t I be?”
Taisiya sat back and brushed back her tears with her sleeve.
“You’ve been gone for three days of course you wouldn’t be okay! Who would be?!”
“A warrior.” He declared, and Taisiya didn’t know whether to roll her eyes, laugh, or cry.
Mother and Tonia soon joined them, and seeing Tonia’s distressed face burst into tears and cling to him seemed to bring some sense of the situation to Ajax.
“O-oh Tonia, hey. I’m fine, don’t cry.”
“FINE?!” Mother gasped, the emotions she had been so careful to keep in check bursting. Unwinding her scarf to throw over him, and Taisiya followed suit with her coat. “You left home with nothing but a rusted shortsword! How could you be fine?!” She grasped the hand holding the sword and shook it, before another gasp of tears flooded out and she grabbed the two younger of her children into a hug, squeezing them both tight.
Taisiya stood, finally wiping the last of her tears away- when what her Mother just said struck her.
Ajax was holding a broken, rusted shortsword in his hand that had the same handle as the one he took that morning, but…
Taisiya swallowed hard as her vision focused in on it.
It hadn’t been rusted the morning he left.
Her focus shifted from the sword to the hand holding it, to the bandages round fingers stained with brown blood, to his clothes cut and slashed as if by something bigger than a bear. Finally, to his hair that had grown inches longer than it should have in only three days.
Fear was pulsing through her veins again, because how could it not? All clues in front of her pointed to him being gone for much longer than just three days yet she knew that was how long it’d been. Attempts to try and rationalize were flicking through her mind in rapid succession.
But she came up with nothing.
Taisiya found herself looking right at Ajax over the arm of their Mother’s coat, and he was staring back at her, and she realized another source of human fear.
Not knowing was just as scary as mountain peaks.
“Ajax, what happened?” She asked, delicately, but there was a shake to her voice.
Everyone froze slightly, waiting for his answer, but he was quiet for a moment as he stared at his older sister with eyes missing the dance of excited light they had the last time she saw him. Now, they were a deep, dark blue that seemed to fall forever into darkness.
Like a fissure beneath the sea.
“I’ve been fighting.” He said at last, a thrilled smile curling his lips.
A shock of terror went down her spine at how gleeful he seemed at the memory. Though Mother and Tonia seemed to not catch it, and bundled him up tighter in scarves and coats and ushered him home.
As they began walking off, Taisiya remained stock still clutching her rifle. Not able to control the fear that three days ago had been the last time she would ever see the Ajax she knew.
Though, was that fair to be scared of?
She looked down at her hands holding the rifle, and knew underneath the fabric her knuckles were white.
Hadn’t she changed as well?