[center][img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/210131/53a200cc81a754fbfea32363291eca9d.png[/img][/center][indent][indent][indent][color=gray][sub][right][color=92278f][b]Location:[/b][/color]The City of Thorinn, Aetheria[/right][/sub][/color]
[hr]The edge had returned to his voice, the emotion was choking him, but that was a thousand times better than cold detachment. She didn’t shy away, but she didn’t dog him to look in his eyes. He turned, paced, and she stepped after him. An urge arose to reach out, touch him, but she quelled it for now. 

Seele let his words simmer in her mind. It was a familiar heat, even if she didn’t agree with it—perhaps especially because she didn’t agree with it. This, she guessed, was much deeper and longer-reaching than the events of the Glitch. Though she didn’t know how far, and had no inkling as to the cause, he had said something she could empathize with. These people were the best thing to happen to her, too.

“[color=92278f]You’re wrong,[/color]” she said, not harshly, but surely. “[color=92278f]And what you’re doing—what you’re feeling—is proof of that, you know. You want to protect people, you want to help. Good people don’t think that way. If you were half the man you put on to be, you would have gladly stayed, and used us, and thrown us away when you were done. But you’re not that man. You’re hurting yourself because you think it’s the right thing to do. For everyone.[/color]”

She still stayed put, but—dang her impulsiveness—she reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder. She didn’t know how old Graves was in the waking world, but to her he seemed young. That wasn’t to say he was naïve, in fact, she thought the opposite; life had saddled him with many more years of experience than he had lived, and for the first time Seele considered how much of a curse it might be to have lived [i]too much[/i]. 

“[color=92278f]It isn’t, though. That voice you hear, telling you that you don’t deserve happiness, that you’re a storm wrecking everything around you—it’s wrong. Everyone deserves happiness, you're allowed to find it in your friends,[/color]” she stepped slowly around him, to the front again. She took her hand off his shoulder, and took him gently by his wrists. “[color=92278f]There’s so much more to you than your mistakes. I know it’s hard to see, but that’s okay. Sometimes it takes other people to show you.[/color]”[/indent][/indent][/indent]