[That's the problem. People die in war. Hayame has watched people suffer and die her entire life. In the breeding stable, the number of yearlings had dwindled year by year until she, her brother, and only a handful reached adulthood intact ready to be sold to the highest bidder. How many had there even been? Toshifuji, a breeding stable yearling one season older who had broken her leg... Hayakusa, a captured mountain jinba who had bucked every groomsmen in the stable until they'd flensed off his arms... The new broodmare whose name she'd never learned, who had nearly kicked the stable master's shoulder to pieces rather than accept being hobbled for mounting...
They'd all died. Toshifuji's neck had been slit so deeply her head almost came off, Hayakusa's severed arms had grown infected, the broodmare's severed hooves had adorned the stable gates... and to not be among their number, she had always had to fight, to be strong, stronger than anyone. She'd put everything aside, locked it all down, and after a while... it hadn't phased her at all. So of course it would have been better if Claude had said nothing at all. Of course she would have preferred if he'd left that wound alone, so that she could deal with it in silence like she always had. She's killed by her own hand since Horos, in Kenos, because she was a warrior, and that is what warriors did, they take heads, they take shards, but she-
She wants to go home. She wants to die (doesn't she?). But she can't do it here, in this foreign land, she has to do it where her death will mean something, where her honor will be cleansed, and Claude...
Her tears are hot and wet on his fingers, staining her cheeks and leaking from beneath the leather eyepatch slipping slightly up her face. The crack in her voice is so pathetic that she wishes she hadn't said anything at all, but-]
You are a fool, Claude von Riegan-
[So why, then, now that her hands are empty of his shard... do they cling to the front of his clothes as if begging him not to stop trying to comfort her?]
cw: jinba is dark
They'd all died. Toshifuji's neck had been slit so deeply her head almost came off, Hayakusa's severed arms had grown infected, the broodmare's severed hooves had adorned the stable gates... and to not be among their number, she had always had to fight, to be strong, stronger than anyone. She'd put everything aside, locked it all down, and after a while... it hadn't phased her at all. So of course it would have been better if Claude had said nothing at all. Of course she would have preferred if he'd left that wound alone, so that she could deal with it in silence like she always had. She's killed by her own hand since Horos, in Kenos, because she was a warrior, and that is what warriors did, they take heads, they take shards, but she-
She wants to go home. She wants to die (doesn't she?). But she can't do it here, in this foreign land, she has to do it where her death will mean something, where her honor will be cleansed, and Claude...
Her tears are hot and wet on his fingers, staining her cheeks and leaking from beneath the leather eyepatch slipping slightly up her face. The crack in her voice is so pathetic that she wishes she hadn't said anything at all, but-]
You are a fool, Claude von Riegan-
[So why, then, now that her hands are empty of his shard... do they cling to the front of his clothes as if begging him not to stop trying to comfort her?]