RORY
i told the stars about you
He wasn't sure if he had meant to comfort her either, but he supposed he had, in whatever honest way he could. He refused to coddle her, to wrap truth's hard, jagged edges in cotton, but if there was some solace to be had in rationality, he was willing to give it. Whatever it was that he had said, she seemed to have taken something good out of it, judging by the way that her shoulders firmed oh-so-slightly.So, she had reached some sort of conclusion he was not privy to, but he suspected it had something to do with not giving up.
He wondered if he should've tried to talk her out of it.
He wondered if he should've rained blow upon blow upon her, until she buckled underneath it and crawled back to the Valair family and resigned herself to her fate of making apple cider for the rest of her life.
He didn't have that sort of cruelty in him.
At her promise he merely made a noncommittal grunt. He didn't feel charitable enough to say something whimsical like I'll hold you to that, nor optimistic enough to feel soothed by it. Only time would tell if her best was good enough, and he hated himself for such a bleak thought, but what else could he do? She had put herself in this place, and by extension, she had put everyone else in this place, too.
But, ah.. the sword. "Oh," he said, as if woken from a nap. He let the awl spin freely, folding his hands between his knees again. "It's up at the house. Do, uh.. do you want me to go get it?" Finding Maea with a blood-slick sword in her hand was still one of the more bizarre events of that night, and by the time he'd come down from the top of the Spire she had been gone. He'd brought it home with him, not knowing what else to do with it, but after wiping it down he'd mostly forgotten about it. He'd been meaning to ask someone, Wessex perhaps, about sword care, because he thought it probably needed something after being drenched in blood, or even ask Maea if she wanted it back, but he had had two recurring problems: lack of time, or just forgetting about it.
