The morning after her night of heavy drinking with Ves and Stel was about as unpleasant as Khari had expected it would be, and then also worse.
Granted, she'd been the one doing the most drinking; Stel had been moderate and thoughtful like she was about anything, which was probably the only reason Khari was in her room at the barracks now and not passed out in the table in the tavern or some snowdrift between here and there. It occurred to her in a hazy sort of way that she probably ought to thank her for that.
More urgent was the fact that her stomach was rebelling against her. Khari rolled out of bed, head pounding in time with her heartbeat, and more or less fell into the door leading to the hallway. From there it was a staggering journey to the shared washroom, where she lost the rest of... whatever was in her guts into an empty chamber pot. Wiping her mouth with her sleeve, Khari sat back against the wall, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth until the world stopped spinning, at least. For a while, she didn't think about or feel anything other than her body's admonitions for the way she'd spent the night before, urgent but relatively tolerable.
But being sick had actually helped, and her stomach gradually settled until the nausea was mostly gone, leaving the pain in her head and the one in her chest as well. That one didn't seem to be going away. Ignoring it had been effective for about a day, but she sensed she was at the limit of her capability to do that, and so the only question that remained was whether she wanted to try coping with the fallout by herself or seek out company and impose herself upon the unlucky subject of her search.
Surprisingly, there was more than one candidate, even. But she didn't have to think too hard to know who she was going to look for.
With a few more minutes to get herself together, Khari finally pushed off the floor, shuffling over to a washbasin and splashing chilly water onto her face. It stung, sharp little pinpricks of iciness against whatever warmth she'd kept from her cocoon of blankets to here. It was jarring, and exactly what she needed. Or part of it.
Scrubbing the rest of herself clean, including her teeth, she changed out yesterday's shirt for a new one, mint-green and thick enough to keep the chill at bay, and stepped back into her boots. Stel must have taken them off for her. Wrapping her cloak around herself, she wound her hair into a hasty bun atop her head to save the time it'd take to braid wet and stepped out of the barracks.
That was almost a mistake; she winced at the brightness of the sun, estimating the time to be late morning, perhaps almost noon. She figured she should probably eat, but honestly felt no hunger. So she'd skip the food for now. Keeping her eyes squinted against the glare off the snow, Khari headed for the main building of the castle, climbing the stairs with only slightly more difficulty than usual. She took it slow, though, trying to get her thoughts in order. Too bad they all seemed to slip away from her like wraiths, not quite tangible enough to hold on to, much less force into any semblance of sense.
Fortunately, she didn't really need to think to find the undercroft. Her feet just sort of took her there. She doubted Rom was expecting her or anything—he might not even be there. She hoped he was; Khari had no particular desire to go traipsing around the grounds looking for him, not in this state.
Reaching the door felt like more of an accomplishment than it should have. She resisted the urge to rest against it for a moment and knocked before she lost her nerve. Khari had never been one to impose upon other people if she could help it. She preferred to think of herself as being able to do things alone, without relying on anyone else. But she also wasn't the type to ignore her instincts—and she felt like she should be here, right now.
"It's open," came Rom's voice from inside, fairly muffled, but then the door was quite thick. His tone was strained, as though the words had taken some effort to get out.
Considering the size of the room and all the equipment he had in there, Khari was not especially surprised to find that he was, in fact, doing push-ups when she entered. Of course, at this particular moment, even the thought of strenuous motion was enough to make her feel slightly ill, so she averted her eyes and made a beeline for the sofa near the railing on the upper part of the room.
“No rush or anything, but when you're done there, is there any chance you have anything for headaches? I kind of feel like you decided to open a rift in my skull." She took off her cloak, plonking herself down at one corner of the couch and tossing it to land over the rail.
"Sure. One minute." Rom had chosen a spot near the open mouth of his quarters to complete his set, which was obviously part of a much larger workout judging by the sweat occasionally rolling in beads off his bare back. Even in the depths of winter the undercroft had a way of staying warm, heat emanating up from the floor in front of Khari. After about twenty more he exhaled a heavy breath and stood, grabbing a nearby towel and wiping his face and head.
He looked remarkably different than he had the day before. He'd taken a razor to his beard and his head in general, now clean shaven entirely. He looked simultaneously a lot more like his old self, as he'd appeared upon first meeting her in Haven, but also entirely different. It was in the way he carried himself, perhaps. A different person in many ways from the one he'd been in the Inquisition's first days. He made a quick stop at his alchemy table, carefully moving a few vials and ingredients aside before he grabbed one from the rear and made his way back towards the front of the room.
He tossed the vial into Khari's lap. It was a mostly clear liquid with a slightly yellowish tinge, a rather unpleasant color in all honesty. Rom moved a light tan-colored shirt on his bed as he took a seat there, throwing the towel over his shoulder while he caught his breath. "That's pretty strong, but you look like you could use it."
He wasn't wrong. Khari was sure she hadn't been able to completely scrub away the evidence that her morning had been rather unpleasant, anyway. Uncorking the vial, she tossed it back quickly, which was definitely the best way to go, considering how it tasted. Shaking her head and exhaling sharply, she grimaced. Already, though, she felt a little better. “Ugh. Thank you." Replacing the stopper in the vial, she set it aside and blinked at him.
“What happened to your hair?"
"I got rid of it," he answered simply, shrugging. He rubbed at the top of his head with his marked hand, as though he wasn't quite used to the feel of it yet. "I'm sure my head will freeze, but it just didn't feel like me. I was tired of it. Tired of this winter, too."
“Maybe I should shave my head, too." Khari pushed out a heavy breath and leaned back on the couch. The fabric it was covered in had a different texture against her neck than her hair did, of course. “I'm not sure if that would feel more like me, though. I'm not sure I actually know what me feels like, right now." Bringing her hands up to her face, she scrubbed, as though the uneasiness was some layer on her skin that she could slough off. But it wasn't, and she dropped her arms back into her lap.
Rom fell silent for a long while, taking steady breaths through his nose that slowed and slowed until they fell into a normal pace. His eyes fell to the stone floors as he thought; grey eyes like steel and just as unwavering. It was obvious he'd expected the conversation to shift in this direction. If he'd been surprised at all by Khari showing up at his door at all, he hid it quite well.
"For what it's worth, I like your hair just the way it is," he said, keeping his tone somewhat light despite it all. "It's a bit of a mess, but so are you. No more than the rest of us, though." Running the towel over his upper body one more time, he threw it aside and pulled on his shirt, a bit of uncertainty crossing over his features. "Certainly no more than me. Thanks to you I've at least kept the pieces of me in order. If any of that makes sense." He ran his hand over his head again, maybe to get rid of some itch. He was obviously not at ease as much as he was trying to display.
"Can I ask you some questions, Khari? About Ser Durand, about... you? I want to help, that's all I want to do. But I'm no good at this, I don't think I've helped anyone in my life with doubts or anything of the sort. Maybe I can if I understand a little better."
A bit of a mess, huh? She supposed that was true enough. This whole thing was a mess, really. The Inquisition. Bunch of spare parts from other lives and other armies, thrown together and hammered, tied and welded into some approximation of order. Definitely not a well-oiled machine. Maybe it never would be.
Khari hit her palm against the unoccupied soft cushion next to her a couple of times. “Ask me anything you want. Gods know I can't get my own thoughts straight enough to be any use." It would be something of a relief, to let someone else help her figure out what she was left with, after everything that had happened. She sure as hell didn't know on her own—all she had was a churning mix of feelings, knocking around inside her like... something in a cage, maybe. And she couldn't help but feel the bars were too rusty to hold it all for long.
Rom slowly got up and crossed the short distance over to sit next to her on the sofa, though he leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees, steepling his fingers. His eyes remained locked forward for the moment.
"Okay..." He looked about to ask a first question several times, rethinking each one before he finally settled on something. "Should Ser Durand have done something different? What should he have done instead?" He let the question hang for a moment, before adding on to it. "I've been thinking about it since we spoke with him, and... I can't figure out what other option he had. At least, not one that could've been a success, not one that could have saved anyone and stopped Halfhand. What he did caused some good people to die, but it was a good plan. It could've worked, and it almost did."
“He shouldn't have been so willing to sacrifice other people. Especially not when he wasn't willing to sacrifice himself." She shook her head fiercely, lacing her fingers together on her lap and squeezing them. She knew she felt deeply wrong about what he'd done. She knew on some instinctive level that it was wrong. Identifying exactly how was a different matter. “There's no way Halfhand's entire party fell on Ser Liliane's squad and left the fort undefended. He could have helped. Could have at least tried to help her out of there, then explained everything. It's like he said: she was important. People would have listened if she'd said they needed more help."
Ser Durand had always had difficulty getting nobles to listen to him. She understood that. It was partly because he had so little status himself, and in a status-obsessed world, it meant he couldn't do half the good he wanted to. “Even before that... I think he gave up on the other chevaliers too soon. Messages are easy to ignore. But if he'd left the guys to look after things for a couple months, and gone to Val Royeaux himself? If he was smart enough to think of the plan he chose, he was smart enough to get someone to listen to him. He just didn't." Probably because he'd already decided it wasn't going to work. Khari believed his cynicism had blinded him, the way people so often accused her of letting her optimism blind her.
Rom didn't seem convinced by her answer, but he took a while to pick which part of it to address first. "Maybe he could have helped. Maybe it would have just gotten him and his recruits killed. Maybe in the months it would take to go to Val Royeaux himself, more would have died, and maybe he would've returned empty handed all the same. Cunning with plans hardly means cunning with words. I should know." He sighed, obviously tired of thinking of it, but it was all there seemed to be to think of.
"It was a flawed, dishonest way, but I just don't see the other ways resulting in less life lost. Maybe I'm just as jaded as he is. Not like I've had the greatest teachings to base my opinions on." He fell silent again for a moment, and then turned his head sideways, resting it against the palm of his hand and looking at Khari.
"You say he wasn't willing to sacrifice himself. But... he lost everything for this. He lost his honor, he'll lose his title, he could have lost his life. He still could, I suppose. But he knew that going in. Maybe I'm not seeing things right, but it seemed to me he was willing to do more than die to protect the people he served. He was willing to let people that cared about him remember him as a liar, as a man who threw away his honor. He was willing to let you hate him. I might be wrong, but that seems like it could be worse than death."
“But he didn't try, Rom." Khari hissed out a frustrated breath, but the feeling wasn't directed at him. She wasn't sure whether it was even directed at Ser Durand. So much of this made so little sense to her. “Maybe those other things would have gone badly, that's true. But if he tried them and they did fail, at least he'd have been doing things the right way. Sometimes the right way is the hard way, but just because it might fail isn't any reason not to give it a shot. It's no reason to go treating someone else's life like it's a means to an end and nothing more."
She took in a deep, trembling breath. “It's like... anything could have gone wrong. Any of the possibilities. Nothing was guaranteed. And right then, when he had the chance to take the risk, to do the right thing, to be uncomfortable and out of his element but brave and honorable and in the right... he didn't. He chose what looked to be easier at the time." She shook her head. “Everything he stands to lose... those are the things he taught me to hold onto no matter what. The things that make the difference between knights and... and..."
She'd been about to say killers. It was probably obvious. Khari swallowed thickly, raising shaky hands to her face and rubbing at her eyes. They were hot and prickly and she was having trouble seeing out of them. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean... I just..." She sniffed, wiping her palms on her trousers.
They left wet marks.
Rom was pretty good at muting his reactions to things, at putting up a stone wall in place of his face, but even though she'd cut herself off before she could finish he still looked as though he'd been struck, and a dark look passed over his face, twisting the line of the tattoo that ran across the bridge of his nose. As though he'd smelled something foul. "No, you're probably right," he muttered, looking back ahead towards the door. "I doubt I could understand. All my teacher ever taught me was how to hurt. How to survive, how to kill." A tightness had developed in his jaw, his brow sunken down over his eyes.
He stood, pacing slowly right to left, towards his desk at first. The journal was still there, closed and placed right in the middle of the thing. He hadn't thrown it out yet. Hadn't burned it. His eyes glanced at it momentarily, and then he turned left and walked towards his bed, looking at the empty wall. He stopped there, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I'm sorry it didn't go the way you wanted, Khari. Sorry your mentor turned out not to be the man you thought he was. The world's a shitty place sometimes, and even if you follow a code that always demands you make the right choice... sometimes the world and what it's done to you can make it seem like there isn't a right choice to be made."
He exhaled, looking down at his marked hand to find his fingers were shaking a bit. He shook it, opening and closing his fist several times, before he turned to meet Khari's tear-shining eyes. His own were still cold and grey. "Bad things can happen to good people, until they don't know what's good anymore. And..." He trailed off, swallowing. "Sometimes good things can happen to bad people, and they can learn that there's a whole world of good things waiting for them, if they can find the heart for it." He nodded a bit, his eyes now starting to shine as well.
"I don't know if I can help you find peace with what Durand did. But I hope I can help you decide what you are. You're the best thing that ever happened to me. The only person that could make me stay here and keep trying to find a way to be good."
It was too much.
She hated what she'd said, even if it was an accident. She wanted to swallow the words back down and make it so she'd never said them. Because even if she didn't think of him like that, she knew how he saw himself. It was right there in the reaction he'd had. Khari sobbed, and she hated that, too. She was supposed to be stronger than this. She'd said it—way back when she stumbled upon Ser Durand's camp the very first time, crying like a child who knew she'd never be enough for the people she loved.
That was the deal—he taught her, and she didn't cry anymore. She wasn't sure anymore if that was an act of kindness or not, but it had helped her find the strength to keep going more than once before, strength that seemed to be eluding her now.
She hadn't believed Stel, when she'd said Khari was good for more than fighting. She hadn't believed Ves, when he'd said Rom and Stel leaned on her. It was hard to believe Rom, either, when he said she was important—that important.
Khari had never been that important to anyone. No one had ever relied on her or leaned on her or maybe even really trusted her. The one person who'd come closest to doing any of those things was a liar, and she still couldn't say how much of anything between she and her teacher had been real. “I don't know about any of it anymore." Her voice was more a raspy croak than anything, but at least it didn't give out on her. “I thought... I thought I'd finally found it. The thing I was meant to do. Who I wanted to be." She swallowed past the painful lump in her throat. “But maybe he was right. Maybe I was just looking at things too simplistically. Maybe I was stupid, or naïve."
She exhaled; the breath was shaky. With some effort, she managed to stand, orienting herself towards Rom. “But I have to believe good can win. Real good. Any battle it fights. The one in you, the one in me, the one the whole Inquisition is fighting together. If that's naïve and childish, then fuck it. I don't want to be realistic or mature. I'm gonna keep believing it. You're going to win, I'm going to win, and we're going to win. And if... if I help you believe that, too, even a little, then... I'm staying." She shook her head.
“I can figure the rest out later."
He swiftly crossed the few steps between them and wrapped her in a strong hug, burying the lower half of his face in her mess of bright red hair. It was difficult to see if he was crying too, but judging by the somewhat irregular way his chest expanded and contracted against her, it was a safe bet. "Good," he managed. It was all he was capable of saying.
Granted, she'd been the one doing the most drinking; Stel had been moderate and thoughtful like she was about anything, which was probably the only reason Khari was in her room at the barracks now and not passed out in the table in the tavern or some snowdrift between here and there. It occurred to her in a hazy sort of way that she probably ought to thank her for that.
More urgent was the fact that her stomach was rebelling against her. Khari rolled out of bed, head pounding in time with her heartbeat, and more or less fell into the door leading to the hallway. From there it was a staggering journey to the shared washroom, where she lost the rest of... whatever was in her guts into an empty chamber pot. Wiping her mouth with her sleeve, Khari sat back against the wall, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth until the world stopped spinning, at least. For a while, she didn't think about or feel anything other than her body's admonitions for the way she'd spent the night before, urgent but relatively tolerable.
But being sick had actually helped, and her stomach gradually settled until the nausea was mostly gone, leaving the pain in her head and the one in her chest as well. That one didn't seem to be going away. Ignoring it had been effective for about a day, but she sensed she was at the limit of her capability to do that, and so the only question that remained was whether she wanted to try coping with the fallout by herself or seek out company and impose herself upon the unlucky subject of her search.
Surprisingly, there was more than one candidate, even. But she didn't have to think too hard to know who she was going to look for.
With a few more minutes to get herself together, Khari finally pushed off the floor, shuffling over to a washbasin and splashing chilly water onto her face. It stung, sharp little pinpricks of iciness against whatever warmth she'd kept from her cocoon of blankets to here. It was jarring, and exactly what she needed. Or part of it.
Scrubbing the rest of herself clean, including her teeth, she changed out yesterday's shirt for a new one, mint-green and thick enough to keep the chill at bay, and stepped back into her boots. Stel must have taken them off for her. Wrapping her cloak around herself, she wound her hair into a hasty bun atop her head to save the time it'd take to braid wet and stepped out of the barracks.
That was almost a mistake; she winced at the brightness of the sun, estimating the time to be late morning, perhaps almost noon. She figured she should probably eat, but honestly felt no hunger. So she'd skip the food for now. Keeping her eyes squinted against the glare off the snow, Khari headed for the main building of the castle, climbing the stairs with only slightly more difficulty than usual. She took it slow, though, trying to get her thoughts in order. Too bad they all seemed to slip away from her like wraiths, not quite tangible enough to hold on to, much less force into any semblance of sense.
Fortunately, she didn't really need to think to find the undercroft. Her feet just sort of took her there. She doubted Rom was expecting her or anything—he might not even be there. She hoped he was; Khari had no particular desire to go traipsing around the grounds looking for him, not in this state.
Reaching the door felt like more of an accomplishment than it should have. She resisted the urge to rest against it for a moment and knocked before she lost her nerve. Khari had never been one to impose upon other people if she could help it. She preferred to think of herself as being able to do things alone, without relying on anyone else. But she also wasn't the type to ignore her instincts—and she felt like she should be here, right now.
"It's open," came Rom's voice from inside, fairly muffled, but then the door was quite thick. His tone was strained, as though the words had taken some effort to get out.
Considering the size of the room and all the equipment he had in there, Khari was not especially surprised to find that he was, in fact, doing push-ups when she entered. Of course, at this particular moment, even the thought of strenuous motion was enough to make her feel slightly ill, so she averted her eyes and made a beeline for the sofa near the railing on the upper part of the room.
“No rush or anything, but when you're done there, is there any chance you have anything for headaches? I kind of feel like you decided to open a rift in my skull." She took off her cloak, plonking herself down at one corner of the couch and tossing it to land over the rail.
"Sure. One minute." Rom had chosen a spot near the open mouth of his quarters to complete his set, which was obviously part of a much larger workout judging by the sweat occasionally rolling in beads off his bare back. Even in the depths of winter the undercroft had a way of staying warm, heat emanating up from the floor in front of Khari. After about twenty more he exhaled a heavy breath and stood, grabbing a nearby towel and wiping his face and head.
He looked remarkably different than he had the day before. He'd taken a razor to his beard and his head in general, now clean shaven entirely. He looked simultaneously a lot more like his old self, as he'd appeared upon first meeting her in Haven, but also entirely different. It was in the way he carried himself, perhaps. A different person in many ways from the one he'd been in the Inquisition's first days. He made a quick stop at his alchemy table, carefully moving a few vials and ingredients aside before he grabbed one from the rear and made his way back towards the front of the room.
He tossed the vial into Khari's lap. It was a mostly clear liquid with a slightly yellowish tinge, a rather unpleasant color in all honesty. Rom moved a light tan-colored shirt on his bed as he took a seat there, throwing the towel over his shoulder while he caught his breath. "That's pretty strong, but you look like you could use it."
He wasn't wrong. Khari was sure she hadn't been able to completely scrub away the evidence that her morning had been rather unpleasant, anyway. Uncorking the vial, she tossed it back quickly, which was definitely the best way to go, considering how it tasted. Shaking her head and exhaling sharply, she grimaced. Already, though, she felt a little better. “Ugh. Thank you." Replacing the stopper in the vial, she set it aside and blinked at him.
“What happened to your hair?"
"I got rid of it," he answered simply, shrugging. He rubbed at the top of his head with his marked hand, as though he wasn't quite used to the feel of it yet. "I'm sure my head will freeze, but it just didn't feel like me. I was tired of it. Tired of this winter, too."
“Maybe I should shave my head, too." Khari pushed out a heavy breath and leaned back on the couch. The fabric it was covered in had a different texture against her neck than her hair did, of course. “I'm not sure if that would feel more like me, though. I'm not sure I actually know what me feels like, right now." Bringing her hands up to her face, she scrubbed, as though the uneasiness was some layer on her skin that she could slough off. But it wasn't, and she dropped her arms back into her lap.
Rom fell silent for a long while, taking steady breaths through his nose that slowed and slowed until they fell into a normal pace. His eyes fell to the stone floors as he thought; grey eyes like steel and just as unwavering. It was obvious he'd expected the conversation to shift in this direction. If he'd been surprised at all by Khari showing up at his door at all, he hid it quite well.
"For what it's worth, I like your hair just the way it is," he said, keeping his tone somewhat light despite it all. "It's a bit of a mess, but so are you. No more than the rest of us, though." Running the towel over his upper body one more time, he threw it aside and pulled on his shirt, a bit of uncertainty crossing over his features. "Certainly no more than me. Thanks to you I've at least kept the pieces of me in order. If any of that makes sense." He ran his hand over his head again, maybe to get rid of some itch. He was obviously not at ease as much as he was trying to display.
"Can I ask you some questions, Khari? About Ser Durand, about... you? I want to help, that's all I want to do. But I'm no good at this, I don't think I've helped anyone in my life with doubts or anything of the sort. Maybe I can if I understand a little better."
A bit of a mess, huh? She supposed that was true enough. This whole thing was a mess, really. The Inquisition. Bunch of spare parts from other lives and other armies, thrown together and hammered, tied and welded into some approximation of order. Definitely not a well-oiled machine. Maybe it never would be.
Khari hit her palm against the unoccupied soft cushion next to her a couple of times. “Ask me anything you want. Gods know I can't get my own thoughts straight enough to be any use." It would be something of a relief, to let someone else help her figure out what she was left with, after everything that had happened. She sure as hell didn't know on her own—all she had was a churning mix of feelings, knocking around inside her like... something in a cage, maybe. And she couldn't help but feel the bars were too rusty to hold it all for long.
Rom slowly got up and crossed the short distance over to sit next to her on the sofa, though he leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees, steepling his fingers. His eyes remained locked forward for the moment.
"Okay..." He looked about to ask a first question several times, rethinking each one before he finally settled on something. "Should Ser Durand have done something different? What should he have done instead?" He let the question hang for a moment, before adding on to it. "I've been thinking about it since we spoke with him, and... I can't figure out what other option he had. At least, not one that could've been a success, not one that could have saved anyone and stopped Halfhand. What he did caused some good people to die, but it was a good plan. It could've worked, and it almost did."
“He shouldn't have been so willing to sacrifice other people. Especially not when he wasn't willing to sacrifice himself." She shook her head fiercely, lacing her fingers together on her lap and squeezing them. She knew she felt deeply wrong about what he'd done. She knew on some instinctive level that it was wrong. Identifying exactly how was a different matter. “There's no way Halfhand's entire party fell on Ser Liliane's squad and left the fort undefended. He could have helped. Could have at least tried to help her out of there, then explained everything. It's like he said: she was important. People would have listened if she'd said they needed more help."
Ser Durand had always had difficulty getting nobles to listen to him. She understood that. It was partly because he had so little status himself, and in a status-obsessed world, it meant he couldn't do half the good he wanted to. “Even before that... I think he gave up on the other chevaliers too soon. Messages are easy to ignore. But if he'd left the guys to look after things for a couple months, and gone to Val Royeaux himself? If he was smart enough to think of the plan he chose, he was smart enough to get someone to listen to him. He just didn't." Probably because he'd already decided it wasn't going to work. Khari believed his cynicism had blinded him, the way people so often accused her of letting her optimism blind her.
Rom didn't seem convinced by her answer, but he took a while to pick which part of it to address first. "Maybe he could have helped. Maybe it would have just gotten him and his recruits killed. Maybe in the months it would take to go to Val Royeaux himself, more would have died, and maybe he would've returned empty handed all the same. Cunning with plans hardly means cunning with words. I should know." He sighed, obviously tired of thinking of it, but it was all there seemed to be to think of.
"It was a flawed, dishonest way, but I just don't see the other ways resulting in less life lost. Maybe I'm just as jaded as he is. Not like I've had the greatest teachings to base my opinions on." He fell silent again for a moment, and then turned his head sideways, resting it against the palm of his hand and looking at Khari.
"You say he wasn't willing to sacrifice himself. But... he lost everything for this. He lost his honor, he'll lose his title, he could have lost his life. He still could, I suppose. But he knew that going in. Maybe I'm not seeing things right, but it seemed to me he was willing to do more than die to protect the people he served. He was willing to let people that cared about him remember him as a liar, as a man who threw away his honor. He was willing to let you hate him. I might be wrong, but that seems like it could be worse than death."
“But he didn't try, Rom." Khari hissed out a frustrated breath, but the feeling wasn't directed at him. She wasn't sure whether it was even directed at Ser Durand. So much of this made so little sense to her. “Maybe those other things would have gone badly, that's true. But if he tried them and they did fail, at least he'd have been doing things the right way. Sometimes the right way is the hard way, but just because it might fail isn't any reason not to give it a shot. It's no reason to go treating someone else's life like it's a means to an end and nothing more."
She took in a deep, trembling breath. “It's like... anything could have gone wrong. Any of the possibilities. Nothing was guaranteed. And right then, when he had the chance to take the risk, to do the right thing, to be uncomfortable and out of his element but brave and honorable and in the right... he didn't. He chose what looked to be easier at the time." She shook her head. “Everything he stands to lose... those are the things he taught me to hold onto no matter what. The things that make the difference between knights and... and..."
She'd been about to say killers. It was probably obvious. Khari swallowed thickly, raising shaky hands to her face and rubbing at her eyes. They were hot and prickly and she was having trouble seeing out of them. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean... I just..." She sniffed, wiping her palms on her trousers.
They left wet marks.
Rom was pretty good at muting his reactions to things, at putting up a stone wall in place of his face, but even though she'd cut herself off before she could finish he still looked as though he'd been struck, and a dark look passed over his face, twisting the line of the tattoo that ran across the bridge of his nose. As though he'd smelled something foul. "No, you're probably right," he muttered, looking back ahead towards the door. "I doubt I could understand. All my teacher ever taught me was how to hurt. How to survive, how to kill." A tightness had developed in his jaw, his brow sunken down over his eyes.
He stood, pacing slowly right to left, towards his desk at first. The journal was still there, closed and placed right in the middle of the thing. He hadn't thrown it out yet. Hadn't burned it. His eyes glanced at it momentarily, and then he turned left and walked towards his bed, looking at the empty wall. He stopped there, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I'm sorry it didn't go the way you wanted, Khari. Sorry your mentor turned out not to be the man you thought he was. The world's a shitty place sometimes, and even if you follow a code that always demands you make the right choice... sometimes the world and what it's done to you can make it seem like there isn't a right choice to be made."
He exhaled, looking down at his marked hand to find his fingers were shaking a bit. He shook it, opening and closing his fist several times, before he turned to meet Khari's tear-shining eyes. His own were still cold and grey. "Bad things can happen to good people, until they don't know what's good anymore. And..." He trailed off, swallowing. "Sometimes good things can happen to bad people, and they can learn that there's a whole world of good things waiting for them, if they can find the heart for it." He nodded a bit, his eyes now starting to shine as well.
"I don't know if I can help you find peace with what Durand did. But I hope I can help you decide what you are. You're the best thing that ever happened to me. The only person that could make me stay here and keep trying to find a way to be good."
It was too much.
She hated what she'd said, even if it was an accident. She wanted to swallow the words back down and make it so she'd never said them. Because even if she didn't think of him like that, she knew how he saw himself. It was right there in the reaction he'd had. Khari sobbed, and she hated that, too. She was supposed to be stronger than this. She'd said it—way back when she stumbled upon Ser Durand's camp the very first time, crying like a child who knew she'd never be enough for the people she loved.
That was the deal—he taught her, and she didn't cry anymore. She wasn't sure anymore if that was an act of kindness or not, but it had helped her find the strength to keep going more than once before, strength that seemed to be eluding her now.
She hadn't believed Stel, when she'd said Khari was good for more than fighting. She hadn't believed Ves, when he'd said Rom and Stel leaned on her. It was hard to believe Rom, either, when he said she was important—that important.
Khari had never been that important to anyone. No one had ever relied on her or leaned on her or maybe even really trusted her. The one person who'd come closest to doing any of those things was a liar, and she still couldn't say how much of anything between she and her teacher had been real. “I don't know about any of it anymore." Her voice was more a raspy croak than anything, but at least it didn't give out on her. “I thought... I thought I'd finally found it. The thing I was meant to do. Who I wanted to be." She swallowed past the painful lump in her throat. “But maybe he was right. Maybe I was just looking at things too simplistically. Maybe I was stupid, or naïve."
She exhaled; the breath was shaky. With some effort, she managed to stand, orienting herself towards Rom. “But I have to believe good can win. Real good. Any battle it fights. The one in you, the one in me, the one the whole Inquisition is fighting together. If that's naïve and childish, then fuck it. I don't want to be realistic or mature. I'm gonna keep believing it. You're going to win, I'm going to win, and we're going to win. And if... if I help you believe that, too, even a little, then... I'm staying." She shook her head.
“I can figure the rest out later."
He swiftly crossed the few steps between them and wrapped her in a strong hug, burying the lower half of his face in her mess of bright red hair. It was difficult to see if he was crying too, but judging by the somewhat irregular way his chest expanded and contracted against her, it was a safe bet. "Good," he managed. It was all he was capable of saying.