Closed [The Sanctuary] Arise Sleeping Beauty

[Kavala]

Kavala blinked at him, her eye growing wide for a moment in surprise before slipping back into a more normal shape. Of all the things she expected him to say or could guess he would say, this was the very last statement she would have ever guessed he'd say, knowing him as she had. Ronan wasn't good with stating his thoughts and in her experience he was not very strong at talking about anything important. They were forgivable flaws in Kavala's book because he was such a kind devoted man, but it made telling him your true feelings on things very hard at times. It wasn't because he wasn't easy to talk too. He was. It was simply that in her experience he never really responded to the things she'd said.

She always seemed to know what to say, what to do, when things weren't being easy with life. But in this she was lost. A restless hand snaked forward and brushed her long hair out of her eyes, tucking it behind one ear. She shifted in her chair, the seat suddenly harder than she remembered, and eased the pressure on her rump.

Icy blue eyes studied his own and she caught her bottom lip in her teeth for a moment, unsure of what to do or what to say. She thought it was over. Usually when someone within their people said something like that - that something was done - they meant it. No, he had still meant it. She realized, replaying the words over and over in her mind. He was sorry, she heard it clearly, that he hadn't stood and fought. Okay. Kavala took a deep breath and nodded slowly. She lifted her hands, studied them a moment, and then reached out with one of them and took his hand.

"In a way, I'm glad you didn't. I can't compete with all the things in your life you have made commitments too already, Ronan. Everyone loves Sama'el - and are in love with him - and would follow him to the ends of the earth and back. I see that kind of leadership and I know I will never be in his class. You ride Watch for the Drykas. What is the needs of one when it comes to the needs of so many? And now there is Semele. A Goddess? I can see it in your eyes that you love her. You just shocked me. You rode out of here last year a free man with all the options in the world. And you rode back in here a bound man, having made every commitment possible under the sun except one to me. And what you offered... was leftovers." Kavala said softly, liquid pooling in her eyes. She promised herself, no demanded of herself, that she would not cry. And she didn't. But her eyes got over bright regardless.

"I know I am not human. I know that even half our people don't even consider me Drykas. I know that. I knew that when I still was a girl and rode with my father's Pavilion. But I have spent the last three years of my life not belonging to myself. I didn't belong to The Grass, not really, I belonged instead to the Council as a broodmare. I was sold, my contract, to an Akalak who bedded me and then left as soon as I showed signs of a pregnancy. Then I was given a season off... and my contract resold. This time the man negotiated and came by twice daily for sex. It didn't matter what I was up too, if I was in the middle of teaching a riding class or was even giving a surgery at the clinic. I had to stop, service him, and I could not complain. In the end, he lost control one day and his dark brother beat me nearly to death. It was such a violent situation that he punctured my lung, broke three ribs, dislocated my shoulder, and broke my jaw. It took me almost a season to talk to anyone again. And he left me pregnant. I was pregnant when I met you." She said, looking sad.

"The night of the Spring Djed Storm I lost the child even as I delivered my entire broodmare herd's foals all at once. My body still hasn't recovered. I was infused with so much wild djed that night. I don't know if that was it, or if it was that my body just couldn't take another pregnancy so soon... or if his violence had somehow harmed the child. That night, when Raiha and the other healers were here and saved my life, I promised myself that I would never settle for anyone that put me on their list as a visit. I want love. I need love. You are so very easy to love, Ronan. But all we'd ever have - with all your commitments - is a night here, a night there, maybe two if we are lucky stolen out of a season. It hurt me so badly, and I know I have no right to think you'd have done otherwise, but it hurt me so badly when you rode back in here and were suddenly a Sunsinger and a Watchman, and devoted to Semele utterly. Like I told you before, that left so little for anything else. And your life is already, even now, bouncing you between those first choices." Kavala said, shaking her head.

"I can love you with all my heart - and I absolutely do. I can need to be with you, want to be with you, and think of no one but you - and I do - but it doesn't change the reality that you made your decisions long before you returned here. And I wasn't in those plans, Ronan. I couldn't have been. From where I'm sitting there's absolutely nothing left for me. What you offer is nothing but scraps, visits here and there, and no real life together. And what I need is someone to stay here with me, share my dreams, to help me build what I've started here. I want a life with someone. We can do so much good through The Sanctuary. It is my Call. It always has been and I cannot leave it, not really. I told myself that I wasn't mad at you and that I didn't blame you - and I don't. But you made your choices. You did that all on your own. And you are Drykas through and through. Your vows to Sama'el and the Watch are what they are and were freely given. How... how was it even remotely fair to return with all that on your shoulders and do what you did? To tell me how you truly felt and want into my life as well?" She asked, looking at him deeply.

"I would love to be that woman, Ronan, that one that opened her doors to you and let you be all those things you have already chosen to be and yet always have a torch out for your return. I would love to make love to you for a few stolen hours when you can spare a day or two here or there in a season to swing by while you are riding circuit. But I know me. I really do know me. And I know what I need and that would be the absolute worst thing for me. I would die a small death every time you rode away. And in the end, while you spent all those nights with your family on the grass, surrounded by Sunsingers, I would be alone here. And that's not what i want or need. I need a partner. I need a mate that will stand at my side and make decisions together with me on what we can do to change the world. I know, for a fact, that I can change just as many Drykas lives from here as The Watch can on the grass. I don't have to ride circuit to do that. I guess, I had just hoped, when you rode off and then returned that things would have been different." Kavala said softly, taking a deep breath.

"But it seems you owe debts yourself. I do understand that. And I'm sorry I can't be more flexible. But I owe it to myself to know what I need and hold out for it. All those things I told you that you didn't acknowledge - my deepest darkest burdens. There was no comfort, no hug, no words of reassurance, Ronan. I needed those. But you just left my confessions hanging as if they didn't happen. I'm not even sure you heard me really. And if you can't listen, then how can I even feel comfortable speaking? And then there's Tasi. He's me. We're a package. In the end Tasival needs a real father. Not many will accept him for his skin is blue. But we both need someone to be here, not always here, but here more than gone. We need someone that will listen to us, hear what we are saying, accept our flaws and that will comfort us when we need the comfort. And to settle for anything less... its well, not what we need. You shouldn't be sorry for not fighting for me, Ronan. There was no battle here. There never will be. I think you understood that day that we had so very little chance... " She said, taking his hand and squeezing it between her pale scaled ones.

She still hadn't forgotten how he'd never reacted to everything she'd already told him about herself - especially the dark things - and leaving it as if she'd never spoken. And in some ways she was afraid of telling him more, and having it glossed over or unacknowledged again. But she needed him to know for her own piece of mind, even if he didn't react and didn't say anything. Before, when she'd confessed painful things, there'd been no response to that. She knew she took that risk now too. But at least she told him everything. At least, if he didn't hear or understand, it wasn't because she'd kept silent or hadn't tried.

"I meant it when I said go. Marry a drykas girl that can match you stride for stride on your exploits all across the Sea. One that isn't tied down with something like The Sanctuary or ruined physically for you already. I love you. And I will love you long after you've passed from this world. But as it is, I can't see a way it can work. I can't see how both of us can get what we want and need out of this. I hate to say it, Ronan, but how would it ever work?" She asked.

[Ronan]

The Konti looked taken aback at first, swallowing, and unsure of what to say. Ronan was surprised too. This was the first time he had ever seen her lost for words. Kavala had an answer or an argument for everything, or at least she had.

He tried to sit up a little more, shuffling until he was comfortable. He took another sip of the tea, put it down and met her icy blue eyes. They searched him for integrity, in this room of honesty inducing citrine. Though it perhaps didn't hold that quality exactly, he felt its raw power. Since he had been marked he had become more acutely aware of Semele's treasures and the energy they emitted.

She began to speak, and it seemed emotions were getting the better of her this time. It was a more intimate location than the open hills outside Riverfall. Here in the fractured candle light, it seemed all would be exposed to bare. He listened, and he accepted the criticisms like wounds to his flesh.

When she spoke of her baby, his face crumpled a little. All this time, he... he hadn't known. She had lost a baby. Torturous were the trials she had been through, and he had been so totally clueless. It was because he didn't ask. Because he didn't respond.

"I'm so sorry... I didn't know," he said in response to the baby, and then grew quiet again. The storm had taken more than her home. Much more. It part way explained her state when he had returned. He felt so isolated from her suddenly.

When she looked at him, it seemed so deep, as if she peered into his very soul. Ronan felt he could cry if he willed it, though he remained sat in sobriety. This time it began to sunk in, what he had done. Torn himself up into a million pieces, and came and offered Kavala the remnants. He was a bastard... a selfish bastard.

He glanced down, dowey eyed as she took hold of his hand. When she finally finished speaking, presenting a question to him, he thought long and hard on his own words. He was terrible at expressing himself. He always had been. Nothing came out as he imagined it - it was as if his own mouth twisted the words.

He met her eyes again, blinking softly. "It wasn't that I never listened, nor that I never understood. I heard all of it. Your life. Your broken, shattered life. I heard it all. But I... I couldn't allow myself to be so greatly moved by it, as I have done in the past. I have my own demons Kavala, and I have broken before. I needed only a few more straws, and they would break my back permanently. I'm not sure if you'll understand what I'm saying, but there were so many things from my past I had never dealt with. Not properly."

He breathed, remembering all their hushed conversations in the darkness. She had shared a lot, it was true. And it frightened him that he had seemed so ignorant to her plights.

"I couldn't face your problems too - I wasn't brave enough to become your shoulder to cry on. For that, I am regretful," he squeezed her hand a little. "I see what is it you see now. You know, it was only just now I noticed how tired you've been. How you've lost weight. How you're not looking after yourself, Kavala. And thinking back, you were that way when we last met, but I chose not to register that fact. Not to accept one more worry."

He swallowed against the lump in his throat.

"And that was why I gave myself to so many. Semele presented herself, and named me her charge. Sama'el offered me his brotherhood. The Watch offered me its strength. All of it, Kavala - and it's so stupid (why did that word feel so strange to him?) - is there to fill the gaps, and somehow, in my stupid brain, I thought it would redeem me. But then I realised, there is nothing to redeem. My brother didn't die because of me. It was a glassbeak. My parents didn't die because of me. It was a goddamned Zith."

Ronan's voice had grown angry and he thumped the bed with one fist. It felt like glass shards to his heart, but as the pain subsided there was an immense sense of release. Air rushed in to fill the strangled void.

"And now I am committed to them, that is true. I love you too, Kavala. With all my heart. Sometimes, I wish I didn't, but I do. And now you talk of past lives, and I recall a little. It seems fate has its own designs for us, whichever path we choose to walk." Finally, he let go of her hand, holding back a tear. "I want you to do what makes you happy. Spend time with Tasi, and build this place into something beyond anyone's wildest imaginings. You can do that - you have it in you. You are a wonderful woman, brimming with spirit. I only wish I was half the man."

He closed his eyes, tilting his head back a little. He could barely feel the pain now, only a dry sense in his mouth, as if he were nearly choking. His words were killing him, he knew.

"And I will be pleased to call you my friend through it all."

And forever think on what we could have been...

[Kavala]

His words echoed through her mind, wrapped around her psyche and infused her with a dark energy that was no stranger to her. "Your life. Your broken, shattered life." After all that she'd survived and how far she'd come from the remnants of her youth, those where the words he assigned to her existence? In the midst of The Sanctuary and what she'd built here, that was what he saw of her? Only that? That was how Ronan viewed her life? Kavala blinked, shock infusing her system. He thought she wanted to dump her problems on him and make him carry her own burden so she could have a lighter load? And so he'd run... so far and so fast... and burdened himself up so heavily that he couldn't have been put in that situation?

"You're wrong if you think I ever wanted you to ease any of my burdens. I took them all on willingly and they bring me great joy, Ronan. I didn't want you to be an ear to listen to or a shoulder to cry on. You misunderstood completely if that's what you thought. I just wanted someone to love, that would be around, that would understand me... not think me broken and shattered." Kavala said.

"I'm not that at all, Ronan. I'm strong. I'm far stronger than I'd have ever been without the past I've had. This place wouldn't exist without my existence. The Gods forged me. Just like they forge everything. The Sanctuary exists because I exist. I just told you those things because I wanted you to know me. Who I am inside and why... not because I hated me and wanted you to fix anything or feel responsible. I don't need fixing. I honestly don't." It was no wonder he ran if that's what he thought. Had she given that impression?

Acceptance was not so much to ask was it?

Now was not the time for anger though. And really couldn't be, not after all he'd said. Sure, there was anger there, but it was useless and unnecessary in the scenario they were in. She was grateful that he was finally talking to her - even if it was after the fact and too late for both of them.

"I would have liked to understand about your past, Ronan, and about all the straws you talk about. But you talk so very little specifically about yourself. I don't know what your past is like other than you had a home... parents, a brother, and they all died. It happens among our people. Far too often if you ask me. I wanted to talk more, but you would say nothing, even when I've asked. Don't you understand that in good relationships people share these things and the burden is never doubled, its instead halved? That's what family does for people. All I wanted to be was your family, not your burden. I know you haven't had one for a long time... and even when you were Irvyn you didn't have one, but you should give it a try sometime Ronan. It's a blessing, not a curse. And I'm not talking about a family with a Pavilion of all males. That's safe. That's easy. I'm talking about a real family."
The Konti said softly, starting to cry now.

"It would have broken my heart...." Wasn't it already broke though? "... to add to your sorrows." Kavala said.

"I think in a lot of ways I just needed you to acknowledge the things I told you and to not have them matter to you. I'm so sorry I gave you the wrong idea about so many things. I'm horrified that you thought a relationship with me would mean you would have to take on so much more. Maybe fix things... things I don't think are broken at all. Everything is as it should be in my life. Absolutely everything, maybe moreso now that I realize you have no desire to be the one I want at my side even though we share feelings for each other. I can let go now, look elsewhere, because I hate being alone and I'm not going to stop looking until I find someone who will let me make them happy, take care of them, and be their support structure. That's all I ever wanted to be for you, Ronan." Kavala said, convinced herself of the validity of her words.

"When it's the right thing to do, it's easy to do that thing. Love should be easy. It's a gift from Cheva and one that comes with responsibility you need to assume along with it. When its hard like this, its wrong. When the burdens are not ones you are willing to take on, then its time to move on. I'm not sure why this is so hard. It never had to be. Not at all." She said, releasing his hand and sitting up.

"I hope we can be better at being friends than we ever were at this... this whatever this is." She added, her words tasting bitter in her own mind. Your broken, shattered life. Petch that. He had no idea. And if he couldn't appreciate her for her strengths and only saw her weaknesses... then so be it.

"And this... I'm like this now because I've been pushing hard. I don't have to push hard for much longer though. The work is almost done. My people are almost safe. Once they are, I can rest, put weight back on, and think about things like looks. But I put them first. Before me. Because that's where they needed to be." She said, addressing the weight loss and the way she looked finally.

Unlike him, she held no tears back. She didn't need too. Any tears Kavala felt for the Sunsinger had long dried up with his confession. He thought her weak. He thought her a burden. He didn't want to take on such things. Kavala actually didn't like this new Ronan. Not at all. He wasn't anything like the Windsong she'd come to know and love. And maybe that made it easier, in the end, for this to be the end.

And maybe, in the end, that's what he'd intended.

[Ronan]

Ronan listened as she countered everything he had said. He wished she had seen those words for what they were - for what they meant them to be - but again, Kavala misunderstood, thinking them insults to her life.

He closed his eyes and looked up to the ceiling. It was difficult. He could barely take her words anymore, such were they retaliations against everything he had said. And all he had wanted was to end all of this amicably.

"That... that isn't how I see it. Not at all."

His voice was croaky, probably because of the tea and the grogginess that sweltered inside him. But there was annoyance and denial in his voice too. He just wanted her to understand, and it would all be better. But no matter how hard he tried to voice the way he was feeling, it felt like she wouldn't understand.

"You misunderstand me, Kavala... you twist my words. You make all sorts of assumptions, and then finalise your decisions - and you do that all of your own accord."

Gods!

"I know it sounds cowardly. Don't you think that ran through my mind for eternity? I nearly killed Tairell riding her so hard - because I was thinking about you. Us. That's why I just tried to explain it all to you, but...

"I don't think you'll ever leave my mind Kavala. I'm no good with words... I never have been. But I feel a lot for you, and I can't deny those feelings, even if I try. And I would be honoured to be your friend. Truly. I really would. But you make it difficult Kav... you think I don't listen to you. But sometimes, sometimes you don't listen to others either. You hear your own convictions."

He looked to her, swallowing miserably. There. He'd said what needed to be said.

[Kavala]

Kavala still sat with him, still listened, and then in the end nodded to what he said. It was true that she did often make assumptions and take a stance almost prematurely in situations. It was one of her defenses.

"You are right. I do those things. Maybe you listen and understand a lot more than you seem." She said quietly, without sarcasm and with acceptance and agreement. She reached out and touched his shoulder and studied his eyes, her blue ones switching from his left eye to his right eye, glancing back and forth between them trying to read his thoughts.

Humans were so hard for her. Animals were so much easier.

"I don't think you are a coward, Ronan. Not at all. The things you've just told me take a lot of courage to admit. They aren't the words of someone who's afraid and craven. They are the words of someone scared and frustrated. I'm so sorry I do that to you. It is not my intention. And I think about you too, all the time. I wonder where you are, what you are doing, and if you are safe and well. There's not a day goes by that I don't stop a dozen times and wonder." She stopped her soft crying then, turning her head to wipe her eyes on her shoulders... first the left then the right.

"But I want to understand. I really do. You say I misunderstand. That I twist your words. What did I get wrong? I'm sorry I'm so terrible at this. Help me understand." Kavala said. She wanted to know how she misunderstood. "Your life. Your broken, shattered life." The words rang in hr mind again.

[Ronan]

FInally. She seemed to give him a chance, studying him again in that way she often did. Then he watched her wipe her gathering tears on her shoulders. There was so much pent up emotion between them. Too much.

Did the past bind to them that too? Waterfalls of tears, and aching hearts.

He was glad she didn't think him a coward though. He had been, but now he trained every day, trying to better and change himself. As craven as he had been, the Drykas inside him still roared. It still fought like the best of them.

"You are not terrible," he finally said softly, "not at all. I... I didn't mean that you are broken still. I meant that you have suffered pain like me. But I see it Kavala - I see that it made you a stronger and brighter person. Wise. Beautiful. Always, Kav.

"And I did not see your pains as a burden on me. Not at all. It was just a bad time for me, and I was craven in that respect, for I could not handle it all. But I would gladly accept them now, and hear you out. It does not make our relationship troublesome. I see now that it would half the problem."

He reached out for her, hand touching the side of her face affectionately.

"I see it all. Light. Brilliant light."

[Kavala]

She watched him quietly. Part of her understood that in this, she just needed to listen. If Ronan was in the mood to talk, it was her job to simply quiet her mind and hear what he had to say. She didn't allow herself to stop, fixate on something he'd said, like she had with his comment about her life. Instead she simply pushed it aside, as easily as she did the covers tucked in around him, and let him keep speaking. Had he said those things to her days ago, none of the mess they were in would have happened.

Listening was a skill, and she let him talk. She didn't judge or fixate or ask questions. Kavala simply watched him speak, let his words wash over her - sooth her - and finally when he paused she bent down and pulled first one boot off then the next, sliding into bed with him, fully dressed in her leathers. "I'm not sure if friends are supposed to do this..." She said softly, then curled up at his side, laying her scaled cheek across his heart where his heartbeat soothed her.

She draped an arm loosely across his waist, and let one leather encased leg drape over his own. Kavala was warm and smelled of horses and leather. Her white silk hair covered his shoulder and tangled down on the arm she'd tucked under to curl up at his side. The black leathers she wore encased her protectively, but they were butter soft from being oiled and well cared for.

It was an unexpected move. It was a surrender. The Konti had decided to stop being so tough, so strong, and simply be.

"I don't want to argue anymore." She said softly. "It's nice just to see you here. And I'm so glad you are alive. I've missed you and was so scared of what we'd find when Larik came screaming in sounding the alarm. I'm so thankful he was on patrol and that we had fast horses. You need to be careful, so much more careful, Ronan. If nothing else, the Sunsingers need you. I need you. Even if we are only to be friends." She said, laying quietly against him.

The two of them had never made love in the years they had known each other. But as always, with them, there was a bond between them that somehow went deeper. Kavala understood a bit more about it now, though she knew Ronan perhaps still didn't remember. She smiled a slightly painful smile against the shelter of his chest. Doomed. The man was doomed. Once upon a time he'd put all her pieces together in a shape that had pleased him and then fell hopelessly and madly in love with her. And now that here she was, in essence wearing the same body, only Konti not kelvic, not human. And still obsessed about him, still unwilling to give him up, even though it was actually the one thing she needed to do.

[Ronan]

He shuffled into a comfortable position as Kavala climbed alongside him, draping a leg over his. Her touch was comforting. And she was right... friends didn't curl up in the hay, stark naked, and feel so warm and complete. That was more than friendship. Could they ever truly deny what they were?

There was a softening in her character. He had noticed the change, since she had been strongly on the defensive at first. Now she opened up to him a little more, listening more than she spoke. He ran a hand through her hair that splayed across his shoulder.

"I don't want to argue either," he agreed, matching the soothingness of her voice. It brought the whole atmosphere down to a new, more delicate level. Her quiet berating set his eyes back to the bed. It was a risk you took, traversing the Grasses. But perhaps he shouldn't have returned alone.

Of course! He had forgotten the whole reason for his being here. He shuffled back up in the bed again, looking down at her face. "I'm sorry... I completely forgot to explain why I was even bound for Riverfall. I came as a herald of Endrykas, to bring news of the Pox. It's terrible, Kav, and it's spreading through the Drykas. Some have died. Sam thought it would be wise to let someone in Riverfall know - he fears it may spread beyond Endrykas."

Coughing, he realised he had probably scared her.

"I'm clean," he said softly, raising hands in mock mercy. "Promise. I'm sorry to change the subject to such bad tidings. But there, now you know."

Relieved, he sank back down a little, his arm coming round her. When they lay like this, he didn't want to get up again. He felt like he could lie with her forever. And he remembered a little. Her creator? Had he lain with her then? He was confused as to what was dream, and what was memory. It frightened him a little, knowing fate bound people beyond their choices in their current life.

He pulled his arm tighter, and moved slightly so he could kiss the top of her head.

Whatever they were, he liked it, and he never wanted to lose it. For once, he cared little for titles and labels. Friends. Lovers. Or none of those. It mattered not.

[Kavala]

She lay where she was a moment longer, lingering, not wanting to hear what he said. His words rang out against what others had said at the twentieth bell feast just recently. A letter from Zeltiva had come. There was serious illness there. And Kavala had warned it could spread, that they needed to be ready, and now it was among the Drykas?

Slowly, she sat up. It was a measured deliberate movement. Her whole body was cautious and concerned. "Illness always follows disaster. Will this Djed Storm ever stop cascading repercussions?" She said softly and shifted so she was fully sitting up again, perched on the side of his bed not lying with him.

"Ronan, that is terrible news. The worst you could have brought. Elem Bree had a letter from a Konti in Zeltiva and there's sickness there. We'd talked about how we could help, but its too far. I had tossed out the idea for an isolation chamber and a lab that studies disease, but we'd need shielders and folks in the know about sanitation to pull it off. Is there any way we can help? Any way at all?" She asked, concerned. "It will hit Riverfall as well. These things always travel around. IS anyone we know ill? What else can you tell me about it? You said it was a pox. Is it like anything we know as a pox now or is it something different? Something maybe the Djed storm started?" She asked, suddenly very very concerned.

"Gods, there's so much to do. Too much. We'll need to get ready, and create that lab beneath the clinic. I should have done it before now, but there's been no time. Now it seems were out of time. Thanks for bringing the news Ronan. Now I understand why you rode alone." The Konti said, suddenly restless. She rose to her feet and began pacing barefoot, waiting for Ronan's answers.

"Roughly thirty days... that's all the warning we had... but its enough. It has to be enough." The Konti swore softly.

[Ronan]

He was slightly taken aback by her reaction. She sat up, so full of thought, seemingly deciding there were a million things she now needed to do. It was all on her again. She was not the leader of Riverfall. She pressed too much authority on her shoulders.

The mention of Zeltiva did scare him though. Sickness elsewhere, and so far away, a world from the Cyphrus grasses. He wondered if it was connected, or if it was just happenstance. It was hard to say.

"I am not sure, Kavala. Sama'el sent me as a messenger only, I have little experience in things like this." She was the medic after all. "It hasn't touched our Pavilion yet, but I have heard people talking. It starts as sickness, and develops into a thick, strong fever. Those who died... they never got up again from that fever."

He strained to reach out a little, placing a hand onto her arm affectionately.

"But please stay calm. Don't stress yourself too much though, Kavala. I know you will help, and that is good, but it isn't all on your shoulders."

He gave her a smile. As if such a simple action could help.

"You need to remember that sometimes, I think."