i can't save the world if i'm not happy anymore.

Her lip curled back in a snarl then. ”You're terrified.” Fuck him! She wasn't terrified, she was full of festering rage and pain and betrayal. Why was he being so fucking kind to her? So soft? He killed her father, she sold him out to the king, and she left him for dead - he had made it so clear when they had last seen each other. Her chest was heaving as she backed away another step, towards that dark where she go down and down and down, to lose herself. Away from this. Why now? Why was he here now? What's scaring you, Ashe? That sword of lightning crackled away then, vanishing as her hands lifted and raked into her hair, and she swore she felt that great chasm in her break further, echoing into the silence that was her head now, her soul. Mental walls were erected, as if in habit, as if she still feared Alistair feeling this part of who she was. But he already had, already had suffered her presence in his life and soul. “Only pain drives you, pain and anger, and misery are the trinity…” he’d said as he handed her soul back to her. “Your truest loves, and your heart, soul, and body belong to them.” Her heart, her soul, her body... he was right. And it hurt everyone she ever cared for. Ever loved. Gods, even after the betrayal of Silver Wing, after the betrayal of her Master, she had still loved, had tried to understand love outside of the Guild. She blackened it every time she touched it. Her head spun when she thought of Jasper, the lake of red, the tipped over chair in his office, the arm hacked away from the rest of his mutilated body. MJ, the note that promised he was dead. The threat to her husband. The unending worry and frustration of her friends as she desperately tried to understand how to survive and love and live and failed over and over again. Who and what she was could never be understood. The night terrors and paranoia and hunger for the violence that had always been her life since she began her training at six years old. She was never meant for things like love, no matter how freely her heart expended it. But perhaps that was wrong. Perhaps her heart was incapable of love, as Alistair had said. She could not be saved. It couldn't be true. It couldn't be true, because if it was.. then her curse for destroying the things that mattered most had begun long before Jasper's murder. Ashe turned away from him, and ran a hand over her face, pacing a few steps further into the mouth of the cavern. Misted eyes looked deeply into the dark that was so close now. She didn't speak for a long minute, but she could feel him behind her. She had done so well burying his face, his name, his voice down deep with all the other things she could not, would not face. She had killed Master, finally had ended his reign over her, and it hadn't been enough to bring her peace. And now.. now Silver Wing came leaping back into her life. Training with him, sitting with him. He had been with her on that final contract. He had been watching her, ever the dutiful watchdog for the reckless Assassin in Blue. Her hands dropped down to her sides, and her lightning crackled one last time.. and it vanished. Dissipated into nothing, emulating what was within the assassin. ”I left you to die,” she finally said, and her voice was tired. She turned around to face him then, forced herself not to flinch at meeting his gaze.. though she could not stop the way her lip trembled. Everything they had been, that they had fought for and bled for and suffered for, everything she thought had been some kind of sick game to him… all real. And she had been the one to throw it all away. Her arms wrapped around herself, her shoulders caving inwards as she turned fire-blues away from his crystalline stare. There was a softness there that shouldn't be. When would he plunge the dagger into her chest? She'd given him plenty of chances for it. Was there more he planned on, is that why he had stopped her from her descent? What kind of retribution did her former trainer have in store for her? She wasn't sure she cared to stop it. She was staring down at her cloak, at Reckoning safely stored in its scabbard. Her voice was flat when she spoke again, not looking up. ”When should I expect my end, Silver Wing?” Kalt ashetta it's live or die my way.