Your wizard can make his own decisions. Would that make you any less furious if someone else deliberately chose to put him directly in the path of a knife's blade?
You might have. You didn't. That's your only saving grace.
[ He deletes the last of what he writes: and the proof of the worth of your efforts. ]
[ It takes Shadowheart a moment to compose herself. Thinks of how much she’s desired his approval, in the past; his argument with Gale, yesterday. How close she’d come to asking Silco, in spite of it. ]
Would you have cared, had something happened to me?
[ It's not a turnabout he expects, but he's not so blind that he doesn't know how to divine a wrong answer from a right one, truth notwithstanding. ]
I would have.
[ True, on a technical level. He cares about everything that comes to pass in this game, when all of it bears weight as to the outcome. True, excepting the fact that, in this case, he believes she'd have brought any ill outcome upon herself.
Not a truth — yet not a lie — in the way she means it. ]
[ She’s seen only fragments of what Silco’s capable of, and only through the gallery of stolen memories. He knows more of her than she of him, and she knows that’s by design.
Shadowheart has given him more, when she perhaps should have been more careful. And still she thinks of how he was the one she went to, after forsaking her goddess; how he stayed with her, something like gentleness in him in the aftermath, when he didn’t have to be gentle. That same gentleness in the fragment of memory where she was young and frightened, and he thought her someone else. ]
I understand how much she means to you. I’m sorry.
What would you have done, had I asked you instead?
[ Whatever capacity for gentleness he retains in this mess dwindles at her response, his inclination to trust her — to give her more of himself — eroded by her choice in company and her decision to involve Jinx. Not all the way, when she offers him an apology, but I'm sorry is different from I won't.
He sighs, looking down at his phone. It doesn't matter now. Deleted. Then: ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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You might have. You didn't. That's your only saving grace.
[ He deletes the last of what he writes: and the proof of the worth of your efforts. ]
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Would you have cared, had something happened to me?
Or only to her?
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I would have.
[ True, on a technical level. He cares about everything that comes to pass in this game, when all of it bears weight as to the outcome. True, excepting the fact that, in this case, he believes she'd have brought any ill outcome upon herself.
Not a truth — yet not a lie — in the way she means it. ]
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[ But I don’t know that I do, unspoken. ]
I nearly went to you, first.
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I would have protected her. I’m skilled in battle, even without my powers. And protection is what I do.
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Don't involve her again. I've said my piece. I won't repeat myself.
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Shadowheart has given him more, when she perhaps should have been more careful. And still she thinks of how he was the one she went to, after forsaking her goddess; how he stayed with her, something like gentleness in him in the aftermath, when he didn’t have to be gentle. That same gentleness in the fragment of memory where she was young and frightened, and he thought her someone else. ]
I understand how much she means to you. I’m sorry.
What would you have done, had I asked you instead?
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He sighs, looking down at his phone. It doesn't matter now. Deleted. Then: ]
Ask me next time, and you'll find out.