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Red catches up to him, eventually. On a clear day, not long after everything, she finds him alone on a walk through the sprawling golden fields. Asher expects her to be furious, knows she has every right. But she's calm, like the prelude to a storm is calm, and she walks next to him without hesitation. Cuts right to the heart of what she wants to say.
"Are you happy with all this? All that, and the four of you finally have what you wanted. Stagnance." Ice-smooth as they are, her words cut sharper than her fury would have. He keeps his eyes on the circling clouds above, doesn't think he could bring himself to look at her. There is stagnance as well in the prevention of progress through constant upheaval; or at least, that's what he would have said before. Now, he's not so sure. He counters with honesty. "No. I'm not." It must not be what she expected, because she doesn't reply, and something in her demeanor changes. Less coiled-spring tense. She doesn't leave, though, at least not immediately.
He risks a glance over at her. She seems different from what he little he'd seen of her before--- before everything. The fire isn't gone from her, not at all, but the light behind her eyes is more embers than the former inferno. Her shoulders are stiff, her posture unrelaxed. Tiredness shows in her gaze. Exhaustion seems to have settled in her very core. Reasonable, all things considered. It hasn't been so long since everything, and something like that would take a heavy toll even on someone as resilient as Red. It's strange, talking to her so calmly. The others, the ones that they had integrated, they all avoid him for the most part. And he'd certainly understand if Red avoided him. But here she is. "I don't know how you can be so calm about this."
Red frowns. Perhaps that was the wrong thing to say? A minor sin, comparatively. "The way I see it, there's no use fighting between what few of us there are. If we have to spend forever here, then we might as well work with what we have. I certainly don't forgive you, and I don't think any of us ever could, but staying angry forever would be more effort than it's worth." Her tone is dark, but level. Surprisingly level. Everything she's saying comes as a surprise. It would be well within her right to be enraged. "You would have more than enough reasons to be angry," he says quietly.
A warm breeze blows through the fields, drifting through the sheaves of wheat. Red looks down at him sharply, her mouth firmly set. "We don't need your guilt."
Straight to the point. Fair enough; he wouldn't expect any sort of apology to be accepted anyways. "Regardless. What we did was abhorrent. Guilt could never make up for it, of course, but then, regret has a nasty way of being felt whether it's useful or not." He thinks of Grant, and his chest aches. The strongest man he knows, and yet when faced with the realization of their failure--- he rushes to think of something else. Sybil, who hasn't told him much, but he catches the way she glances at Red sometimes, and there's remorse as much as there is longing in her gaze. Thinks of himself; doubts he'll ever be at peace again.
Silence passes between them, far from amiable but not entirely malevolent, either. Red looks upward as she walks, watching the slow drift of the clouds. Brushes her fingers idly through the wheat. "It's strange. I still wake up sometimes and expect everything to have changed. And then I see the sky. I know it's not the only thing that's different from before, but---" She trails off, seemingly unsure of what to say. He finishes it for her. "---the most obvious?" Asher thinks he gets what she means. The sky serves as a constant reminder of the difference between Cloudbank and the Country, unchanging as it is. As much as the Camerata had fought for a less incessantly dynamic city, waking up day after day to plain blue skies is disorienting relative to Cloudbank's fluid, designed skyline. No city noise, hardly any noise at all; he never thought he'd miss the ever-present cacophony of background sounds that had been so pervasive in Cloudbank.
Red stops walking. "Yeah. That's what I meant." A pause as she considers her next words, and a wry smile creeps onto her lips. "Like I said. We don't need your guilt. But it's a whole lot easier to be satisfied knowing the four of you are going to have to live with it." She turns around and walks off, leaving him in silence.