starshower | 🌠 escordvi inbox.

Just helping others is a form of fighting back, in some cases. Often is in Minrathous.

[ but she also understands having to let go of that in order to stop the larger threat. sometimes one can go back and forth, doing both jobs, sometimes they can't. but both options, in neve's opinion, are fighting back.

as for the comment about the people themselves, a soft, tired sight slips out from neve. ]

We're trying. Hard to do when half the city is blighted and the whole thing is under the control of a power-hungry, murderous cult. Those who can leave will. Those who can't... well, they have me and the Shadow Dragons fighting for them. The Viper will continue rescuing slaves and killing Venatori until the Blight claims him. That's all any of us can do now. My team will work on our greater threat, like yours. And one day we'll see the job through to whatever end comes.

Still, hearing all that, I know you're right, but can't help but feel guilty, you know? That we couldn't do more for those people.

[She sets down her coffee again, realizing that she hasn't even taken a sip from it.]

Wish that I could say that we all didn't know what that feels like, but I suspect that's not the case here.

[ neve's expression becomes more distant at those words, at the thought of doing more for the people they'd lost. she feels that every day of her life now. hector, lorelei, the other shadows strung up in the streets, the civilians who had nothing to do with anything and were blighted or killed for their troubles.

her hand tingles, a certain familiar numbness stealing across it before retreating in an instant. like the phantom feeling of magic that no longer answers her call. ]

Yeah. Doesn't help anyone to feel that guilt. But it's there. And sometimes it eats a hole into what you once were. Takes something from you.

[ she hasn't spoken of this magic she once had that got locked away because of minrathous. too hard to talk about what happened to her city, let alone how broken it left her. easier to focus on the remaining job. but maybe it's time...

her hand flexes around her cup, shaking off the last remnants of that phantom feeling. ]

Used to have another magic I could call on. Haven't been able to access it since Minrathous fell. Like that guilt that doesn't go away. Seeing the dead and knowing you couldn't do more to save them. [ she lets out a soft, slow breath that speaks to every pain she feels on the subject of her city. something she thinks tifa likely understands well. ] Yeah. That doesn't go away.

[ but she'll keep fighting. for her city but also on the job she signed up for when she agreed to help varric. she's still on the clock for that one. ]

[Tifa regards her with cautious curiosity.]

Another magic?

[She's not sure that she understands, though she hopes that it isn't that she can see the dead. She doesn't know what she would do in that situation if it were her, or Neve, for that matter.]

Do you want it back?

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