Amalia spent a night and half another day in the compound, mostly making herself useful by handling a few small tasks the warriors were unsuited for, and otherwise attempting to regain her equilibrium. For as long as she’d been alive, moving amongst her own people had been the best kind of meditation there was. The Qunari acted as if all had one mind, one soul, and one body. The separation between individuals was hardly present, not even conceptually. Everyone did what needed to be done, what must be done, with no hesitation or thought for personal feelings or inclinations. They had their bonds, of course, and their emotions. Nobody was without them. But such things were simply pale imitations, ghosts of the bond that drew them all together as a singularity.
For the first time, it brought her no solace. She could not help but feel as one apart, even though her mechanical movements integrated her inexorably into the whole. She walked betwixt her people, and it brought her nothing but a vague sense of unease, of dissonance. Perhaps it was because she moved with the Antaam, and not the rest. Yes… surely, that was the only reason.
Whatever it was, she found it deeply unsettling, and returned to her dwelling shortly thereafter. The viddathari were slightly more comfortable company, but all the same she made it clear that she was not going to be doing any teaching that day. Nor, in fact, was she planning on venturing out of the house at all. On anyone else, it might have been considered sulking, but Amalia did not sulk. And indeed, she was productive with her time, cleaning and sharpening every instrument of death she owned— and there were quite a number. These each found their way onto a hook in the wall of the room she’d claimed as hers, a small one at the end of the short hallway. There was a hard sleeping pallet in one corner, with a pile of blankets, as the occasional cold snap did not sit well with one so used to deserts and humid jungle.
Pushed against the opposite wall was a worktable, accented with various dried plants hanging in bundles from the ceiling. The only other pieces of furniture were a pair of stools and a shelving unit. It was clear to look at from the outside that despite the number of people she found herself surrounded by on a daily basis, her existence was quite solitary.
For once free of her armor, Amalia had donned only her robes and a pair of gloves, and was presently working on mashing several substances together with a mortar and pestle—one of the viddathari was suffering from a number of poisonous insect bites, and required a poultice. The repetitive motion helped keep her mind away from other things. She could feel her chains tugging at her again, the ones she’d told the Imekari about. Perhaps she should send her a letter, explain that no more lessons would be forthcoming? No… such a thing bore saying in person, to she and the Warden. She found, to her irritation but not her surprise, that she didn’t want to say them at all.
Ithilian had spent the majority of the day after the Fade business in the woods. Lia had insisted on joining him, and he found he was unable to refuse her. He suspected she meant to tell him something, but he couldn't keep the sour mood from his face, and it must have convinced her to keep it to herself, whatever it was. They hunted mostly in silence, which was honestly more effective, and brought back a large deer quicker than Ithilian would have liked.
Amalia's decision to remain indoors (he had asked around some of the children he knew to be her students and learned where she'd gone) had spared them the inevitable awkwardness of seeing one another, at least for the time being. Ithilian didn't really want to know what that was like, speaking to someone who had killed you in a dream, someone you thought you might have cared about more than was possible for not being an elf. Lia stopped him once they reached his home.
"I'll take care of the deer, you go... fix whatever's making you like this." He looked down at her, unsure whether or not to be annoyed that she would prod him like that, or happy that she would be able to read him like that. "Really, you're no fun at all like this. Go on, shoo. I've got this. We'll have a nice dinner when you get back." He didn't really know what else to do, so the corner of his mouth quirked up slightly, and he gave her a rough rub on the head, the way he used to do for his daughter. "If I don't come back, it's because the Qunari woman's murdered me," he said, quite honestly. Lia responded with a laugh, though.
"Hah! I bet she would beat you in a fight. Good luck!"
Once she could no longer see his face, Ithilian scowled, stepping quickly past the vhenadahl, though he pulled off his leather chestguard and ringmail shirt there and left them. It wasn't like anyone in the Alienage would steal from him. When he arrived in front of Amalia's door, he paused, a closed fist hanging in the air, but then he went through with it, hitting the door with three soft thuds.
"Amalia. The air in this city is thick enough without this hanging over it."
The door was answered, not by Amalia, but one of her viddathari, a solemn-eyed boy of perhaps fourteen, the pointed ears marking him as a native denizen of the Alienage. He regarded Ithilian steadily for a moment, bereft of the usual touch of fear or awe that the other elves showed him, then pushed the door open widely enough for him to step through. “She’s in the back,” the lad said, and then his eyes narrowed. “She hasn’t been speaking very much, though. You might not get her to talk to you.” He pointed to the hallway, then gestured left to indicate which door the man would want.
Amalia did not initially look up as he entered. Instead, she finished her crushing with a dull scrape of granite, then scooped the contents of the stone bowl onto what was clearly meant to be a bandage of some kind. The cloth was far from pristine, but she’d boiled it beforehand, so it was clean regardless. ”There is something you require of me, basra?” she asked flatly, setting the bowl aside for cleaning. She’d told her students not to let anyone in today; apparently, one of them thought he understood what she required more than she did. That would be a matter for some discussion later.
He knew what the word meant. Perhaps it was somewhat of a parallel to him referring to her as a shem. Something of that nature. It wasn't unexpected. He'd tried to kill her, after all. He wasn't sure what the best course of action here was. Should he shoot back at her? Should he beg her forgiveness? He didn't want to be enemies with her, that much he knew.
"I've never required anything of you, nor you me," he said. "I was deceived by a demon. I cannot deny my pride, certainly not now. What the demon promised in the dream seemed possible, it seemed real. I've wanted to see a place like that my entire life." He didn't really know what to do with himself; he was just sort of standing there in her doorway. He was distinctly aware of young ears listening in.
"I'm not infallible," he said, struggling to keep frustration from his voice. "No one ever trained me to resist demons. I... shit..." He ran a hand through his hair in frustration, resisting the urge to hit something inanimate. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say here. All I know is that this feels wrong. Everything." He gave up on words, leaning up against the wall and scowling at the floor like it had threatened him.
Amalia could not help but think he had misread her somewhat. Normally, she would not bother to correct something of that nature, but… here, she was driven to it. She looked up at last, and her eyes were hard, though given his own posture, he wouldn’t know. “It was never your motive I faulted,” she said simply. “You think I have somehow missed what you want? A world where your people can reclaim what is theirs? I’ve known that much for quite some time.” She paused, arranging the words as she wanted them. She was not one to spare feelings, not her own or anyone else’s, but she also did not desire to be ill understood. It was a delicate balance, one she was not certain she had mastered. ”I was displeased because you thought you had to turn to a hissra to get it. I had thought you began to understand what I have always believed—that you, not an illusion, will be enough to do what you need to.”
Speaking so plainly was clearly a bit odd for her, and her expression switched abruptly, this time to one of perplexity. She had intended not to speak at all, to say nothing and allow the volumes to be communicated in her silence, but that was unfair. ”And I was angry because you believed it when it told you that killing myself and the Warden would bring you what you wanted. Angry because you did not hesitate.” She was still angry about it, actually, but conveying this was unnecessary. The circumstances of the discussion made this obvious enough. ”I had believed you different. Someone who would not turn his back on the people who trusted him. I have believed so exactly thrice, and all three times, I have been mistaken. So perhaps I am as much to blame as you are.”
She stood, mouth dropping into a pronounced frown. Pacing the small room in a rare show of agitation, she completed two crossings of the space before she spoke again. “And then I gave it some thought, and perhaps I should be thanking you. I realized that what happened was inevitable. I thought about what you wanted, and I understood that, in order to obtain it, you would have to eliminate me eventually. I was not born with your history, your heritage, your morphology. I would be an obstacle to a world made for elves, because I am not one. Sooner or later, in that world’s advent, I must die. Unless you’d think to emulate the vile Tevinters and keep others as pets.”
Of course, then she’d given it yet more thought, and realized that in that, she may well be exactly the same. The Qun demanded its own expansion, its spread to all the corners of the world, and resistance was to be quashed. Either through death, or through assimilation. It was then, for the only time she could recall, that her step, perfectly in time with the heartbeat of her people, had faltered. And why? It had stood up against so much more than the life of one person before. Yet she’d raised her head, looked around, and been disquiet with what her eyes had shown her. She had learned, then, that part of herself still harbored hissra of her own, and the knowledge had terrified her. Her dauntless soul had wavered, and she’d almost been able to swear that every one of those soldiers had known it. So she’d fled it.
“And after that, I realized something I hadn’t known. In this, I am not like you. If the Ariqun appeared before me today and told me to slay you, to slay Imekari, to slay the Warden, I could not.” Her utter confusion was writ large over her face, and she stopped pacing, glancing across the room at him. The Qun had been the only constant in her life for so very long, the only thing that never wavered, the only thing that made her strong. But now she felt that it was tenuous in her hands, and she was absolutely afraid of that. She’d been taught that when things like this occurred, when she began to feel the urge to put individuals over the whole, she was being tempted, held under the sway of an illusion. So why did she feel as though the veil had been lifted instead?
“It feels wrong for me as well. And I do not understand it. Nothing I have ever been taught grants me understanding. Even knowing where you stand, what you would and will do, it persists.” Her tone had shifted, apprehension and wonder warring for control of it.
It was quite honestly too much. Ithilian ended up sliding to the floor, propping his head on one hand. Was he so weak? He didn't think so, and yet when it came down to it, he seemed to always think himself inadequate of the goal he'd been striving for. It just seemed so... impossible, especially when simply exacting small revenges was so much easier, so much more achievable. He was simply one man. He wasn't a leader of his kind, he wasn't an inspiration, he was just a killer and a hunter. He could feed them and kill their enemies, but he never truly believed he could inspire them to anything.
And Amalia... she was right. The reason he'd turned his arrow on her and not on Nostariel had nothing to do with how he felt about them. In the end, his instincts had come down to the determination that Nostariel was elven, and Amalia was not. Qunari or human it made no difference, the anatomy was still the same. The human race would still have the same effect on the elven one regardless. In Ithilian's version of a perfect future, Amalia could not exist, or at the very least, she needed to be far, far away. And in the Qun's version of a perfect future... well, it wasn't something that Ithilian wanted for elves. He'd always been a firm believer in isolationism as the only way to restore what the elves had lost. The Qun would not bring any of that back. It would rewrite it and destroy it altogether. So... where the hell did that leave them?
"I don't know what to do anymore," he admitted, shrugging weakly. He'd proven it time and time again: he was not as strong as everyone thought he was. He could not live up to expectations. He was weak. She was a fool to ever believe in him, wasn't she? "All I've ever done is fight for my people's future. I've left pieces of myself along the way. I've betrayed the trust of friends, and lost others entirely. And I have so little to show for it." He was now quite clearly on the brink of striking something.
”For all that many things are certain, few are ever simple,” she said heavily, taking a couple of steps forward and dropping into a crouch in front of him, so as to be on a level and capable of eye contact. There was something she wanted to say here, but she was not quite sure what it was. She was too perplexed about too many things to render any judgements today, even if she had been inclined to do so. ”You complicate my life, Ithilian. There’s little point in denying that. But I do not know what to make of that complication, and so for now, I won’t do anything.” There were far too many things she had yet to work through for her to yet contemplate burning this bridge, she had determined that much at the very least.
”For the moment, I invite you to do as I am going to: to live with your eyes open, see what you might, and then determine what it is that you want to do about it. I will expect only one thing of you in the meantime: that, if you determine that it has become your task to be rid of me, you do me the courtesy of informing me beforehand. I will not stay if I risk a knife in my back again. It is not… I am too weak to endure that.” The emphasis on the word was only very slight, but it was accompanied by an expression, too fleeting to read. ”Perhaps, when we are done, we will both have more to show for it than our scars.”
"I'm..." he started, but he hesitated, because the words seemed downright treasonous coming out of him. "I'm tired of the things I feel like I have to do for the Dalish. I never wanted you or anyone I care about to get hurt, but it seems like everything I do leads to that just the same." He stood, needing to get out, needing to think. There was a lot to absorb.
"I need some time to think about this, as you said. Maybe something to kill. Not you, of course, we already know who wins that fight." There was a hint of dark humor in his voice, but he suspected that now was not the time. "After all, it's clear that I need you here. Even if it complicates things." He didn't know what else to say. There wasn't anything that could be decided on the spot. At the moment, it didn't seem like there was a right decision to be made. Maybe that would change once he cleared his head.
Amalia stood as Ithilian did, nodding to his words. It would seem from the look of things that she had regained some of her lost equilibrium, for she no longer seemed upset or particularly puzzled. Even such small determinations as the one she had come to could do that. “Mer— Very well. I understand. If you should wish to share your determination with me, you know where I might be found.” It was certainly not a process she desired to rush, and she didn’t want him to rush his, either. Things this important deserved time and care.
As soon as he’d left, Amalia collapsed into her chair, staring vacantly at her forward wall. Just where had her precious certainty gone, and why now? It was, perhaps, the hardest question she’d ever had to ask herself.
For the first time, it brought her no solace. She could not help but feel as one apart, even though her mechanical movements integrated her inexorably into the whole. She walked betwixt her people, and it brought her nothing but a vague sense of unease, of dissonance. Perhaps it was because she moved with the Antaam, and not the rest. Yes… surely, that was the only reason.
Whatever it was, she found it deeply unsettling, and returned to her dwelling shortly thereafter. The viddathari were slightly more comfortable company, but all the same she made it clear that she was not going to be doing any teaching that day. Nor, in fact, was she planning on venturing out of the house at all. On anyone else, it might have been considered sulking, but Amalia did not sulk. And indeed, she was productive with her time, cleaning and sharpening every instrument of death she owned— and there were quite a number. These each found their way onto a hook in the wall of the room she’d claimed as hers, a small one at the end of the short hallway. There was a hard sleeping pallet in one corner, with a pile of blankets, as the occasional cold snap did not sit well with one so used to deserts and humid jungle.
Pushed against the opposite wall was a worktable, accented with various dried plants hanging in bundles from the ceiling. The only other pieces of furniture were a pair of stools and a shelving unit. It was clear to look at from the outside that despite the number of people she found herself surrounded by on a daily basis, her existence was quite solitary.
For once free of her armor, Amalia had donned only her robes and a pair of gloves, and was presently working on mashing several substances together with a mortar and pestle—one of the viddathari was suffering from a number of poisonous insect bites, and required a poultice. The repetitive motion helped keep her mind away from other things. She could feel her chains tugging at her again, the ones she’d told the Imekari about. Perhaps she should send her a letter, explain that no more lessons would be forthcoming? No… such a thing bore saying in person, to she and the Warden. She found, to her irritation but not her surprise, that she didn’t want to say them at all.
Ithilian had spent the majority of the day after the Fade business in the woods. Lia had insisted on joining him, and he found he was unable to refuse her. He suspected she meant to tell him something, but he couldn't keep the sour mood from his face, and it must have convinced her to keep it to herself, whatever it was. They hunted mostly in silence, which was honestly more effective, and brought back a large deer quicker than Ithilian would have liked.
Amalia's decision to remain indoors (he had asked around some of the children he knew to be her students and learned where she'd gone) had spared them the inevitable awkwardness of seeing one another, at least for the time being. Ithilian didn't really want to know what that was like, speaking to someone who had killed you in a dream, someone you thought you might have cared about more than was possible for not being an elf. Lia stopped him once they reached his home.
"I'll take care of the deer, you go... fix whatever's making you like this." He looked down at her, unsure whether or not to be annoyed that she would prod him like that, or happy that she would be able to read him like that. "Really, you're no fun at all like this. Go on, shoo. I've got this. We'll have a nice dinner when you get back." He didn't really know what else to do, so the corner of his mouth quirked up slightly, and he gave her a rough rub on the head, the way he used to do for his daughter. "If I don't come back, it's because the Qunari woman's murdered me," he said, quite honestly. Lia responded with a laugh, though.
"Hah! I bet she would beat you in a fight. Good luck!"
Once she could no longer see his face, Ithilian scowled, stepping quickly past the vhenadahl, though he pulled off his leather chestguard and ringmail shirt there and left them. It wasn't like anyone in the Alienage would steal from him. When he arrived in front of Amalia's door, he paused, a closed fist hanging in the air, but then he went through with it, hitting the door with three soft thuds.
"Amalia. The air in this city is thick enough without this hanging over it."
The door was answered, not by Amalia, but one of her viddathari, a solemn-eyed boy of perhaps fourteen, the pointed ears marking him as a native denizen of the Alienage. He regarded Ithilian steadily for a moment, bereft of the usual touch of fear or awe that the other elves showed him, then pushed the door open widely enough for him to step through. “She’s in the back,” the lad said, and then his eyes narrowed. “She hasn’t been speaking very much, though. You might not get her to talk to you.” He pointed to the hallway, then gestured left to indicate which door the man would want.
Amalia did not initially look up as he entered. Instead, she finished her crushing with a dull scrape of granite, then scooped the contents of the stone bowl onto what was clearly meant to be a bandage of some kind. The cloth was far from pristine, but she’d boiled it beforehand, so it was clean regardless. ”There is something you require of me, basra?” she asked flatly, setting the bowl aside for cleaning. She’d told her students not to let anyone in today; apparently, one of them thought he understood what she required more than she did. That would be a matter for some discussion later.
He knew what the word meant. Perhaps it was somewhat of a parallel to him referring to her as a shem. Something of that nature. It wasn't unexpected. He'd tried to kill her, after all. He wasn't sure what the best course of action here was. Should he shoot back at her? Should he beg her forgiveness? He didn't want to be enemies with her, that much he knew.
"I've never required anything of you, nor you me," he said. "I was deceived by a demon. I cannot deny my pride, certainly not now. What the demon promised in the dream seemed possible, it seemed real. I've wanted to see a place like that my entire life." He didn't really know what to do with himself; he was just sort of standing there in her doorway. He was distinctly aware of young ears listening in.
"I'm not infallible," he said, struggling to keep frustration from his voice. "No one ever trained me to resist demons. I... shit..." He ran a hand through his hair in frustration, resisting the urge to hit something inanimate. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say here. All I know is that this feels wrong. Everything." He gave up on words, leaning up against the wall and scowling at the floor like it had threatened him.
Amalia could not help but think he had misread her somewhat. Normally, she would not bother to correct something of that nature, but… here, she was driven to it. She looked up at last, and her eyes were hard, though given his own posture, he wouldn’t know. “It was never your motive I faulted,” she said simply. “You think I have somehow missed what you want? A world where your people can reclaim what is theirs? I’ve known that much for quite some time.” She paused, arranging the words as she wanted them. She was not one to spare feelings, not her own or anyone else’s, but she also did not desire to be ill understood. It was a delicate balance, one she was not certain she had mastered. ”I was displeased because you thought you had to turn to a hissra to get it. I had thought you began to understand what I have always believed—that you, not an illusion, will be enough to do what you need to.”
Speaking so plainly was clearly a bit odd for her, and her expression switched abruptly, this time to one of perplexity. She had intended not to speak at all, to say nothing and allow the volumes to be communicated in her silence, but that was unfair. ”And I was angry because you believed it when it told you that killing myself and the Warden would bring you what you wanted. Angry because you did not hesitate.” She was still angry about it, actually, but conveying this was unnecessary. The circumstances of the discussion made this obvious enough. ”I had believed you different. Someone who would not turn his back on the people who trusted him. I have believed so exactly thrice, and all three times, I have been mistaken. So perhaps I am as much to blame as you are.”
She stood, mouth dropping into a pronounced frown. Pacing the small room in a rare show of agitation, she completed two crossings of the space before she spoke again. “And then I gave it some thought, and perhaps I should be thanking you. I realized that what happened was inevitable. I thought about what you wanted, and I understood that, in order to obtain it, you would have to eliminate me eventually. I was not born with your history, your heritage, your morphology. I would be an obstacle to a world made for elves, because I am not one. Sooner or later, in that world’s advent, I must die. Unless you’d think to emulate the vile Tevinters and keep others as pets.”
Of course, then she’d given it yet more thought, and realized that in that, she may well be exactly the same. The Qun demanded its own expansion, its spread to all the corners of the world, and resistance was to be quashed. Either through death, or through assimilation. It was then, for the only time she could recall, that her step, perfectly in time with the heartbeat of her people, had faltered. And why? It had stood up against so much more than the life of one person before. Yet she’d raised her head, looked around, and been disquiet with what her eyes had shown her. She had learned, then, that part of herself still harbored hissra of her own, and the knowledge had terrified her. Her dauntless soul had wavered, and she’d almost been able to swear that every one of those soldiers had known it. So she’d fled it.
“And after that, I realized something I hadn’t known. In this, I am not like you. If the Ariqun appeared before me today and told me to slay you, to slay Imekari, to slay the Warden, I could not.” Her utter confusion was writ large over her face, and she stopped pacing, glancing across the room at him. The Qun had been the only constant in her life for so very long, the only thing that never wavered, the only thing that made her strong. But now she felt that it was tenuous in her hands, and she was absolutely afraid of that. She’d been taught that when things like this occurred, when she began to feel the urge to put individuals over the whole, she was being tempted, held under the sway of an illusion. So why did she feel as though the veil had been lifted instead?
“It feels wrong for me as well. And I do not understand it. Nothing I have ever been taught grants me understanding. Even knowing where you stand, what you would and will do, it persists.” Her tone had shifted, apprehension and wonder warring for control of it.
It was quite honestly too much. Ithilian ended up sliding to the floor, propping his head on one hand. Was he so weak? He didn't think so, and yet when it came down to it, he seemed to always think himself inadequate of the goal he'd been striving for. It just seemed so... impossible, especially when simply exacting small revenges was so much easier, so much more achievable. He was simply one man. He wasn't a leader of his kind, he wasn't an inspiration, he was just a killer and a hunter. He could feed them and kill their enemies, but he never truly believed he could inspire them to anything.
And Amalia... she was right. The reason he'd turned his arrow on her and not on Nostariel had nothing to do with how he felt about them. In the end, his instincts had come down to the determination that Nostariel was elven, and Amalia was not. Qunari or human it made no difference, the anatomy was still the same. The human race would still have the same effect on the elven one regardless. In Ithilian's version of a perfect future, Amalia could not exist, or at the very least, she needed to be far, far away. And in the Qun's version of a perfect future... well, it wasn't something that Ithilian wanted for elves. He'd always been a firm believer in isolationism as the only way to restore what the elves had lost. The Qun would not bring any of that back. It would rewrite it and destroy it altogether. So... where the hell did that leave them?
"I don't know what to do anymore," he admitted, shrugging weakly. He'd proven it time and time again: he was not as strong as everyone thought he was. He could not live up to expectations. He was weak. She was a fool to ever believe in him, wasn't she? "All I've ever done is fight for my people's future. I've left pieces of myself along the way. I've betrayed the trust of friends, and lost others entirely. And I have so little to show for it." He was now quite clearly on the brink of striking something.
”For all that many things are certain, few are ever simple,” she said heavily, taking a couple of steps forward and dropping into a crouch in front of him, so as to be on a level and capable of eye contact. There was something she wanted to say here, but she was not quite sure what it was. She was too perplexed about too many things to render any judgements today, even if she had been inclined to do so. ”You complicate my life, Ithilian. There’s little point in denying that. But I do not know what to make of that complication, and so for now, I won’t do anything.” There were far too many things she had yet to work through for her to yet contemplate burning this bridge, she had determined that much at the very least.
”For the moment, I invite you to do as I am going to: to live with your eyes open, see what you might, and then determine what it is that you want to do about it. I will expect only one thing of you in the meantime: that, if you determine that it has become your task to be rid of me, you do me the courtesy of informing me beforehand. I will not stay if I risk a knife in my back again. It is not… I am too weak to endure that.” The emphasis on the word was only very slight, but it was accompanied by an expression, too fleeting to read. ”Perhaps, when we are done, we will both have more to show for it than our scars.”
"I'm..." he started, but he hesitated, because the words seemed downright treasonous coming out of him. "I'm tired of the things I feel like I have to do for the Dalish. I never wanted you or anyone I care about to get hurt, but it seems like everything I do leads to that just the same." He stood, needing to get out, needing to think. There was a lot to absorb.
"I need some time to think about this, as you said. Maybe something to kill. Not you, of course, we already know who wins that fight." There was a hint of dark humor in his voice, but he suspected that now was not the time. "After all, it's clear that I need you here. Even if it complicates things." He didn't know what else to say. There wasn't anything that could be decided on the spot. At the moment, it didn't seem like there was a right decision to be made. Maybe that would change once he cleared his head.
Amalia stood as Ithilian did, nodding to his words. It would seem from the look of things that she had regained some of her lost equilibrium, for she no longer seemed upset or particularly puzzled. Even such small determinations as the one she had come to could do that. “Mer— Very well. I understand. If you should wish to share your determination with me, you know where I might be found.” It was certainly not a process she desired to rush, and she didn’t want him to rush his, either. Things this important deserved time and care.
As soon as he’d left, Amalia collapsed into her chair, staring vacantly at her forward wall. Just where had her precious certainty gone, and why now? It was, perhaps, the hardest question she’d ever had to ask herself.