ic inbox/voicemail

[brainiest]

 
"Hello, Hermione Granger here. I must be busy, so please leave a message. Thank you very much!" 

 

ic contact for hermione granger at eachdraidh.
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Comments

[brainiest]

You have no idea what's best for me.

[ Hermione stares at Katsa for a long moment before she shakes her head. ]

So I step down. I stop being a Marchioness. Who replaces me? My second, yes, but what if she disappears or goes home or steps down - [ because Anne was pregnant and had a baby, for goodness sake, this would be madness for her ] - and someone like Tarz takes my place? Is that what you want?

[ She shakes her head, voice a little ragged. ]

I am not just a Marchioness. I am a Protectress, I am the Lioness of the Path. I'm doing everything I can to protect all the people I love and that means staying where I am. If you want to get to the Citadel then fine. You can try. But Katsa...

[ She breathes out, sharp, throat tight. ]

You'll have to get through me.

[ It's the worst choice to make. To protect her friends she has to try and use her power, to keep it, to shape herself to be a true Protectress. She doesn't agree with everything Solais and Ridire were doing, but Lancelot? Flora? Kayneth and Anne and Mako? All of the people she loves that would suffer because of this? She can't abandon them. Not even for Katsa. ]

[survivra]

[ She's too confused to argue, too lost for words to know how to save this. Yes. Hermione is a protectress. She protects the ones she loves. Katsa may try, but when she does it, it always ends in death.

But she doesn't believe that she is wrong, either. Only that she is worse. And maybe that's why Hermione doesn't see it. Katsa has to be willing to do this, to throw the knife, because she can fathom doing terrible things that others wouldn't—like using a knife simply to stop a man from talking, all on reflex. She can't change her mind—but she can't stay here with Hermione, either.

She'd felt like this once before, and it had felt just as terrible then, crying her heart out in the forests and wondering how two people could love each other and still have such broken hearts. This is not unlike that moment, except that Katsa is not deciding between keeping her heart or risking giving it away. The answer doesn't just require time to think about it; Katsa already knows the answer. And Katsa is afraid that if she stays here any longer that she will do something that she regrets—a knife to stop someone from talking, and she hadn't even known what she was doing.

Katsa looks at Hermione and holds her eyes for a brief instant, takes in the familiar and dear shape of her face. And then—

She turns on her heel and flees. Down the stairs out the door, it does not matter where she is going, nor who sees her with tears tracked on her red cheeks, loud choking noises in her throat. She simply needs to go. ]

[brainiest]

Katsa!

[ As soon as she turns away Hermione tries to chase after her, but she knows the limits of what she can do now. A Seelie shardholder running around an Unseelie owned tavern, randomly, without having a reason or an excuse? There would be talk and she wouldn't have anything to say for herself other than the truth; that today she hadn't just broken her own heart but she had broken Katsa's, too.

She has information, though. She can go back and tell Lancelot that there is a specific bounty on them all, that there is more than what they thought ahead when it came to danger, but... She didn't want to. Her emotions were a sick weight on her and she didn't want to consider all of this, what it all meant, the way that her heart felt like it had been ripped out of her chest.

What had she done?

Today she had stood in front of Katsa and, in no uncertain terms, told her that she would fight her, possibly to the death, to defend the Citadel. She knew what Katsa had experienced there was horrific in the worst possible way, but... She couldn't let that happen. She couldn't let anything happen to her friends, even as the burst of pain and sadness pressed down her and made her feel sick, something hard in her throat, a lump that she couldn't swallow away. She had sworn to fight Katsa, her friend, and fighting in the Drabwurld...

Fighting back her tears, the knowledge that all their meetings, their friendship, was tinged with Katsa and her mission, the knowledge that each word she'd shared might have given her more room to explore the Citadel, that none of it was an accident, Hermione turned and disappeared with a pop. ]