Sasha sat with him in silence for a long, long time. It took until the thunder stopped and the rain quelled for him to stop shaking. She couldn't see him in the dark, but she could feel the sullen look in his eyes. Like he'd given up. Her socks made a sucking sound as she pulled them off her feet. She ensnared her arm in his and made an attempt to stop shivering as the cold wind seeped into her soaking clothes.

"I didn't want to do it," he said. It cut through the quiet like a candle through the darkness that surrounded them on all sides. She blinked and for once, said nothing. Her eyes refocused in the dim light, scrambling for a detail to catch on to. She could feel the bird, same as he could, hanging around somewhere in their periphery. She wished it would leave.

"I could have said no. I could have run away, or something. I didn't think there was anywhere to go." He sank into the wall behind him, his wings shifting wetly in the darkness. She didn't expect it would be so uncomfortable. She hadn't a clue what he was talking about, but the waves of tension radiated off him and hit her like a ship cutting through the harbor. She thought better than to ask.

"He screamed. I could see him limping past me...his leg was just a stump. I wanted to help him but--" Rannok stopped talking for just a brief moment to catch his breath. The air wheezed out of his lungs like he'd just ran for miles. "And when the powder stopped going off I just ran. I didn't even know where I was going. And then I found my friend's mother lying in a market stall with her throat slit. I lied to her about it so we could leave."

Sasha grimaced. She wished she'd never bothered him and that he wasn't telling her about these things, because it crushed her. It made sense now, why he'd woken her up when it threatened to storm. Why he shook like a baby bird when the thunder started, and why he'd wanted her to leave him alone.

"I'm a terrible person," he said, then rubbed at his face with his hand. She suddenly felt terrible for ever having bothered him in the first place.

"I don't think that's true," she said. "Stubborn, maybe."

He made a sound that might have been a laugh. She couldn't tell through the roar of the wind outside, but it wasn't really funny, anyway. Terrible people didn't regret what they did. They just kept doing them, over and over, with maybe a fake apology tacked onto the end to make it seem okay. They pretended like it never happened in the first place.

"I could have run away and let that guy live. Instead I blew his legs off because he happened to be standing in the wrong place. They told me no one would get hurt but I knew they would." 

Sasha felt him tense again. He readjusted his wings against the wall so they shielded them from most of the wind. Water dripped from them and landed on her arm. She couldn't imagine how much more miserable he was in the rain with them attached to his body.

"You don't understand. You're only fucked up because people did things to you. I did things to other people. It's not the same."

"I know it's not. I don't think you're a terrible person." Because he was right, she didn't understand, and she likely never would. Just like he would never really understand why she left home, or why she didn't talk about home if she could help it. He'd never understand why she kept Driver, or why she'd felt just the tiniest little bit relieved when he ran off.

He'd never understand what it was like to love and hate someone equally, until sometimes you didn't remember why you hated them. And he'd never understand why she was still running. Why she would probably never stop, even long after her father had stopped chasing them. 

But that didn't make him evil. It just meant he didn't understand. She wished he understood why they weren't the same thing.

"I really don't hate you as much as I thought," he said, in a way that sounded like an apology. Sasha nodded. She didn't need that explained to her any more than she needed him to explain why he'd wanted her to leave him alone, or why he got so mad when she pushed.

Because it wasn't her he hated. It was everything. She could feel it radiating off him when he got on the horses or woke up in the middle of the night or sat alone by the fireside, stewing silently. He hated Erean and the horses and this place, and probably himself, too. He probably even hated the crow, but she didn't blame him. She didn't blame him one bit for the way he acted. She wondered if he even realized he did. 

"How are we going to get out of here," he asked. Sasha shivered. Soon day would break, and her father would be on the hunt again. Even the rain wouldn't hide their scent for long, and they wouldn't be able to outrun men with dogs and horses and supplies on their side. Her stomach grumbled its annoyance. The last time they'd eaten was before the crow had taken them to the nesting grounds, and that was at least a day ago.

"I don't know," she said. Either way, he would catch them, and he would take her home, and maybe even kill Rannok. She didn't know which two of those things were worse. She wished Erean was there to tell them what to do and where to go. She missed the steady sound of his voice, and the calm that filled the room when he was there.

But now they were on their own. She couldn't trust the crow any more than her own sense of direction. She hoped daybreak would come soon, if only because it meant she could stop thinking about what was going to happen when her father came.