video;

[survivra]

—What?

[ It's a question that's both disbelieving and demanding, Katsa's voice just a little more high-pitched than she usually ever speaks. Of course, since this is her first time using the TAB and among her first days in Thisavrou, it's not a detail that too many people should recognize, but still. Squeaky.

It's especially obvious once she continues speaking—lower, but no less demanding, with the look and tone of someone who's accustomed to getting answers when she asks them. ]

Is it a common welcome here, then, to offer some sort of poor beast's heart as a gift? Or does someone imagine they'll disturb others for amusement? A gift from a king, perhaps?

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[cockade]

[She could say anything she wants, she could yell at him until she ran out of breath to shout, and he would still not hear her. Arno has made himself blind and deaf to all reason, insisting that the only good he will ever do is his redemption, and anything he does from then.

So when Katsa tells him he's being foolish, all he can do is shake his head and sigh, breathing out as he listens to her.]

You can hit me all you like, it still doesn't change anything, Katsa.

[And he's right. That sort of change won't happen for years.

Arno pauses as she describes her life to him, though; mouth keeping shut as his mind mulls over what he's learned for a moment before speaking again.]

But you don't anymore. Either by choice or by someone else showing you, you don't, now. Katsa, knowing that, you are one of the strongest people I've met outside of home.

And it's not because of who I've killed. [His tone shifts, and it takes him longer to say the next sentence, if only to prove that he has not forgiven himself for anything wrong in his life.] I was the reason my father died, and Élise's father was murdered because of me. The only way I can redeem myself is to take care of Germain, and make sure something like what's happened before never happens again.

[Arno Dorian is a good man. But he is a man who lives in the past and drowns himself in his mistakes, refusing to come up for air until he believes he has a right to even breathe.]

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[survivra]

[ Katsa is shaking her head long before Arno has finished speaking. Only a herculean effort of self-control and a few years of growth and practice keep her from interrupting.

It's because he doesn't have all the information on her life that he says this. She's only just given him the minimum. He doesn't know how close she came to killing Randa when the moment had come—that she'd simply had to pretend that she was strong and flee before she gave into her true nature. He doesn't know that she's still the sort of person who would shut someone up with a knife through his mouth, or that she would grieve the loss of a chance to kill a man herself. He doesn't know how she is anything but strong; and at the moment, though she desperately wants to tell him, her worries and fears and doubts close to spilling from her lips, she does not. It would do him no good to hear how sorry she feels about herself in turn.

So she shoves it back. ]

You believe too much of me and too little of yourself.

Tell me how it happened, Arno. [ She doesn't whisper, isn't gentle, but her voice is quiet and low. ] And whether you wielded the knife yourself, and how taking care of this Ger—German—will fix it.

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[cockade]

[Even if he knew, Arno is a friend and refuses to believe that she is as bad as she thinks she is. He trusts easy to those who have proved so much to him, even if they've given so little in return.]

I believe it because I've seen it. That's what matters.

[He has to pause at her demand, however. Arno's mouth thins into a firm line, and he breathes out through it in a strained effort to simply bat away her question. He hadn't wielded the pin himself- that was because of the inner treachery of the Templar Order- but he had the letter warning Francois of his death.]

You don't need to wield a blade to kill someone, Katsa. [He breathes.]My father died when I was eight, because I disobeyed him and didn't stay put. And Élise's father... someone in the Templars knew he would be murdered. I was given the letter and told it was to be delivered to Francois with haste, though I assumed it was simply a letter of business being passed along. I lost track of the carriage he was in, and thought nothing of it to slip it under the door to his office instead. That night he was murdered by his own colleagues, and Élise came to blame me as a part of his death soon after.

[That part is perhaps what sealed his desire to seek redemption at any cost.]

If Germain is stopped, the entire mess of this whole thing will be prevented from happening again. That's why I have to find him.

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[survivra]

You have your sight yet, Arno, and yet you are blinder than a man without.

[ The men she loves are full of sadness, and it saddens Katsa equally. She stares at her TAB as though she can see him there, wishing to reach out, to grip him, to shake him. ]

You did not kill a man when you were eight, Arno. I killed a man when I was eight, because he touched my leg and looked at me. I shoved his nose into his brain with my bare hands, because he complimented my eyes. Tell me, how is a wandering child responsible for his father's death, when it is a parent who ought to protect his child? And tell me, if you lost track of his carriage and didn't know what message you carried, how would you have known to keep searching and finding when the person who asked you to deliver couldn't be bothered to see to it himself?

You can feel sorrow for the mistakes that you have made and the things you could have changed. But you cannot blame yourself for something you did not do.

If you can prevent more death by killing one man, though—then I hope you find him. And then I hope you wield the blade.