Those Can Go Suck My Dick

- "What did you do with that piece of fecal matter of a man? Winski didn't have anything special to tell me," Sarevok demanded.

- "Let's just say that I was feeding the sharks," Peri said dryly. "You were too much in the rant mode so I had to send you away. He wasn't stupid - if he realized we would kill him anyway no matter what he did, he wouldn't have told us everything he knew."

Sarevok walked to the deck, leaning and watching the black waves. Jelena's quiet hum of prayers could be heard from under the deck where she was healing the children.

- "I will go help Imoen with cleaning," Winski said. "I hope that semi-dried diarrhea and vomit feel honored - not often does that kind of refuse get scrubbed off by two archmages. You take care of Sarevok."

Peri walked next to Sarevok, saying nothing.

- "Do I strike you as a stupid man, sister?" Sarevok finally asked.

- "You should know that you are one of the most intelligent people I have ever known," Peri replied.

- "Yet... you dealt with that Arny person just right and had to send me away like I was some sort of interfering apprentice. If I had had it my way..."

- "... you would have ranted for minutes and scared the shit out of him, then killed him in some poetically just way."

- "When my passion arouses, there is but this soaring in my veins, the strength of it like a dark current I ride."

- "So I have noticed," Peri smiled. "That is you. If you weren't like that, you would never have gotten out of the Abyss, and that would be the greatest loss for me as well as many others."

Sarevok smiled faintly.

- "You think so? There are those who think no suffering of mine will be enough to pay. And perhaps it is so."

- "Those can go suck my dick for all I care," Peri said with feeling. "It is easy to condemn if you don't know what the other person has to live with. Even Irenicus... I can't hate him anymore after living a while without my soul. Ironically enough, he was the one who did it to me, but it also made me see what a horrible thing it is, how devoid of all decency and compassion it makes a person."

- "Your... dick? Some little details you have not mentioned to me, dear sister?" Sarevok said, his eyebrow cocked.

- "Ah, you know what I mean. A figure of speech. An expression of sisterly loyalty," Peri smiled. "Keep ranting, Sar. It is then I know you are being yourself. I can always invent some important business elsewhere if it is practically prudent."

Sarevok hugged Peri from behind, pressing his face into her hair.

- "I love you so, sister..." he murmured. Peri grabbed his hands and hugged them ferociously.

- "I love you too, bro. I'm so happy to travel with you. I'm so happy that we have a family," she said.

Ali was wide-eyed, hanging to Sarevok. They had forgotten to pay attention to him as he had been silenced. Now the spell wore off, and the boy uttered a little whimper. He had seen the slaughter, and wore a stunned expression.

- "Er... whoops," Peri said. "Perhaps we should not have let him watch."

Sarevok grimaced.

- "Mother will be displeased with us," he muttered.

- "Ouch. I guess we will have to tell her anyway so she can heal him or something," Peri said.

- "Damn it! I just didn't think of it," Sarevok said. "Ali, dear? Come..."

He kept hugging the boy.

- "Do not fear me, little one... I got angered at those men. They are the ones who would hurt precious children like you... will you come so we go to my mother."

With sagging shoulders he walked to Jelena, leaving Peri alone with her musings.

Peri heard footsteps too light to be Sarevok's. It was Jelena.

- "Er. Sorry about Ali... I guess we make lousy babysitters," Peri said.

- "Both of you are much too accustomed to violence to realize how shocking it can be to a child like Ali... Sarevok wasn't much older when Reiltar expected him to work regularly in danger of it," Jelena sighed.

- "And his first kill was when he was five years old," Peri nodded. "Another lovely child rapist, a rich man who thinks he can get away with anything."

- "I didn't know that," Jelena said, her expression wavering between hatred and sorrow. "Poor boy. It is so good that he has you. There are some things only you can share with him.