Chapter 1200: Why? (2)

"At the very least... you could have looked for me, after the Entrance Banquet."

Lucavion didn’t answer right away.

Jesse watched him search for it, as she had watched him hunt an opening against Valeria, except there was no blade to read here, only the small shifts crossing his face while he decided which version of the truth to hand her first.

"I thought you needed space."

It came out smooth enough to sound rehearsed, though she doubted he’d ever said it aloud before. The respectable answer. The one that let him stay the considerate party even while explaining why he’d done nothing.

’Space.’

There had been a time when Jesse might have accepted the word for what it appeared to be. She might even have been grateful for it. She might have taken the distance he had placed between them and called it consideration, because consideration hurt less than the alternatives.

She had met too many people since then.

Officers who called abandonment a necessary withdrawal. Nobles who dressed contempt in courtesy. Men who made decisions for everyone beneath them, then spoke afterward as though the burden of deciding had been sacrifice enough.

’A cleaner name didn’t change what had been done.’

Jesse studied Lucavion for another moment.

"What made you think that?"

His expression barely moved. "Think what?"

"That I needed space."

The question took some of the smoothness out of him. It showed in a small pause.

"You had just found me again," he said. "There were people around you. A life I knew nothing about. Walking into the middle of that because we once—"

"Did I ask you to stay away?"

Lucavion stopped.

The wind pressed against the side of Jesse’s coat before slipping past them into the covered passage. Somewhere below the terrace, metal struck stone, followed by the distant complaint of whoever had dropped it. Neither of them looked toward the sound.

"No," he said.

"Did I tell you I didn’t want to see you?"

"No."

"Then where did the space come from?"

His eyes narrowed slightly, the attention he gave an opponent once the easy rhythm of an exchange had broken apart.

Jesse felt no satisfaction from causing it.

Lucavion looked toward the terrace wall, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond the Academy grounds. "You shouldn’t have needed to tell me to leave before I considered whether staying would make things worse."

There it was again. Careful. Reasonable. A truth set where it could shield everything behind it.

Years ago, she would have struck at the shield until her anger exhausted itself. Now she waited.

Lucavion glanced back at her. Whatever he saw in her silence made his mouth shift, though the familiar smile never formed.

"What?"

"That isn’t all of it."

"I didn’t say it was."

He said it easily, almost gently.

It irritated her more than denial would have.

’Then make him finish.’

Jesse kept her voice level. "What else?"

For several breaths, he said nothing. He could have turned the question aside with some fragment about the Academy, Adrian, or the danger that still followed him. Any of them would have held up. This time, he chose none of them.

"I didn’t know what you wanted from me."

Jesse’s fingers curled once against her palm.

"You could have asked."

"I could have."

No defense. No qualification.

Jesse looked away from him, toward the low terrace wall and the open distance beyond it. Through winters, marches, and nights when sleep refused to come, she had imagined this conversation. In some versions he apologized. In others, she struck him before he could. The younger woman inside those memories had wanted only one thing from him: proof that leaving her had hurt him too.

That was no longer enough.

’Pain doesn’t undo a choice. Regret doesn’t hand it back to the person it was taken from.’

"You thought I needed space," she said. "You didn’t know what I wanted. You thought staying away might be better."

Each reason held up alone.

Jesse faced him again.

"All of that let you do nothing."

Lucavion’s gaze held hers.

"Yes." He said it without ornament.

Her chest pulled tight, but she refused to mistake his honesty for restitution. She had spent too long living with the result.

"Did you want to come?"

Lucavion did not answer. His gaze stayed on her, but the face around it went flat, the face she remembered from the nights when orders arrived that neither of them liked.

Jesse waited.

Somewhere behind them, beyond the closed corridor, the Academy continued with its afternoon: doors opening, distant voices crossing stone, a world moving without any regard for whether Lucavion answered her.

He remained silent.

Impatience worked in her, slow at first, then sharper. She had given him room. More than he had given her. She had listened to every careful reason and allowed him to arrange each one where he wanted it.

She would not let his silence become one more arrangement.

"Did you want to come?"

Still nothing.

His eyes shifted away from hers toward the open terrace, not the corridor or any possible interruption. An evasion measured in inches.

’No.’

Jesse crossed the distance before she could think better of it. One step brought her within his reach; another forced him either to look at her or make the avoidance obvious. She stopped close enough to see the faint tension along his jaw, close enough that the wind no longer passed cleanly between them.

"Did you want to come, Lucavion?"

He let out a scoff.

The sound was quiet and without much humor, but it scraped against what remained of her patience.

"Does it matter?"

"It does."

His gaze returned to her. "Why?"

"Because it is important to me."

Jesse glared at him as she said it, hating the naked simplicity of the admission. She could have given him reasons.

She needed to know whether the distance had hurt only because she had been the one crossing it.

Lucavion studied her face.

"What if I say I didn’t?" he asked. His voice had regained a trace of its usual ease, though she could see the effort holding it there. "What if I say I didn’t want to see you?"

The question found the old wound easily.

For a moment, Jesse felt it: the instinctive recoil, the younger part of her ready to believe the cruelest answer before it could take her by surprise. But that girl had spent years learning what people looked like before they abandoned a position, betrayed a promise, or spoke words they had already decided to regret.

And Jesse knew him, well enough for this, though perhaps never completely. Her glare steadied.

"You won’t say it."

"Heh?" His smirk returned by degrees, smaller and less certain than the one he usually wore. "You sound sure."

"Because you would have said it already."

The smirk remained, but Jesse saw the stillness enter the rest of him.

"You’ve had enough chances," she continued. "You could have said it when I found you. You could have said it after the banquet. You could say it now."

She did not look away. The terrace opened around them in pale stone and moving air, the low wall catching the afternoon light. There was nowhere for him to retreat without making the movement visible.

"If you didn’t want to see me, you would tell me."

"That is quite a bit of faith to place in a man you dragged out here to question."

"It isn’t faith."

She didn’t have to think about it.

Jesse knew what faith felt like. Faith was what she had carried through Loria, built from memories and absence because there had been nothing else to hold. This was a conclusion drawn from the man in front of her: from what he said, what he withheld, and the care with which he kept circling one answer without ever giving it.

"You have a reason," she said. "You always do."

Lucavion’s smirk thinned.

"Even if it is a bad one."

That earned her the smallest breath through his nose, almost a laugh.

Jesse stepped closer again, until only a hand’s width of stone lay between their boots. He did not move back.

She kept her attention on his face.

"Why didn’t you come?"

Lucavion watched her for several seconds. Then his shoulders loosened, so slightly it could have passed for ease.

"Do you really want to hear it?" His smile returned, quiet and crooked. "It isn’t grandiose or anything."

"Yes."

She left him no room to turn the question into a joke.

His eyes searched hers once more, perhaps looking for the version of Jesse who would accept the answer before hearing it. Whatever he found made the smile linger without reaching any deeper.

"I’ve become something of a target here."

Lucavion explained that the Academy had begun watching him more closely, though not everyone watching wore an instructor’s robes or cared about regulations. Attention gathered questions; questions gathered pressure. Anyone seen standing consistently beside him risked becoming another way to reach him.

He delivered it without dramatizing the danger, and that made Jesse trust the danger more and his conclusion less.

"You had already entered the Academy without any of that attached to you," he said. "A respectable delegation. Your own standing. People who knew you before they knew me."

His gaze moved past her shoulder, toward the empty passage leading back inside.

"Coming to find you would have connected us before either of us knew who might care."

"So you stayed away."

"It seemed better for you."

Jesse barely noticed the cold at her back.

Lucavion looked at her again, his smile carrying that familiar suggestion that the matter had now been made simple enough for everyone involved.

"There you have it. I wanted to come. I didn’t."

He lifted one shoulder.

"Associating with me has never been particularly good for anyone." His eyes held hers. "Is that enough now? Isn’t that what you wanted to hear?"

For a moment, Jesse only stared at him.

"Heh..." ℴ

Then she laughed.

"Ahahahahhaa..."

The sound escaped before she could stop it, one sharp breath after another, until she had to turn her face toward the open terrace. The wind caught the laughter and carried it through the lattice, thin and bitter against the quiet stone.

After all those years, this was his answer.