A sharp, bitter bark of laughter escapes him before he can stop it, and he feels Alain's quick worried glance cut to him. "You're right about that."
Roland's absence aches like something's been torn out of him. It always will, he suspects. Even as he makes himself master the pain, biting down on it the way they'd been taught to bite on leather when dealing with a wound, he remembers a day months back and Susan's unhappy words--
(he told me I were everything the Way of the Eld was not)
--remembers how she'd been miserable enough to think she needed to learn the gun, that she couldn't be part of their tet without it, and remembers how he had finally been able to convince her otherwise... and how relieved she'd been.
What followed hadn't been the first time or the last that he'd clashed with Roland over Susan for her sake. Cuthbert knows he'll always, always
(Roland's love is my love)
do what's needful to protect and care for her, and if that means shaking some sense into this man who, whatever he thinks he knows, can't possibly understand the depths of everything that happened that day, then he'll do it.
"I'd speak plain, sai," he says. Cuthbert's careful to work to keep his tone pleasant, but it's very level now. "You're right that Susan and Roland aren't the same. That's not the point. Don't think we're not grateful for everything you've done for her today, either. But Reap-Tide's bearing down on us, and what she's going to need tomorrow are those who understand what she's going through, and not to have to worry about those she cares about who don't."
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Roland's absence aches like something's been torn out of him. It always will, he suspects. Even as he makes himself master the pain, biting down on it the way they'd been taught to bite on leather when dealing with a wound, he remembers a day months back and Susan's unhappy words--
(he told me I were everything the Way of the Eld was not)
--remembers how she'd been miserable enough to think she needed to learn the gun, that she couldn't be part of their tet without it, and remembers how he had finally been able to convince her otherwise... and how relieved she'd been.
What followed hadn't been the first time or the last that he'd clashed with Roland over Susan for her sake. Cuthbert knows he'll always, always
(Roland's love is my love)
do what's needful to protect and care for her, and if that means shaking some sense into this man who, whatever he thinks he knows, can't possibly understand the depths of everything that happened that day, then he'll do it.
"I'd speak plain, sai," he says. Cuthbert's careful to work to keep his tone pleasant, but it's very level now. "You're right that Susan and Roland aren't the same. That's not the point. Don't think we're not grateful for everything you've done for her today, either. But Reap-Tide's bearing down on us, and what she's going to need tomorrow are those who understand what she's going through, and not to have to worry about those she cares about who don't."