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[ It takes him some time to figure out where this Konoha lives. Not for lack of trying, nor from dragging his feet over it. Just– he'd meant to ask Matthias, after they had their conversation, but then the Fjerdan had disappeared. Gone, without a trace. The same had happened with Nina and Wylan, and then eventually, Jesper.

Suffice to say, he's spent the last couple weeks looking for people he knows aren't here any longer.

But just like anything he does, he swallows the bitter taste of disappointment (so familiar) and moves on. He said he'd return the knife he'd stolen on a lark, so he will. After all, it's not like it has any use to him.

So, this is how he ends up at Konoha's front door, rapping on the door briskly. ]

[Konoha wasn’t expecting visitors.

The house that is normally open along the sides to let in light and a breeze has had the rain shutters up for weeks to cut out the cold, so there’s no seeing her guests as they make their way along the path from the Groves main road through the small farmstead. Instead it’s the knock that pulls her attention from her sewing, humming along by herself as she focuses just on the weave of the needle and thread.

Raising her voice for a short “coming!”, Konoha throws off her quilt and rises to her feet with a clatter of hooves, brushing stray threads off her forelegs as she makes her way to the door, sliding it open with a smile of greeting to reveal-

The man she’d bumped into, that day in Third. The man Matthias had said was a skilled thief, a dangerous person. A... demjin.

There, at her door, and she momentarily lost for words, the smile slowly fading away.

[ The sounds are muffled, but he hears her acknowledgement from behind the door. And then the creaking motions of her getting up from what she had been occupied by, hooves clicking closer. No rug, he notes idly, wondering if it's more of a hassle to keep clean with tracking four times the amount of dust in.

It's not long before the door swings open, Konoha's sunny smile dropping almost immediately. Kaz doesn't waste any time, simply produces her knife from one of his sleeves and holds it out in the palm of his hand. ]

Here.

[It’s her knife.

Before anything else can register, she reaches out to take it. A bit too sharp a movement, a bit too sudden to be anything like how she’d normally (politely) grab something offered to her, but it’s right there and before it can vanish in his sleeve again she has it clutched right to her breast, still struggling for words.

So he had taken it. She hadn’t checked his sleeves, had she? He’d lied so well that she had ended up feeling awful for even suspecting him, and now-]

... What did you want for it? Matthias didn’t say.

[Because Matthias was gone, and she’d assumed her chance of getting the knife back along with him. It’s so familiar in her hand, the wooden sheath and boar tusk belt strap of the small all-uses blade her father had bought from a Matagi, carved her favorite flowers onto the side before gifting it to her when she began work on the mountain yard.

It was just a knife... but it was the only thing she had left of a father she wasn’t sure she’d ever see again, even with as much as she smiled as hoped and said they would.]

[ He doesn't flinch or pull away when she takes it out of his hand so suddenly. Really, he'd expected it as much. This meant something to her, didn't it? Some emotional connection to people that weren't here.

(Maybe he should've done something like that before—no, he's not thinking about that right now). ]

Nothing. I owed him a favor.

[ Not really, but he doesn't want anyone to get used to the idea that he would just give something back because they asked nicely. ]

[It's written all over her face. How much the knife meant to her, how relieved she was to have it back, how conflicted she felt to know he'd actually been the one to steal it... and how devastated she was that Matthias wasn't here any longer.

He was gone.]

Have you...

[She tries to open her mouth to speak, tries to find the words, but for a moment they just escape her, and her fingers curl tight around the carved sheath in her hand, struggling to find them. There wasn't a single ounce of hope here to cling to, because Matthias... he was dead. She couldn't reach for being happy that he'd returned home, being glad for him able to return to his life...]

Have you sent him off yet?

[Matthias had called this man a demon. He'd said they weren't exactly friends. But he was still someone from his world...

[ Deed done, he's ready to go. He doesn't imagine she has any reason to continue conversing with someone who'd taken something precious from her. Even if he'd returned it. Kaz turns away, having nothing else left to offer. He knows he's not a conversationalist.

Apparently, she has other ideas. It surprises him, that this is the question she asks, not the obvious one of why?

Pausing, he looks down at the ground, seeming to stare through it. ]

No mourners, no funerals.

[ It's what they all agreed on, during the Ice Court job and after. The words feel hollow now, ashy in his mouth. ]

... I've heard that before.

[On that night at the teahouse, when she'd sent off a glowing lantern and taught Matthias how to do his own. When she'd been the closest she'd gotten to figuring out his death on her own, where she'd stopped just shy of the revelation until Nina had laid the truth out at her hooves.

And whether it was then, or no-]

I don't like it.

[She won't say she thinks it's stupid, won't insult his and this man's strange pact, but the idea of intentionally not mourning the passing of someone... Even thinking he's going to refuse, that he might mock her for her sentimentality... Konoha's fingers tighten even more white-knuckled on the blade in her hands, a bit of emotion choking up her words.]

I promised I'd honor him after he was gone... If you want to leave an offering, there's space.

You can do whatever you like.

[ He isn't going to rain on her parade or stop her from mourning however she wants. But while part of him wants to take the chance she's offered, to actually say something or do something about Matthias' passing, he's grown up in the Barrel for too many years. Seen how many bodies and people just disappear, how none of them have really been buried since the Queen Lady's plague all those years ago.

More to the point: he's not good at saying good bye. It's easier to simply let go, even though he's coming to terms with being absolute shit at that too. ]

I said my piece the first time around. [ He hadn't, not out loud. Doing it again though, it's almost unthinkable. No one should have to do this twice. ]

[The first time, he said. The first time, but-]

But now it's the second time.

[And how many people had the chance to buy twice? To hurt people twice... It seems so unfair, even if she's the lucky one who only has to mourn him once.

Konoha has lost people before, she's seen death, she's seen the aftermath of the wars, seen jinba who's limbs had been lopped from their shoulders, and still she's not hardened. She cries easily, she feels everything, and she can't stop it now, either, tears welling up in her eyes and the attempt to hold them back in front of a man who surely wouldn't appreciate them leaking into her voice.

Why was she even asking him? He'd stolen from her, for no reason, Matthias hadn't even said he was a friend, but-]

Should I tell him you came by, at least... ?

[But he was someone else who'd known the person she was missing.]

It doesn't matter, when they're gone, they're gone.

[ That comes out harsher than he wants, originally aiming for neutrality. Instead, there's an edge to his response, like she's close to hitting a nerve that he doesn't want to acknowledge. The conversation is too close to one he's had with himself over the years; should he mourn Jordie? Would it even matter? He hadn't had any time to do so, when he'd dragged his sorry self out of the harbor. All he'd felt then was cold and numb.

Not soon after, the anger set in. He hasn't let it go. ]

No, he doesn't need my name following wherever he's going.

[Though Konoha flinches a little in the face of the anger in his voice, the dismissal she hears there... Konoha stands her ground. It isn't like she hasn't heard similar, and worse, before. She'd grown up in an era where humans kept jinba as slaves. She's met people who spoke to her as if she were an animal.

It may have made her strong, striving to smile through hardship. But it hadn't made her into someone who couldn't be hurt by such things.]

... I don't believe that.

[She couldn't. Didn't want to believe in a world where the spirits that had passed didn't still exist. Didn't want to think that the parents that had brought her into this world only to succumb to its cruelty didn't get to see that at least she had managed to find a little happiness.

Didn't want to believe that Matthias was just... gone.

But she also knows that her words... How could they make someone else believe? She doesn't know this man well enough to reliably reach him... and so her gaze drops again, demurs in anticipation of defeat.]

... But thank you, for honoring your word to him even though he's not here any longer.

I'm not here to convert you.

[ He knows he's a cynic, knows he's seen too much and let it scrape him raw. It's why people like Konoha or Inej are too good for him. They've managed to hold on to the positives, to keep their heads up without feeling the need to drag those who cross them down into the dirt. Maybe he was like that once; too long ago for him to remember with any clarity. When he thinks of his younger self, all he sees is a stupid boy who should've known better. ]

He deserved better. [ That, at least, is said with some softened edges. It's simply the truth. Matthias had so much ahead of him, so many things he could do or opinions he could change. Nina is carrying on some of it, but it just isn't the same. ]

[He deserved better.

Konoha hangs her head, unable to raise it despite her intent to. Matthias wouldn't want her to cry. She knew that. But knowing it and being able to do it were two different things, and all she can think about now is that he's dead, and she's standing her alive holding what was basically a gift from beyond the grave.

He'd had a chance here, to live again... and instead of sending home someone who had a life to return to... He'd been lost instead. One of the first people she'd met in this world, who had lent her his sleeve to dry her tears and tried to help her make sense of a world that terrified her with its strangeness. One of the friends she had made that helped her feel like it wasn't so bad, being stuck in this place far from home. Someone who'd taught her things, and told her stories, and called her his friend.

So she tries, she does, reaching up to wipe her tears with her own sleeve, but she can't stop the flow now that it's started, emotion choking up her reply.]

Yeah... He did...

[He really did.]

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