My best enemy

Who was it that led you on
And makes you want to hurt me so?

If Liam had been the same man he had been when he first joined the Dragoons, he would have found Maea's lapse in judgment to be an insurmountable obstacle to any relationship he might have had with her. The Liam of those days had seen in black and white, without admiring any of the many shades of grey that existed in the world. But the man he was now had made his own mistakes, had his own regrets - and could see the good in Maea, even if she had done bad things. She wasn't unlike him, in that way.

So maybe it wasn't kindness, not really; maybe it was recognizing a kindred spirit, understanding that there was more to this world than reducing every action to either good or bad with no in between.

And maybe it wasn't easy, but neither was it as difficult as it might have been in another world, in another life.

Maea's grip on him shifted, and Liam reached to brush an errant lock of hair behind an ear, the motion tender and gentle and altogether loving as he realized that there was, in fact, one thing that he should share, since she had bared her soul in such a way. It wasn't, perhaps, quite as big as setting fire to a hospital, but it weighed on him just the same.

"You already know that I had a drinking problem," he started, his voice quiet but resolute, unwavering in his decision to share this with her. "It started after my family died, and it was... it was bad. Sometimes... sometimes I even showed up to go on duty while I was still drunk." There was shame in his voice, and guilt, because in those days, he'd had no business calling himself a Dragoon, and yet he'd done it anyway. "There was one night that I was supposed to be training a new recruit, and we were trying to break up this bar fight - and I was too out of it to realize I should have called for backup until the trainee was dead on the floor."

Liam shifted uncomfortably, bracing himself for any judgment that might come his way. Maea might have gone after innocents, but she hadn't actually hurt anyone. Liam had gotten a man killed, all because he couldn't get it together enough to do his job. The drinking - at least off duty - he could live with. Frequenting the underground fight clubs that festered in Stormbreak's Silk Houses district, he could look back on without guilt. At least everyone there had known what they were signing up for. But this... this was one thing he could never take back, and he'd never quite learned to live with it, either. "I resigned the next day." It had been his fault, and he'd been too much of a coward to stay and face his demons. He wouldn't blame Maea for reacting poorly, not when everything he tried to be - moral, brave, loyal - felt like a lie.

Who do you want to forget?
Who forgot you long ago?

Liam