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Laudna didn’t know what she wanted to do.
That was a problem in this moment, right now, and it was also a problem that seemed to plague her every step of her life. What do I want, what do I do, where do I go, a never-ending string of words that only ever stuttered to a stop when Delilah’s voice sang, honey sweet and sultry, giving her all the answers that she didn’t want (but maybe sometimes craved).
Delilah’s voice did not sing in Laudna’s head now, however. In fact, it was remarkably empty up there as compared to the past thirty years. With Delilah gone and Pâté come to life, it was feeling shockingly silent up there. Laudna didn’t even know what to do with all the space she had to think now, didn’t know if she had enough thoughts of her own to fill it all up.
One thought rang loud and clear, though: we’re going to hunt down Otohan to fight her again. Laudna was well versed in keeping her fears to herself, in brushing them aside to keep up a happy, joyful facade, but she had to admit that this tested even her impressive skills. She had barely just shucked off the physical weakness from her resurrection—she had little interest in seeking the woman out to give her another chance to finish the job.
Restlessly, she paced the floor of her chambers. It was late, and Imogen was taking a watch, so Laudna was alone for the time being. Anxiety ate away at her gut, driving her to walk faster, as if she could outrun it.
“Settle down, luv,” Pâté crooned from where he sat on the bed, bony wings clacking together as he shifted. “You’re makin’ me dizzy.”
“Quiet, Pâté,” Laudna snapped, not even breaking her stride. Pâté sighed, but quieted, curling up in a ball on the bed and watching her ping-pong from one side of the room to the other.
“You could talk to someone,” Pâté said after a long moment.
“What are you talking about?” Laudna asked.
“I mean, luv, that something is eatin’ you up inside and if you don’t talk about it, it might actually eat you all up.”
“I am talking,” Laudna said. “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”
“You haven’t said anything,” Pâté pointed out. “I mean, not really. You’re just walking a lot.”
Laudna came to a stop and took a deep breath, bracing cold fingers on her temples. “Imogen will be back soon. It’ll be fine.”
“Are you going to talk to Imogen?”
“Of course, Pâté,” Laudna laughed and was pleased there was only a bit of mania to the sound. “We talk all the time. Every night. Which you might have heard if you listened.”
“I listen,” Pâté said. “Just ‘case you’re talking doesn’t mean you’re saying much, though, does it?”
Laudna crossed her arms over her chest and faced Pâté. “What do you want me to say, then, since apparently you know so much?”
Pâté shook his little raven skull head. “Don’t ask me. I’m just a rat. But I have been with you a long time and know when something’s bothering you. It’s not going to get better if you pace a crater into the floor.”
“You don’t know,” Laudna said testily. “It could.”
“It wouldn’t,” Pâté said. “You’d just have to spend more gold to fix the floor. Life’s a bitch like that, innit?”
“Ugh,” Laudna said, whirling around and leaving the room shutting the door firmly behind her so she wouldn’t have to talk to Pâté anymore. She hadn’t realized how difficult it would be now that he was actually sentient. Unfortunately for her, Pâté knew everything about her, every bad thought and every coping mechanism she had to run away from her problems. It was terribly, terribly annoying.
“Whoa, hey,” a rough voice called. “What the fuck is up with you?”
Laudna huffed, still peeved with Pâté, and glanced up at Ashton, who stood a little ways down the hall, hand on the knob to their room. They raised their eyebrow at Laudna, waiting.
“Nothing,” she said.
“All that slamming doors and shit is nothing?” They said.
“Pâté,” Laudna tried instead, by way of explanation. “He was annoying me.”
Ashton’s hand dropped from the door and he turned to face her fully, raising a hand to scratch at the back of his neck. “You sure that’s all?”
“Why wouldn’t I be sure that’s all?” She snapped. It was hard to pretend everything was fine when every word out of your mouth sounded so testy, so Laudna supposed she could understand the skepticism on Ashton’s face.
“I’m just saying, if I’d just died—again—and come back to life with all this shit going on I probably wouldn’t be super fucking okay about it,” he said. “So, like, I get being a little fucked up. Shit. Who wouldn’t be?”
Laudna’s fingers twitched. Ashton didn’t break their gaze. There was something of a challenge glinting in his eye, like he was daring her to come out and tell him what was wrong. Like he expected her to. She couldn’t decide if that challenge annoyed her or invigorated her.
With quick strides, she crossed the hall to them, stopping just a foot away and lowering her voice to a near whisper. “Can we talk?”
Ashton turned the knob on their door and threw it open without breaking their gaze from hers. “I’ve been dying to, actually.”
Laudna sniffed. “Well, don’t do that,” she said, shouldering past them and into the room. She could have been wrong, but she thought she heard him laugh as she went.
“I’ll try not to, I swear,” they said, following in after her and shutting the door behind them.
“Ashton,” she said, whirling around to face him again. Her hands clenched into fists at her side, but she couldn’t help it. “I don’t want to go after Otohan.”
The words came out in one, long, panicked rush. Ashton blinked, letting the words filter into his brain. “Yeah, I can see that,” he said.
“You can?” She asked, taken aback.
“Sure,” he said. He walked further into the room, passing her by close enough that she could feel the warmth of his skin as he went, but not close enough to touch, and crouched next to the bed. He pulled a bottle out from under it, shook it at her, and uncorked it as he straightened. “She just killed you. You’d have to be a little fucking crazy to want to go after her again. Well, crazier than normal.” He took a quick swig of the bottle and offered it out to her.
She took it gratefully. She really shouldn’t drink very much—she weighed less than nothing and couldn’t handle her booze very well—but she felt like she deserved a drink or ten right then. “But we’re doing it,” she said, a bit of a whine creeping into her voice. “And I can’t tell anyone I feel like this because what am I supposed to do? Stand between Orym the woman who had something to do with his husband’s death? Get between Imogen and her revenge? And besides, Otohan killed Eshteross. I loved Eshteross. I should want to go after her, then, right? For his sake? Right?”
“Okay, first,” Ashton said, sitting on the bed. “You’re not getting between anyone and their anythings, all right? Second, you really should tell the others you feel like this.”
“I know,” she said sadly, taking a long pull from the bottle. It was very poor quality whiskey, but she didn’t care how bad it tasted. “But what does that make me? A coward?”
“Hey,” Ashton said, their voice going a little sharp. “You’re not a fucking coward, all right? I’ve seen you face way too much shit to ever be considered a coward. I think it makes you very fucking rational to not want to fight Otohan again.”
“Do you want to fight her again?” Laudna asked.
Ashton sighed and held up his hand for the bottle. Laudna handed it over and gingerly sat on the edge of the bed next to them.
They didn’t take a drink, instead lightly tapping the bottle with their fingers as they thought. “I want,” they started slowly, “all of us to be o-fucking-kay. That’s my main priority.” Ashton sighed. “I don’t know if fighting Otohan is the solution to that, especially considering what happened last time. But Orym wants it. Imogen wants it. Chetney’s probably, fuck, I don’t know, horny for it. And we got debts to pay, right? So, yeah, I guess for Eshteross, I want to do it.”
“She killed me,” Laudna said, a little woodenly. It was the first time she’d really said that out loud and the weight of it dragged her shoulders down into a slump.
“She killed a few of us,” Ashton said.
“This is the second time I’ve died,” Laudna said. “And it felt just as fucking pointless as the first. What is it about me that makes people—”
“Whoa, hey,” Ashton said, holding up a hand. “It wasn’t about you—”
“No,” Laudna agreed, the word coming out swift and forceful. “It wasn’t about me. I’ve been murdered twice and neither time was about me. I didn’t do anything and people keep murdering me.” The anger filled up her chest like hot, molten lava. She gripped the edge of the bed tightly and wondered if her eyes would glow green when she got angry still. Ashton didn’t react to anything, but it was Ashton. They probably wouldn’t react either way. “Maybe next time I’d actually liked to be murdered for being a bitch or something. For-for stealing someone’s favorite ring or something. I just want it to be because I did something.”
“Well, that’s something you’re not going to have to worry about because it’s never going to happen again,” Ashton said. The levity had drained from their voice, leaving it rocky and pitted and heavy in its absence. “Nobody’s going to fucking murder you again. Nobody’s going to fucking murder any of us again, but especially not you, okay? So you don’t have to worry about it.”
“You don’t know that,” Laudna scoffed. “It could happen tomorrow. We don’t know. You never know when tragedy is going to strike—that’s what makes it a tragedy.”
“I fucking know that,” Ashton said. “You know I know that. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to stand in the way of tragedy as best I can.”
“What if we’re hurtling toward it?” Laudna asked. “What if we’re going toward it right now?”
“No,” Ashton said simply. “We’re not.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No, I fucking can’t and that’s why I have to believe it!” Ashton’s frustration finally broke through, his hand tightening around the neck of the bottle. “You’re not dying, I’m not dying, none of us fuckers are dying and that’s that. We’ll do this because we have to and we’ll be fine because we have to be.” He blew out a breath in an aggravate sigh, taking another drink.
“I’m sorry,” Laudna said, deflating. “I didn’t mean to make you upset.”
“You didn’t,” he said. “Well, you did, but it’s me, which means it’s easy to do. And I’m not mad at you, so don’t apologize. You apologize too much as it is.”
“If you’re not mad at me, then who are you mad at?” She asked.
“The whole fucking world,” Ashton said, sounding solemn and a little bit sad. She thought he’d probably prefer being angry again. There was so much more energy and life and color in anger than there was in sadness. “Who are you mad at?”
She took the bottle from his hand, fingers brushing his lightly. “Myself, mostly, I think.” She shook her head. “But that doesn’t much sense, now does it? What did I ever do?”
They both went quiet and he looked at her. Just looked, one eye piercing, the other eye cloudy. She didn’t shy away from his gaze, didn’t try to hide behind any magic or facades. It felt good to proudly choose not to wear any guises, to let someone stare at her and know they saw the truth that lay beneath. Even with Imogen, Laudna had walls, walls she’d erected to protect her friend. Ashton didn’t need protecting, though, and Laudna had to admit that was a bit…freeing.
“I suppose,” she started slowly. “I’m feeling a bit more broken right now than before.”
Ashton nodded, never taking his eyes off her. “I get that.”
“You do,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but a recognition. “I don’t know who else I could have said any of this to.” She reached out and placed a hand on his arm, barely a feather of a touch.
Still, a muscle in his arm jumped under her fingers and she found herself withdrawing the touch almost as soon as she’d made it. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No,” they said. They grabbed her hand before she could pull away completely and pressed it against their forearm, making sure she was going to hang on before they let go. “It’s fine. You’re cold. I don’t mind that. It almost feels nice, even.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m glad then.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”
The anger was spent. Laudna felt drained, but better after letting all of it out. She still didn’t like that they were going after Otohan like this, still felt that anxiety gnawing away at her gut, but as she and Ashton shared the bottle between them, it eased somewhat. At that was really the most she could have asked for, she supposed.