"If it was asked of me? Then yes. You alone know what I was before any of this, everyone else that knew is dead." Zevran, Nightingale, The Outsider, all of them dead and gone now so only Korrin knows. "If this played out a different way then it wouldn't be so very different. Take it or leave it. I know what would be asked of me."
She's lying but Araceli lies all the time now and this one is a carefully assembled reworking of partial truths and careful guesswork that no one can poke many holes in. Unfair but who said she had to play fair. Korrin's touch means she doesn't have to play fair when she leans into it, unable to help herself, eyes shut, breath shuddering out. Would it be so very terrible if she gave a bad order and let the sea claim her, let her lungs fill, let it be over so she could be with everyone they'd lost? Would that truly be so selfish now? Araceli knows how to spot liars. Everyone is lying to themselves at least a little, at least out here.
Stubborn as ever, she clenches her jaw so Korrin can feel it then tips her head up to look at her. "Some things we learn for ourselves. I pray, sirena, that you are never in that position but I had to do it alone. I had to know that I could. Maybe that isn't something that will ever make sense in whatever time is left."
Soft girl, never known a war until Thedas, soft girl soft notions, bleeding heart everything slipping through your fingers same as the light through your palm--
She wants to lie down. Curl up with the covers over her head so that she might pretend this is her father's ship and that her mother is coming to fetch her as she did when she was little. Instead she carefully lays her hand over Korrin's and continues. "You don't need to do or be something more Korrin," she murmurs softly, ashamed, verging on quietly horrified because Korrin was always enough, has always been enough and more than enough, has been so much good in her life. "Splitting myself all these ways, going by another woman's name when you know what we were to one another. If something happened to you by virtue of you being here and I could have kept you from it by keeping you away, by hiding you under the earth with everyone else I would never forgive myself. You are all I have left. You and a ship named for one friend painted for another."
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She's lying but Araceli lies all the time now and this one is a carefully assembled reworking of partial truths and careful guesswork that no one can poke many holes in. Unfair but who said she had to play fair. Korrin's touch means she doesn't have to play fair when she leans into it, unable to help herself, eyes shut, breath shuddering out. Would it be so very terrible if she gave a bad order and let the sea claim her, let her lungs fill, let it be over so she could be with everyone they'd lost? Would that truly be so selfish now? Araceli knows how to spot liars. Everyone is lying to themselves at least a little, at least out here.
Stubborn as ever, she clenches her jaw so Korrin can feel it then tips her head up to look at her. "Some things we learn for ourselves. I pray, sirena, that you are never in that position but I had to do it alone. I had to know that I could. Maybe that isn't something that will ever make sense in whatever time is left."
Soft girl, never known a war until Thedas, soft girl soft notions, bleeding heart everything slipping through your fingers same as the light through your palm--
She wants to lie down. Curl up with the covers over her head so that she might pretend this is her father's ship and that her mother is coming to fetch her as she did when she was little. Instead she carefully lays her hand over Korrin's and continues. "You don't need to do or be something more Korrin," she murmurs softly, ashamed, verging on quietly horrified because Korrin was always enough, has always been enough and more than enough, has been so much good in her life. "Splitting myself all these ways, going by another woman's name when you know what we were to one another. If something happened to you by virtue of you being here and I could have kept you from it by keeping you away, by hiding you under the earth with everyone else I would never forgive myself. You are all I have left. You and a ship named for one friend painted for another."