. . . You've got some rock solid self-control. I'll give you that. You may be on the bottom tier as far as mages go, and likely to get yourself killed with your approach even if no one else gets there first. You're hanging by a thread, Fujimaru. But your restraint is admirable. I've never once let how shitty I feel about something stop me from continuing to do it in the future.

[Because she's right, of course: Kadoc has also never felt better after picking a fight, not once. And yet his brain won't let go of the hope that one day it might pan out for him. Maybe this will be the time, it says, that he verbally crushes someone and enjoys it. This will be the time he comes out on top and manages to feel some glory in that. It has never happened in the past, and he knows it—but he just can't listen to himself when it comes to clawing at social scabs.

Like right now. He's insulting her as they speak, even after she held his hand and met the news of his survival with gratitude. Kadoc knows, now, how tired she is, and this can't be helping. She's been through so much and now he's flinging shit at her, and for what? Not even he knows. Does he hate her? Hadn't he realized back in Russia that he can't even aspire to the kind of hatred he'd once thought he held, wanted to hold, just for something to cling to?

But here he is! Here they are!

He looks away first, body curling in on himself just a smidge.]