"Only a battle lost is sadder than a battle won" - Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven
She blinked and the world began to focus. The man in front of her was tall. His hair formed long dark corkscrews that were pulled back from his head. It took her a moment to remember who he was. It was not that he was now tall and broad where he had be short and rotund. It was not the long hair or the scraggly half-beard that clung to his face. The thing that had changed about Rose from their last meeting were her eyes. In the beginning of the rebellion they had brimmed with hope, at the end with determination. As Steven her eyes had been full of trust, but now they were angry and broken.
Bismuth met the empty gaze. Neither spoke for a long moment, they just held each others gaze. Bismuth had no idea why she had been freed or what would be demanded of her. She could not decide if it was Rose or Steven. So many tricks, she had been promised that her friends would be told about her failings and her fate but Rose had never hesitated to tell a kind lie. Finally Steven spoke. His voice was raw and halting but the anger in his eyes assured her that he did not have any questions as he asked "Can you make another breaking point?"
Bismuth was staggered. When Rose had made a decision that had been final. There was no way that Rose could find the humility to admit that her ideals had to be sacrificed to win the war. So that she could be certain Bismuth had to ask "What changed?"
The old Steven would have cried, but he was not the child he had been. She could see the pain and the rage and the fear in the clenching of his jaw and the tightness of his neck. But there was no quaver in his voice as he responded "I had to grow up" his tone level and unaffected. "I hate that it is necessary, If I thought that I had half a chance of accomplishing anything without it, I would try. But you can't fight a war halfway. I tried. I understand what you meant before when you asked me what kind of general wouldn't give their troops the best weapons to fight. I had never fought before, not really. I know it now. Its a choice, the simplest and most painful choice to make; us or them. There is only one answer and it is awful, but it's impossible not to chose."
He was wrong, Bismuth knew. Rose had refused to make that choice again and again, refusing to surrender and refusing to take decisive action. She had won almost every battle but had stopped before takeing the steps necessary to win the war. This was not Rose. Rose could never have been humble enough, or strong enough. Bismuth realized in that moment that she had no choice to make another breaking point, but where the thought had once been exciting to her, it was now abhorrent. She looked at Steven and saw his hurt and his determination and didn't have the courage to ask him who he had lost. She wanted to embrace him but knew that she couldn't. He was more than a soldier and less than a leader and she didn't dare touch the fragile barrier that he had made to protect himself from rage that he felt
Steven thought that more explanation was needed.
"We do what we do because we must" he whispered
"So that later generations can live in the garden, we must burn with the chaff" She finished. She didn't know where the words came from and would have thought them dramatic and pedantic in another context.
There was nothing more to be said. He knew that she would build it. She followed him out of the temple and to the warp pad. If she had looked up she would have seen four bubbles, each filled with gem shards, hovering alone above the burning room. If she had looked closely she might have seen the fist clenched around the lock of dark hair. But she didn't. Her eyes were forward and only the path ahead occupied her mind