He never needs to know what he’s getting into. He’d do it just so one of us doesn’t have to.
Truer words when it came to their mutual friend had never been spoken. It was something Deidre already knew, but couldn't voice in her deliberate attempts to find some legitimacy for her current state of being. All the while, her darkened irises fixed on his digits -- sword-worn and rough as they were, squeezing her hand warmly and knowing who stood near her was the Aurin that propelled her into striking some kind of kinship with him over the years they had known each other. In spirit, the three of them were inseparable... he had been right about that as well, that whenever circumstances required it, Fate managed to bring them all in the same place.
If she believed in those things, she wondered what that meant now. If the three of them met again at the crossroads of their lives for something that necessitated them coming together, what did that mean? What was to come for each of them? If he was right and there was a reason, what was it? The answer was something she dreaded, deep down. Her defiance had pushed her into the blackening pits of her benefactors' graces -- it was something she had tried to shield them both from, and while Aurin's words had been given to reassure, she wondered now whether it was more a harbinger of darker times rather than a herald for good ones.
However when he apologized the way he did, her head snapped up at him. "Are you insane?!" she blurted out, the hand he was squeezing snatched back as if he had burned it. "Offered to volunteer instead of him?! How daft did you get since the last time I saw you?!" She seemed genuinely angry, the smooth, gold-tinged complexion of her slight tan turning into a dusky rose around her cheekbones... not at Alderic now but rather at him for suggesting it. "What makes you think I want that?! What makes you think I'd rather have it that it was one of you instead of another?! Just because I haven't known you as long doesn't mean..."
She shook her head vehemently, feeling her eyes moisten further and knowing why. Aurin hadn't said that to upset her or to mollify her -- she knew he meant it, and if he had known about the risks, he would have gone so his friend wouldn't have had to. In many ways it ached to know it, to realize their bonds have run so deep over the course of the last few years that doing these gestures, or wishing they had done it, was second nature. The thought of them being split asunder by a looming apocalypse was almost too much to bear.
Let me go, Deidre.
She shook her head again, as if she could physically throw off the haunting echo at the back of her head. Impulse drove her as she suddenly threw her arms around Aurin, holding onto him tightly and gritting her teeth.
"You idiot," she breathed, dropping her head on her shoulder -- the gesture obscuring his view of her face. "I wouldn't want this for either of you."