Legitimated Problems (D4, Night)

[Efren Lanville]

Efren stood on an open balcony on the backside of the castle, the cool night breeze carrying the scent of salt from the ocean below. The stars overhead flickered like distant memories, and the rhythmic crash of the waves against the shore echoed the tumult in his mind. The comments of his future duke littering his thoughts before he could rest:

"Caladan is our stewardship, Lieutenant. Lankiveil is Rabban's. There is no escape - we pay for the violence of our ancestors. Violence against us must beget violence of our own making, until magnanimous justice can arrest it in a way for all the Imperium to see. In that field, my father will beat the Baron. If House Atreides is ever defeated, it will be in darkness."

Efren was beginning to learn the weight of inherited burdens, the way they constrained you to paths not of your choosing. He felt the legacy of the past and present pulling him into battles that seemed inevitable... The idea that justice might one day put an end to the cycle of violence felt increasingly distant... almost impossible. And the thought of being defeated in darkness haunted him. The night was deep, the waves too... and so was the uncertainty.

He would have loved nothing more to be spending this night with Thra U. Their time had been short... but the memories seemed like they had burned bright in him. Tomorrow he would depart the planet... With only the hope that he would return.

He shook his head slightly, attempting to pull himself out of this introspective spell.

"There's nothing to decide..." He told himself.

The die is cast... Just go do it now.

[Kannon]

"There must be something left, Lanville." The voice came from another entrant to the balcony view over the ocean, and a usual one given how lonely the castle had turned in the past months. There was drizzle, but one in a break between storms.

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Paul came over to the balustrade that was more like a crenellation and leaned against it.

"You'll have more agency on Lankiveil than me here."

[Efren Lanville]

Efren turned his head at the voice and then offered a proper salute with a fist across his chest upon recognizing the future duke.

"Young Lord Atreides..." He offered a nod of deference as he addressed the young man.

"I don't lament having to go. I'm happy to do my duty." He replied in a soft tone, not defensive.

"I was just thinking about choices in general. Even though thinking isn't exactly my strong suit." He offered a self-deprecating smile.

He then angled his body back towards the expanse once it looked like Paul made it clear it was fine to relax.

"You've got just about as much agency as one can have at your age I'd think." He replied to Paul's last comment in a warm tone.

[Kannon]

"You're right about that. I just wish my father was back already so that I could stop trying to be someone I am not. At least not yet. I am not sure I will ever live up to the standard he is setting. Hawat has enough expertise for all of us and he could be running the House without me as the figurehead. When we disappeared in the jungle it first solved some problems before it caused another ones."

[Efren Lanville]

"And solved some other ones we didn't know we had." He said supportively.

"You showed who you were out there. At least a part of yourself. You showed yourself to be someone others can trust... someone others can follow."

He looked out over the waves with a soft expression on his face, "A standard is just a target... You don't always hit the bullseye, but the better you aim... the closer you get."

[Kannon]

"It was hard. Killing was hard, never done it before. But I just couldn't let them kill Duncan, or betray the word I gave Sinsei Vim. My father got me good with his lessons of honour." Paul quietly laughed.

"Comforting words." He sighed. "Derived from experience with your own father?"

[Efren Lanville]

He chuckled once through his nostrils at the boy’s accurate powers of perception, “Probably…”

He smiled, “He’s a good man too. Set standards high… when I was young I think I was just trying to be seen. The standards were things to do to catch his eye or approval.”

He paused, “He didn’t hold back his approval or anything like that… That’s just how the kid in me saw them.”

He leaned onto his hands, “He just wanted me to grow… and create an environment where I would push myself to grow.”

He finished, “That’s why you keep the standards high. You get closer and closer as you struggle to meet them.”

[Kannon]

"That's one thing." Paul agreed. "The other, however, is less heartening. My father was my age when the Old Duke died in the bullfighting incident. Overnight, he had to take everything over. He almost lost Caladan to a Harkonnen intrigue then."

A pause.

"...Few Atreides Dukes died of old age. The curse of the House of Atreus, as we are reminded in plays." He thinned his lips. "It's irrational, but... I just want to see him again, alive and well, in charge."

[Efren Lanville]

Efren nodded, "We're all praying for him to be back soon and safe."

He turned his head to the young man, "And whatever role this mission tomorrow has on influencing that... I promise I'll do whatever I can to make those prayers a bit more solid."

[Kannon]

Paul smiled at that.

"Our House stands with the strength of our people. However I dread it, there will come the time I will need to stop relying on my tutors and choose my own warmasters and lieutenants. I trust you'll get Gurney home alive. But if you also manage to knock some of the Harkonnen teeth out by blowing up that refrigerated ill-begotten spice hoard Thufir thinks is there, it will give us a good breathing space for things to come. The Harkonnen have no honour. Only insidiousness and wealth. The former we can humble, the latter we can thin."

[Efren Lanville]

“We’ll try to bleed them like the fat pigs they are.” He said with a smirk.

[Kannon]

Paul returned the smirk, but then grew serious.

"I'd also like to thank you for dispatching Chaen Marek. His escape would have put us in peril few normally anticipate." There was something on his mind.

[Efren Lanville]

"Even though the man more than deserved it, I was just trying to put him down. It would have been nice to see what we might've gotten from him otherwise." He replied and waited to see what Paul was hinting towards.

[Kannon]

"We wouldn't have got anything. They choose suicide over any betrayal of their secrets, and they always secure the means. I think this is what happened when you deprived him of all other options to survive. They consider us infidels, unclean in contact, unworthy of moral treatment, livestock in short. But death doesn't weigh to them the same is it does to us. For this simple reason they are capable of growing gholas from any cells they obtain. So some other Chaen Marek may actually return to haunt us."

Paul explained, not yet voicing his primary concern.

[Efren Lanville]

"Another Chaen Marek?" He asked. The information Paul provided only deepened his disgust for the man and all of those Tleilaxu creeps.

[Kannon]

"It could be worse. Have you heard about Beakkal?"

[Efren Lanville]

He shook his head unconfidently, "Some sort of operation back in the Great Spice War was it not?"

[Kannon]

"Yes. We had to bomb our own war memorial on the Senasar Plateau where Atreides ancestors were buried. The planetary governor had given the Tleilaxu a permission to excavate. They were after our genes. Persistently have been. They even approached my father when his first son died to turn the boy's cells into a ghola, trying to abuse his heartbreak."

Paul paused. "All the captives must have had their DNA stolen, Duncan included. We can hope that it hadn't gotten offworld before you slew him."

[Efren Lanville]

"Why would they want Atreides genes? To plant spies in our house?" He asked.

[Kannon]

"Possibly. We don't know how their face dancers are made. But I can imagine some more nefarious purposes. Like to give us the copies of our diseased loved ones so as to mess with our loyalties while they pull the strings. Or to craft poisons that uniquely affect us. Bene Tleilax is capable of all that, and more."