i've been trying to sleep

ASHƎ i did my best to control the growing unrest in my soul.     Ashe didn't take her eyes from the stunning goddess, and as quickly as her anger had burst to life, it fizzled out. It settled heavily in her as Safrin confirmed it - they would not give Ronin back. She bit down hard on the inside of her lip with hard eyes that could have been a glare if it weren't for the unshed tears that glistened there.     She shook her head with a half growl of frustration, and she looked down to press her brow to her knees. The gods had no reasons to give - as blind as she and the rest of the Outlanders were as to why the fuck they had been pulled here. Why it was that it was them that were able to defeat a three hundred year old beast. Why Ronin had to -- ”We were randomly selected to shoulder another world's plight, then? Or was Ronin chosen because whatever brought him here knew he could never ignore something like that beast?”     Quietly, she took a long breath before lifting her head to look at Safrin once more. "We fought for people," she said. "Back in Northaven, that's what he  did. What he pushed me to do. We fought to help people, to save people. And then here, I just..." Her voice cracked, her face crumpled before she sniffed and looked down again. She took 'I suck at saving people' to a whole new level.     She had to hold her breath to contain the monstrous thing in her chest. When she looked up again, she raised a hand to rake her fingers into her hair, shaking her head. "I'm trying to want to help these people, but the price we paid to end that menace... and they're angry at us? Is the key to freedom even in that spire?" And Roana posted that gods damned notice, lines were being drawn, and she couldn't accept that as what he would have wanted. Ashe shook her head and turned her eyes up towards the sky before she looked back at the goddess. "Ronin wouldn't stop. He wouldn't give up, he would know exactly what to do next, but how the fuck am I supposed to do any of this without him?"     Ashe didn't know what answers she expected for her jumbled and incomplete thoughts. She didn't know why she spoke to a goddess like this, why she thought this would help anything at all. Live, live, live. "There has to be a way to get him back," she said, almost pleadingly.