Heron Lake Plateau Just smell with your eyes

Oh, if only it'd be that easy.  Face what part of that resulting giant emotional katamari?  There were so many angles to it -- but yeah, it did boil down to his failures, but it wasn't necessarily just one.  He nudged Raven back but it was a little halfhearted -- he could intensely focus on one thing, or he could spread himself thin thinking about too much and probably fail at all of it. And he's still out there after that. I get that there was no good choice to deal with him at the time, but still.  I don't know how I'm supposed to do anything but think it would have been different if I'd been there -- or been there sooner.  I was supposed to protect everyone -- but especially you.  And just-- He obviously hadn't done a good enough job, because then everything else happened.  He probably deserved the ghosts, but Raven hadn't deserved any of it.

His failures and frustration and the unexpressed sorrow had pretty much welded itself into a wall, and he just stood at the bottom of it not knowing how to approach taking it out.  Qui was pretty sure the thing that would crack first would be the rest of him -- not that.  How could he figure out how to talk about whatever parts he needed to?  It was a very foreign vocabulary to him, and he felt like Raven had a head start on it, at least.  He, too, took a second to look away, but he couldn't appreciate the landscape, his mind was too busy.  It was just... There.  And he was continuing to walk away from his problems.

He took a breath, then sighed.  It's not happening again, he said at last, determined but a little emotionally shaky on the whole thing.  It wouldn't happen again because he'd do anything -- anything -- needed to make it the truth.  If someone was shifty, he wasn't going to trust them near his family.  If someone tried anything, they'd be dead.  That was a truth he could hold on to and fight for.  It was simple and perhaps a little too black and white.