Quinn didn't say anything for the longest time.

Minutes ticked by as she stared across at Roaki, the newly-minted decision she'd made on the brief walk up weighing her down. Not like an impediment to moving; if anything, she felt she had more energy than before. A weight in her mind, a burden that she knew she was about to bear on herself. This was already going to be rough. If Roaki had been closer, she might have seen her chest heaving as she tried to take calming breaths to stanch the fear that was bleeding through her.

It was already going to be rough. So hard. So incredibly hard. Roaki would be trying her best to tear her Sa—to tear [i]Ablaze[/i] apart, piece by piece. She wanted to kill. But as rough as it was already going to be...she'd gone and made it so much harder by handicapping herself. Handicapping herself in a fight that wasn't just "whoever got punched first" with Dahlia. Handicapping herself in a fight where losing meant she would [i]never[/i] see her family again. She would lose them. And they would lose her. In the end, was it really worth it?

But she couldn't stop thinking about that last conversation with Besca, and she hadn't stopped on the way over. And as she'd reached the first hill, she realized something.

Roaki wasn't a monster. She knew it, deep down, and she finally fully realized what she saw of [i]herself[/i] in her. Why she'd gotten so [i]angry,[/i] so suddenly. What Roaki was, was [i]hurt.[/i] Scarred. And she wanted to make everyone around her hurt too. So why should she die? Being mad at the world wasn't a capital crime. She didn't deserve death. Not on any metric or scale. And Quinn wasn't going to kill her. She'd heard the formal rules on the way here: the loser was [i]whoever could not continue.[/i] Not whoever [i]died[/i]. And that made all the difference.

So it didn't matter whether she [i]could[/i] or [i]could not[/i] kill someone. Because the fact of the matter was, she [i]wouldn't[/i] kill someone. 

She wouldn't kill [i]anyone[/i]. 

And she [i]certainly[/i] wouldn't kill Roaki.

So, all those minutes later, she replied. Once sentence. Quiet, calm, self assured, filled with a newborn conviction. The sun played across the rolling hills, turning them—just for a moment—into the surface of a deep blue lake.

"[color=FFE63D]I'll tell you later.[/color]"