She isn't good with people.

Not embarrassingly bad or anything. No one meets her approach with dread or passive-aggressively tries to drive her away (though she would tell them flat out to knock that shit off), but she can tell. She's not the sharpest ax in the armory but she knows that a lot of people aren't sure what to make of her. Even those that befriend her, hell even those attracted to her, know that her filterless speak, intolerance of bullshit, lack of patience for social cues, and a lack of chivalry and respect ill-fitting of a knight or woman… well, they just come with the Sully package. Love it or leave it, she reckons, and to be honest, she can understand each option.

Being the connoisseur of interacting without an ounce of social grace means she can notice when others are as well- they're her damn people, after all- and she can see it in Libra. Hell, she's kinda proud of herself; that's not someone many would see through that easily, but it comes crazily easy to her. Libra is respectful, kind, and graceful. He's kind of a beautiful person, so much that she thought he was a woman, because even though she tries not to think that way, she was conditioned to think that's how women are supposed to, and he's a damn better woman than anyone else she's ever met,

But she's caught onto him clear as day. Cause everyone's a litmus test of how normal people interact. It's kinda fun to watch. Everyone with their oddities and neuroses having meet-cutes and suddenly getting along then really getting along. She kind of likes seeing the relationships blossoming. It's like a play in real time.

Then there's him. People give him all the opportunities in the world- they talk to him, invite him to things, try to figure out his likes and dislikes- you know, how friends do- and he politely keeps the conversation from going any further than a kind priest grateful for the strangers he will meet in his life. All the courtesy in the world bounces off of this satin pillow wall of a human.

So it's only natural that she developed a sort of precocious crush on him.

She can defend it. It's mysterious in a sort of attractive way, like literally attractive, like drawn to him attractive, and honestly, to her, that's the most romantically attractive thing you can be at all. There are a few people she's met that cast off friendship or romance- and she herself has definitely ruled out romance as a thing she will experience- but they brood a lot or make it known how little time or give-a-shit they focus on forging those bonds. That ain't him. He doesn't push people away, he just smiles as they tire themselves out and assign him to the acquaintance barrel. He does it like that's the outcome he should expect for himself.

She doesn't like it.

But it's interesting, at least.

The first time they really interact, she doesn't expect to get far, so she doesn't give him her life story or talk about her biggest fears. But she knows that he's helpful, compulsively so, so she asks him to help move a couple of boxes from one end of the camp to the armory on the other. "I was just looking for a pair of hands," she explains like she didn't keep a lookout for the area for an hour.

He does help, and she thanks him with an alarming amount of sweetness and means it, Naga above what is wrong with her? She makes small talk- Shepherd life, how he likes it there, if there's anyone that interests him. His answers are all serviceable and meaningless- he wants to serve Naga and make her world better, he's grateful that everyone was so dedicated to serving the people with their lives- but it's not like she actually expected answers out of him so she didn't have hopes to crash. Still, seeing and experiencing his noncommittal answers made to end a conversation, a friendship, before it starts, is strangely isolating, because she wanted to be his friend and not just someone strangely longing to know him.

So she does it again. And again. And again. Probably gets a little transparent about things. Enlists his help in such simple things that she looks a little vulnerable. It's a good way to make small talk, but godsdamn, it cannot stay the way it is. He has just the right answer for all her small talk, She'll talk about her mount, he'll talk about how intelligent the bond between man and animal is. Talk about rejoining the Shepherds after the Valm inquisition is known to them, and he says it is his duty as a man of faith.

The answers tend not to be about him, and the ones about him are about the concept of him. She's running out of axes to polish and crates to haul. She figures that she should probably at least offer him something, extend a line to him and see if he pulls before she keeps throwing her emotional energy off a cliff.

She would try the honorary Shepherds icebreaker of challenging him to a spar- that's how she gets to know everyone. But what she gathers from him is that he's a man that loves peace, kinda befitting of him trying to be a nice man of the cloth.

So she asks him on patrol.

That's on the fly- she almost asks him to try some tea with her but heaven help the person who allows her to prepare food and drink. Since he's taken the role of her helper, he falls for her trap. Half of the first ten minutes is her trying to think of the right thing to say that would get an answer from him without scaring him from speaking too much.

So, all innocuous-like, she asks "so…" while leaning against a tree on the edge of camp "I know we haven't even started yet but… when this whole mess is over… do you know what you're gonna do?" Planning conversations like a strategy makes her better at them. Kind of sad to think about that, but here she is.

He closes his eyes, and she immediately thinks that it isn't going well for damn sure. He opens them and smiles. The kind of smile that is preparing something, and not just preparing to fall back on the same half-answers. It leaves her kinda hopeful.

"I suppose that I would like to open an orphanage."

Now there's an idea. "That's ambitious! I kinda wanna see that."

He beams. "It would be an honor," he says as the two of you get back to walking around the perimeter. "I would be honored to give back to the world."

There he goes again, talking about the concepts of things. Something to admire from a distance. A trick that gets cheaper by the conversation. This is a little different, though, They're concepts as they relate to him. How he feels about them.

So if he dares a little, she will too.

"I think you really care about that. Like I can't imagine anyone giving the effort towards it that you do."

He smiles sadly. Like he's glad that she said that, but it's an untrue statement. He's wrong, it is true, but that's beside the point. She wonders why he reacted that way, and how important it is at setting up the edge pieces of the puzzle that is Libra.

"Perhaps it's how I prove…" he starts, but it fades away.

"Prove?" she dares to ask.

He shakes his head. "Ah, it's nothing to worry about."

She fakes an "okay" even though in the corners of her mind she just threw an ax at the ground in frustration. She's absolutely gonna worry about it now- this whole exercise in curious self-deprecation.

They don't talk about anything that matters for the rest of the patrol.

She leaves it with a towering, shaking stack of questions, but she'll answer them down the line.

The time before the Shepherds officially join the fray in Valm is not very interesting for Libra. It's often too boring to circle the wagons, so to speak. Perchance this is the best time to get to know everyone before they set off across the oceans, but to be honest, no one holds his interests.

Well, save her.

He can't help but linger whenever he sees her, because he has acknowledged that she has started to break his defenses a little. He likes the way she leads. Too many people drop invasive questions on him that he couldn't answer cleanly without giving away a bit of himself that he couldn't retrieve. Not that he can blame them; diving straight into personal, expository details works with so many. They're happy to be vulnerable. Isn't it miserable for them? It always is for him.

He likes the way she talks. She's very blunt but guarded in a way. A few people prepared him for Sully, saying she was abrasive, challenging, interesting to deal with. Soft talk that was, in its own way, somewhat degrading. He wasn't sure what to expect, but she was definitely less of a handful that people made her out to be. (People are quite driven by instinct and gut feelings- things he has currently shelved.) She is very considerate, even if at times he can tell that she's frustrated by his immediate answers. She's shown that she's more than she seems. He can't help but think she deserves more.

He says it's nothing to worry about when he veers closer to being personal. That's a half-truth; maybe three-quarters of the truth. It should be nothing she worries about. A lot in his life has led to the cynical, lonesome way he thinks, the scars on his heart that, like the one on the back of his neck, have no way to fully heal. The scars can be a burden to carry for him enough for him to avoid the idea of passing them on to her.

Still, he doesn't think it right to let himself get in the way of her good intentions.

So he adjusts his answers.

They go on lookout duty a lot. Enough so that Robin gives him an odd look, but he honestly doesn't mind the curiosity of others (and how they tend to give him too much credit). Sully retreats into the same small talk that she did when he made her acquaintance. Some of the questions are even the same as before. At first, it seems like an accident, but the more he answers them honestly, the more she recycles them- like she's letting him answer them correctly.

Nothing he gives away is too personal. Personal-adjacent, maybe, but nothing that requires too much from him. When she asks him if he's enjoying life with the Shepherds, he replies with his admiration of the Shepherds acting like a well-oiled machine that found room to give him a part. He talks about a bird he kept as company during a few months in his priesthood that, though the bird has passed, still lightens his heart to speak of, knowing that they did not leave him of their own volition.

When she asks if he is interested in any of the Shepherds, the romantic intent is there perhaps more than she intends in the first place. He immediately shakes his head, but she has her hand on her hip because she knows there's more.

"I will admit that thinking of the Shepherds as individuals can be tricky…" he admits with a pause. "I am so used to them being a singular entity. The Shepherds. Thinking of many of them as the individuals they are… is not an unappealing test, but a test regardless."

She snorts, but it's endeared and strangely endearing. "You really like those big damn concepts, aye?"

Goodness, she's right. "In a way… it's a refuge."

"Refuge," she muses. "Yeah, that's what I figured, yeah."

"I'm woefully predictable," he smiles sadly again. "I hope you've not grown weary of me as a conversation partner." After he says that, he winces as if struck. Were he to state such a concept, it's entirely through the hypothetical relief of the other person. Never is it through his own desire to keep her nearby to speak to him.

Something seems to be off within him.

He hopes the gods are bestowing him with mercy.

She laughs. "Nah, I get it." She places a hand on his shoulder. He forces a smile, but he doesn't know how forced it was until she removes it suddenly and hisses "ooh" like she set it on a hot plate and not a human being. "Sorry," she winces, so apologetic that it feels intensely personal, more vulnerable than he would like, because, as the gods would have it, she cares.

For that alone, he should apologize to her.

"Quite all right," he responds before he can measure his words. "You didn't know. I'm not very keen on physical contact."

She looks up at him with eyes both excited and confused. "Oh, I can dig that," she says with pride that he doubts even she knows the root of.

He smiles. He can't convince himself that he deserves it, but he's quite pleased to have someone to trust.