Beyond Good and Evil

[Rosa Gunn]

Layil screamed, her concentration shattered the gold tendrils ceased to draw from him. She snatched her uninjured leg away, making to kick him and toppling as her leg gave way beneath her and landing hard on her back, lightsaber slipping from her fingers and spinning away across the floor. She drew back her leg again and drove her heel into whatever she could find before scrambling back. Blood ran freely, leaving a red smear on the green carpet beneath them. Fingers grasped at a rotting table and she pulled herself back to her feet, eyes frantically searching for her weapon.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Fatigue and exhaustion clung onto his limbs like glue. After an effort, Seydon rose unsteadily to his boots, battling nausea gorging up his throat and the swimming disorientation robbing him of balance. There was blood smearing his right hand, down the glove, dripping off the elbow patch. He stepped forward, and kicked her lightsaber away under a cracked desk. The next motion, he knelt forward and nearly toppled retrieving Razorlight back into his grasp. An itching degree of pain was radiating out from each wound tore through his tunic armour and pantlegs. Seydon felt wet heat slowly congealing round his hips. Blinking, he stared ahead at the witch.

“Not sure what made you think... mentioning my wife... was such a good idea,” He gasped. Blood was on his tongue. The Dunaan held his blade forward, with hands and elbows back, out of reach so the only object for the woman to contend with was several feet of bright, alchemic steel. “But I'll share something with you too. If I'm lucky, that pivot-knife managed to knick right through a femoral vein. Which means if I want to, I can hold you right here and watch you bleed out. Or...”

Razorlight was suddenly menacing her eye, glinting in the air half-an-inch from from the port in her mask. “You surrender. I stop the bleeding. And then take you to Threewaters, and let the alderwoman decide how to charge you. First thing's first -”

Seydon's expression curled into a wolf snarl. “Take that fething mask off.”

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Layil said nothing, glittering eyes fixed on the edge of his sword. She'd surrendered once before, weak and frail, Rosa had surrendered herself to the Dark Lord, to the Chosen and Layil had been born from the torment. If she surrendered now, he would take her to Threewaters, the alderwoman would sentence her to death and she'd do what she'd done here. She'd devour her and the people of Threewaters and the cycle would start again.

She shifted her gaze from the sword to the wolf behind it, still making no move to remove the mask she blinked back angry tears and dove into the darkness around her to bring an illusion. Green felt gave way to soft white sand, the dark ceiling began to roil, shifting to thick storm clouds that rumbled loudly. Here was where she had left Rosa, here on the stormy beach of Spira, encased in darkness.

Only Rosa was not encased, she was very much free and standing behind Seydon. Layil's eyes widened with terror as Rosa moved past him without so much of a glance in his direction, eyes filled with fury fixed on the woman in the mask. Layil shook her head. "No!" This was not what was supposed to happen, this was not what she had had planned. Around them the illusion was crumbling at the edges as she began to lose control. "This is not possible!"

Rosa was almost upon her, she turned to run but she was too slow. Rosa snatched her arm, yanking her back and twisting it behind the woman's back and spinning her to face Seydon. "I told you, that I would kill you." she whispered in Layil's ear before lifting lilac eyes to rest on the amber of Seydon's. " I have a thousand things to say to you, but you'll hear none of it if she lives." He might have noticed that they were bleeding from the same wounds.

Layil screamed and and struggled. "You'll kill us both!" she shrieked, Rosa's grip tightened, not taking her eyes off Seydon.

"Seroth," she breathed "I never have, nor will I ever again ask anything like this of you, but I am begging you."

The red eyes of the witch were wide with horror, and she writhed in Rosa's grip. Rosa, whose lilac eyes were filled with regretful tears.

"Kill her."

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The recreation stemmed from a memory. Details only Rosa Gunn nee Mazhar would know were revitalized with stunning clarity. Abandoned sand-castles draped with kelp for banner rolls, the hundred, stippled claw-tracks in the wet dunes where scores of minute hermit-crabs ventured. Beneath the slough of surf were long beds of jade and turquoise stones, rubbed almost as clear as glass. He could smell banana-whiskey coming from vendor bars some sixty kilometers downwind. It was a favourite dream; one last vacation before sloughing through work, hell, and doubt.

His blade wavered in that moment. It fell back, rested over his waist in trembling hands. The Dunaan stared ahead at his wife's flickering apparition. Piercing lilac eyes gazed through curtains of whipping, black locks draping across her face like a mourner's veil. The witch trembled in her relentless grip. Further corrosion was eating up over the gilt metals on her facial mask, and was turning the gold nearly jet as soot leaked and beaded off its edging. At his back, the sea was whipping into a sloshing frenzy. Foam and froth were leeching up the shoreline, and something colder than the wind was cutting into his bones.

The Dunaan felt some horror assault at his nerves, the further and further realization began dawning. His eyes glazed dull. Unbelieving. Her noetic drain on his life force had maybe effected a hallucinatory episode. Combined with his strike at the woman, it was a possible imagining. A vision he wanted to witness, maybe brought on by the witch's knowing taunts. He couldn't tell. Bitter cynicism refused to believe that now, at the end of so many roads, he chanced upon his wife at last. Hard-earned instinct, inculcated through practice regimes, sheer, cruel experience, and survival impulses activated as he faltered.

Razorlight shot up into a guard, transitioning fluidly with his body through a step and joust. The point was aimed to maim a blow through her ribcage, and sever cleanly through the handful of heart chambers. Seydon blinked. Colour returned to his eyes. And time managed to slow itself as his wrists cocked imperceptibly and altered his draw of attack. The point tipped down. It sped through the skin of her abdomen, sheathing into her abdominal cavity... But into the upper left quadrant, sliding between the space of her liver and stomach. The end poked through her backside, withdrawing in the next millisecond, as Seydon stepped back and watched blood briefly pop and hose to the sand.

A lesser evil...

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

A scream burst from Layil's lips, and Rosa let her go letting her drop to the sand where she crumbled. Darkness reached up from her own illusion and began to smother her. "You will never be rid of me! I am a part of you!" The words stung, cutting far deeper than any sword would. Rosa raised a hand drawing the darkness about the mask, silencing any screams. Lightening cracked across the sky, blinding all of them. When vision returned, Spira was gone rough sea's had given way to the sound of rain as it hammered on the roof of the town hall, soft sand eased back to green felt carpet and the smell of banana-whisky replaced with the smell of damp wood and blood. So much blood. The masked woman dropped to her knees, fingers grasping desperately at the wound, red liquid flowed between her fingers and she looked up.

The ruby in her eyes was fading as Layil lost her grip, her screams still echoing in the air around them. Recognition began to form in lilac eyes brimming with tears of pain and joy. Rosa was free, she was free and he had found her. "Seydon." she breathed before pitching sideways. Her body rose a small cloud of dust as it impacted on the floor, a trembling hand reached to her face to pull the mask away.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The illusion of Spira shunted back into the grit truth of Charnel's wasted town hall. There were rimes of sympathetic ice curled up and over every window sill and lip across the long atrium, brought on as a result of Rosa's psionic abilities yoking energy and power from the atmosphere. The air was chilly. Mixed in with the rain were sleet drops, the size of eggs, pounding on the outside stonework. If it kept up, the roof would disintegrate in a day and night. Let it, as far as Seydon was concerned. He'd dropped his blade and had crawled to her side. She was cradled up into his lap, with his trembling fingers holding her face in a shaking frame. It was rare seeing him ever cry. But his eyes were swelled red, while water ran down his pale cheeks.

“Rosa...?” He bleated. Thumbs in rough hide gloving stroked at the skin of her cheeks, beneath her eyelashes. “Oh no... Oh no... I... I'll fix this... I'm fixing this, we're... Oh black gods... Hang on... Just hang onto me... We're going home, Rosa, okay? We're going home... We're going there right now...”

He tore into his harnessing. Compresses, pressure bandages, bacta poultices were strewn onto the flooring. The Dunaan's hands regained belying stillness, as they clinically rent through her clothing and exposed each injury site. Seydon tended quickly at her deeply pricked thigh, the laceration dealt across her clavicle, sternum, and ribs twixt her bosoms, and all but flooded her puncture hole running through her abdominal cavity with further medicines. It was rough first-aid. Battle field treatment. He sloughed off his own partially shredded tunic and dressed her in it, lifting her up gently into a bridal cradle in his arms.

“We're going home...” He murmured into her brow, and started setting off for his distantly parked speeder bike.

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

She watched the world pass over her, the sleet lightly peppering her face. Beneath his feet the cobbles became washed with muddy water. She watched the shifting sky, mesmerized by the dark swirling patterns illuminated by forked lightning. Her head lolled as darkness hemmed in and peered up at him. Her husband, her wolf with golden eyes. A thousand promises made and broken yet in the end it didn't matter, not to her, for when it came down to it, in her eyes she'd broken a thousand more. Not just to him, but to herself.

A bloodied hand reached weakly to touch his cheek a soft smile on her lips. Home was here, home was with this face, the shelter that came with it was simply that. A roof over their heads. "I'm so sorry..." she murmured. "I love you." Dark skies that framed his face gave was to the dark boughs of the forest and she stopped fighting the darkness, allowing it to wash over her, safe in the knowledge that she was safe. She was home.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[ Some Weeks of Interstellar Travel ]
[ Levant Sanctum Space / The Tingel Arm ]
[ Kalos System / Laekia ]

( Crisphin Memorial Ward Hospital )

Ward nine, in floor three, patients undergoing recuperative care in the wake of trauma surgery shared a wing of common quarters. Starched beds in white-steel cot frames, arraigned in support modules connecting diagnostic probes to the framing, lined the bright walling. Privacy suites could be activated, surrounding each bed in tall curtains of opaque thread-glass and highly effective sound dampeners. Any given hour, there were at least three Levant patrollers recovering from injuries. Mostly sustained battling raiders along the contested Sanctum/Primeval line drawn between Etti IV and Tion.

Hospital policy frowned on dietary supplements outside of their own ordered regiments. But administration and the nurses association in general turned an ignorant eye aside for a certain case. Seydon, in sharp attire, balanced a self-heating tray between his calloused hands. He wore a coat over tunic and pants, belted tight at the waist, the collar turned high against his nape and ears. The Dunaan eased through the auto-doors sectioning ward nine off, enduring a brief bio-scan.

“Hate visitor hours,” Seydon groused, strolling beside one particular bedside in the long hall. His hand pulled out a folding stool, and lifted the lid free of its tray. “Fried pork dumpling nachos. Just the way you like them, Rosa...”

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

In between visits, Rosa switched between immersing herself in a healing trance and listening to the world around her. She knew Seydon was coming long before he reached the third floor and set herself the painful job of sitting herself upright. She didn't like to do it while he was here, she didn't like the shame that crept into his eyes. Propped up by pillows she watched him with smiling eyes weave between other visitors and irritated nurses to reach her, to utter the same grumble he always did.

She reached for his hand and squeezed it tightly. "Thank you, love." Words that came easily, had she not been lying in a hospital bed, one might have said things were back to the way they had always been. The constant flow of patients, overbearing nurses and visitors made it impossible for them to talk freely. So they started with the simple things, the changes in the Sanctum, the development of the astronautical academy and the impact that the last Akala incident had had on the galaxy in its entirety. The air between them was still thick with things unsaid.

"Doctors say I'm healing faster than they expected." she said "Perhaps you can convince them to let me come home tomorrow." She plucked a nacho from the tray and bit into it, sinking back slightly into the pillows a blissful smile on her face.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Time aboard the Relentless had been a harrowing gauntlet fighting to sustain and then stabilize her condition. Rosa's homoeostatic crash through a cost of blood loss and wound trauma had her consciousness eking between a fever dream and a coma. Once, and Seydon never told her, she departed him outright. Her husband worked through a crazed half hour reviving her from cardiac arrest, boosting blood volume with packets of plasma-restocks. It took a straight week voyaging before he found her fitfully awake, and they talked for the first time in nearly...

What had it been? Seydon pursed his lips. How long...?

“I'll have a word with staff. See what they recommend, scale it against your capabilities,” He nodded. Seydon edged his stool closer, and rubbed beneath her hair at her nape. “Where do you wanna go...? Once you're discharged. What do you want to do...?”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

She was quiet for a long moment beneath his gaze. "I want to go home, to Arda. I want to feel the sand beneath my feet and the sea at my ankles." She brought a hand to touch his face. "And I want to heal wounds that cannot be touched by any amount of bacta..." she trailed off. Shame creeping into her expression she looked away. Charnel was only part of the story. Oh the things she had done, as Layil and before Layil truly took hold.

"All those times..." she said softly so no one else could hear "All those times you came home after a long trip riddled with guilt for leaving in the first place, all those times I was torn between anger at you not keeping in touch and joy that you were alive and now..." She looked back at him. "I've over five years as a terrible wife to make up for." She wondered if he knew, if he knew how it had all began with Ordo...disgusted with herself she forced the thought from her mind, forced a smile, albeit a sad one back to her face and began to pick at her plate.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He looked at her eyes, through them to a soft depth. They wore that same glaze of self-hurt, loathing, shame. Guilt tied itself to her words, weighted them. The Dunaan suspected a terribly ferocious and cruel story behind her long sojourn in enemy territory. There were a handful of hints, but she'd never spoke or divulged its entirety. Seydon waited and listened at a passing nurse make his rounds to a resting patient four beds over. His wife wore disinfectants and faint bacta in place of her old perfumes. He leaned forward, arresting her pain with a very long, very warm kiss.

“There's time,” He said. “We'll make time. No more disappearing into the dark for so long. It'll get better, Rosa. We don't have to resign to grief.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

The kiss was welcomed, his words of comfort eased the tension out of her shoulders and she silently thanked the force for blessing her with such a man. She recalled finding him on the beaches of Spira, where they'd cavorted on the beach without any worries or pain. Just them, the sea and the storms that the warm nights had brought with them. The force had brought them together and time and time again it brought them back, no matter the distance and time.

"I love you." she said earnestly. The wards patron caught her eye as she made a beeline towards them and Rosa sighed heavily and glanced at Seydon. "I've got to get out of here." she muttered beneath a smile she offered the nautolan woman as she approached.

"Afternoon, Mrs Gunn, Mr. Gunn." she offered Seydon a curt nod, eyes raking over the food with unhidden disapproval. As if in defiance, Rosa popped another morsel into her mouth and winked at her husband. "Afternoon Mrs Morr." she managed with her mouth full. Morr's scowl deepend and she clicked her tongue. "I need to change your bacta patches."

"Now?" Rosa protested.

"Now." she replied firmly and Rosa gave a theatrical pout. "Mr Gunn, would you excuse us?" she asked beginning to tug the curtains around the bed. It was a question spoken in a manner that left very little room for disagreement.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“'Standing policy:'” Seydon repeated to himself, pushing a sardonic gait into his step outside of the ward. “'Spouses and related family are unallowed in aiding or observing medicinal procedures performed on patients. Unless granted exception.'”

He was diverted to the central administration hub through a series of locked mag-rail trains. Crisphin Memorial retained its status: the largest mid-metropolitan hospital in downtown Lavorn. Accordingly, to several advertisement holo's broadcasted steadily in the primary waiting rooms at Ground Floor and Entry, it hosted as many as three to six thousand patients on any given day and hour. Facilities ranging from accident & emergency to diagnostic imaging, to general surgery and neurology, down to genitourinary medicine, were spread across hectares. For Rosa's sake, Seydon braved manuevering against its equally sprawling command hierarchy.

Eventually, he was admitted to a series of interlocked cubicle stations and faced off with various clerics and personal assistants standing in for their controlling officers. In time, despite their avid, bureaucratic deflection, he was admitted a brief audience with Rosa's case doctor. She was a young Rodian, expression caught in a constant, insectoid scowl, complaining of long hours, pay disputes, and migraines issuing from her handling of as many as a hundred sentient's. At best, Missus Gunn would be eligible for discharge in approximately three days. Provided infection or complication didn't spring up in response to her abdominal surgery and a grafting procedure to repair her thigh muscle and slashed artery.

Good enough, he thought. Good enough.


[ Sometime Later... ]

Scale gulls. Scents of far away grain bars cleaning kelp-beer off their counters. A bright, too blue sky that went cloudless for the day. And a beach of hot, ivory sand that burned deliciously at the foot sole.

The Relentless sat idling moodily beneath the awnings of a frond-built 'hangar' carved into a section of volcanic rock and glass. It'd taken them to a lonesome island retreat, along Arda's generous equatorial belt. Her debarkation ramp lolled under the forward nose fuselage.

Seydon was out on a beach head already, planting opaque shade umbrellas where he'd wet the sand. The Dunaan was dressed down to swimming breeches, with still belted with a pair of gutting knives, axe, and a rebreather jaw-mask. At a sound, he turned, watching the shadows beneath the vessel-beak.

“Rosa?”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa ran her hands along the hull of the ship her heart weighing heavily in her chest. She'd been so eager to get out, to be free of people so they could talk openly yet now...His voice rang out, brought to her ears by the gentle breeze scented with the sea. She glanced up at the ship and patted her gently. The Relentless had carried them on so many journey's, its halls rang with memories of old times past. Of storms and bickerings as they'd travelled across the galaxy from one place to the next. Drawing a deep breath, Rosa exhaled slowly letting go of her dread, letting go of her fear and stepped out from under the nose padding across the sand towards him.

A loose skirt fluttered about her legs, a great split allowing a blessing breeze in the heat, a brassiere left her belly open, the wound beneath her rib cage was red and angry, but in a few more weeks it would be nothing more than a scar. She lopped arms about his neck as she reached him and kissed him warmly, her heart feeling lighter though there was still a shadow behind her eyes as she drew back. "Will you meditate with me?"

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Not sure if I remember how, anymore,” He confessed.

They teetered their umbrella shawl back until it afforded proper shade. The Relentless had made landing the eve prior, navigating the current-straight winding eastward from the Archipelago of Mytia, settling her almost forty-meter span into the roughly constructed rock space. Neither of them rose at the morning alarm. Seydon, lying alert beside his wife, waited for her to come awake before suggesting an afternoon by the surf.

Instead of the more usual side-by-side seating arrangement, they opted to pose face to face. The Dunaan was settled with knees forward and down against the towel and sand, heels at his rump. Hands were faced palms to the sky, and the fingers arranged in obscure casts. At Rosa's cue, Seydon tried relaxing, slowing pulse and breathing, until his hold on the there and then loosened into fluidity. His eyes were still open, blinking, but gently hooded and moist. They weren't seeing much of anything as his third eye took hold and coasted him into the expression of Rosa appearing in the Force.

“It's cold...” He said, mumbling.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa's eyes slid closed as she slipped into old routines, focusing on her breathing and easing the tension out of her muscles with each exhale. Relaxed and calm she let go of her physical self and reached out around her. She could feel Seydon, his mumbled complaint like a whisper on the wind, she could hear his slow and steady heart beat, slower than her own and more powerful. She reached for his mind, tugging him into a force meld.

It's not cold. She replied without speaking before stretching beyond the pair. Her time with the sith had left her raw and unable to shut her empathy down. She'd felt everything. Every death, every moment of sorrow, every lost temper. Layil had been born out of a need to be able to deal with so much darkness, yet here...Here there was joy. Across the open sea she could feel the content fisherman singing as they cast their nets, she could feel the joy of the ardan children as they played on the beach, the irritated elder woman that shooed them from under her feet with a smile, the excitement of two forbidden lovers as they kissed in the shadows behind a mud shack. Peace could always be found on Arda.

There was something lurking though, something that hovered over her and snapping at her heels. As she reached to find light a dark cloud seemed to circle over her. Realisation dawned as she found the source and snapped away from Seydon and the meditation eyes snapping open she got to her feet and moved to the water's edge, letting the surf roll over her ankles she hugged herself. The darkness was within her, and she was a fool to think she could shrug it off just like that.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Suddenly tugged free and naked of their shared bond-meld snapped pain behind Seydon's eyes. He gasped, coming back to wakefulness, rubbing at an inexplicable chill that had latched to his arms like frost and rime. Ardan heat stole comfort and equilibration to his senses, sunlight giving his skin a slight hiss of sunburn, and he rose back to his feet. His wife had retreated; her pose was like a shadow on the surf froth, hugging against her belly while sky and sea blue rolled against her with the water and wind. The Dunaan paused, before stealing up to her side and laying an arm around her waist.

“It'll get better,” He finally said after a thought. He'd wanted to avoid empty consolation, or pick at her doubt with cliche and over used adages. The temptation was there to pry, demand answers, stories to give her explicit terror and doubt a history to comb and analyze. Seydon's muse was always the hunt, and instinctively he wanted to tackle her pain like any monster: with silver, ferocity, and skill. He reined in, understanding there was something frighteningly intimate and scarring dealing with her long episodes behind Layil's mask. An arduous task of healing that, ultimately, she would have to manage and work through on her own terms. “It will. Whatever it takes, whatever you need. I won't leave you wanting. You know that...”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa went rigid beneath his fingers, a cruel response danced on the end of her tongue and she turned to look at him, his soft expression shattering through her cold demise and she blew out a heavy sigh out of her nose. "There is nothing you can do to help me, Seydon." she whispered sadly. She wanted to tell him that he could work wonders, that he could help bring her back to the light. Her would always be her rock, there to steady her when she lost her balance, but this was her battle.

"Save for listen," she continued finally "And if you can find it in your heart, forgive me, where I cannot forgive myself."

She slipped her hand into his and tugged him into a walk along the sand to tell him her story. How Turin had come back from a battle with the One Sith badly wounded and mentally traumatised, obsessed with finding Isolda. How she tried to heal him, tried to stop him from leaving when he was not fit to go and of the duel that followed. HEr first meeting with Isolda had been in Turin's mind a seed planted so deep that she had to dig deep to find it and in doing so, triggered Turin's own fall. She spoke of Ordo possessed, of his control over her. Of the drugs Isolda used to boost her mental capabilities and the her determination to make Rosa into something deadly, of Turin's blind devotion to this Vahla, this Chosen. He was no longer that person, no longer Turin, but a sithspawn and hound to do the Eye's bidding. She spoke of a bounty hunter she'd paid to bring a note of her death, not wanting Syedon to come looking, too afraid of what he might find.

In the end, Isolda succeeded in breaking her, releasing Layil into the battle of Zeltros where she met Jericho and Ben, and did her utmost to kill them both. Tears ran freely down her face, only to stop when she thought of him, replaced by untamed and quiet fury. Odium. She told Seydon of her brother, her fellow dreadlord and how she despised him. How he had taught her the meaning of hunger and that despite what she felt, she was always drawn to him. She'd helped him consume a world and it was him that had pushed her truly over the edge. Layil took hold and when Akala struck, taking her brothers lead she broke away, only to crash on Charal.

By the time Rosa had finished, they had lapped the island and come to rest beneath the umbrella's. Sat cross legged she could not look at him, instead she dug a small hole in the sand in front. "I want to be able to say that I was possessed, that I had no control over my actions, but it would be a lie." she forced herself to look up, to meet his eyes. "Layil is me. She is born out of my darkest memories, made from the darkness in me. A darkness I never wanted to have or use."

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Their stroll was a long, unbroken confessional, spanning the weeks leading into the renewal of the recent Jedi Wars until now, in the wake of a chaotic month, as hyperlanes crashed, worlds slipped away, populations went hurtling into aether, and virtually all bets were off. Seydon, biding at her side as they strolled along turtle trail-runs, passing shallow scallop pools in the surf break and catching a few errant coconut-lobsters for a later dinner, hardly said a word. It was confessional for Rosa. Though she glazed over certain events, associations, moments, it was only to spare him the cruel breadth of havoc detail. Again, he bit against prodding. It'd be further nails in the coffin. He sensed she could barely forgive herself for making him bleed on Charal. 'If only you knew' was always just a breath on her tongue.

“Mmmn, and now you're saddled with the responsibility of controlling it,” He nodded lightly. The Dunaan paused, wiping his palm across his eyes. “I don't know what's left to say. You tread through hell and lived to tell it. I think you're stronger than you believe, but I don't know if you'll believe that as much as I do. And you've probably lectured yourself enough on cause and consequence when I haven't been looking. I don't know, Rosa. If you want my honesty?”

They faced, and stood as close as their toes gently bumping on the sand. “All I'm good for is kissing you, saying that you'll work it out, things will be fine, and that we'll deal with what comes. And maybe take you on that bathing towel until you ache so hard you forget all your troubles.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]