[PP-F24] The meaning of...

[Baldur 0]

Baldur smiled when he felt the strike on his arm from Alkor's blade, the tension of the air released and he took a few steps back. His steel blue eyes considered the man, their situation, and the words he was asking. It wasn't clear what he was asking, but Baldur would do his best to give him answer.

"I have found that when people ask for advice, it's usually because they already know the right answer, but don't like it. They want someone to tell them that they're wrong."

Alkor had gone for the blow against Baldur, it told him a lot about the man, but he had also sacrificed much to get it. If the blow hadn't finished Baldur, it would have given him a clean blow against the man as well. It was a zero sum move, but it was also how Baldur had opened the fight. You needed to know the margins, the factor of safety, and what you were willing to sacrifice.

"Do you know why it's often more difficult for a swordmaster to fight a novice, than another swordmaster?" Baldur suddenly smirked, realizing the implications of his words, but he knew that Alkor would not take them the wrong way. They were both able to feel the skill in the other's blades.

"Yes yes, the novice is unpredictable, we all know that bit, but the crux of the matter is, a swordmaster knows when he's putting himself in harms way, and is unlikely to make moves that will get himself killed. He's not going to expose himself in a way that gets them both killed, because that isn't really victory, is it? But the novice doesn't know that. The novice is just trying to win the fight they're having, rather than all the ones that come after it. In so doing, they don't realize how the attacks they make open themselves up. If you stab your opponent and they stab you, and you both die, then it wasn't really a very good move."

Baldur slowly began to pace around the man in a circle, his blade held in a low guard.

"It was a lesson I had to teach Mari." Baldur waited until he could see the mans face when he mentioned the woman.

"She kept looking for a battle she could die in, to repent for all that she had done. I had to disabuse her of such a selfish notion. I don't want fighters that are going to go out there and die in every battle. I have 73 more floors to battle through. I need people I can trust at my back. If she wanted to repent, I told her she needed to fight in such a way that would get us to the 100th floor, not merely the next one. She had skill with her dagger, but our weapons aren't the ones in our hand. Our blades, the blades of the people we're trying to save. That's us. And what happens if you don't care for a blade? Maintain it. Treat it with respect? It becomes dull and then it breaks."

[Alkor 0]

"Mmm..."

There was wisdom, certainly, in the allegory of the student and Master. The growth Alkor had found over the span of several years in Aincrad could be measured in his self-awareness, if not the elegance of his movements. Truth be told, Alkor found function for more important than form, and that was why he adopted movements that responded to the situation, not to his understanding of technique. As Bruce Lee had once said, "be formless, shapeless, like water."

But Alkor's flow was anything but gentle and flowing. It was turbulent, like the cascading falls that eroded rock and reshaped the earth. It was force, it was pressure, it was passion, and it was always directed forward. Forward, to where it could blast through and carve a path, but never look backward. Baldur could take time to sheathe his own blade and help to hone the blades of others. He had the capacity to put away the weapon.

When Alkor reflected inward, the weapon chipped away at the imperfections, but he found no comfort or solace.

That degree of difference between them was a gulf. Baldur was a vast sea, calm, gentle, inviting. By contrast, Alkor was an ocean that had long since dried up and had nothing to give- if it had ever had anything at all. It was that which he'd told Lessa, and when Baldur mentioned Mari, his expression did not seem to change.

Alkor continued to stare at the floor between them, almost like there was a ghost staring back.

"People are often looking for answers about themselves in others," the younger man agreed. "But the answers I'm looking for can't be found anywhere else but inside of me. And every time I answer a question, I'm afraid none of the answers will satisfy me."

They hadn't satisfied anyone else. Why should they satisfy him? What did it truly mean to be happy?

"I told Mari that I couldn't help her. I couldn't be what she expected me to be. I couldnt save her. But no one wants to hear that," Alkor said. "Everyone wants the hero. They demand the fairy tale ending. When you categorically deny its existence, then what?"

He sighed as he lifted his weapon again, into a mid-level guard as he offered his left side to Baldur. 

"I don't mind being the villain," he said flatly. "if my harsh or even cruel words or actions drove someone to find their own truth, to grow, and to heal- no matter how difficult that journey was- then I would gladly be the antagonist in their story."

Alkor still remembered the day Mari returned to find him alive, and how she had expected everything to go back to the way it was. The hollowed out shell of a woman broken time and again not only by loss, but by her own attempts to cope with that loss by lashing out. Alkor told her that he couldn't be what she wanted, because it was true. It was his own truth. 

But unlike Alkor, Mari found support. Like Lessa had Jomei and even Bahr at one time, Mari it seemed found Baldur. It was hollow, perhaps, but there was warmth in it. Alkor felt at ease knowing that this man had been the one to reach out his hand to the woman.

"When I came to this world, I did struggled to be someone. Anyone. I lied to myself about who I was, because for so long, I had no idea."

Alkor was not well adjusted. He was not a strong person, and his sense of identity was virtually non-existent. He struggled through daily tasks and found meaning only in challenging himself again and again, looking for answers to questions that should have been simple. Every answer brought with it new questions. He was like a child, bewildered, looking at the world for the very first time.

"In many ways, I still don't," he said finally. "But I'm not going to lie about it anymore, or pretend to be something I'm not to fit into anyone's mold."

He raised his gaze toward the man and his golden gaze burned just a bit darker than before- but burn it did.

"So, I suppose what I'm really asking..."

With a long sigh, he finally voiced his concern. It wasn't a question Baldur could answer for Alkor about Alkor, but perhaps Baldur's own experience could give him insight.

"...is anything ever good enough?"

[Baldur 0]

Quote

 

"People are often looking for answers about themselves in others, but the answers I'm looking for can't be found anywhere else but inside of me. And every time I answer a question, I'm afraid none of the answers will satisfy me."

"I told Mari that I couldn't help her. I couldn't be what she expected me to be. I couldnt save her. But no one wants to hear that," Alkor said. "Everyone wants the hero. They demand the fairy tale ending. When you categorically deny its existence, then what?"

"I don't mind being the villain," he said flatly. "if my harsh or even cruel words or actions drove someone to find their own truth, to grow, and to heal- no matter how difficult that journey was- then I would gladly be the antagonist in their story."

"When I came to this world, I did struggled to be someone. Anyone. I lied to myself about who I was, because for so long, I had no idea."

"In many ways, I still don't," he said finally. "But I'm not going to lie about it anymore, or pretend to be something I'm not to fit into anyone's mold."

"So, I suppose what I'm really asking......is anything ever good enough?"

 

Baldur paused in his pacing and appraised the husk of the man before him. His words were so sad, and his question showed a depth of pain that Baldur wished he could say was surprising to him. He grave a slight frown weighing the man as Baldur lifted up the tip of his own blade and slapped the side of Alkor's in a way swordsmen often did to signal they were ready. He let Alkor's words settle about him like a weighted blanket. They were comforting to the man, but they were heavy to anyone else.

"So, you're willing to be a villain, but not the hero? You reject the existence of one, but not the other. You tell the people in your life, who obviously have a special place for you in their hearts, that you can't be what they want, because it's not in you, but at the same time you don't know what is in you? Is that about the jist of it?" In any other man, there might have been scorn to those words, but to Baldur there seemed to a bit of sympathy wrapping his iron words as his sword threw them at Alkor, each blow hammering the man.

"You can't save someone that doesn't want to be saved, Alkor, and that includes yourself." The man fought back, the fire inside still burned, but there was a hollowness to his strikes.

Baldur began a series of goading attacked, non-committal blows that served only to harry him, not letting him close the distance or get a satisfying counter attack before Baldur moved out of range, constantly resetting the fight through a use of distance.

"It's obvious to me someone hurt you, and that you've put up walls. I know that, you know that, I'm sure everyone in your life knows that. But you already know the answer to your question. The answer to the question you're really asking is that it will be good enough when you stop letting that person define you. Perhaps you haven't actually chosen to, but you are letting someone else define who you are, define what is good enough. I'm sure you've lived with it so long you don't even realize you've internalized it."

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The blows were coming heavy and faster now, but when Alkor got a chance to counter attack, Baldur retreated, not letting him get the satisfaction of an attack. It was a cowardly way of fighting between equals, something more reserved when someone who was outclasses, and could only fight by taking small bits out of a bigger target, and had to win through a thousand cuts.

"It seems, to me, that you have decided what your role is to be in other people's lives. You may not be letting Mari or Lessa change you, or fix you, and nor should you. But you don't get to decide what your role is in their lives. They get to do that. At some point in the past, you were a hero in Lessa's story, whether you believe it not has nothing to do with the truth of it.

Suddenly there was a glint to Baldur's steel blue eyes, as the man was outlined by the purple hues of the setting sun. He came forward suddenly, charging completely, refusing to back down. He abandoned defense and pressed forward, it didn't matter if Alkor counter attacked, or struck him, the gaijin samurai pressed forward with fire in his belly and pressed Alkor back. For every blow Alkor landed, Baldur returned it, every time Alkor tried to hold his ground Baldur would force him back through sheer stubborn force of mass and unceasing attacks. He was only a head taller than The First Sword of Aincrad, but he leveraged that size difference.

"Stop letting the past limit your choices. Stop assuming your only role is who you are. Don't accept who you are as good enough, or the end of your journey. If you keep whittling away at a piece of wood, never satisfied, you end up with nothing in the end." Finally, Baldur clashed blades with Alkor and threw both of them back away from each others, taking a pause.

"You don't know what is good enough, because you're still letting someone else define that for you. You can't ask them, you can't get their approval, or more specifically, they aren't here to give you their disapproval." Baldur put the point of the wood sword down on the floor of the dojo and leaned on it. Something he would have scolded any of his students for doing.

"The answer, Alkor, is that you're already good enough. You have been for a very, very long time. Just because you could be better, doesn't mean you aren't good enough. And the moment you stop letting someone else narrow your options, is when you'll start to feel satisfied."

 

[Alkor 0]

How many times had he reached the same conclusion?

How many times had it tasted just as bitter?

The reality for Alkor was that he was a pyre, a bright burning furnace that fueled itself with singular passion- but the fire burned monochromatic. Where so many others put on a brilliant display across the entire rainbow, his own worth was grayscale. He could be hotter than all of them, but never as beautiful.

And he couldn't even look away from the fire to care about the difference. That heat called to him, always drew him back, and ever burned him. The things Baldur said, Alkor knew. For so many people, Alkor was "enough," and yet, for the people who mattered most, he never was.

Now, to take away that definition, damning though it was, and replace it with the opinions of his peers in this world... 

The song that played in the beat of their bokken was a solemn one, rife with staccato sounds filled with that zest for life that Baldur beat back at him with. It was a tragic melody with just enough hope to perfectly flavor the despair. 

The words sounded so hopeless as they formed on his tongue. "Because I don't want it," he finally admitted. It was like the floor broke underneath them when he finally spoke his mind. "I don't want to be anything to any of them. I don't want the responsibility that comes with it. I dont want to be let down again by the people closest to me. I don't want to let them down again."

It was childish, and yet, no one had ever taught him how to be a man.

Alkor had subsisted for so long in rage and defiance of expectation, that Baldur was ultimately right. He kept cracking away at the stone, hopeful that there would be nothing left at the end. Because when there was nothing, then nothing could hurt.

Simple defiance. That was what responded to Baldur. And perhaps, that was the most deeply disappointing response Alkor could have given. Their stubbornness was evenly matched, and finally, battered, they rebuffed one another.

Finally, he sighed.

"The only answers are the ones I find on my own," he asserted. "Until I learn to walk, I'm not going to try to fly."

Those words had a deeper meaning that he'd internalized, just as Baldur surmised.

I can't even accept myself. I'm not ready to trust anyone else.

"But this is a journey that doesn't give me the luxury of searching aimlessly," he flipped the wooden sword in his hand as Baldur leaned on his own weapon, and he offered the hilt to the Samurai. "I'm joining the frontlines again." Alkor confirmed at last what so many people were probably now wondering. "Because I'll never grow without being challenged, and because I'll never have the chance to live a proper life if I don't fight for freedom, just like everyone else."

Edited March 19, 2022 by Alkor

[Baldur 0]

Baldur smiled when Alkor stated he would join the Frontline. It hadn't been his specific goal, but it was a good one to win at none-the-less. There were so many things left that he wanted to say to the man, so many more words he thought Alkor knew but needed to hear. The man didn't respond to platitudes though, but maybe hearing them from people he trusted often enough would start to make them sink in.

"Just remember, Alkor-san, you are surrounded by people who care about you, whether you want them to or not. And your journey, just like our quest to get out of this tower, cannot be completed alone. Strength is not eschewing help from others, it is admitting to ourselves that we need it, and asking for it. I know you know all of this, but even I didn't achieve all of this" Baldur gestured to encompass everything, "Without the help of my friends, and standing on the shoulders of those who came before me. Better men that I have tried and failed at going it alone." He took both of the bokken and walked over to the racks, putting them away.

"But ultimately it is up to you to decide who you want to be. Don't judge that by the opinions of others. Set goals for yourself and achieve them. Like rejoining the Frontlines."  This is the second time I've had this conversation tonight. 'The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.' Baldur quoted to himself. Alkor had the right of it, always wanting to hone himself, improve himself, but he forgot to extend the grace his gives to others to himself. To love himself. To understand that he didn't need to be perfect, before he was worthy of love.

He smiled as he turned around.

"Thank you for the match." He bowed to the young man.

"I hope that you will always feel welcome here, and that you would return again. I have enjoyed our conversation."

Baldur walked over to the edge of the dojo, bowed to the kamidana, and then left to go and rejoin the rest of the festivities.

[Alkor 0]

Thread Complete!

total word count: 13610
base exp: 2265

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