Phoenix Maplewood i'll wind up working in the thick of it

Warbone? Phoenix was both relieved and repelled by the mention of his father's banner. He swallowed his aversion, and responded to Indra's dubiousness with a stiff nod and an affirming snort. She seemed to buckle further in her astounded seat, and he felt at a loss for how to assuage her. He supposed this was (currently) turning out better than he had anticipated, but an intense guilt loomed closer. The lonely deserter began to wonder if he had made the right choice...

When she didn't try to finish what she was saying before, Phoenix found himself agonizing. The last thing he wanted to talk about was the tumultuous home he'd abandoned. "I have a sister," he admitted quietly. "She—" Phoenix took a deep breath, and let it out in a surly huff—"Her name's Willow. She chose to stay behind." He was much worse than Indra when it came to hiding feelings. His tone dribbled with salt and contrition; telling a much deeper story than his cliffsnotes version. Most obviously, he resented his sister—the choices she'd made in the heat of the moment—and yet a careful ear could tell that he clearly missed her; that between her betrayal and her absence, he was more deeply hurt by the latter.

He remembered his feet, checking and shifting them numbly before returning his burnished gaze to her. "I'm.. sorry for blindsiding you. Being lonely's made me selfish," Phoenix admitted freely. He had already made the mistake of not being honest with himself until it was too late, and he wasn't keen on repeating these kind of emotional mistakes over and over again. "This is something I wanted. I even justified it by imagining myself in your position. I thought I'd wanna know if I were you... but I'm not you. I didn't think about how you actually might feel about all this." He swallowed thickly, having turned his eyes away in shame, waiting for her to rebuke him.