Book 3: Chapter 51: Questions and Answers
It wasn’t much of a conversation at first, as Sen laid out the reasons why he was angry with Lo Meifeng. She tried to justify a few things at first, but Sen just asked her to wait, assuring her that questions were coming. She reluctantly fell silent after that and simply endured his words. Words that he delivered with an almost mechanical precision and blank tone of voice. Once he finished with that, he was silent for a time as he weighed which questions really mattered and which ones would just be him venting his anger on her. She knew he was angry, so there was no point in driving home a point that had already been driven home. Sen had thought he’d been ready for this conversation. He’d believed he already decided on all the questions he’d ask, but the reality was different than he’d imagined. He hadn’t anticipated how pale Lo Meifeng would look or the obvious effort it took her to remain silent. He also hadn’t anticipated how his own anger would cloud everything and make him want to lash out at her.
Sen dug deep and leaned hard on the discipline he’d built over the years. He leashed that anger and dragged it into a back corner of his mind, where it could snarl and screech but not drive him to act without thought. He didn’t look directly at Lo Meifeng, because that seemed to make his anger worse. He looked out at the quiet little garden, seeking solace and calm in nature. When he felt he’d ordered his thoughts and emotions enough, he asked his first question. It was probably the most important question, objectively, even if it wasn’t the one that he cared the most about.
“Why did you lie to me about why you wanted to come here?”
“I didn’t lie,” said Lo Meifeng with an explosion of breath. “Nothing I said to you about coming here was untrue. It is out of the way. There is an order of fire cultivators here. We can learn things from them.”
“I recognize all of that,” said Sen coldly, “which is why we’re having a conversation about this and not a duel.”
That brought Lo Meifeng up short. It seemed that possibility hadn’t occurred to her. Maybe she’d underestimated Sen’s anger, or maybe she’d assumed that their relationship would prevent it. The very idea of it seemed to drain the bravado out of the front she was trying to put up. She had seen Sen fight, up close and personal, and she knew what he could really do if he decided to. That knowledge gave her an advantage over other potential opponents but also gave her perspective. While a duel between people at their respective levels of advancement would normally be an automatic win for Lo Meifeng, Sen could see the truth in her face. She recognized that her odds of survival in that kind of direct confrontation were fifty-fifty, at best. Not even that good if Sen used all the tricks in his bag. She swallowed hard.
“Then, I-,” she started, “I appreciate your restraint.”
“Yeah, sure, you’re welcome,” said Sen in a very tired voice. “The point still stands. Why did you lie to me about why you wanted to come here?”
“Because I didn’t think it was your business. Because I didn’t think it would matter. It didn’t have anything to do with you.”
“Of course, it had something to do with me,” growled Sen. “Did it ever occur to you that he might send people out to attack us?”
“Baihu would never do that!”
“How would you know? You haven’t seen the man in a century. You assumed he wouldn’t based on hundred-year-old memories.”
Lo Meifeng had no answer for that.
“Look,” said Sen through gritted teeth. “I’m not saying I needed every sordid detail of your family fight. That really isn’t my business. That your brother was here and that you had a falling out was my business because they mattered to my safety.”
Lo Meifeng seemed to struggle with herself before she said, “I know. I know. I should have told you. It’s just embarrassing. A hundred years without speaking. Who does that?”
Sen snorted. “You, apparently.”
Lo Meifeng glared at him. “Not funny.”
Sen glanced at her. “It’s a little funny.”
Lo Meifeng rolled her eyes, then took a deep breath. “I assume that’s not your only question.”
Sen did look directly at Lo Meifeng then. “It is not.”
The woman seemed to wilt under that gaze, but she nodded. “Let’s have it.”
“There was a moment when you could have chosen to stay out of that battle altogether,” said Sen, and he saw Lo Meifeng flinch. “Instead, you raced headlong into it. You know me well enough to know that I wasn’t just going to sit idly by while you fought for your life. You also knew I wanted no part of that fight. You knew I’d hate the killing. You forced my hand anyway. I want to know why.”
Lo Meifeng didn’t have an immediate answer for that one. Sen could almost see her trying to arrange what she’d say into the least inflammatory version of the answer she could give. Then, he saw her resignation when she seemingly realized that there was no best version of the answer. No version of the answer that was going to make Sen just nod and agree that it had been necessary. She took a deep breath and plunged forward.
“I needed to get to my brother. I wasn’t sure I could make it by myself. I needed what you could do, and I needed it on that battlefield.”
Sen wasn’t as surprised by that answer as he imagined Lo Meifeng thought he’d be. It was the answer he’d been expecting. It didn’t hurt less hearing it, but it wasn’t shocking. He nodded.
“So, you used me. Endangered my life. Pushed me into a situation where I’d have to kill people that I had no conflict with, just to get what you wanted.”
“He’s my brother,” she said.
Even Sen could tell that there were a million other things wrapped up in those simple words. No doubt, she was thinking of a thousand shared childhood memories. Maybe she was thinking of images of a little boy that she remembered fondly, time spent with parents, or playing games. It was a bond that Sen knew that he knew nothing about. He didn’t have the context to gauge the kind of pressure that kind of relationship put on a person. Yet, it didn’t change the fact that she had valued the life of a relative stranger over his. Not that Sen was blameless in all of it. He could have turned around and walked away at any point. He should have if he was being honest with himself. He wanted to dump all of the responsibility on Lo Meifeng for what happened, but he’d made choices out on that field. They had felt necessary at the time. Once he was in the thick of the fight, it would have been a lot harder to walk away without doing the kind of things he didn’t want to do in very public settings. In the end, he’d probably even saved more lives than he took, but he’d had no business on that battlefield in the first place. He knew that, and so did Lo Meifeng.
“I can’t drop all of the responsibility on you, much as I’d like to. I stayed on that battlefield of my own free will. But we both know you used what you knew about me, the kind of person I am, to get me into that fight. That manipulation is all on you.”
Lo Meifeng stared at the ground for a moment before she nodded. “I know. I did manipulate you.”
Sen eyed her. “Not going to say that you’re sorry?”
She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be honest. I’m not sorry I dragged you into it. It was probably the best thing that could have happened for everyone involved. Everyone except you. I’m sorry it caused you pain, but I’m not sorry I did it.”
Sen let that sit for a while before he asked his next question.
“Let’s take Master Feng out of the equation. Let’s say that we were just two people who knew each other. If I had deliberately, knowingly, lied to you, manipulated you, and pushed you into a fight you didn’t want, what would your response be? What would you do in that situation?”
The silence after that question stretched out for almost five minutes. Sen had a pretty solid idea of what the answer was going to be, so he gave her as much time as she needed. When she did finally answer, her face was a brittle mask of indifference.
“All other things being equal, if you had done to me what I did to you, I would murder you.”
Sen nodded. “I thought it would be something like that.”
Then, he stood up from where he’d been sitting and started walking back toward the compound. He'd only taken a few steps when Lo Meifeng called after him.
“So, is that it? Should I expect a dagger in the night? We both know you can do it.”
Sen paused and turned to face Lo Meifeng. “I think, right now, that you should be enormously grateful that I’m not more like you. No, I’m not going to murder you in your sleep. I owe you too much for that. I just haven’t figured out what I should do about you. I can’t trust you not to do something like this again, but I also can’t send you away. So, I need to think for a while.”
Sen was a little surprised to see a moment of hurt cross Lo Meifeng’s face when he said he couldn’t trust her. That look was fast replaced with a look of grim, resigned acceptance. Minimally, she’d burned whatever bridge of trust that had been between them. That destruction had taken a lot of the connections of friendship and loyalty he’d felt toward her with it. Sen could even, vaguely, understand why she’d done it. But it would be a long, long time before he’d ever extend her the same kind of trust that she’d enjoyed from him before that battle. It might never happen again, and that made for a very complicated working relationship. What he needed to decide was what role, if any, he was going to let her play in his life after this.
Lo Meifeng looked to be groping for words before she finally just nodded and said, “I understand.”
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