Lajaka didn't flinch when he grabbed her arm. She met his cold eyes with a hard stare of her own. Contrary to what he said, she knew exactly what she was saying. She figured he was hiding who he was, but if he was going to ask how she knew who he was without him giving his name, he shouldn't be upset when she used that name. But if he wanted to keep hiding, so be it.
Telling him he had a son- even though he'd not been born, probably not even conceived- was the part that broke him. Lajaka watched him blink back tears as she went on. At the end, he asked a question she had been dreading: did he live? She looked down at her nearly-empty cup and shrugged. He'd been Galin's son, and her brother. Lorcan's, too; had Lorcan made it?
"He'd been hit," Lajaka admitted, "but it was a glancing blow. He needed to lean on someone to walk away, but I saw him leave the battle alive." She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. "But I ain't sure if he lived. After I… after you died, things started falling apart. I'd been inside the hall, in the room with the crack, and the walls were coming down and who knows what was going on outside. I didn't get a chance to check before I had to get back on my side." Lajaka hoped they had lived, but suspected they were dead.
"Aye, I know you would have worked the blade yourself, but you didn't," Lajaka fired back. "You couldn't. Your hands were tied and you were bleeding, and I had to look you in the eyes, you with a face the same as a man I loved like kin, and draw a knife across your throat. It don't matter that you would have done it yourself, it ain't an easy thing and I pray you necessary need to be the one to do it. It'll haunt your dreams, if you can get any sleep at all." It had haunted Lajaka. It wasn't just taking his life, it was also knowing that Lajaka took away her husband, and she remembered the way she had screamed for him and fought the men holding her from getting to him. Lajaka took the boy's father, too. Did he have any other children? Worst of all, it had been Lajaka's choice to kill him. It had saved the people in her world, and probably no one would have disagreed that she did what had to be done. But there was another choice. She could have killed her Galin instead. Had she given him the choice, he'd have slit his own throat, no question, and let this other man, then one now sitting across from Lajaka, live. But that would have left her Ma alone, and possibly pregnant as well. It would have left Lajaka and Lorcan without a father. And Lajaka just wasn't that selfless.
The apology took Lajaka by surprise, as did the emotion in his voice. Suddenly she was blinking, too. He'd been alone all this time, and Lajaka realised that she had been, too, without really knowing it. Sure, she'd found Luthene, but that woman wasn't really her Ma, just like the Galin her, or the one in front of her, wasn't the same man as the one she called father. But this man, at least, knew what it was like to be in another world and surrounded by people they didn't really know.
"I want you to go back," Lajaka said finally. "And you'll ask for her proper when you do, and you'll make that son I saw, and I'll tell you everything I know about the war so maybe you can win it and take back the Highlands. That's what you need to do, and I'll do everything I can to help you get home." She whiped a stray tear that had broken through her defences. "But if it doesn't work, then aye, you won't be alone anymore." She paused again. "But I need to be near her, too. That might be hard for you; she ain't really changed much, and I think she's with him, the version of you born in this world. And if she ain't, she will be as soon as she pulls her head out of her arse. He'll be a problem, too. You two ain't exactly the same, but you look similar enough to be kin, and I don't mean in the way most Highland people are kin. Close kin. Plus you sound the same, and… well, if you run into someone who ain't human and has a keen nose, they'll sniff you out easy. It's hard to miss. Now, might be them knowing the truth won't be a problem, but if it is… you'd be worse off, I figure, than you are now, alone."
A serving woman set another pitcher on their table, and Lajaka was silent until she was out of earshot. "But it we can get you back, it won't be a problem," she continued, pouring another cupful. "I figure, on that hill, whatever keeps worlds apart, it's weaker there. The crack between my world and yours had been open a good while; we figure that, from the moment they started to manipulate things on both sides, it had been open more than a month. Maker only knows how long it was there without us knowing. Anyway, there was a ritual they planned, and I remember it: the runes, the fancy words, if I saw it I remember how it went. Might be more I didn't see, but that's the chance we're taking I suppose. But Timedeath made things especially weak her, so it might be enough." She smirked. "Me, thoue, I might be the only one in this world who can say they've been to another world and got home again." She stopped to take a drink and to consider things more. "By the way, seeing as you'd rather I not call you by the name your Ma gave you, what should I be calling you?"
