Infidels

[Nox]

Those five words left Nox staring at the Ascendancy.  He owned him?  Nox took his hand, but shook his head.  "You owe me nothing.  I was just doing my job.  It makes no difference to me if you were a homeless man or the leader of half the world."  He grinned across their clasped hands.  "But the sentiment is welcome. Thank you."

He didn't need favors or depts.  Just his life.  That's all he wanted.  They walked.  Graveyards were quiet.  He didn't fancy the location himself, but it was peaceful, and in the chaos of his life it was fitting.  His past failures were all dead.  What he'd hoped had been his future was dead, and now, he was fighting to stay alive against what he'd always wanted with his life.  The question asked he'd never really thought about before.  

Life before had been a day to day thing.  Survive to fight the next monster, move to the next location, fight, survive, move on.  Moscow was the only place Nox had ever stopped long enough to find a real life - real friends.  There had been nothing more than his family.  Nox laughed. "If you'd asked me that a year ago, hell even six months a go I'd have said to make my Dad proud of me.  Sadly now, even though hes been dead going on three years now, he would never be proud of me.  I'm what he hates most in the world - a monster."  Nox didn't add that it didn't help that he was attracted to the same sex.  But that was a life Nox didn't really think about.  "Asked me a few weeks ago I would have told you that the only thing I wanted in life was to protect my family and friends.  And then friends betray you and what you thought was life isn't anymore."  

That was his life.  Nox shook his head.  "I don't know what I want in life anymore, kinda what I'm doing right now.  Finding that truth.  My family's dead.  I killed my best friend.  My colleagues want me dead." Nox sighed.  "I know what I don't want thought.  I don't want to live under my family's shadow.  I don't want to be the zealot Atharim like my father - a man who turned his son straight, a man who would kill that very same son the day he found out he weilded the power of the gods.  He'd have killed his beloved daughter just the same - that was the strength of his conviction to the Atharim.  I'm not that.  I beleived in Aria, in her strength to be different.  But she was a tortured soul even from the moment I met her.  I followed her to the monastary to find more information about Apolyon.  This dreaded propehcy she feared yet she couldnt kill.  I followed because of that.  I've helped more men who could channel since then than I knew possible.  I'm nothing.  No one yet I find myself in a position of knowleedge because I didn't blow myself up when I found out what I was."

Nox laughed and looked at the Ascendancy.  "I know you don't like me because I don't bow and scrap.  I won't worship you.  You are not a god.  Just a very powerful man.  I respect what you've done - come from nothing.  But I won't be like the men of old who worshiped the gods of old.  Just like I won't be a god."

Nox realized he probably shouldn't have said that last bit and closed his mouth sharply.  He talked too much when he was nervous and he was standing in front a man who could smite him.  That would make anyone neverous specially when the man threatened his life every. single. time.  they'd met in the past.