C1E3* - The Past Comes Knocking

## Orentha's Account

Orentha blinked. It was a lot to process. It’s not easy to be woken up in the middle of the night by someone who snuck into your room only to tell you that they found the sister you abandoned over a decade ago.

She tried to get her mind right; she didn’t know what to do. “Do we go now?”

Nix shrugged. “We can,” he said, “I don’t know how long she’ll stay in one place.”

“Right.” This wasn’t right. She hadn’t figured out what she was going to say to Valia. Every time Orentha imagined meeting her again, the scenario ended very poorly. Valia was obviously going to hate her for leaving - how could she not? She was also probably a hardened criminal by this point. Orentha had seen how she beat down that dealer through the scrying statue - how she slowly pushed a knife into him without even flinching. It wasn’t hard for Orentha to imagine herself in that man’s place. She didn’t know if she could bear being hated by Valia.

*Maybe we’ll just go see what she does*, Orentha rationalized, *then I can decide what to do after*. She dressed and followed Nix out of the lamp. He led her through Guavira towards the docks for about a half hour, and the entire walk Orentha was trying to get her shaking hands under control. Her nerves made her stomach lurch and she thought she was going to be sick. Nix was certainly a comfort to have, and they even joked back and forth about her misadventures in the Nicto Kurasis tunnels. Even then, Nix could make her smile.

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Valia had seen them. *Shit, shit, shit*. Orentha looped her arm with Nix’s and tried to steer them as casually as possible off the main street. If Orentha didn’t confront her now, it was possible Valia would follow them back to the barracks - back to their friends. If Valia was dangerous, Orentha couldn’t let her near them. She needed to confront her now.

Orentha brought herself and Nix behind the building that Valia was perched on. She looked back and forth to make sure no one was watching, took a few deep breaths, and squeezed Nix’s hand like a vice before releasing it.

“Hey, V,” she said into the air.

For a few moments, there was nothing. Orentha knew she was still up there. She could see a bit of movement as a figure on the roof seemed to shift in consideration.

“What are you doing here, Ren?”

*Oh, good. Still on nickname-basis, then. At least she didn’t pull out the full name*.

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Orentha watched her sister’s shadow disappear around the corner of the building. She had known, then. Valia knew about the massacre in Aroth. She knew that Orentha had played some part in it - and a large one, at that. It didn’t seem like she knew any specifics about what happened. Maybe no one did.

Did that many people really die?

She vaguely heard the click of Nix’s shoes as he walked down the side of the building to meet her. He hadn’t been far during that whole conversation.

“How much did you hear?”

He hesitated. “I was trying my best not to listen.”

Orentha smiled. She knew what that meant, but also appreciated that he didn’t lie to her. “But how much did you *hear*?”

“Just something about … 346 people being massacred.”

“Oh!” Orentha couldn’t help but laugh, “So you just heard the worst part?” She closed her eyes and leaned down with her hands on her knees. It started getting hard to breathe. Orentha’s heart wouldn’t stop racing and her whole body had started shaking again. This was bad. Valia hadn’t tried to kill her, but she *knew*. And *Nix knew* - to some degree, anyway. What if he hated her? What if he told the others and *they* hated her?

She felt hands on her shoulders trying to straighten her up. “Orentha, it’s ok. It’s ok.” Nix pulled her up to face him, and gods he looked so sincere. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“But - but you don’t even know what it is!” Orentha half-shouted back at him, “You can’t be ok with what you heard and not know what it is!”

“It’s not my business, and you don’t have to tell me anything,” he paused, “I’ve worked with terrible people before.”

And that shot hot anger through her. They weren’t just working together - that was the problem. “Oh? Would you still work with me if I was a terrible person?”

Nix sighed and looked down, dropping his arms to his side. They stood in silence, and Orentha knew he was waiting for her to break it. He was telling her exactly what she wanted to hear: that he didn’t need to know, that she could bury this still. Sure, he would know some nebulous piece of it, but he wouldn’t ever really know how bad it was. How bad *she* was.

But they weren’t just working together, were they? At the very least, they were friends. And at the most … well, they had never really talked about that. Didn’t he deserve to know? He was the one that always checked in on her, that made sure she was ok, that clearly cared so much and here he was willing to forgive her before even knowing her crimes. Orentha realized she didn’t want to keep this secret from Nix. She even wanted him to know. She wanted him to know her.

After a while, she said, “You deserve to know. I want - “

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” he repeated again.

“No, I want to tell you.” She paused again. She didn’t know how to say everything that she was feeling in the moment. She just kept repeating in her head, *I want him to know me*. “Do you want to get dinner?”

Well, that was unexpected. That wasn’t at all what she was planning on saying, but she wasn’t upset about it either. *Not exactly the most romantic moment, idiot*. Judging by Nix’s expression, he was surprised as well.

“I mean,” she stumbled through her train of thought, panicking now. “it-it’s a little late now, so-”

“Yeah,” he breathed out, “things might be closed. We could go and look - ?”

“We could go tomorrow night?”

“Oh! Oh, yeah. Tomorrow works too.” Nix smiled and looked down at his shoes. They stood in a heavy silence for a few moments.

Orentha suddenly panicked again. “I'm - um - I am asking you on a date, to clarify.”

Nix nodded his head. “Yeah, no, I got that.” He laughed to himself for a moment before admitting, “I don’t have the most experience in this.”

Orentha breathed out a laugh as well. She was still shaking a bit, but the butterflies in her stomach were a symptom of something much different than earlier that night. “I don’t either, really.” *Not that felt like this*.

“I’m glad that we can both be awkward and clueless, then.”

“I’m glad that we have a half hour walk back home and we can awkwardly walk back next to each other the whole time.”

It was awkward, but it was also ok. Orentha mused on how Nix could turn what she thought would be one of the worst nights of her life into something wonderful and exciting. Even after everything that had happened, she still found herself unable to repress a smile as she lied in bed.