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I need to learn how to make maps. Big maps—I know how to do towns and short distances between roads, but that's not big enough. And I want to know about trading ships. How far do they sail? Do their captains take passengers?

[ She rattles off her list of questions with no explanation, because don't these sound like any reasonable questions no matter why she's asking them? Katsa opens her mouth to say something else, stops, frowns, and then starts again with less of a demand in her voice. This is far more awkward for her, something she's unused to asking or even desiring, and so it's the more difficult request. ]

And... I don't wish to continue training on my own. I don't mean in magic. I've plenty of help. And I don't mean that I need teachers. I need someone who can challenge my Grace. Who can push me so that I don't stop becoming faster and stronger, as far as I can.

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[Somewhere in the back of his mind, Arno is remembering the outburst that happened within the Brotherhood when he had arrived with a Templar in tow. His intentions were different, however; he knew he could trust Élise. Here, now- he wants to trust Katsa, knows better perhaps than many that to be considered her friend is something rare, but his anger and his own self-preservation push that aside in favor of making sure his own hide as well as other's are safe first.]

Do you have any idea what this can do to me? To Élise?

[His main concern isn't even about himself; if anything were to happen to Élise, if she were to be hurt or even worse- Arno would never forgive himself. It would be another burden to tie to his guilt and eventually bury him within his own self-hate.

The Frenchman breathes out at that, paces, looks away from the locket and scrubs his face just for a moment- before something strikes him and he stops mid-step and his eyes widen. In the next instant, he closes his eyes, breathes out through his nose, and opens them again to give Katsa perhaps one of the most betrayed and hurt faces he's given to anyone in years.

Quietly:] Who else have you told about me?

[For if she talks about him being an Assassin so easily, surely she might have told others without even giving it a second thought.]

[ She sees that flicker even in the bare, brief moment that it flashes across his face. It isn't that Katsa particularly tends towards reading others well—quite the opposite, in fact, for she often misses what is right in front of her face. But that lack of tendency becomes an unnatural ability to pick up on the smallest of details among the people about whom she cares the most, whom she watches and wishes to know when they are happy and when they are in pain. So for all that it's brief when the look appears on Arno's face Katsa sees it; and she knows, as surely as she has ever known anything, that something is wrong.

But in that short moment of silence in which Katsa nearly lurches to her feet from where she's sitting she cannot grasp at what could possibly be wrong, and the look vanishes. Perhaps she imagined it, she thinks, for Arno's response is almost something as normal as anything else he has said—yet it is not quite, something in his words too serious, something in his shoulders too stiff.

Yes, something is definitely wrong. And she's ready to ignore their banter of only seconds before and demand to know what that something is when she's notified that he's locked the feed. Locked the feed. A cold, horrible sinking feeling suddenly floods her chest and chokes her throat and she realizes what she’s done wrong. She’d been so comfortable. So secure. And so she’d forgotten how they were speaking and teased him for the secrets he’d shared with her, and their conversation hadn’t been private at all. ]

Arno—

[ The realization at what she’s done is striking in the look on her face that might almost be horror at her own mistake. She’s ready to apologize, too, and it’s halfway out of her mouth—Forgive me—when his face turns hard and angry and her name snaps out of his mouth in a way she’s never heard before. Anything she might have said dies on her tongue right then, and all she can do is listen. ]

[ Anger, warning, danger. Katsa knows all of these emotions. She knows how to deliver them, and she’s even seen them on Arno’s face before, but she has never seen them directed at her. It leaves her speechless, so utterly caught off guard she is and shocked to see it, and worst of all there’s a horrible feeling of deja vu at being faced with such a dear friend’s anger. Horrible, and of course she’d caused it, and even after all she has seen and done in the Drabwurld she has still managed to turn yet another person she loves in anger against her.

I felt you deserved to know. I thought you knew better to say anything. She winces with each delivery, but Katsa is determined to allow him his anger. She will not pity herself, she tells herself fiercely, for she has only herself to blame for her mistakes. It’s well within her nature to be this strange sort of friend, one who holds so tightly that eventually she herself turns to bite the hands stretched out to her in friendship. It must be the worst sort of friend, too, but it’s what she is, and she has no excuse for it. She ought to have been more aware, and she will not be upset for the feelings he is allowed to have for something she cannot take back.

Katsa’s first words would have been an apology, too, if he hadn’t asked his final question. She’d have finished what she’d started to say when she’d registered his anger, for that was anger she had deserved. This question, however—this is undeserved. And this is the one that hurts the most, for the look that he gives her when he asks it. It hurts because she knows that she has caused that expression on his face, the one that pains her to see in a friend. It hurts because she hates to see him hurt. But it hurts worst of all because he thinks that despite her mistake here, her lapse in attention and judgment in the middle of a conversation that she had thought was merely between them, he believes this is not the first time she would have done it.

Arno would think she would share his stories and secrets, the ones not hers to tell. Katsa does not think in that moment that he has a right to believe that if she would let it slip here then she could let her judgment falter somewhere else, too. She hasn't said anything, so she doesn't deserve the question as though it has already happened. Instead the realization of what the assumption in his question must be hurts so much that it makes her angry, because anger is easier to feel than hurt. It’s anger at herself, of course, for forgetting—but it’s anger too for the realization that she is not the friend she wishes to be, anger that he is looking at her with such an expression and she can do nothing to end it, anger that he would believe that his friendship could mean so little to her. Anger that she has lost his trust—and anger that she has no one but herself to blame. ]

[ That anger comes in a gasp, for Katsa cannot at first think of anything else to say. She grabs onto it, because it’s more familiar and less frightening than hurt and guilt, and this is her second mistake. ]

If you believe that I would tell anyone, Arno, not thinking that we were alone, only you and I—that I would share your secrets with anyone else when I had no right to do so or otherwise forget completely about who you really are—then I don’t know you at all. As you do not know me.

[ She knows she regrets her words as soon as she says them, but the mortifying burning in her eyes only makes her less capable of thinking about what she is saying before she does. It's too late, besides. The words have been said. ]

[He knows from the moment she speaks his name, she realizes her mistake. That what has now been said cannot be taken back, and if anyone is curious, he could be in jeopardy. She goes to apologize and he won't let her, and any attempt she makes he knows that she has chosen to listen rather than speak. Every word he delivers is like a blade, strong and painful and he cannot stop it, will not because it is so incredibly important to him and who he is.

He should be thankful she realizes where she went wrong. He should be thankful she understands that it's her fault, that this is something she can't take back. Instead all he feels is regret and hurt of his own, not for what she's done, but what he has said to her. The accusation he gives, asking for who she's told- isn't one of scolding, but one where he's trying to sort out how to avoid problems, how to counter if anything goes wrong. He doesn't mean it to hurt as it does, but that's the price that comes with words; a double-sided blade that can do more damage than what was intended. He's upset that she's broken his trust, but more than that he's upset that he's upset her.

Arno opens his mouth to say something else once she reacts, but he isn't prepared for the words that come next, ones that sting just as raw as he gave to her. He immediately blanks, acting as if he's just been struck across the face with her palm, not even knowing how to process what she's told him. Arno knows it's anger that's the reaction, which is valid, but it burns him in ways he hasn't felt in years, back to the time when Élise accused him of letting her father die.

So instead of saying anything gentler, or perhaps an apology of his own, he snaps his jaw shut and swallows back the immediate retort of at least I know I can trust myself, knowing all too well it will only make things worse.]

You're right. You don't.

[A spitting back in his own way, harsh and strong; his anger hasn't lessened by any degree.]

I trusted you, Katsa. I thought I knew you just as well as I knew myself. [There is a beat in between the sentences, a look of defeat coming across Arno's face as he realizes he can no longer trust her as his friend.

Not for now, at least.]

I was wrong.

[ It's worse than if she had hit him, because at least then she could have seen the damage, known how to regulate her swings and stopped things before they got out of hand. And physical blows from him in return wouldn't hurt as much as this does, either. Words are more difficult. Katsa has no idea the strength of their blow when she says them nor the sting of them when they land. It's more difficult, and because of that it's more frightening; and even if she wished to she can't hit him now in an effort to turn words into something physical that she understands, because she is not even standing next to him. ]

Yes. I suppose you were. No—how dare you look at me like that.

[ Of course she's also crying hot tears now, and that's just embarrassing on top of everything else. She wipes furiously at her face, setting her mouth into a scowl, blue and green eyes as bright with fierceness as they are with her tears. She'd made a mistake, one stupid, maddening mistake. And suddenly everything is falling apart and she doesn't know how to keep it from doing so. How had she allowed this to happen? She had always been the one angrier with Po whenever he'd suggested telling his own secret; she'd always held on to secrets so tightly, when the truth could put others at risk. It isn't as though she cares for Arno any differently. Perhaps she simply hadn't comprehended the magnitude of this secret. But that couldn't be right, either, for Katsa would never had let it slip if she hadn't thought they were alone. She'd grown complacent, that was it: she'd been so relieved and happy, so sure of herself, that she'd forgotten what it was to need to be careful. And that was a terrible, deadly thing to allow.

But still he wasn't being fair.

You could always trust me. You always can trust me, Katsa aches to say, but she doesn't say what she should. ]

I made a mistake, and I'm sorry for it. But how dare you act as though you're blameless between us.

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4/4 cries a river

1/3

2/3 (im sorry)

3/3

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