She can’t help but laugh at his reply, the beautiful sound of icicles falling, shattering on the ground. Her eyes twinkle, her lips twisting into that Cheshire grin. Once her mother’s, now hers. And one Erebos often gives as well, when he wears his princely mask. He doesn’t know what she sees in him, but she sees her brother in so many ways. In looks, minus the horn. In name, just change the s to an r. In temperament and disciplines, both children of warrior Kings. “Why? Because I once asked if I should trust you, in that moment?” she asks, still laughing, letting the sound of the laugh fill the space between them, letting its echo quiet before she continues.

“Think about it, Erebos.” She picks his name over his title, trying to sound like a friend and not like she’s just chiding him. Though she is chiding him, in the way a little sister chides and goads her big brother. Because she cannot help but see Erebor. Cannot help but see before her a family she’d left behind, a chance to make something right where she’d left so many wrongs.

Leaving was what she needed to do, she knows. Erebor had gone back to fight alongside their old herd mates as their land was flipped on its head. Her twin little brothers had up and disappeared into new lives of their own. She was the last to leave, but she went the farthest, and she’d never go back. There’s a small part of her that still feels like it was wrong, but she’s always lived for herself. She would never stand over her mother’s grave and mourn her loss. Not just because she’d never see her mother’s grave (there would be no real grave), but because she just isn’t that type. And her mother never would have wanted that anyway.

Her mother would want the world for Weaver, and she was damn well working on that.

Her voice is softer now, trying to explain in a way that makes sense. “It’s what Kaos did to you all. Pretended to be something he was not, and tricked how many in Helovia? It would be a reminder lesson if you turned on your own army just long enough to prove a point. It doesn’t make you less trustworthy to teach us, you know.” But Erebos is honorable and dedicated and incapable of seeing the world as something likely to stab you in the back. He’s the fighter that won’t kill you without a weapon in your hand, who would give you the chance to stand before slitting your throat. Everyone else just sneaks up in the dark and doesn’t let you see them coming.

Weaver’s been to hell and back, literally and figuratively. She has wandered the world and seen the way so many live. And she knows they are not like him. Few are, anyway. Her brother had been like him, but even Erebor knew deceit. How could he not, with their mother? Erebos, she suspects, has lived his entire life within the walls of the Basin. It is a very safe, small place, all things considered. But her features remain soft and she keeps quiet and still as he talks, listening as a son rattles off what everyone else thought of his father, and then what he thought.

She remains silent for a moment, looking back to the stone and letting the silence stretch between them. She would have liked The Reaper. They would have been friends. “He should have met my mother. I think they might have torn the world apart together,” she says quietly, amber eyes turning back to his blue ones, a soft smile on her lips. Not happiness, not mischief, just her attempt at understanding. She would never mourn her mother, but on some level, perhaps she can understand. She’d never even met her father – the man couldn’t be bothered to come meet his daughter. She knew him only from the stories she was told. “And if he saw you now, do you think he’d see the man he raised you to be?” Again, her voice stays soft, though the question is a dagger without the sheath removed. She can be kinder, but she is never kind. There’s no room in the world for band aids. Rip them off and deal with the wounds underneath.