The two men lay on the ground in striking contrast to one another. The one pirate's body twitched slightly as his heart began healing his injuries. The other man's form remained unmoving.
It would never move again.
Red shook himself. Logically speaking, nothing that had happened was his fault. The pirates had killed people and would have killed him. Derrin would have killed them. Zara would have killed them. Ayjax likely would have killed them as well. He knew all of this, and it didn't matter. A man was dead because of him, no matter what the circumstances were.
That wasn't even the worst part, though. After all of his careful preparations and all of his planning, he had still ended someone's life. Even being prepared for this potential eventuality hadn't been enough for when the true understanding washed over him. He hadn't hesitated, he hadn't flinched, he had simply fired his shockblaster into the man's chest.
His question from so many days ago had been answered. Had he been in Derrin's situation, he likely would have killed the pirate just as readily. He shuddered thinking about it. There had been no thought as he fired his gun; that was the worst part. He had so wholeheartedly accepted that he was prepared that he never even anticipated the pirate dying by his hands.
Red felt his heart rattling in his chest. His sea heart seemed to be reacting as well. He had thought it was supposed to suppress his emotions when he was in danger. He was clearly not safe yet, so why was his overwhelming guilt so powerful? His heart pulsed again as if his heart itself blamed him for the dead.
"The man deserved to die, he needed to die, he was a pirate. It's not my fault the man's dead. No, the pirate brought himself there in the first place," Red nodded.
Yes, that was it…
That… was some bullshit.
He waited, trying to tell himself that it was worth it, that the man deserved it, but he couldn't. Red felt terrible. He hadn't even known anything about the man other than his being a pirate. Killing someone had always seemed like some sort of emotional affair. That's what it was in the stories anyway. The stories couldn't have been more wrong.
Every fiber of his rational mind told him he needed to move. It was the logical thing to do. Remaining here would only increase the chances of encountering more pirates and forcing him to fight again. His rational side was not in control. It was as if his sea heart itself was lamenting the fact that he'd killed.
Red wasn't sure if knowing more about the man would have made him any better off in a decision. Perhaps the pirate had been a father and a husband. He might have had a family and been forced into this business simply to make ends meet. What right would he have to take him away from his family? He'd lost his family already. He had no one waiting for him back home, but this man might have had.
Why couldn't his damn sea heart start suppressing his emotions?
He needed it now more than he had ever needed it before. Derrin's words seemed to come back to him. The control his sea heart had over him was far more than that of a more powerful person. Ayjax was likely in total control of his sea heart, while Red's sea heart could control him in a way.
Red was shaken from his stupor at the sound of crunching leaves. Despite his sorry state and current mental spiral, he leaped to his feet. His shockblaster was in poor condition, but that hopefully wouldn't stop him from getting a few more shots off. He flipped the switch, turning back to low power mode; his grip on the weapon tightened. His whole body shook, but he tried to calm his nerves.
He needed to be ready.
He had been prepared for a fight, or as prepared as he could have been, but when he saw the figure scaling the ravine, he was relieved. His gun arm dropped, and the weapon nearly tumbled from his grip. He was shaking far too much to have hit a shot anyway.
Bloody hell, why couldn't he calm down?
"Derrin?" he asked, not really sure what it was he was trying to ask.
"I heard the fight, but it seems I didn't get here quickly enough."
His friend leaped the last few feet to the jungle, and his hand rested on the hilt of his blade. His clothes were ruffled from combat, and there were smears of blood on him. Derrin paused and assessed the two fallen men. His gaze landed on the dead pirate, and he focused there for a moment.
Derrin turned to him as if nothing had happened, "We need to move. There is more coming, and I think that the boss arrived in the caverns."
Red blinked, "What?"
"We need to go," Derrin turned to him, his voice firm but soft, "That man's dead."
Glad you noticed, he wanted to say.
However, all he could do was nod. Derrin eyed him. He seemed to survey everything about him, making Red feel uncomfortable in the silence. Red expected him to do something about needing to be there. Something about how he should have followed his honor and protected Red even when he didn't want to.
Instead, Derrin gave him a sad smile, "You'll get over it, I promise. It took me a long time to accept it, and it will take you a long time as well. Don't worry, you'll get used to it eventually."
Red stared at him, unmoving. To a soldier like Derrin, those words may have been gratifying. It would have felt good to get the reassurance that you wouldn't feel terrible about your job for the rest of your life. Red was not Derrin, and he was not a soldier either. He had already told Zara that exact thing.
This was all too much. For the first time, he recognized how Vizim must have felt, overwhelmed by everything around him. His friend was so used to his home on the ship that when his world turned upside down, he was lost and adrift like a ship in a storm.
Derrin's words were not reassuring. How could they be? His biggest fear after all was not from killing this man. It wasn't from getting into more fights. It wasn't even from needing to kill another person.
Red was scared that he would get used to it.
He was terrified that he would end up like Derrin or Zara, where he accepted killing as a thing that needed to be done and moved on. He did not want to become so callous to death, so accepting of killing, that he could walk away from it without looking back. He could not, he would not, allow death to become normalized for him.
He could already envision a version of himself. A version that did not hesitate to blow a man's head off. It disgusted him. The world should be better than that. It shouldn't glorify murder as much as it did, whether that be a person or a robot. The world should have been better even if it wasn't.
Red found himself joining the world that day. He became part of something he had long wished to avoid. There were countless numbers that had blood on their hands. He had joined that group.
There was now blood on his hands, and no amount of water would wash it off.