Chapter 63: Your Fault

Leon looked down at the pouch in his hand.

He turned it over and pulled the opening wide, as if there might be something he had missed. He tilted it toward the lantern light. Nothing. Not a single coin, not even a stray copper at the bottom. Slowly, he raised his eyes and looked at Mark.

A certain look came over his face. It was the look of someone who was praying with everything he had that this was not what it looked like.

"What’s going on?" he asked. His voice was quiet and careful. "How does he have this?"

Mark’s head was hanging low. He was drunk and beaten, and the room swam in front of him. At the sound of Leon’s voice, he lifted it with effort and squinted at the pouch dangling from Leon’s fingers. It was blurry at first, a black smear in the lantern light. Then it came into focus, and he let out a laugh, a low chuckle that turned into a longer one.

He shrugged his arm off Sophia’s shoulder, and she let go. He swayed a little and stayed on his feet.

"Ha. So you found it," he said, in a voice that was loud but not quite yelling. "You thought I wouldn’t, right? You’ve all been stashing money away from me. For what? What could you possibly be keeping from me, when half of what’s in there was probably mine anyway?"

"Mark..." Sophia said.

"What the fuck did you think you were doing?" His voice climbed. "What, you were saving up to run away from me? We’re supposed to be a team. We do everything together. And then I find a pouch full of gold coins, hidden, like I’m some thief you can’t trust." He shook his head, mumbling and babbling, waving his hand. "A team. That’s what we were. That’s what I thought we were."

Leon grabbed him by the collar.

He pulled him close, until their faces were inches apart, and the smell of ale and blood hit him in the face.

"What the fuck did you do with it?" he yelled.

Mark looked at him, and then he laughed again, right in his face.

"What do you think I spent tonight drinking, kid?" He grinned, his split lip dripping. "Part of that was my money. Mine. You had no fucking reason to hide it from me."

Leon’s fist came across clean.

CRACK!

The punch landed squarely on Mark’s jaw and sent him to the floor. The whole tavern went silent. The men pinned by ice stopped struggling, and the owner pressed a hand to her mouth.

Leon stood over him, his chest heaving. His eyes had turned red, and tears were gathering at the corners of them, spilling down his face before he could stop them.

"None of that was your money!" he screamed. His voice cracked. "Every time we split our profits, the three of us came together and put something in that pouch. Every time! Why the hell do you think we were doing it?"

His voice was shaking now.

"To get your life together, Mark! Ever since you lost your arm, you’ve been going from shit to shit! We are sick of watching you like this! We want the Mark who was here before, the one who laughed, the good one, the great guy!" He gripped the pouch so hard it crumpled. "We found out there might be a mage in the next city who could do something about your arm. That’s what we were saving for. For you! And now you have fucked up months of saving!"

Mark lay on the floor and listened.

The haze in his head was clearing. The pain from the punch had cut through the drink, and he could hear it all clearly now, every word. He looked up at Leon and saw the rage on his face and the tears running down it. He saw how young Leon looked, a boy of fourteen with red eyes, shaking like a leaf.

But something inside him refused to give way. A voice in the back of his mind that would not bend.

He pushed himself up from the floor and got to his feet, wiping blood from his mouth.

"Who the hell asked you?" he said.

"What?"

"Who the hell asked you to do anything for me?" His voice grew louder. "I never asked for your shitty help! I never asked you for anything! All I wanted was to live my life, wallow in my own pity if I wanted to, and go on. I didn’t ask you to pity me. I didn’t ask you to look down on me!" He jabbed a finger at Leon’s chest. "So who the hell are you to look at me like that and think you can fix me without my consent? To think you’re so much better off than me that I need your money?"

He was screaming now, spit flying from his mouth.

Leon could not hold it any longer.

He launched himself forward and tackled Mark to the ground. They hit the floor hard, and Leon landed on top of him and began to punch. Each blow landed heavy. Mark’s head rocked back and forth, and blood sprayed across the floorboards as the fists came down again and again.

"Leon!" Sophia rushed forward, and Kira was right behind her. People in the tavern stood frozen, watching in shock.

"We gave everything for you!" Leon screamed between punches, tears dripping from his chin. "Everything! So that everything could go well! So that we could be what we were before!"

Sophia wrapped her arms around his chest and pulled him back with all her strength. Leon struggled against her, then went still, panting, his knuckles red.

Mark lay there for a moment. Then he turned his head and spat blood onto the floor. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and slowly he sat up and looked at Leon.

"Nothing can go back," he said.

His voice was low and rough, and it had lost all of its drunken swagger.

"We lost someone. The team broke apart. I lost my fucking arm. I lost my home." He shook his head. "There is no going back to the way things were."

He paused, and then his lip curled.

"And everything was fine until we met you."

Leon froze.

"Mark," Sophia said sharply. "Shut up."

"No." Mark turned on her, and his eyes were burning. "You’re at fault too. Ever since you met this kid, you couldn’t stop hanging around him. If the party had been together like it always was, we would have survived that day. Nobody would have died. None of this would have happened." He pushed himself to his knees, and then he pointed at Leon, his hand trembling. "It’s all his fault! For joining us! For ruining everything!"

Silence filled the tavern.

Leon stood there, completely still. His fists hung at his sides. For a few seconds, he did not breathe, did not blink. His red eyes stared at Mark, and something behind them seemed to go out.

Then he turned around.

He walked toward the door. Nobody stopped him. The people in the tavern parted to let him through, and he stepped out into the dark street without saying a word. The door swung shut slowly behind him.

Sophia and Kira stood in the quiet. Neither of them moved for a moment.

"If you don’t know," Sophia finally said, her voice shaking with anger, "Leon is the one who has been searching for someone to heal you."

Kira stepped forward. "He started the savings on his own, Mark. Before we even found out. We only decided to chip in afterward."

"He has been torn up about it," Sophia said. "About how you stopped holding your life together. And he has been doing everything he can to fix it."

Mark said nothing. He sat on the floor, blood running down his chin, staring at the empty pouch that Leon had dropped beside him.

Sophia looked at him for one more second. Then she turned and walked out, and Kira followed.

The door closed.

Mark was left alone on the ground.