Skyhunter

It is always the gentle ones I fear for the most, those willing to bare their hearts, who grieve for others and feel happy for others' happiness.

Because my mother taught me that, in spite of everything, I must choose goodness.

You have taken advantage of my silence in every way, robbed me of my dignity and my pride. You have used me for your own gain. Now, in your hour of greatest need, you will use me again. And yet, I will still risk my life to save yours. I swore and oath to this country on the day I donned this coat, to protect you and every other citizen from harm so long as there is breath in my body.

Our pasts matter because they created us, helped mold us into who we are.

They may try to take everything from you... But you can take from them too.

We aren't trusted here - not because of who we are, but where we come from.

Sometimes a crime is an act of heroism.

But conquering people is easy. You break past their defenses, seize their cities, burn their world to the ground. To annihilate us, though, is impossible. A seed will survive. I am not done. I will not forget.

You're alive, and Mara still stands." I leaned my cheek against her my hand and watched her crush eggshells into her plants' soil as fertilizer. "Is it standing," I signed at her, "or is it just falling slowly?

It's not our home. But you try your best to take your home with you, even if it's a shack in the middle of a desperate place.

No fish," Ren then says, his accent thick. We all stare blankly at him. "Well, we're set," Adena says. "He can say 'no fish.' We'll all be chatting together in no time.

But sometimes you cope by wasting time, yes?

Aren't we all always searching for someone to understand us?

Because Jeran, young and kind and forever loyal, would rather return and give his life alongside Aramin than live knowing he had turned his back on the man he loves.

Your friend's been awake all night," she tells me in Basean, touching my wrist and nodding at the display. She raises an eyebrow at me. "She came knocking on my door at some ungodly hour. I almost hit her with a pan before I realized she wasn't a soldier or a thief. It's as if I have two daughters.

Because Mara, for all its faults, had still taken me in. Because the alternative is the Karensa Federation, swallowing everything and everyone in its path. Because I have witnessed the deepest horrors their soldiers could inflict on other humans, and I've survived, and the reason I've survived is because of this last free nation, one that might soon collapse. Because right now, we are all just young souls in identical sapphire coats, fighting to hold back the darkness. It has bound me together with them, whether they - or I - like it or not. It has to be the reason I stay.

Can you be kind and a killer? Can you be gentle and a weapon of war?

I accept, then. A few hundred dinners here with you.

For Mara?' Adena signs. 'For the idea of Mara,' Jeran replies. 'Ideas are nothing but air,' Adena mutters. 'Then we're truly lost,' I sign.

Look proud, she would say to me as she patted my cheek, until you feel it.

The bloodlust in me blinds my concentration to anything else. I am death now, steel and sword and bullet.

A hall with no end. A day to live. A million ways to bridge the rift.

You want to dig into my life by holding out pieces of your own.

Because sometimes the things that cut closest to your heart deserve the weight of being last.

He doesn't understand that scars can be invisible, that his soldiers- that *he*- was the one who'd broken my voice.

And in this moment, I finally, finally understand why I fight for Mara. It is because my mother sacraficed everything to bring me here, went hungry so that I would not, lived in squalor so that I would not. Mara is the gift she gav me. And I'll be damned if she did that for nothing. I'll be damned if I don't fight for that gift.

Jeren nods solemnly. "That's what I prefer to do before I had out to certain death," he signs. "Scowl in a chair.