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[color=#A4303F][b]"Oh."[/b][/color]


So that was how it was.


It started right where she thought it would. A pressure to stand in the shoes of this prior Rogue that had been a blank outline in her head before, this 'Hardcase'. [i]But he's stronger than him. Shieldtown knows it. Shieldtown [b]loves[/b] him. So why-[/i]


Then she nodded, and invited the truth. And it turned out, she could colour him the same shade of so many men that had cried into her chest before him. She'd read him right from the start. Because she [i]knew[/i] him.


Umbri saw a little kid avoiding bottles. Making art out of the shards and offering it up to the apathetic god of his world. [i]'Love me, love me, love me, please.'[/i] He might be picking glass out of his shins for the effort, until he had enough. Now this was where the story Umbri knew differed. The boy became a man that shattered an Apex's jaw [s]his father's head[/s] and tossed her through the air in a blue cage [s]wrapped his father's body in hardlight and crushed it.[/s]


Alex was insecure about fulfilling Hardcase's position as the Rogue of Shieldtown, not because he wasn't strong enough. He was insecure as a hero because he was a [b]fake.[/b] He didn't belong in this world, with its flourishing community and sunny dispositions and Herculean protector.


He belonged in hers.


Maybe he wasn't even so different from Temujin. She was learning that there were similarities that bound all Rogues, even such insistent opposites as them. To be a Rogue, you had to be [b]fucking crazy.[/b] You had to have a death wish. And you had to be a murderer.


[i]Murderer.[/i]


Umbri could feel her heart-rate spiking. He'd killed his kin. It was a tragedy. She did not want to look afraid. It didn't feel... safe to show. She was putting so much effort into keeping her face straight she couldn't think of anything to reply to him with. What did he [i]want [/i]her to say to that? Did he even know?


[color=#A4303F][b]"And nobody knows?"[/b][/color] She guessed, from the way he'd said it. This certainly wasn't something he normally shared. It was... common, in her line of work, to be told secrets men wouldn't even speak to their families. Some things were easier to give to a stranger. The thought stopped her from ever feeling too special.