Ripley: All Things Left Unsaid

[Set during The Dwarven Ruins (Finally).]

  Joan had never been much good at talking. The problem was, whenever she opened her mouth, the things that came out were not the things she meant to say.

  It was effortless with Amari, alone at night. Everyone else... it was impossible.

She and Amari had a date one evening. “Go ahead and head home,” she said to Amari. “I’ll close our tab.” She paid the bartender at the Silverlight Inn a few gold and spoke to him a while. He often had interesting information for her; she’d recently started paying him to keep an eye on Mikhail Haeth. She was pretty sure, though, that the fucker had already figured this out, and was paying the bartender to feed her false info.

When she headed home, there was a light inside the house. She stopped dead outside the door. There were voices.

Goro was home.

Something in Joan's chest tightened. If she walked in, he was just going to run off again. She leaned silently against the door and listened.

Amari told him everything. Helm’s fall, the corruption of the church, Amari’s loss of faith… and she begged him not to get involved, not to become violent, just as she had begged Joan years ago.

Finally, they stopped talking, and footsteps approached the door. Joan took a step back.

The door swung open. As soon as her saw her, his expression changed, and he bolted. She shut the door with a snap and caught the back of his clothing. “Hey, hey, hey. Hang on. I wanna talk to you.”

She kept her voice low.

“Just so you’re aware," she said, "Roddy snitched you out as soon as you came back. If you need to rob a temple in the future, I wouldn’t take him with you again.” At least Roddy snitched to her and not the police.

“Yeah, no surprise,” Goro said.

“Look—” There was a bad taste in her mouth. “I already gave this speech to Roddy, but… you know, if the Church arrests you, they won’t just put you under that truth spell. Maybe you didn’t see this side of it, but they’ll also torture you until you actually talk. If something happens—if you get arrested—don’t talk. Goro, they can’t hang you without a confession. I want to know you understand that.”

*And I will come get you,* she thought. *Stay where you are, stay sane, stay quiet, and I will come get you.*

 It was probably obvious; Goro probably already knew she’d come get him. Of course she would.

The ‘how’ part wasn’t important. Maybe she’d get Ombre to break in; maybe she’d convince Mikhail-fucking-Haeth to teleport Goro out of prison; maybe she’d send Larkin and Raef to sneak in while Mormiir distracted the guards; maybe she’d walk into Bishop Fred’s office herself and rip out his throat. All good solutions.

“I know,” Goro bit out.

For fuck’s sake. “Look, will you just—come home. I know I’m a jackass.”

“I already told you, it’s not you,” Goro said, backing away. “I just—I need space.”

Joan threw up her hands. “Why?”

Goro looked a bit more tense than usual. Both the easygoing smile and the flint-eyed look were gone today. “I can’t tell you,” he said without looking at her. “You’ll hate me.”

What she should have said was:

*Goro. Nothing you ever say or do will make me hate you. If you sold your soul to a devil, I would come drag you out of the depths of Hell.*

 She opened her mouth, and what came out was: “Well, to be honest, Goro, I already don’t like you much.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said without an instant of hesitation. “I don’t like you either.”

And there was dead silence for a moment.

Oh.

Joan had gotten used to hearing that. She heard it from her teachers; she heard it from the other clerics and paladins at the temple of Iomedae before it burned; she heard it from her girlfriends as a teenager.

Hearing it from Amari’s son still knocked the air out of her chest.

Joan did not, as a rule, have feelings, and anyone who said she did got a black eye. Sometimes she’d imagine herself as a rock: small, stone, and cold. Joan closed her eyes and reminded herself: *You do not give a fuck if anybody likes you.*

*You are the fury and vengeance of Iomedae. You are Her sword and Her shield.* The High Cleric of Io used to make her kneel in the refectory and repeat that for hours whenever she got into fights with other recruits.

God, she was so fucking bad at talking. How were Amari and Goro so good at this? It stung. She used to tell herself people didn't like her because she couldn't be bothered to be nice, but that was a lie. Even when she tried she didn't know how. Fuck. How *fucking* stupid this was. Two years and she couldn't make Amari's beloved son like her even a little.

She repeated the prayer silently until her feelings went away.

“Okay,” she said. “Good night.”

She went inside, locked the door, sat down at the kitchen table, put her head down, and did not move for a long time.