My Cup of Tea

Your Kalt. The sentence wasn't supposed to come out like that, and Ashe glanced quickly at him before back to her mother. The tension here was so thick she could have cut through it with a knife, and she felt every muscle in her coiling tightly. He was just leaving? The weight in those words was clear, and she found herself gathering up Soot to hang onto her shoulder. This was not the visit she expected to have with her mother, and this was absolutely not how she intended to bring the topic of Kalt to her mother. Ashe cleared her throat and looked between them, furrowing her brow. "Is there some kind of problem...?" she asked warily, and she cast sharp eyes that said everything they needed to at Kalt: What the fuck did you say to my mother?    It was then that he started speaking, addressing not Ashe, but Vai. And with every word, her heart was sinking with dread. Shit, she thought again, her wide eyes snapping towards her mother for a minute. Bad. This was bad. Ashe had no idea how her mother would react to the way Kalt was talking, and it was clear he'd already let it spill that they were in the guild together. Ashe chewed her lip anxiously before she looked at Kalt and tried to open her mouth, to stop him, to make him shut the fuck up, but there was rarely any stopping him when he decided to do something. She didn't understand those things he said he saw in her - no one sees that, don't be stupid - but she recognized the intent in his pretty words.    Ashe listened in stunned silence. Frozen. Soot appeared to sense her unease, crouching closer against her with a soft hiccup and chitter, and Ashe's hand rose to brush over him. She didn't know what to do, what to say. Five hells, she had not been prepared for this, for a conversation like this, and her mind was reeling trying to process what the two of them said.. but frustration was rising with every word spoken. Vai loved her, had fought to finally find her. It was true that she had only been in a total of four and half years of her life, but this was her mother. Her mother who had looked Ashe in the eye as her daughter held a blade to her chest, lightning curled around her throat.. and she hadn't looked away. Her mother who had held her as she broke apart under the weight Master had heaved upon her in Northaven. Her mother who had found her against all the odds.    And there was Kalt. Kalt, who knew her better than anyone, who had been there suffering alongside her and found whatever light and warmth they could in a life of unending dark. Kalt, who always brought her back when she was too far gone. Two important people in her life, and within a minute of seeing them together, they were at each other's throats. Had she expected her family, her mom, to have any understanding of Kalt, of who they were to each other? No, not exactly, but when her mother threw a glass at Kalt… Ashe's blood was boiling.    Ashe met her mother's gaze evenly and with hardened eyes, her question leaving a bad taste in Ashe's mouth. She grit her teeth. ”No,” she half growled. ”Never. I never did that to Alistair.” That her mother would think that she would… there was a time that Alistair had questioned her loyalty too. Ouch. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised - no one had ever seemed to have any faith or trust in her. ”I chased after Kalt when there was a disguised man that appeared to know me twice, but I never knew it was him.” With that she shot a glare at Kalt before returning blazing eyes back to her mother. ”Kalt didn't even show himself to me or tell me he was around until weeks after Alistair left, wouldn’t have shown himself if I hadn't been about to do something fucking stupid.”    She shook her head and squeezed the bridge of her nose with a heavy sigh. A headache was starting to throb behind her shut eyes. ”If both of you could stop this territorial, who-knows-who-better  bullshit, that would be great,” Ashe said sharply as she looked up at them. She settled her gaze on her mother, and while part of her warmed at how viciously Vervain came to her defense, how fiercely she fought to be there for Ashe, her frustration was a hot coal in her chest.    ”Kalt was trapped in that hell, same as I was.” She didn't say that he had been taken as a child too, that he'd been one of Master's favorites as she had been, that he knew the different breed of torment that she did. His story was his to tell. ”He might be a fucking prick,” she tossed a raised brow his way before looking back at her mother with a soft frown, eyes imploring. ”I don't care if you don't like him for that, but if it's the Guild in him you're rejecting, take another look at who your daughter is. I have never spoken very much on what my life was in Northind - I don't exactly blame you for assuming the worst. But I am telling you now, Kalt is not the enemy. I might not have survived the Guild without him, and he's been helping me survive it now,” she tapped her finger against her temple. ”Up here.”    She had a feeling nothing she said would get her mother to listen, to hear her, had probably already heard all about Ashe's talk with Devrum. The bear said he would kill Kalt, and that thought had her fingernails digging into her palms. Dev's threats might have been fierce and genuine, but none of them wanted to find out what would happen if any of them tried harm him. Hers. He was hers, and the world itself would come to its knees before her and she would go to places she would never return from should anything so horrible were happen as people she loved hurting him. That kind of betrayal...    Her eyes turned to Kalt then, and her jaw feathered. ”And you are a fucking asshole,” she growled. Her hand thumped down on the bar before her fingers curled, her eyes narrowing to a glare. ’You're dead in our next session,’ the look said, already imagining the ways she'd kick his ass the next time they trained. ”She is my mother. I don't give a shit what she does or doesn't understand about my life, it's not as if I've given her much of a chance to.” It was a painful truth - she never breathed a word of the things she had been through. The killing and bloodlust were the least of it, but talking about it… that would have made it real. Real in the way Kalt was making sure she knew it was now, not letting her pretend those things never happened to her. ”You will respect her and the things she did to get back to me.”    Ashe let out a heavy breath and braced her elbows against the bar counter, digging her fingers into her hair. ”I'm too fucking sober for this,” she muttered to herself under her breath. She didn't look up as she spoke to them. ”Neither of you know anything about each other, so stop fucking acting like you do.” But love is all that I have now I gave my blood just to find out.