Dragons, Dystopians, and Denial

Between focusing on keeping Mellie riding steady and Jerica's information dump, Elias did not feel confident on being quizzed on Beirania's government.

"... Yeeees," he said out of habit whenever he was asked a question he didn't know the answer to. He then closed his eyes and sharply shook his head, deciding to start over. "I mean, I don't know. Maybe it'd be easiest if I just explain how the Earth government works."

He took a deep breath. "It depends on where you are, but from where I'm from, there are a series of towns called sectors with a unified government. I'm from Sector 2, out of 25. The common folk don't know this, but they are divided into the alphabet too. So I'm from Sector 2-A, because all 25 of the sectors are from Region A. There are continents, too, separated by a different alphabet, but I don't know much about that. Anyways, there are Regions A though J that I know of, spanning great distances apart. There are smaller ones too, but they don't have a political leader. And speaking of political leader, each sector has a leader with a power involving time manipulation. They're considered pure bloodlines, so these political leaders do have arranged marriages. And they all meet up every once in a while. It could be small, like a meetup with a nearby sector, or big, like Region A meeting with B, or all all Regions A through G meet up with one another. I'm sure they meet internationally too, but I don't know the details of that."

He looked over at Jerica after his own information dump.

"Does that answer your question..?"

The longer he talked, the more Jerica realized she didn’t actually care. He sounded like a madman listing off all these sectors and towns and regions.

“Sure.” She nodded, pretending like what he’d said made sense. But the only thing that stood out to her was the arranged marriages. “Sounds to me like you you have kings and are just in denial about having kings so you call them leaders.”

Elias narrowed his eyes at her. It sounded like she absorbed just as much information from him as he did from her. Which, needless to say, was probably nothing.

"We don't have..." he began, but then let out a small back-of-the-throat groan.

"Sure, if that's easier for you," he grumbled, deciding not to go on the whole tangent about how it wasn't just the leaders who controlled the decisions. Something told him she wouldn't care.

"But I'll have you know, it's just not 'kings', then. There are 'queens,' too. In fact, a close friend I had growing up was supposed to be this 'queen' for my sector."

His mouth was open like he was going to continue talking, but then he stopped before any sentences came out.

It had been a long, long time since he talked about her in a casual setting like this.

“Oh?” Suddenly she was invested in the conversation again. He looked like he hadn’t meant to say that. Which meant she /definitely/ wanted to hear all about. “Tell me about her.”

Elias paused for far too long.

It wasn't like she was a sore subject for him. If anything, he was probably a sore subject for her. It had just been a long time since he got to talk to her. Like, as an actual conversation. The last time they met, they only got to exchange looks, and that was that. But conversations could still happen with the eyes, and he knew what she was saying. What she had always been saying, ever since he left.

I'll never forgive you.

"... Her name is Evaline," he began. It felt strange to say her name out loud. Everyone already knew who she was. She was infamous, even after the war.

But of course, he had to assume Jerica knew nothing, because she didn't.

"We were friends before I was in the military," he continued slowly. "And I think you'd be friends with her, too. That, or you'd both hate each other. I can't tell."

Jerica looked at him thoughtfully. It was almost like her an Akeno -- only Akeno was the soldier boy and she was the complicated royalty-not-quite-queen that made things harder.

"And are you friends now?"

"No," Elias said with a heavy voice. "She hates me."

That one was a little harder to make the analogy with her and Akeno. Akie tended to follow her around like a puppy, no matter how much she tried to make him stop.

"Why's that?"

Elias sighed. The answer was a lot more complex than he wanted to go into, but the surface of it was good enough for now.

"The military works for the government, and so we're supposed to be on the same side. But she joined an anti-government rebellion, and then became leader of that. You can see why she'd hate me."

Ah, so Earth had juicy lovers' quarrels too. She kept her expression impassive but wanted to smirk at how flustered he was getting about his ex. "But you hate the military?"

"That's right," Elias continued on. "But it's... I mean, if I could, I'd join the rebellion too. One of their demands is to reduce the military. But it's more complicated than that. I can't just leave the military."

He was hoping Jerica would fill in the blanks herself. Evaline, being on the opposing side as him, and her knowing that his job was to eradicate dissent.

"Are you afraid that the rebellion wouldn't be able to protect you?" It wasn't adding up. If he hated the military -- and there was a whole counter-reaction against the military -- why not just join it? Go be reunited with Evaline.

"Well, the rebellion did lose," Elias mumbled. "So, I guess, yes. The power of the existing and government military is too strong. Plus, it was impossible to escape. It still is.
They don't make it easy for people like me, who..."

He sighed again. This was more frustrating than he thought.

"I don't have a military background," he settled on instead, but by now it seemed painfully obvious. "My comrades were born into it, but I was forced into it at eighteen."

Well, there were layers to that statement, but again, it was a good enough answer for now.

"So people like me would naturally want to escape. And of course, they don't make it easy."

"So, you're a no-one who doesn't matter to your government, but are somehow important enough for them to force you into the military and keep you there, despite the fact that you're clearly not loyal and are just scared of the system?"

Jerica was getting confused. Which was impressive, since she usually had an aptitude for understanding political structures. She knew which Baron's kneecaps to crack to make a country veer towards a deal. Whose wife to threaten -- whose son to blackmail. But she didn't have the foggiest idea what Elias was rambling about.

"Would you join your girlfriend's rebellion if you could?"

Elias was taking a swig of water from the canteen, but then spit it out mid-swallow when Jerica asked her final question. He had to take a minute to cough and wheeze when the water seemed to go down his windpipe.

"First of all," he said mid-wheeze, trying to recover from that spit-take and also the context of her question, "Evaline is not—and has never been—my girlfriend."

He took a second to imagine a history in which that were true.

... He couldn't.

Elias shook that dreadful thought away and then cleared his throat to answer with a steady voice.

"But if I could have joined that rebellion, no, I wouldn't have. I don't want to fight in anyone's side. I just want to live a normal life." He sighed. It seemed he had been sighing nonstop during this conversation.

"And for your first question, the answer is basically yes to all of that."