@gravityheld asked: ' who are you scared for? ' ✧ i’m thinking of ending things, n/a.
“myself for one, in this cold.” laden with enough swift melodrama to suggest that the weather wasn’t at the top of his true concerns, no matter how much huddling he does, hands tucked into gloves & a thick bright scarf looped around his head and shoulders. love walks a wending path beside the general for the short trek between buildings, at times skirting away to step into an errant puddle. a not-so professional presentation, to splash around with frivolous delight right in front one of atlas’s most important figures. but, well. the things that growing up socializing with older family friends and warriors will inure one too. he boasts a questionably even disposition around people of all ages and authority, his tongue loosened towards universal casualness.
who are you scared for? what a testing question! how very headmaster-y. theodore was practical and demanding in a different way, not unkind, possessing a seriousness that still didn’t override the headmaster’s energetic demeanor – this being the very same man with an overt, playful habit of inviting his students to fighting him at every other school assembly. a common quality, perhaps, for individuals invested in bringing forth remnant’s future protectors to drop ponderous questions and small provings into small talk. sweet nerves, surely, for love to smile at the query rather than find it intimidating or grim.
“hmm. it’s like this …” his footsteps neaten up again, marking a serious return to the topic at hand that lasts about as long as it takes to return to ironwood’s side. “i don’t like to think about it! even before i went to shade academy i had this one combat tutor who always said things like alkhawf shay' yarshaduk, ‘fear should guide you’, yes, ‘but don’t let it control you! fear is a tool, fearlessness is as dangerous as being too scared!’ — and on and on while i sat there wondering when we would get back to actual training. the message must have stuck if i still remember it, because now i like to think about how i’ve been trained out of acting from fear alone since i was little, even if i can’t always do it. i like bravado and thinking about bravery instead and how i’m able to be brave for many more people than just myself. really, sometimes it’s much easier to do things for other people than for yourself.”
“it’s like … this is my first time visiting this kingdom & it’s much less white than i thought it would be. it’s one thing to know about the heating grids and another thing to come here and realize that it means it rains a lot more in the cities than i expected. in vacuo it’s rare for a rain to last for days. when it does we think of it as a mixed blessing, because heavy rainstorms can bring water while washing away people’s shelters at the same time. the simpler buildings just aren’t made to survive it. so even though i come here and know that the climate is the most different from home, that’s still what i thought of first.” he gestures at the sky, then throws the slipping end of his scarf back over one shoulder. “the mixed blessing.”
“so i’m not scared for anyone. least of all for myself.” even his conclusion flitters out with luster, a sterling example of prior bravado laid out already. his pace quickens to catch another puddle. “a mixed blessing, probably!”
