walk me home in the dead of night
Rather than hiccupping out her surprise, Flora bites down on it, trying to swallow it back if only so that he won't turn around and see the flush that spreads across her cheeks. "I'm sorry too." She says after a moment, when her tongue doesn't feel like it's going to betray her entirely. "I just...really liked you, and I think I felt more stupid than anything to realize how wrong I'd gotten it all." The admission, rather than feeling weighty and embarrassing, has her feeling relief. She'd never admitted to anyone, much less to herself, that a big part of what had fueled the youthful fury she'd felt for the butcher, had been nothing more than a bruised ego.
The conversational path they walk on shifts, but gods if it doesn't feel easier to find themselves on the same footing about something. "Because it was...easy?" Blinking, Flora watches the movements of the ancient's elbows and fingers as if the invisible hieroglyphics he was carving out into the air might make it make sense. "In what world is it easy to take that out on you?" Having to keep her voice from raising, the queen huffs as if that might replacement the satisfaction of yelling. She'd had to write and re-write her responses to the few letters she'd exchanged with Asta precisely because it wasn't easy to yell at someone like him, or judge him for the things that he did, much as she'd wanted to.
Not minding at all this vaguely unhinged version of the butcher, Flora can only bark out her own humorless laugh. "Have you ever thought about pelting her with a few dozen snowballs and putting her in a stony time-out for a while?" From what the queen had heard, stasis wasn't supposed to be painful for the ancients, so she hoped she wasn't suggesting anything too out of turn, but then again, given that Maea had thought being starved, tortured, and left to rot out in the sun had been humane, maybe she wasn't thinking broadly enough.
The conversational path they walk on shifts, but gods if it doesn't feel easier to find themselves on the same footing about something. "Because it was...easy?" Blinking, Flora watches the movements of the ancient's elbows and fingers as if the invisible hieroglyphics he was carving out into the air might make it make sense. "In what world is it easy to take that out on you?" Having to keep her voice from raising, the queen huffs as if that might replacement the satisfaction of yelling. She'd had to write and re-write her responses to the few letters she'd exchanged with Asta precisely because it wasn't easy to yell at someone like him, or judge him for the things that he did, much as she'd wanted to.
Not minding at all this vaguely unhinged version of the butcher, Flora can only bark out her own humorless laugh. "Have you ever thought about pelting her with a few dozen snowballs and putting her in a stony time-out for a while?" From what the queen had heard, stasis wasn't supposed to be painful for the ancients, so she hoped she wasn't suggesting anything too out of turn, but then again, given that Maea had thought being starved, tortured, and left to rot out in the sun had been humane, maybe she wasn't thinking broadly enough.
