Jim's flat rebuttal stops him cold. Felix falls silent, eyes on every shift and clench in the captain's expression. He's not allowed to kid himself about what Jim really wants to know. Not any more.
Secrecy has always been a necessity, from the first time he stole off to his room with a borrowed tome on daedra. Every night he slipped into the snows or the woods with a satchel of salts and candles, every coded journal tucked into his pack, every quiet rendezvous by the light of a bonfire. Hiding away from his family's disapproval, his people's fear and disdain, from the Vigil's undiscriminating crackdowns, even from the danger of amateurish imitators.
Secrecy is a habit as ingrained as tying his boots on properly. It's not something he thinks about, for the most part. It's just the way you do things. It's the way that's best for everyone.
Unless your husband is from a different world and lives by another set of rules entirely.
Felix listens. Winces a little when Jim calls him out on the one-sidedness of the honesty between them. But there's a well of simmering emotions lying untapped in him too, and they're beginning to bubble over. Fear and hurt and anger and guilt, because yes, there's so much in the captain's words he can recognize.
"What should I have done, then? Let you tear yourself apart trying to save them all single-handed? Allowed you to stop me from saving you? Stood by and watched you get yourself killed?You would never have agreed to leave."
no subject
Secrecy has always been a necessity, from the first time he stole off to his room with a borrowed tome on daedra. Every night he slipped into the snows or the woods with a satchel of salts and candles, every coded journal tucked into his pack, every quiet rendezvous by the light of a bonfire. Hiding away from his family's disapproval, his people's fear and disdain, from the Vigil's undiscriminating crackdowns, even from the danger of amateurish imitators.
Secrecy is a habit as ingrained as tying his boots on properly. It's not something he thinks about, for the most part. It's just the way you do things. It's the way that's best for everyone.
Unless your husband is from a different world and lives by another set of rules entirely.
Felix listens. Winces a little when Jim calls him out on the one-sidedness of the honesty between them. But there's a well of simmering emotions lying untapped in him too, and they're beginning to bubble over. Fear and hurt and anger and guilt, because yes, there's so much in the captain's words he can recognize.
"What should I have done, then? Let you tear yourself apart trying to save them all single-handed? Allowed you to stop me from saving you? Stood by and watched you get yourself killed?You would never have agreed to leave."