My Cup of Tea

Kalt got a quiet scoff and an eyeroll, and she considered heading home drunk just to spite him. Her eyes followed him as he left, and even as he disappeared up the stairs, her eyes remained where he had been. It wasn't until her mother spoke to her that her eyes flicked back to her, her own gaze guarded. Her face was carefully blank as her mother spoke, studiously ignoring the burning in her chest. She remained entirely silent.    Her hand seemed to hover over Soot as she touched her fingers over his back at the sight of that cat, and she glanced down at the spider that was most definitely eyeing the wine racks. Ashe remained silent still after her mother finished, moving to lean against the bar with her eyes set on the counter.    She took a deep breath without looking up. "Let me make one thing very clear," she said quietly. "It was my choice to stay away. No one sequestered me away, and just what do you think he was doing, coming here to you?" She looked up at her mother then, something unreadable in her expression. "Yes, I have been with him instead of here, but that was not his choice to make. I know now that I should have been coming to you, to Ronin, to see anyone. I'm starting to come back and Kalt..." She sighed through her nose and glanced down at the table again, her jaw feathering. "Seems he decided to speed up the process."    She fell silent again for a moment. 'Please just fucking talk to your mother about what needs to be talked about.' What could she talk about? Why did she need to, why did anyone need to know all the ways she was broken and sharp and jagged? What would it do other than to hurt the people that cared about her, what would do other than make them look at her and see something so much worse than what they saw now? She pursed her lips briefly before she looked up at Vervain again, taking a long breath.    "I was wrong to stay away," she went on. "But Kalt has helped me. I would have -" she broke off, remembering standing at the mouth of the underground, prepared to waltz down there and never resurface. She wasn't sure how well anyone caught on to her deep fear of being beneath the earth, but it didn't matter now. She sighed and bit the inside of her lip before she went on. "I wouldn't be here, coming to anyone, if he hadn't been there."    Ashe had to pause again, to keep her breath steady, to keep her tone steady. Impulse and frustration railed against her control, urging her tongue lash out, but she held herself. Her mother loved her. Vai wasn't trying to hurt her, she reminded herself. "I get that you all want me to trust you, to go to you, but how in the five hells am I supposed to just talk about this shit?" She tapped her finger against her head again, and her facade of nutrality fell into something perhaps a little more desperate. A little more broken. "Kalt was there. I don't.. I don't have to explain to him how I survived it because he just.. knows.  So yes, there is a certain kind of understanding that no one else can give me." Shared trauma was something altogether different than what most people could grasp when it came to living with what they were. "I know that doesn't mean I should have cut you off. I fucking know that, but he didn't do that. I stayed away from Dev because he promised to kill me if I ever hurt Alistair. I stayed away from you, from Ronin, from Remi, because I am not.. good for anyone. For a while I thought the only thing in me was this twisted, sorry excuse for a soul that I didn't want anyone else to see again. I killed Master and I was just left with my worthless fucking life. I thought that I would be able to finally be free when he was dead, but I wasn't. I'm not, not yet." Alistair hadn't been able to grasp that, hadn't been able to fathom why she couldn't just settle into peace and normalcy, as if anyone could do it. If Devrum could do it, then why couldn't she, right? She may have been wrong in the way she stopped opening up to Alistair... but he had condemned her for the parts of her that he had looked right through.    She straightened in her seat then, taking a moment to watch her mother. "I get that you're pissed off, I get that you don't like him," she said. Hells, her mother probably hated him, a painful thought she would deal with later. "But I need you to understand that no matter who doesn't like him, he's not going anywhere." Not on anyone's life. Vervain was her mother, yes, and while they all saw only the wide-eyed child that grew up without any parenting.. Ashe was fucking more than that. She would not be ordered like a child. Still, her gaze softened after a moment, and she looked up at her mother as she bit at the inside of her lip.    "I'm sorry I disappeared again, mom," she said quietly, and she meant it. But love is all that I have now I gave my blood just to find out.