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The door closed behind her with a heavy thud. She made no effort to close it gently.
"We are departing by the first sunlight tomorrow. I hope whatever you have to tell me is important."
He said without turning towards her. He still stood in the blood soaked comissarial uniform before his desk. She didn't comment on it.
"Are you better now?" She questioned, though she knew the answer without needing a look of his face.
The comissar's posture stiffened. She saw his knuckles whitening as his fingers tried to dig into the metal of the table.
"You shouldn't be up just yet." He replied, a slight tremour flashing through his controlled voice.
"I assure you it looked worse than it is." She tried to console.
"I am surprised the old doc even allowed you to leave your cot." The Comissar chuckled dry. There was no mirth in his voice. She mustered him for a moment before she moved towards his chest. Red robes flowing over the floor in quiet elegance. He did not turn around.
"He didn't. But exhaustion and the scare I gave him took him to slumber eventually." She replied, placing a trembling hand on the lid of the trunk. "He is resting now in my cot and hopefully will still do so when I return."
The Comissar lowered his head, his jaw clicking.
"He saw it all, he looked horrible." He noted.
"He was losing it all over again." She shrugged. "Or so he thought." Her eyes narrowed as she saw the Comissar's hand twitch in its grip.
He let out a heavy exhale. "Or so he did."
She did not reply, sitting down on the chest.
They shared in a moment of silence, before she turned her gaze back at him. He was still facing her with his back, head pointed at his metal table, hands gripping the edge of it.
"What is done is done." She sighed. "But you have not taken a life today. You have not done the undoable."
The Comissar hung his head lower, saying nothing.
She looked at him a little longer, her hand playing with the lock on his trunk. After a while she decided to stand up again, opening it, helping herself to its contents in it. She peeled back a few roughly folded shirts. Even after all these times the Comissar lacked the dexterity to properly fold one. Beneath a linen sack at almost the bottom of the chest she found what she was looking for. A rough wooden toyship. Worn from the years. The paint almost faded. She pulled it out with delicate hands, closing the trunk as silently as she could. The Comissar was still not facing her.
She mustered it in her hands, eyeing it with great sadness. There was a knot in her throat and tears prickling her eyes, but she shook her head and her thoughts away and replaced her grief with a determined look. She stepped forward, around the table to position herself before him, placing the wooden ship before him. The Comissar's eyes went wide as his gaze shot up towards her, unbelieving.
From her deep sleeves she procured a second item, a slightly faded photo sealed into a sturdy, metal lined glass frame. A young general was holding a boy that was sitting on his lap in it. Both smiled with a warmth that felt almost alien now.
"I found it in his belongings as we went through them." She didn't look at the Comissar.
"He loved you too, you know." She continued, her heart tightening when she saw his finger twitch. She didn't need to look at his face to feel the broiling rage and the grief that kept his mouth shut.
"Put that away." The Comissar eventually ordered coldly, head sinking back down. "Put that... away." Though his voice betrayed him.
Little droplets trickled onto the glass of the photoframe.
"I can't." She croaked, trying to remain steady, tears welling in her eyes.
"For he loved you too." She continued to press on. "And you almost... almost..." She placed a hand over her chest. Over the place where where the tooth of the chainblade had eaten chunks of her flesh hours ago. She remembered the look on his face. It was a man she did not remember. A man drunk on the lust of slaughter. She did not finish her sentence. Letting out a tiny sob as her composure faltered.
The Comissar too felt the corner of his vision getting blurry as he watched her wipe away the tears with her sleeves. His stomach dropped. He could feel nausea overtaking him, but his years of service have hardened him against the feeling.
"What right had you?" He heaved out of his heavy chest, offence mixing with guilt. He didn't know what to feel anymore. He only felt the resistance of the blade surging up his arm as steel met flesh. The horrible squelching sound as flesh tore beneath it. Her flesh. "To stand before me?"
"You would have died!" She sobbed a high pitched sob. "You would have died." She echoed. "Whether you took him to death with you or not, do you truly think they'll just watch you kill their general? You are not that dense, are you?"
"Still!" The Comissar finally released his grip on the edge of the table, grasping for her. Then you should have let me die.
Because he wanted to be nothing more than dead when he saw her jolting at his touch and erupting into an uncontrollable fit of wailing.
"No." His breath hitched. "Please. Breathe." He tried to console her. "Breathe."
"I thought I had lost you." She confessed between her wails in a volume uncaring if anyone could hear her.
"Your hatred had made you so... terribly... terribly ugly." She hick-huped. "I hated it. I hated it. And I hesitated too long before it was too late."
"No. Don't say that." He denied, feeling the tears streaming down his face too.
"I don't understand it. I don't want to understand it. He carved you ships. He paid for your tutors. He never missed a birthday without giving you some laughable extraordinary gift. Told you good night stories. Tugged you to sleep. And you... you... you.... you wanted to cut him down like that?" She yelled without meaning to.
"How? HOW?! How can hands so gentle like yours do something so monstrous?" She continued to wail, sinking to her knees. "How can a smile so kind like yours twist so madly?" She buried her head under her hands. "How can a heart so warm as yours turn so cold?"
The Comissar did not take his hands off her as he sank on his own knees, replaying the things she told him. He remembered them all, so painfully well and he felt nothing but warmth in each of them. Yes, not rage but warmth. Terrible. Fond. Warmth.
"I don't know." He finally answered.
He thought he knew why once.
For his father.
For justice.
It was honorable vengance to execute someone who left a man behind out of cowardice.
A man. A friend. The father of the child he took under his wing. His father.
Yes, he thought he knew why once.
But as she kneeled before him, with the boat and the picture between them, all he could think of was the uncle with the sly grin and another trinket behind his back and a wide eyed boy who's eyes twinkled in excitement.