The Grey Tower

It was easy to see that Paks didn’t like what she was hearing, but then, Marten hadn’t expected her to. That was fine. He didn’t need her to like him; he just needed her to not throw herself in front of a fireball and leave him without anyone to watch his back, if such a thing was avoidable. He needed her to live. As long as they were agreed on that, anything else could be figured out.

When he noticed the tears, his first instinct was to look away; he didn’t know what to do with tears even when their cause was trivial, something he’d said wrong, or failed to say… When it was the death of a lover and bondmate, nobody could possibly have anything constructive to say to that. Certainly not he.

“So resent me,” he replied after a moment. “I can live with that. If you think I’m here to— to try to make things right, somehow, well I’m not. I know I can’t. Nobody can.” Nobody could bring Jesi back; Ninya’s death wouldn’t do that, either, and once that was accomplished, what would Paks then find to keep driving herself forward? That was where Marten ran out of ideas, but realistically thinking, that wasn’t something they were going to have to worry about any time soon. Some bloody upside to the bitch being hard to pin down, he thought darkly.

“I just… want to do what I can do,” he finished with an awkward shrug. “Or else what’s the point?” The point of what; he hoped she wouldn’t think to ask. He fished a handkerchief from his pocket — clean, thank the Light for small favours — and awkwardly held it out to her. “…I should probably… Do you want me to go?”

Paks stared at the offered handkerchief with a side-long look for several seconds before she reached over and took it, accepting the offer from Marten. “I don’t want to resent you,” she admitted as she reached up and wiped away the tears. “You and her. . .you two would have probably been fast friends given how you both reacted to Ninya.”

Did she want him to go?

The Ji’val met the Asha’man’s gaze, “Stay if you want. It’s. . .even as hard as this conversation has been, it’s been better than speaking with the Yellows. I can’t leave the room without one of them with me, and I just. . .talking to someone who isn’t out to fix me is a kind of relief.

“I’m either alone in this room, or with one of them as they try to get me to talk or whatever. A change of pace from that. . .is a relief,” she admitted.