User:JohnB/Scotti's Revenge 5

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Getting Even[edit]

A CHANCE ENCOUNTER:

The New Year holiday came and went. Laila had returned to Vos to liquidate the general store, and it was with an acute bitterness that she sorted through all the knick-knacks and keepsakes that had accumulated over the years. She kept the ring on her finger after it was returned to her so that any man who was on the make in the taverns would know she was somehow connected to the "Vanech Fiasco", as it came to be called, and was best to steer clear of.

She took up work as an adventurer, specifically a tomb raider. She arrived in Gnisis after having cleaned out the Ogrim torture chamber and a vampire lair in that vicinity, and she had two gunny sacks full of loot to sell off at the shopping booths outside the temple. She dropped them on the table of an Imperial arms dealer, and he totted up the value on an abacus.

"Some of this stuff is way beyond my means," he said.

"I'll just take it with me," she said nonchalantly. "I won't quibble over the rest because there's a lot more where it came from." She laid her hand on the gunny sack to lift it off the table, and his eye spotted the ring on her finger.

He paid out the gold slowly hoping she would finally look up at him, but without his braids and beard, she drew a total blank. She finally turned to go.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but may I inquire about that ring?" he finally said.

She stiffened, turned, and looked him straight in the eye. If he still had his braids and scruffy beard, she would have recognized him immediately. She removed the ring and slapped it down on the table with enough force to make the chitin daggers bounce.

"Take what is yours, Decumus Scotti, and go to hell where you belong!"

"What did she call you?" the Dunmer manning the table to his right asked as they watched her swagger away with the gunny sack.

"Oh, n-nothing," Decumus flustered. "Listen, can you watch my table for a moment? I'll be right back."

Laila was up on the silt strider platform waiting her turn for a ride when she saw whoever he was approaching.

"Just let him come! I'll shove my heel into his snoot and..."

But instead of mounting the platform steps, he went to the river and threw something. She couldn't see what it was, but it had to be the ring. He began walking back to his table without looking up at her.

Laila dropped the gunny sack of loot and rushed back down the stairs. He was about half-way to the temple when she caught up with him.

"Excuse me," she called from behind, "mind if we talk?"

"If you’re thinking of coming back now, your presence isn’t welcome. Couldn't you have waited for me to get out of prison instead of turning me into a...a...walking dead?"

Laila had no intention of coming back, and a negative invitation like that showed he was open to counter-suggestions, like can we still be friends? But there was nothing to go back to.

"Has it been hard?" she asked.

"Living as someone else?" He shook his head as they continued walking. "No, I already got a lot of practice living as a Nord. The only thing I cannot do is go back to being Decumus Scotti when it’s convenient. I had an ordeal in which I was captured and about to be turned in to the authorities, but my friend helped engineer my rescue by the Blades.

”This friend has really come up in the world since we last met.  I presented my to Caius Cosade and asked him if it were at all possible for him to pull strings and grease a few palms to establish a new identity for me. Cosades’s operational budget is somewhat limited, so this friend paid out several thousand drakes from her own pocket.”

“Her?! So you were two-timing, eh?!”

“I take it, then, that you're still unattached,” he smirked knowingly.

“That's my business, not yours!”

“Then I don't see why we even need to talk!”

"Well, I just hope I didn't inconvenience you too much setting you adrift the way I did."

“It was of the utmost importance to establish a new identity because I had entered Vvardenfell using the Thief Ring, so money was paid out to various people to keep quiet about my boarding the prisoner transport ship from a rowboat in mid-sea. Everybody at the Census Office had greasy fingers and so cooperated to the fullest. No questions were asked, and I was out of there in no time.

“Yumiya—that’s her name—then told me a Dunmer woman here in Gnisis was looking to sell her arms and weapons stand and go into retirement. Yumiya lent me even more money to buy the concession. I was ready to say no because I was already so deeply indebted to her. I said I would join a great house, but she strongly recommended I keep my independence and do only hit jobs for the great houses—essentially what you used to be doing. So here I am, free to come and go as I please.

“By the way, whatever became of that Thief Ring?"

"I have no idea," she answered instinctively feeling her neck. "I wonder if it came off when we plunged into the sea."

"I should have kept it. I had more need of it, and it cost me a fortune. Anyway, Vvardenfell is the ideal place for con men and impostors because it seems nobody here is really who they give themselves out to be, so nobody bothers to do background checks. And what about you, the widow of the idiot who torched the Vanech Building Commission?"

"Well, that's where your ring came in handy, holding at bay all the 'wolves in sheep's clothing' trying to pick up a one-night-stand. I saw you throw the ring into the river and was sorry, not for me but for you. It's just as well because I don't think I need it any more. I can hold my own."

ACCUSATIONS FLY:

When they arrived at his table, he turned to her.

"Laila, after all that's happened between us, can you forgive me?"

He wasn’t on his knees, but this is precisely what she was waiting for. She glanced at the Dunmer standing at his table watching them intently.

“Let's go inside the temple and talk.”

They found a bench inside where they could sit down.

“To answer your question, my answer would have to be, Yes and No. Many men think a woman’s body is little more than a personal plaything, but you never did. You never forced yourself on me, and this is where I still think of you as one of a kind and still hold a deep and sincere appreciation of you.”

“So why were you never able to get intimate with me?” he asked bitterly.

“Get intimate?!” she laughed sardonically. “Cleanliness is very important to women—we are affected by filth in ways that men aren’t. And this is where you failed. You always took it for granted that I would continually shrug off what you did to Vanech, as if it was some kind of ‘man thing’ that a woman must learn to live with. And then you could help yourself to my body as if I owed it to you as your wife. Come on, get real!"

"Wait, stop right there! Who was it who crept into my room to strangle me?!"

"You know that was before I got to know you. Wasn't it enough that I loved you as I did?! Then after your little caper, wasn't it enough that I followed you to the end of Vvardenfell?!

"To be quite blunt, I really wanted to kill Decumus, and I finally did, hoping it would rid my heart of his pestilent disregard for me as a feeling person. But it failed to do that. I really should have been more careful when I entered your room that first night, and none of this would have happened. You would have gone down in the books as a death by suicide, and I would have gone on killing people for a living. But I’m glad things turned out as they did because this experience taught me a lot about myself, the joy of being a woman, not a victim, and living my own life as I see fit, not as another sees fit!

“And for that reason alone, I want to continue to come and go as I please. Yes, I can forgive the present you. No, I can't forgive Decumus Scotti. You would do well to settle down with your friend. I imagine she’s very pretty, won’t outlive you by a century, and can procreate.”

She could see from the wistful look on his face that he couldn’t agree with her more. She was sorry that she didn't meet any one of those criteria (she was handsome, to say the least) and that her emotional leverage over him had just been squandered. But the last thing she wanted was for him to be happy with his friend. She had to slam him to make sure of it.

”So, tell me, what would this friend want from a 'dead man'? What is she paying such a high premium for? Or is it just an oversize gift for your oversize ego? Or maybe it is her tentacles wrapping around to squeeze you like an overripe persimmon!” she said balling her fist in front of his face. “Considering how much she’s paid you, she has every right to get intimate with you whenever she wants!”

Laila knew he had an explosive temper, but he didn’t respond as expected.

“Laila, at the time you put my ring on the pilot, did you feel you were helping me or hindering me?”

Laila suddenly looked confused.

“Now you say," he continued, "it was figuratively to kill me, but isn’t that only an afterthought? Were you in fact trying to help me escape? This explanation you just gave me is only an emotional buffer to help you justify to yourself what you did to me.

“And the finger you put the ring on, was it this one?” he asked holding up the ring finger, “Or this one?” He held up the little finger.

The vacant look in her eyes showed she was trying to remember.

“Did the ring go only half way onto the finger, or all the way to the hand?”

“Why are you asking such stupid questions?!” she suddenly blurted.

“Merely playing the devil’s advocate,” he answered smirking mischievously. “So, let’s imagine you were standing before a judge, how would you defend yourself? You can’t because Decumus Scotti is still very much alive. You and everybody else say he is dead, but in this case, death is a curable ailment, wouldn’t you say?”

Laila’s lower lip was beginning to tremble as her breathing got deeper and faster.

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“I wouldn’t dare what? Rob you of your freedom to come and go as you please?”

“You’d go to prison, too.”

“Hey, I'll do anything to be Decumus Scotti again!"

Laila stood up and turned to leave quickly.

“Go ahead and run!” he called after her, “They’ll be coming for you!”