"No." Ripped of him, wrenched. Viscera of his sincerity still covering the stillborn. He thinks, if the precepts of Cloud Recesses did not mandate honesty in all ways, at all turns, he would still afford it here: the man who inflicts pain must know. When Wen Qing bore the spread of her scale-poxed back to him, he knew.

As the pale light of a grey sky swallows the fractured marble, he finds his place on the floors again, one leg twinning the next. Proper, gentle presentation — kneeling to form. Like this, from motes of distance, Wrath need not strain his arm in a weapon's pull, to release the arro — bullet.

He has been, so often, the more courageous man of a contingent. And now, fingers curling, clasping, caging his fist, he steels himself to be brave again.

"Do it all the same." What needs done will be done.