"Does it hurt?"

"A little… UGH, FUCK! You did it on purpose, bitch!"

Feeling a film of tears building in her eyes, Tristessa glared at Tiara, sitting across from her. She was purifying the wound on her shoulder with an alchemical ointment made from medicinal herbs and wasn't being too caring as to be End-World's nurse of the year.

"Insulting someone you barely know?" the woman asked, a mischievous smile escaping her that didn't go unnoticed. "Rude little bitches these days."

"You fucking…!"

That kind of expression and the healing routine brought back the girl's only memory of her mother, Selene. The [Sweet Nurse] of [Blackwater Park], smiling the same way as Tiara, on the other side of iron bars.

And that only made her even angrier.

The cold of those late hours brought Tristessa down, sending a chill down her spine that made her shiver. Forced to be bare-chested while Tiara treated her wound, she was freezing, even by the fire. Not so with the pregnant woman, who was bundled up in a thick winter jacket made of Ursall fur.

"Stop complaining and thank me for wasting my hours of sleep fixing the outcome of your stupidity," Tiara told her as she pressed the wound with bandages, beginning to wrap her bitter patient's chest diagonally. "Ugh... That stuff on your chest smells so horrible... So much Discord I'm going to throw up."

"Yeah, you're a sweetheart," Tristessa hissed in return, very uncomfortable at the feel of her fingers brushing against her skin and, more than anything, her Baptism in Ruins. Coming from someone who tortured her in a past loop, she couldn't feel at ease around Tiara, much less while they had physical contact. "Ow! Damn, be more careful!"

"Stop shaking so much and I won't have to be so brusque, you idiotic girl."

"That's because you and your baby are stealing all the warmth from the campfire."

"Better us than a shit-smelling Stranger like you."

The bonfire at the center of the argument between Tristessa and Tiara turned the Derelict Outpost into a beacon in the midst of the lands of the former landowner named Feydra, feudal lord from the Age of Kings. Fortunately, that structure, abandoned by the Empire of the Night's Watch, had known tranquility and peace during that long night. A night in which the mercenaries had been forced to rescue Tristessa and Reiden after seeing the radiance magic projectile reaching high into the forest.

Everyone had returned safe and sound, and it was Madame Luchie who had been charged with caring for the Mercer-Archeos in their absence. After all, she had formed a pact with Tristessa that obligated her to do whatever was necessary to ensure that no harm befalls that family. Even if she had to awaken the beast within and slaughter whoever dares to stand in their way.

At the moment, surrounded by his comrades, Reiden was re-counting them what had happened in the forest. While on the other side of the campfire, the old woman sat near Jin and Lucahn, who was fast asleep in his father's arms. She was smoking in silence, staring, lost in thought, at the pack of aracrosses sleeping peacefully nearby.

"She's been like this ever since you disappeared with Reiden... Oh, I was wrong to think you were a whore and he was a perverted womanizer. I'm sorry," Tiara said, noticing where Tristessa was looking, only to earn a look of cold hatred from her. "While you were nearly killed by a demon and that band of knife-wielding misfits, Karla hasn't taken her eyes off us."

"Perfect, that's how it should be... Ouch!" Tristessa bit her lower lip hard as she felt that last pulse of sharp pain coming from her shoulder as Tiara applied pressure with the bandages, making sure they were tight around her troublesome patient's torso. "That's why I made a deal with her for."

"Yes, to take care of us for seven days in exchange for killing Alastor, the Dead End King. One of the Seven Great Evils, direct servant of the Shadow Queen... Seriously, you're a prodigious negotiator." Beyond the sarcasm and crossed arms, Tiara could no longer hide how annoyed she was, watching Tristessa quickly put on her shirt and then her blood-stained trench coat to fight the cold. "There's something that surprises me more than the impossible-to-fulfill stupid promise you made, and that's that Luchie agreed and has hopes you'll achieve it. No, I'm not surprised. Let me rephrase what I said: it makes me really angry."

"You're always angry."

That was the only thing the gray-eyed girl could think of to say, as she sat down again, fully dressed. She had no arguments to justify what she had done: in anyone's eyes, what she had promised was unrealizable, not to say suicidal.

"You're a Stranger, not a damn heroine. Not even Prince Victarion managed to kill those monsters; what hope do you have of doing so? It doesn't matter if you have thousands of Divinities stuffed in there…" Tiara leaned forward, one hand on her stomach and the index finger of the other tapping sharply in the center of Tristessa's chest, right where her Baptism in Ruins was. "You'll die, crushed like an insect."

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"Don't tell me you're worried about me, Tiara."

It was Tritessa's turn to grin and annoy the woman even more. Wanting to validate her point, Tiara pointed with the same finger at Madame Luchie.

"That woman will pursue you to the ends of Nekrom, hoping you'll keep your promise to save her nation from certain doom. That's how merchants are; they value the power of words as much as their pockets full of soul-jewels. And you signed your Death warrant for a family of exiles everyone wants dead…"

Saying that out loud made Tiara's anger turn into nostalgia, looking at her husband and son. Dejected, fearing the fate that awaited them, dark from every angle. On one hand, they depended on Tristessa's success in negotiating an agreement with Aurelia Eramisaptor so she wouldn't kill them for violating the imposed exile. And on the other, the Coven was hunting them down to kill them and fulfill Moebius's prophecy.

Tristessa had always seen her angry and resigned to dying in every loop, without exception. Tiara never had any hope of survival, from that time she tortured her in the House of Royal Hunter's storeroom for days, until this very moment. She had grown so accustomed to desolation and being hated by everyone that every path Tiara saw before her inevitably led to the deaths of herself and her family.

"Why? Why are you doing all this for people you don't know shit about?" she asked, unable to hide all the confusion and frustration she felt. A flood of emotions she wasn't used to, and that she couldn't shake from the moment she decided to follow that girl. That stranger who had entered their lives unnoticed, and who was now giggling to herself. "What the fuck are you laughing about?!"

"I-I'm not laughing at you! It's about something else." Tristessa hung her head and shook it, feeling her cheekbones go numb as she tried to hold back her laughter. Tiara expected an explanation, given her annoyed expression, but she could only offer her an apologetic smile. "You wouldn't understand…"

How could she tell Tiara that she had asked her the same questions in past timelines, where they had both ended up dead?

There was no way to explain it so she would understand or comprehend. She could only resort to another kind of honesty, without having to delve into forbidden topics.

"You said I wasn't a heroine, and you're right, I'm not. I don't remember a damn thing about who I was in my world, but I assure you I wasn't a heroine there either," she explained, staring into the fire, mesmerized by the incandescent tongues that failed to catalyze more memories. Memories hidden in a darkness so dense that not even that light could reach its depths and reveal its secrets. "I'm not like Reiden, someone who would risk his life for others without a second thought… Believe me, I've often thought about leaving and never looking back, justifying my selfishness with the excuse that I need to return to a world I barely remember."

She closed her eyes for a moment to escape that useless spell of light, and when she opened them, she shifted her gaze to that of the pregnant woman. Unfriendly and cold, like the winds of that night, the first hours of the new day.

"A group of psychopaths led by a dark lord is coming to slaughter this family. Why should I stay with them? It's not my problem… I have no reason to risk my life for them," she said, revealing some of her darker thoughts to that woman. "Valid arguments, right? Immoral, cruel... But valid. For my own survival."

"Exactly…" Tiara hissed, wanting to show the ironclad attitude she had adopted for the sake of her family. But now that she was out of the exile imposed by the Empire, that facade was as fragile as glass, capable of shattering at the slightest breeze, even at Tristessa's words. "You owe us nothing..."

"And yet, here I am."

Interrupting her, Tristessa made Tiara open her eyes, utterly surprised. She couldn't understand her actions, and that's how the girl preferred them. Better for Tiara to believe what she wants to believe, and not know that deep down, Tristessa wanted to atone for being a horrible, selfish person who let them die in pasts that no longer existed.

Someone who feared Death and sought the best outcome, as long as she didn't fall into that turbulent vortex where there was nothing but hopelessness and madness.

"No one will die, Tiara."

When one lives too long in darkness, even the smallest speck of light can comfort the spirit, even if one doesn't want it to. Perhaps in the form of simple words arranged together to convey a message that, to Tristessa, might not have meant much…

But to Tiara, it meant something terrifying. Something that any Nekromian living in that dark time would fear. Madame Luchie had experienced it hours before, and now it was Tiara's turn to let a glimmer of hope settle in her heart after so many years.

Hope that ran deep. Hope that one couldn't afford to have, since it was normal for it to end up abandoned, lost in the everlasting darkness projected by the colossal figure of the Shadow Queen.

"Fucking shit, girl... W-why do you have to do this to me... To us…" the woman cursed, her red eyes pooling with tears, a sign of being on the verge of breaking. She clutched her belly, wanting her desperate love to reach the life that was about to be born into a doomed world. The soul of a mother screaming for help. Exiled, abandoned, lost... Until that Stranger came into her life and her family's. "You won't succeed. We're dead… We're all dead, and yet you said that you'll save us all?! I hate you… I hate you for filling my heart with hope, Tristessa Irandell."

On that, they both agreed. Tristessa would do everything she could to save the woman who had tortured her and sacrificed her to the Coven's slaughterhouse like a pig, but she wouldn't censure what she felt toward her.

That's why she leaned in, so their faces were very close to each other. Her gray eyes focused on Tiara's red ones; two worlds sunk in gray and stormy days facing off against two burning hells where all their devils may cry anytime soon.

And she delivered a discrete, private message meant only to be heard by that woman.

"I hate you too. You have no idea how much... But I will save you. You can count of it."

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