Koa
Don't you just wanna wake up dark as a lake
Smelling like a bonfire, lost in a haze?
"As alright as I can be." Considering I thought you were dead for seasons. "Took me a while to recover, and get out of the Wilds. At least I had Pip." If he'd been alone, gods only could have saved him. And then there had been time spent in Torchline, and the time in King's Edge, and LongNight, and finally the strength to return to Stormbreak, only to find that letter waiting, and now...Smelling like a bonfire, lost in a haze?
...Well, now they're here.
He falls into silence as she explains, his expression stoic, attentive, calm. But if one looked closer they might see the way his fists clench and unclench; the throbbing muscle in his forehead; the cold glint of his copper eyes. This is not the story he expected, not even remotely close to what he predicted. This is dangerously close to the propaganda that They fed Stormbreak, that he refused to hear.
"They let you go?" He repeats it with quiet incredulity, not sure he's properly understood. "And you... just left?" No word, no letter, nothing for seasons, only the overwhelming weight of guilt and anxiety digging grooves into his shoulders with its miserable claws.
"No." Koa's head is shaking, then, disbelieving, as though to dispel these impossible thoughts. "No, you-- Soh, why?" Why didn't she so much as leave a note? Why did she abandon their home, why didn't she go for help. "I thought-- I looked for you, I thought they'd taken you, that you were being tortured or killed and I'd failed to stop them---"
He stops, choking, not sure how to reconcile this. She'd promised to be Stormbreak's heart, then left it with a gaping wound in its chest.
Just like she'd once done to him.
If you're drunk on life, babe, I think it's great
But while in this world I think I'll take my whiskey neat
But while in this world I think I'll take my whiskey neat
