"Aleksei," Aleksei River. About a far from Aeryn Karolinger as one could get, save for the dangerous power that both of them contained within them at the end. It was at the beginning with Aleksei too, of course. "Someday you're going to have to explain to me just how all that worked. Were you trying to tell us something with that?" Had they neglected her? Maybe they had neglected her. His tone was light enough suddenly. "Someday, but not now." It didn't last.
It didn't matter now because she was saying what she saying and thinking what she was thinking. "Agony, listen. If you don't want to be here, if it's not worth it to you, don't stay for my sake. I'd rather you be happy then miserable here. This is a place worth fighting for, but not just for the sake of it. Nothing for the sake of it." Not even living. He had made that clear. "As for me? They might kill me next month or next year, but they're not coming to kill me now. If they wanted to, they would have done so that day. It's bad out there, but we turned the corner from crisis to actually dealing with it. We might not make it through the winter, but we stood up there and reclaimed our lives," her life at least. Glenn and Genny's weren't on the line til the speech began. "Now it's up to what we do next."