"Shackles are still shackles no matter how willingly you step into the role," he offered as a rebuttal. There was a sharpness to her tone and a calmness to his, a temporary role reversal until the she-knight reigned in her emotions. "It doesn't make you any better, if you're insisting that it's different because it's your choice when most of us have done the same."
He leaned back against the slight armrest of the bench, his arm stretching across the back of the bench as he settled into something that looked far too relaxed for the man who nearly always held himself as a soldier first and man second.
"If your argument is that we're caged, slaves, but you're willing to shackle yourself and we've done the same then what is the difference?" He said things casually, uncaring if he was continuing to prod at a fresh wound or if it would get a rise from her again. He wanted a reaction, one way or another. "A slave is slave no matter the 'reason'."
Pressing his tongue against his cheek he regarded Hvergelmir with a wrinkled brow and pursed lips. She had always been an outlier for him, one of the few knights he met and didn't fight and one of the few left to truly dredge up what he'd call emotions. A mixed bag of things that meant that there was little about their interactions that he could predict.
Like they were chess pieces moving about with no definitive end in sight.
"You don't ask," he replied with a shrug. His gloved hand lifted, whiskey eyes choosing to watch it as he turned it this way and that beneath the pale lighting that engulfed them. "You don't offer any of those things readily either, why would I divulge when you're always so reluctant to share?"
shazari
