A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1501 - 1501: The Weight of War - Part 4

She clenched her jaw, and tried to halt the tide of tears entirely. The fierce look she gave him made it clear that she wasn't at all satisfied with that conclusion. It was a similar look of indignicance to what Nila might give. But her heart would not allow for it. The more she struggled against it, the more her tears flowed. Like a dam bursting, they came out all at once, and she gave in to the indignity of it all.

Gently, Oliver embraced her. He did no more than that. He heard her troubled heart, and he listened, feeling his respect for her well up the more he found out about her. He nudged her towards talking, without saying a word.

"I-it's terrifying, Oliver," she said mightily, her voice unable to stay level through her crying. She hid her face in his surcoat, and her words came through muffled. "So many people… Too many… They're all hoping for me to be… Something."

"You'll meet their expectations," Oliver said. "You've exceeded them again and again. Truly, Asabel, you've shown us all a great strength. You do not need to think about Queenly matters now. You are human too."

"What will we do, Oliver?" She said. "W-what can we do? It's all a mess. It's me. I a-agreed! I did it! Those l-lives! They're in my hands."

"Nonsense," Oliver said. "Many of us bear that burden of responsibility, it is not you alone."

"You say that, and you quietly take responsibility for yourself, don't you?" Asabel said, looking up at him, seeing through him.

Oliver grimaced ever so slightly. It was not such a one-way thing. In seeing her, she also saw him, and his troubles.

"You bear a weight," she said.

"Not as heavy as yours," Oliver replied.

"You seem so strong, Oliver," she said. "I had wondered how."

"I wondered the same of you," Oliver said.

"But there is so much pain in your eyes," she said.

"And so much pain behind yours," Oliver said.

"How do you speak so grandly, and so confidently, despite it all?" She asked him.

"You gave me that answer today," Oliver said. "You speak with such force, because of your struggle, because of the wounds you have collected for yourself. The monarch that truly struggles with wrestling their power. Perhaps all good Kings and Queens should be so troubled."

"And your power, do you struggle wrestling with it?" Asabel asked.

"I fear the pull of my wanting," Oliver said. "I worry my hands will grasp too much. I fear for the extent of my greed. It will swallow my soul one day."

"Nila will look after you," Asabel said with certainty. "Your love for her, it would never allow you to go too far."

"Here I am though, Asabel, a General, even if in title only," Oliver said, troubled. "There has been too much, too quickly."

"…Why does it content me to hear you say that?" Asabel said. "I am a terrible woman. I hear you suffering too, and I feel relief."

"Perhaps the corridors of suffering are not so lonely when you have someone to wander them with," Oliver said, with grim amusement. "Whatever is to come of the choices that we have made today, at the very least, it will be a road that we can share."

"…I fear it terribly," Asabel said. "I fear what tomorrow is to bring."

"Human hearts are not made for such responsibility," Oliver said. "I feel myself donning a mask, increasingly, when it is asked of me."

"We are just actors in someone else's play," Asabel realized. "I do not know who I truly am anymore. It has been so long since I have been able to speak so frankly, without ceremony."

"Then we have the same illness," Oliver said. "I know not what I am either, only now what is expected of me."

"…You expect more of yourself than any could of you," Asabel said. "You have always been the same. Even standing here now, as we bemoan the war that we've fallen into, and we fear the consequences it will bring, you stand strangely reassuringly."

"Do I?" Oliver asked.

"Don't say that as if you don't know," Asabel said, glaring at him through her tear-stained eyes, almost falling towards humour, but her smile not quite coming all the way through. "You know exactly what you're doing, and what you're thinking. You're about to make me a ridiculous promise, aren't you, as you always do?"

Oliver smiled lightly. "Now what sort of promise would you expect of me?"

"Some grand declaration," Asabel said. "Go on then, say it, if you're going to stand there like a proud cat, ever so sure of yourself. You're sick, I tell you, that you can have even the slightest sliver of confidence during all this."

"Sick is perhaps it," Oliver agreed.

"Do you believe we can win?" Asabel asked him, almost pleadingly.

"The odds are against us. It ought to be an impossibility," Oliver said. "Every logical path determines our certain defeat."

"That is not what I asked you," Asabel said. "You do not seem quite so terrified. Where is the source of your confidence? What do you believe in? And can I believe in it too?"

"…What indeed do I believe in?" Oliver said, straightening himself. He had to admit, on a closer examination of his heart, despite the fear that he felt, there had come an incredible burning. As soon as he dared to look, and define the situation, all he saw was opportunity. It was a tragically twisted outlook on the whole thing, and yet he could not help himself. Both Ingolsol and Claudia saw it. Ingolsol saw the opportunity to seize new power, and Claudia saw the flood of water, and all the potential it brought to change the courses of so many rivers. "…At the very least, I believe this is where I ought to be," Oliver decided.

"What do you mean by that?" Asabel asked.