Morrie watched Krishna's face closely as he spoke. She knew his face well. Over the years, she had seen Krishna's face wear a variety of emotions, even though he generally played his cards very close to his chest. Still. No one was above emotions, no matter how hard they tried to be. Morrie knew that from personal experience, because she had tried too, so she could recognize subtler emotions in others, or at least those she cared to pay close attention to. One thing she had never really seen in Krishna's face was pity. It had come close perhaps, on a few occasions while she'd been recovering from the fire, but sadness and sympathy were not quite the same thing as pity. She had always appreciated that Krishna had never seemed to pity her, even though he was quite intimately familiar with the extent of her injuries.
Now, as he said that Lachlan was fortunate to have her, she couldn't tell if he was being serious or not. Krishna didn't tend to joke or tease much, though, or at least not about something like this. Morrie frowned and shook her head. "He doesn't have me. Nor I him. We're strangers now."
And wasn't that true. Morrie was not the same woman now that she had been before the fire, and Lachlan didn't know who she was now. Krishna was the opposite. Krishna hadn't known Morrie before the fire, not really. He hadn't known the version of herself that she'd lost, the version that liked to dance, the version of her that laughed so much more easily. He just knew who she was now, and there was something freeing in that. He wouldn't be able to compare her to what she'd been like when she'd been more... whole.
When Krishna spoke about Cal, about how he liked knowing she wasn't alone at Hiraeth, she rolled her eyes in the face of Krishna's protectiveness. "But really, Krishna? In one breath, you say Cal is just a man. In another, you suggest he ought to, what, defend me against my supposed villain? I told you, I can handle Lachlan myself. Besides, I am never alone."
Except never really meant always. Despite living in a house with many other staff members, Morrie always felt alone. Even when she was with Cal, the closest thing she had to family, she didn't really have him. He wasn't hers. He belonged to the Church, and he belonged to his parishioners, and he belonged to the Rosiers too, just as she did -- after all, they both served Master and Doctor Rosier. And of course, Lachlan didn't want to be her family, so Morrie had no one who was actually her own. Neither did Krishna, she thought, though he seemed more independent than alone. She was vaguely aware that he had a big family, even if they were very far away.
"Cal is worried about me too. The two of you are tiring," she drawled, looking away from Krishna in the hopes that he wouldn't notice that her frown was cursory. She didn't need to be fussed over, and she made a point of discouraging it, but she was well used to the way Krishna and Cal treated her by now, and she supposed it was nice on some level to be thought of.