how can you rise
if you have not burned?
She listens, staying close, unable to imagine what it is like to lose someone you helped raise. But she knows what it is like to lose family, and she can begin to understand how he is feeling now. Begin, because she has never had to renounce her own name, never been forced to make that choice. Hale was a good name in Halo, and one she hoped she wouldn’t ruin now. ”Can you tell me about your family? All of it? Who is Zariah to Neron, because they didn’t seem like they would have a child together, unless they hid that really well. And Edy?” Some part of her hates to pry, hates to make him dig it up, but she needs to know, and maybe it’ll help him to get it off his chest. Maybe he can speak it all and leave them as ghosts to his past.She nods. ”I asked her to come by the Kraai in the morning. I do plan to have a conversation with her.” There were so many conversations in her future when all she wanted was action. She wants to rebuild Halo, wants to organize the people. She doesn’t want to stop till it’s done, and yet, she has to stop. She has to take the time to get information she’d never before needed. She cannot make decisions when there is too much unknown.
”If I stick my neck out, it will be because I decide you are necessary to my council. I am a little loath to lose good people right now.” Perhaps it felt like it would be for him, but really, it was as much for her if that is the choice she makes. She cannot make final decisions, not yet, but she cannot help but ponder her options. It was not as if she could sit around and wait on these things. Either she established control quickly, or she risked someone else trying to take it from her.
He resists, though in the end he gives in to her. Sometimes the best thing one can offer is an embrace, a hug. There’s not a damn thing she can say to make it better. ”My problems do not diminish your own pain. At least you feel something. I burned them alive, Loren. I heard them scream, I smelled their flesh. And you know what I felt? Nothing. They deserved to die, because it was us or them, and I will choose us any day.” Him, her, Korbin, Noah, Kiada…the list of those still alive because of the things they’d done is long. Does it make it okay? No. But what else could they have done? ”It’s your home too, Loren.”
WEAVER
