While the others spent time recuperating in Orlais, Rom took his own rest in Skyhold.
He put the peaceful time to good use, aggressively fighting against the necessity of using his particular brand of potions, and he was making very good progress. He wasn't free of them yet, but he felt that within the month he could be. Leon and Rilien both agreed with the assessment, which was reassuring. He'd stopped making new draughts altogether, practicing alchemy now mostly so he could continue instructing Zahra. For all her bluster Zee was a pretty good student, when she had the desire to learn. And in this field, she did.
His energy to keep himself in prime condition had flagged steadily, a result of the drawbacks of his recent efforts. It wasn't like he was turning into a weakling or anything remotely close, but it did bother him to know he might not be as strong as before, as fast or as decisive. When his life or the lives of his friends sometimes hung on a razor's edge, it disturbed him to think he'd only succeeded before because of this. To think he might fail in the future because of it. But he would just have to hope everything would continue to work out. He'd have to have faith.
Rom decided a walk was in order after he was satisfied with the work he'd put in for the day. The late afternoon sun greeted him as he made his way out of the keep, a pair of guards closing the great doors behind him. The days were finally starting to seem much longer, as summer rapidly approached. There were big things coming, he could feel. Hopefully good things.
His walk took him down past the drill yards, where mages were just beginning an afternoon session. More and more templars were beginning to work with them, and while the relations would never be comfortable, they were at least starting to seem cooperative. Their Captain, Séverine, always made sure to be among them. Rom continued on, down the steps towards the front gate, past the fortress well, the stables. The curiously different sound of a large halla greeted him from inside. A rowdy one, if some of the stablehands were to be believed, and only well behaved for a few different handlers. Rom had never been the best with mounts of any kind. He headed for the stairs, looking to make his way up to the battlements.
“Huh. Well, this figures." Khari's was an easily-recognizable voice; she peered down at him from the top of the staircase, apparently about to descend it. For just a second, her brows knit, an almost anxious sort of surprise pulling at her features before it disappeared, replaced by something a little more normal for her: a set expression that he recognized as resolve. “I was just going to find you, and here you are." She flashed a momentary smile, then gestured towards herself. “Planning on a walk? I'll go with, if you don't mind."
Khari coming to find Rom was hardly unusual, but there was something unusual about her today, even if Rom could quite decipher what it was. "Figured I'd walk the wall, just cooling down." He normally didn't cool down with walks, but he'd been making a habit of it lately, and getting outside more was refreshing.
He let it go unsaid that he didn't mind, since it very rarely needed to be said, and together they made their way back to the top of the wall. A pair of guards outside the nearest tower greeted him by his title, and he offered a salute in return. That was something he would never get used to. He and Khari walked along the wall, Rom closer to the outside edge of it, his right hand occasionally brushing against the stone crenelations.
"I've been feeling better," he said, preempting the question. "I'm glad we haven't had to deal with any Venatori lately, the rest's done me good." He glanced left at her. "What about you? How was... uh, forgot the town's name..." He was never very good with Orlesian anything.
“It had a weird name anyway." She shrugged. “It was all right, I guess. Marcy's staying a while longer, which means Mick is too, but that's okay. Everyone deserves a rest sometimes, I guess." She was not known for taking them herself, and no doubt she was working herself just as hard in her trainer's absence as she did in his presence, if not moreso.
Khari turned slightly, almost as if to verify his words about himself. For a moment, she studied his face, squinting as if the truth would be right there to see, when in fact the physical manifestations were only a very small part of the story. Still, it satisfied her, or at least seemed to, from the way she nodded and moved her eyes out over the wall instead.
“You had me worried, you know." Her lips paled where she pressed them together. A breeze from behind pushed several strands of hair into her face; she batted them back behind her ears with an irritated grumble before continuing. “I don't mean—it's not like you have to tell me everything. I get having secrets. Honestly, I do. I just... kinda figured you and me didn't need them. So I was pretty—I dunno. I didn't know what to think."
It hurt a bit, because Rom knew he had more. Worse ones, even. And telling her was... not at all easy. "I've got a lot that I want to just... let go of. And that was one of those things, but it wouldn't let go of me. Maybe the rest won't either." Maybe it would all come back and rear its ugly head when it seemed like he was making too much progress. It would come back and remind him of what he was, what he feared he still was. He should've told her about the potions, probably, but the rest... he didn't know.
"I'm sorry I worried you. I'm not proud of what I was, and... well you might've noticed I'm not the best at talking to people. I guess that includes my friends. I never know how to say any of the things I might want to, it always... comes out wrong, you know?" They were approaching one of the corners, a large square tower that overlooked the entire lake below. They'd played capture the flag down there like idiots last winter, and to be honest Rom was looking forward to doing it again when everything froze back over.
Khari seemed to recognize the spot, too; she picked up her feet a little faster to get to the crenelations, leaning out over them and sweeping her eyes over the landscape. She turned around, though, using her hands to assist herself in hopping up to sit on the wall, facing in towards him. She leaned her shoulder into the toothlike formation on her left, nodding slightly. “I was being stupid." She sighed heavily. “Only thinking about myself. And how I wanted to be the kind of person you could tell that stuff to. But it's not about me, and I was dumb for trying to make it that way."
She blinked, the jade color of her eyes almost washed out by the bright sunlight overhead, until they were just an indistinct, almost colorless pale hue. She shifted slightly, and the impression vanished. “You tell me what you want to tell me. And if some of the things you could say never get said, then I'm fine with that. But I'm not gonna judge you, Rom. Not for anything but who you are now. I just wanted you to know I'd decided that."
Rom very much hoped she could hold to that. The idea was immensely comforting, even if the thought of talking about all the things he couldn't figure out how to say made him feel distinctly uneasy. And he hoped he could hold to the kind of person he wanted to be, the one that would be judged. Because it wouldn't be just Khari judging his actions. Not in the position he now occupied. Only a fool would ever think the world was a kind and forgiving place. That fool died in Rom the day he was shipped away from the Chantry house in Minrathous.
"That's good to hear," he said. "Really, I mean it." He shifted a bit awkwardly on the spot, noting that she'd taken a seat on the wall when they'd originally come up here to walk. "Did you want to keep going, or...?"
This fact seemed to dawn on her as well, if a bit belatedly. “Uh, yeah. I just—I've got one more thing to say first." She hopped down off the wall, shifting her weight between her feet, as if she'd temporarily lost the easy confidence with which she so typically held herself. Focusing on a spot over his shoulder, she pulled in a breath, her shoulders lifting with the force of it. The expression on her face went through several shifts in the ten seconds that followed, almost too rapidly to pin down.
Abruptly, she dragged her eyes back to his. “I like you. I think you're funny and interesting and I always feel like I can rely on you. But you knew that part already." A pause; the tips of her ears were slowly turning red. “You're also really handsome. And sometimes I think about kissing you. Pretty often actually. Like now, for instance. So." Khari frowned slightly, then plowed forward again just as rapidly.
“If, uh... if you've ever maybe considered kissing me, too, you should know that I would absolutely be more than okay with it if you did at some point. And if you haven't, well... that's also fine. I can just, you know, never mention any of this again. Ever." By this point, the blotchy red-pink had spread over most of her face and neck as well. She cleared her throat.
“We can keep walking now."
He really didn't know how he could be this colossally stupid. It made sense now. A lot of things made sense now. He could feel the heat immediately rushing to his face as well, and with it came panic. How many times had he tried to say something like this to her? How many times had he come so close? Of course she would be the one to do it first, she didn't let anything get in her way, not for long at least. And now it was out in the open, and all he had to do was tell her he felt exactly the same way.
And yet, he took a step back, unsure where to put his eyes, because if he put them on her, it was like he was seeing her altogether differently now. And not in a worse way, not at all, just... different. It was jarring, it was frightening, and it was entirely too much. "Um... I don't, uh..." He struggled for words, then grimaced because he'd paused after I don't. "I do, I have, it's just... every time I think, it's... uh. Shit." His grimace grew until it seemed like he was actually in pain. "Not the thought, I'm just doing that thing. It's not coming out right. What I mean to say is..." He tried his absolute best to hold her eyes, like he'd practiced for the Orlesian nobility. This was a thousand times more difficult.
"I... I can't."
Khari's shoulders, held high and tense, collapsed downwards into a slump. She closed her eyes, took in a breath, and opened them again on the exhale. “I sorta figured, somehow." She attempted a smile, but it trembled, then fell, unable to remain. She'd never been particularly good at faking things. “It's oka—" Her voice cracked. “It's okay."
The silence that fell then lingered for several long moments. Khari seemed suddenly very interested in the toes of her boots, from her posture, but it was easy to see that she wasn't really looking at anything in particular. Rather, she seemed deep in thought. “Can I—can I know why?"
"Yeah," he said quickly, "you can. It's like you said: we don't need secrets. But before you jump to any conclusions, it's... probably not what you think." She seemed to be taking it that way, as though this was a rejection, and he was determined not to let it turn out that way. She needed to understand that first. "Khari, you're... you're beautiful, and I've always thought that. You're also an unstoppable force of nature, and I don't think you have any idea how attractive that is to me."
He'd said it, and honestly... it didn't sound that bad now that it was out. It didn't sound that different from the way it went every time he rehearsed it in his head. But all of those times never had what he now needed to follow it with. And this... he'd never practiced this. It was hard enough to think about, let alone say.
"So," he said, exhaling a gusty breath, "with that out of the way, do you remember Redcliffe, the first time we met Chryseis together?"
It took her a little bit longer to adjust her frame of mind to accommodate the new information, clearly. Perhaps that was understandable: she had to do it twice. For a moment, her face was blank, but it was easy to see her putting things together—it was in the way her eyes looked. She lifted her head, nodding once, slow and careful. “Yeah, sure." Khari was no longer even attempting to keep walking, but her uncomfortable shifting had stopped, too, as she narrowed her focus to the conversation alone. “In the Chantry." The relevance wasn't clear to her, but she must have assumed he'd be getting to that, because she didn't ask outright.
He knew she remembered. Even then they'd been more than good enough of friends for her to know that meeting her there was extremely difficult for him. He'd still been in the mindset of a slave at that time, intent on returning to her when the Breach was closed. "You'll remember then that everyone else left when the talking was done, and I stayed behind with Chryseis." He imagined the different breed of tension between them might have been apparent to others, but he didn't think Khari would catch on. She wasn't known for picking these sorts of things up especially quickly.
"She had me, uh... we had sex. In one of the back rooms." He hadn't even thought about it at the time, the fact that it had occurred in a Chantry building. Some Herald of Andraste he was. "That was part of our arrangement, as domina and slave. Ever since her husband died, that was another way in which I... served her." He hated saying it, hated revealing anything about this part of his life, but he trusted her when she said she wouldn't judge him. He believed she would do her best to understand. If it was even possible for her to understand something like this.
“Oh. Oh." She clearly understood something. Grimacing, Khari reached up and tugged at the shell of one ear, a nervous gesture he hadn't seen her use in a while. Right on the heels of that, however, her expression morphed swiftly into fury. “Served her? Arrangement? She raped you, Rom. That's what it's called when one of the people doesn't have any choice." The muscles in her jaw jumped as she ground her teeth. “Fucking sick fucks and their godsdamn—"
Her hand reached behind her, more reflex than conscious thought; for a split second, she looked confused when it closed only over air. The tiny moment of pause was enough to avert what looked to be building into a righteous temper, though. Khari forced a slow breath out through her nose, dragging both hands down her face. “Shit. Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't know and I just—ugh."
"It's okay. It's not your fault." Her reaction was more or less what he'd expected, once she understood. Anger. She cared about him, and what Chryseis did to him damaged him, that much was clear. Rom thought about it often. He never felt he could be impartial about judging such a thing, considering that he had been one of the parties involved. Chryseis had been grieving, and frustrated, and more than anything alone. She let almost no one see a side of her that could be considered vulnerable, but Rom... he likely knew her better at the time he left than her own father did. And while he didn't really have a choice in the matter, she never demanded it of him. She never threatened him if he refused her.
By the time she asked it of him, she didn't need to. He was utterly obedient, and if she needed to be served in that way, he did it without question, without complaint, without a second thought. Sometimes he wondered if he even looked forward to it. If he helped her, she would think more clearly, she would treat him and the other slaves more reasonably. Truly, it was only when he freed himself of her, and when he met Khari and began to think of her in a different way, that he understood how much Chryseis had cursed him.
"I've tried to move on, but... I can't. Not yet. I need to be free of her first, rid of her." That was the most terrifying thought of all. Confronting her, forcing her to address this. She could declare him a free man, to do with his life as he pleased, but words written on the page would not remove the claws from his back. "There's something coming. We'll see her again, I know it. When we do, I'm going to find a way to end this. And then... then we can come back to this conversation."
Khari crossed her arms, gripping her biceps in her hands and squeezing until her knuckles were white. Though it must have hurt at least somewhat, it seemed to clear the last vestiges of anger from her. She swallowed, then let out a short breath. “Okay." She nodded firmly. “'Til you bring it up again, everything's just going to be like it has been. Even if you never do, we've got a pretty excellent thing here, and I don't mean to lose it." She grinned, the expression a bit more subdued than usual, but still genuine. It looked like it belonged on her face.
“Can I hug you, though? I really want to right now."
Rather than give her permission he went ahead and hugged her first, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. He let his fingers twist through some of her mass of red hair. "No matter what happens, we're never going to lose this."
Her hands bunched in the back of his shirt; Khari took a deep, shaky breath and squeezed.
“Good."
He put the peaceful time to good use, aggressively fighting against the necessity of using his particular brand of potions, and he was making very good progress. He wasn't free of them yet, but he felt that within the month he could be. Leon and Rilien both agreed with the assessment, which was reassuring. He'd stopped making new draughts altogether, practicing alchemy now mostly so he could continue instructing Zahra. For all her bluster Zee was a pretty good student, when she had the desire to learn. And in this field, she did.
His energy to keep himself in prime condition had flagged steadily, a result of the drawbacks of his recent efforts. It wasn't like he was turning into a weakling or anything remotely close, but it did bother him to know he might not be as strong as before, as fast or as decisive. When his life or the lives of his friends sometimes hung on a razor's edge, it disturbed him to think he'd only succeeded before because of this. To think he might fail in the future because of it. But he would just have to hope everything would continue to work out. He'd have to have faith.
Rom decided a walk was in order after he was satisfied with the work he'd put in for the day. The late afternoon sun greeted him as he made his way out of the keep, a pair of guards closing the great doors behind him. The days were finally starting to seem much longer, as summer rapidly approached. There were big things coming, he could feel. Hopefully good things.
His walk took him down past the drill yards, where mages were just beginning an afternoon session. More and more templars were beginning to work with them, and while the relations would never be comfortable, they were at least starting to seem cooperative. Their Captain, Séverine, always made sure to be among them. Rom continued on, down the steps towards the front gate, past the fortress well, the stables. The curiously different sound of a large halla greeted him from inside. A rowdy one, if some of the stablehands were to be believed, and only well behaved for a few different handlers. Rom had never been the best with mounts of any kind. He headed for the stairs, looking to make his way up to the battlements.
“Huh. Well, this figures." Khari's was an easily-recognizable voice; she peered down at him from the top of the staircase, apparently about to descend it. For just a second, her brows knit, an almost anxious sort of surprise pulling at her features before it disappeared, replaced by something a little more normal for her: a set expression that he recognized as resolve. “I was just going to find you, and here you are." She flashed a momentary smile, then gestured towards herself. “Planning on a walk? I'll go with, if you don't mind."
Khari coming to find Rom was hardly unusual, but there was something unusual about her today, even if Rom could quite decipher what it was. "Figured I'd walk the wall, just cooling down." He normally didn't cool down with walks, but he'd been making a habit of it lately, and getting outside more was refreshing.
He let it go unsaid that he didn't mind, since it very rarely needed to be said, and together they made their way back to the top of the wall. A pair of guards outside the nearest tower greeted him by his title, and he offered a salute in return. That was something he would never get used to. He and Khari walked along the wall, Rom closer to the outside edge of it, his right hand occasionally brushing against the stone crenelations.
"I've been feeling better," he said, preempting the question. "I'm glad we haven't had to deal with any Venatori lately, the rest's done me good." He glanced left at her. "What about you? How was... uh, forgot the town's name..." He was never very good with Orlesian anything.
“It had a weird name anyway." She shrugged. “It was all right, I guess. Marcy's staying a while longer, which means Mick is too, but that's okay. Everyone deserves a rest sometimes, I guess." She was not known for taking them herself, and no doubt she was working herself just as hard in her trainer's absence as she did in his presence, if not moreso.
Khari turned slightly, almost as if to verify his words about himself. For a moment, she studied his face, squinting as if the truth would be right there to see, when in fact the physical manifestations were only a very small part of the story. Still, it satisfied her, or at least seemed to, from the way she nodded and moved her eyes out over the wall instead.
“You had me worried, you know." Her lips paled where she pressed them together. A breeze from behind pushed several strands of hair into her face; she batted them back behind her ears with an irritated grumble before continuing. “I don't mean—it's not like you have to tell me everything. I get having secrets. Honestly, I do. I just... kinda figured you and me didn't need them. So I was pretty—I dunno. I didn't know what to think."
It hurt a bit, because Rom knew he had more. Worse ones, even. And telling her was... not at all easy. "I've got a lot that I want to just... let go of. And that was one of those things, but it wouldn't let go of me. Maybe the rest won't either." Maybe it would all come back and rear its ugly head when it seemed like he was making too much progress. It would come back and remind him of what he was, what he feared he still was. He should've told her about the potions, probably, but the rest... he didn't know.
"I'm sorry I worried you. I'm not proud of what I was, and... well you might've noticed I'm not the best at talking to people. I guess that includes my friends. I never know how to say any of the things I might want to, it always... comes out wrong, you know?" They were approaching one of the corners, a large square tower that overlooked the entire lake below. They'd played capture the flag down there like idiots last winter, and to be honest Rom was looking forward to doing it again when everything froze back over.
Khari seemed to recognize the spot, too; she picked up her feet a little faster to get to the crenelations, leaning out over them and sweeping her eyes over the landscape. She turned around, though, using her hands to assist herself in hopping up to sit on the wall, facing in towards him. She leaned her shoulder into the toothlike formation on her left, nodding slightly. “I was being stupid." She sighed heavily. “Only thinking about myself. And how I wanted to be the kind of person you could tell that stuff to. But it's not about me, and I was dumb for trying to make it that way."
She blinked, the jade color of her eyes almost washed out by the bright sunlight overhead, until they were just an indistinct, almost colorless pale hue. She shifted slightly, and the impression vanished. “You tell me what you want to tell me. And if some of the things you could say never get said, then I'm fine with that. But I'm not gonna judge you, Rom. Not for anything but who you are now. I just wanted you to know I'd decided that."
Rom very much hoped she could hold to that. The idea was immensely comforting, even if the thought of talking about all the things he couldn't figure out how to say made him feel distinctly uneasy. And he hoped he could hold to the kind of person he wanted to be, the one that would be judged. Because it wouldn't be just Khari judging his actions. Not in the position he now occupied. Only a fool would ever think the world was a kind and forgiving place. That fool died in Rom the day he was shipped away from the Chantry house in Minrathous.
"That's good to hear," he said. "Really, I mean it." He shifted a bit awkwardly on the spot, noting that she'd taken a seat on the wall when they'd originally come up here to walk. "Did you want to keep going, or...?"
This fact seemed to dawn on her as well, if a bit belatedly. “Uh, yeah. I just—I've got one more thing to say first." She hopped down off the wall, shifting her weight between her feet, as if she'd temporarily lost the easy confidence with which she so typically held herself. Focusing on a spot over his shoulder, she pulled in a breath, her shoulders lifting with the force of it. The expression on her face went through several shifts in the ten seconds that followed, almost too rapidly to pin down.
Abruptly, she dragged her eyes back to his. “I like you. I think you're funny and interesting and I always feel like I can rely on you. But you knew that part already." A pause; the tips of her ears were slowly turning red. “You're also really handsome. And sometimes I think about kissing you. Pretty often actually. Like now, for instance. So." Khari frowned slightly, then plowed forward again just as rapidly.
“If, uh... if you've ever maybe considered kissing me, too, you should know that I would absolutely be more than okay with it if you did at some point. And if you haven't, well... that's also fine. I can just, you know, never mention any of this again. Ever." By this point, the blotchy red-pink had spread over most of her face and neck as well. She cleared her throat.
“We can keep walking now."
He really didn't know how he could be this colossally stupid. It made sense now. A lot of things made sense now. He could feel the heat immediately rushing to his face as well, and with it came panic. How many times had he tried to say something like this to her? How many times had he come so close? Of course she would be the one to do it first, she didn't let anything get in her way, not for long at least. And now it was out in the open, and all he had to do was tell her he felt exactly the same way.
And yet, he took a step back, unsure where to put his eyes, because if he put them on her, it was like he was seeing her altogether differently now. And not in a worse way, not at all, just... different. It was jarring, it was frightening, and it was entirely too much. "Um... I don't, uh..." He struggled for words, then grimaced because he'd paused after I don't. "I do, I have, it's just... every time I think, it's... uh. Shit." His grimace grew until it seemed like he was actually in pain. "Not the thought, I'm just doing that thing. It's not coming out right. What I mean to say is..." He tried his absolute best to hold her eyes, like he'd practiced for the Orlesian nobility. This was a thousand times more difficult.
"I... I can't."
Khari's shoulders, held high and tense, collapsed downwards into a slump. She closed her eyes, took in a breath, and opened them again on the exhale. “I sorta figured, somehow." She attempted a smile, but it trembled, then fell, unable to remain. She'd never been particularly good at faking things. “It's oka—" Her voice cracked. “It's okay."
The silence that fell then lingered for several long moments. Khari seemed suddenly very interested in the toes of her boots, from her posture, but it was easy to see that she wasn't really looking at anything in particular. Rather, she seemed deep in thought. “Can I—can I know why?"
"Yeah," he said quickly, "you can. It's like you said: we don't need secrets. But before you jump to any conclusions, it's... probably not what you think." She seemed to be taking it that way, as though this was a rejection, and he was determined not to let it turn out that way. She needed to understand that first. "Khari, you're... you're beautiful, and I've always thought that. You're also an unstoppable force of nature, and I don't think you have any idea how attractive that is to me."
He'd said it, and honestly... it didn't sound that bad now that it was out. It didn't sound that different from the way it went every time he rehearsed it in his head. But all of those times never had what he now needed to follow it with. And this... he'd never practiced this. It was hard enough to think about, let alone say.
"So," he said, exhaling a gusty breath, "with that out of the way, do you remember Redcliffe, the first time we met Chryseis together?"
It took her a little bit longer to adjust her frame of mind to accommodate the new information, clearly. Perhaps that was understandable: she had to do it twice. For a moment, her face was blank, but it was easy to see her putting things together—it was in the way her eyes looked. She lifted her head, nodding once, slow and careful. “Yeah, sure." Khari was no longer even attempting to keep walking, but her uncomfortable shifting had stopped, too, as she narrowed her focus to the conversation alone. “In the Chantry." The relevance wasn't clear to her, but she must have assumed he'd be getting to that, because she didn't ask outright.
He knew she remembered. Even then they'd been more than good enough of friends for her to know that meeting her there was extremely difficult for him. He'd still been in the mindset of a slave at that time, intent on returning to her when the Breach was closed. "You'll remember then that everyone else left when the talking was done, and I stayed behind with Chryseis." He imagined the different breed of tension between them might have been apparent to others, but he didn't think Khari would catch on. She wasn't known for picking these sorts of things up especially quickly.
"She had me, uh... we had sex. In one of the back rooms." He hadn't even thought about it at the time, the fact that it had occurred in a Chantry building. Some Herald of Andraste he was. "That was part of our arrangement, as domina and slave. Ever since her husband died, that was another way in which I... served her." He hated saying it, hated revealing anything about this part of his life, but he trusted her when she said she wouldn't judge him. He believed she would do her best to understand. If it was even possible for her to understand something like this.
“Oh. Oh." She clearly understood something. Grimacing, Khari reached up and tugged at the shell of one ear, a nervous gesture he hadn't seen her use in a while. Right on the heels of that, however, her expression morphed swiftly into fury. “Served her? Arrangement? She raped you, Rom. That's what it's called when one of the people doesn't have any choice." The muscles in her jaw jumped as she ground her teeth. “Fucking sick fucks and their godsdamn—"
Her hand reached behind her, more reflex than conscious thought; for a split second, she looked confused when it closed only over air. The tiny moment of pause was enough to avert what looked to be building into a righteous temper, though. Khari forced a slow breath out through her nose, dragging both hands down her face. “Shit. Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't know and I just—ugh."
"It's okay. It's not your fault." Her reaction was more or less what he'd expected, once she understood. Anger. She cared about him, and what Chryseis did to him damaged him, that much was clear. Rom thought about it often. He never felt he could be impartial about judging such a thing, considering that he had been one of the parties involved. Chryseis had been grieving, and frustrated, and more than anything alone. She let almost no one see a side of her that could be considered vulnerable, but Rom... he likely knew her better at the time he left than her own father did. And while he didn't really have a choice in the matter, she never demanded it of him. She never threatened him if he refused her.
By the time she asked it of him, she didn't need to. He was utterly obedient, and if she needed to be served in that way, he did it without question, without complaint, without a second thought. Sometimes he wondered if he even looked forward to it. If he helped her, she would think more clearly, she would treat him and the other slaves more reasonably. Truly, it was only when he freed himself of her, and when he met Khari and began to think of her in a different way, that he understood how much Chryseis had cursed him.
"I've tried to move on, but... I can't. Not yet. I need to be free of her first, rid of her." That was the most terrifying thought of all. Confronting her, forcing her to address this. She could declare him a free man, to do with his life as he pleased, but words written on the page would not remove the claws from his back. "There's something coming. We'll see her again, I know it. When we do, I'm going to find a way to end this. And then... then we can come back to this conversation."
Khari crossed her arms, gripping her biceps in her hands and squeezing until her knuckles were white. Though it must have hurt at least somewhat, it seemed to clear the last vestiges of anger from her. She swallowed, then let out a short breath. “Okay." She nodded firmly. “'Til you bring it up again, everything's just going to be like it has been. Even if you never do, we've got a pretty excellent thing here, and I don't mean to lose it." She grinned, the expression a bit more subdued than usual, but still genuine. It looked like it belonged on her face.
“Can I hug you, though? I really want to right now."
Rather than give her permission he went ahead and hugged her first, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. He let his fingers twist through some of her mass of red hair. "No matter what happens, we're never going to lose this."
Her hands bunched in the back of his shirt; Khari took a deep, shaky breath and squeezed.
“Good."