ladycousland:

                    She can’t even  l o o k  at him. 

      After all the time she’s spent chewing over the words
      while traveling from Highever to Ostagar, waiting for
      the moment when she could confide in her brothers
      the horror she witnessed in their absence, she’s yet 
      to come up with a way to give him what he’s asking
      for. The truth is trapped somewhere behind her ribs 
      or lodged at the base of her throat, making it difficult
      to breathe.

      Inara cannot force it past clenched teeth grinding the
      words as if they might become a powder more easily
      expelled. Even when he shouts, she hardly seems to
      hear him. It’s not until he begs in a tone as broken up 
      as she is inside that Inara flinches and digs her nails 
      into her upper arms, imagining the grip is the  o n l y  
      thing preventing her from falling all to  p i e c e s. 

                 “—-I’m sorry, Bae.” I’m sorry I couldn’t protect them. 
                  She swallows a scream that has been tearing up her
                  throat since that night. “Just me. It was just me. I’m
                  the only one who didn’t—”

                                                                                           D i e .

His heart sinks. This is what true pain feels like,  this is the 
sting of a loss he may never truly recover from. They are all
dead.  From  Father  right down  to Oren,  and suddenly  he 
feels such a failure, such a terrible excuse for a son. If only
he had  been there.  Perhaps things would  have ended up
differently,  perhaps he could  have turned the tide,  helped 
save… anybody.

                                    Or he could have gotten himself killed.
                                    But how  much different would  that be?
                                    This already feels  so much like dying.

        “No,”  he manages,  and only barely.  He wishes she’d
not told him,  not uttered a single  word of this horrific news…
But he is not a child any longer,  and he must  face the real
world as his father would have. Bravely. Even though he so
very desperately wants to break.

Thoughts suddenly shift  to their brother,  to the last of their
family, out in the Wilds. If he dies…  It’s a thought Balfour is
barely able to stomach, one that honestly terrifies the soon-
to-be Warden to his very core.

                                                    The Cousland line, so strong,
                                                    so noble…  dropping like flies.

        "I will kill that traitorous bastard,“  he swears.  Just like
that,  all the young  has left him,  replaced with  a worn and
broken  soul.  "Damn this  blighted Joining.  I mean  to find
Fergus   and  collect   the  head  of   every  damned   Howe.”