Soren hesitated.
He almost nodded out of habit, because nodding was easier than thinking, and thinking was where the images lived, but something caught, something stubborn, the ugly, practical part of him that kept insisting he didn't get to offload his weight onto someone else just because he was tired.
'Can I really put this on her?'
Lilliana was strong, emotionally and otherwise, but she wasn't some all-knowing adult who could magically fix things, and the cruel truth was that they weren't that far apart in age, which meant if he was struggling like this, it wasn't fair to assume she would be untouched by it.
And truthfully… they weren't that close, not in the way his brain was trying to pretend they were, because trust, real trust, was something you earned over time, not something you clung to in desperation.
If asked who he trusted most at Stellaris Academy, Lilliana would come to mind immediately, but from her perspective… at best, they were acquaintances, and at worst, he was simply the troublemaking student she felt responsible for.
Before he could retreat fully into that line of thinking, Lilliana reached out.
Not abruptly or possessively, but with a quiet decisiveness, and her hand cupped his face, thumb near his cheekbone, guiding his gaze towards hers as if she were anchoring him back to the present.
"Soren, can you keep it?" she asked, and there it was, a small slip, the name without the title, the warmth no longer entirely hidden behind professionalism.
There was no pressure in her voice.
Just concern, steady and patient, as if she had already decided she wasn't leaving him here like this.
Something in his chest gave way.
"I killed someone today," he said, and the words spilt out before he could stop them, raw and plain, like naming it might make it fit in his mouth properly. "It was the first time."
His eyes were fixed on a point somewhere past her shoulder because looking directly at her felt too intimate for the ugliness he was about to hand her.
"I knew I'd have to one day, but… I didn't want to."
He swallowed, throat burning, his stomach turning with remembered copper.
Lilliana didn't interrupt, didn't flinch, but her fingers tightened slightly on his cheek as if she were holding him in place.
"But if I didn't, I would've died," Soren forced out, and his voice trembled despite his attempt to keep it even. "Not just me, Felix too."
His hands curled into the sleeves of his cloak, nails pressing against fabric, a small, pointless pain to keep him grounded.
"And Felix scared me," he admitted, the words tasting bitter, because it felt like betrayal to say it out loud. "The way he acted like it was normal, like it was… nothing. Like he'd done it before, or like it didn't matter, and I kept thinking—what if that's what he's really like? What if that's the real Felix and the rest is just—" he cut himself off, breath catching, "but if it weren't for him, I'd be dead."
Tears burned at the corners of his eyes, and he hated them immediately.
He hated that his body was doing this in front of her.
He hated that he had sat through pain and blood and still this was what broke him, but the alcohol had loosened whatever tight grip he normally kept on himself, and once the pressure had shifted, it wouldn't go back neatly.
"When I woke up in the infirmary, he was back to normal," Soren said, voice hoarse. "Like nothing happened. Like he'd just… stepped out for an errand. It made me feel like I was the strange one."
He brought his hands up to cover his face, because he couldn't stand the idea of her watching him like this, and he heard his own breath hitch, felt it wobble, felt the familiar slide towards panic.
"The worst part is," he continued, words muffled against his palms, "I don't even feel that guilty about killing them. I know why I did it, I'd do it again if it was that or dying, but it's not that, it's the feeling, the way it happened…"
He wiped at his eyes, trying to stop anything from spilling, but his hands were clumsy and slow.
"I don't know how I'm supposed to feel, Professor Roseblood," he said, and his voice cracked despite him trying to keep it steady, despite him hating the crack, hating the weakness. "I didn't know what to do, so I went drinking. I didn't want to go back to the dorm."
A weak, humourless laugh slipped out, more breath than sound.
"I almost made a really stupid mistake too."
The tears finally fell, hot and embarrassing, and when his words ran out, silence settled between them, heavy but not empty, because her presence filled it in a way he didn't deserve.
Soren's mind immediately reached for shame, for the instinctive recoil that came after any vulnerability.
'That was too much.'
And then…
Lilliana moved.
Before he could spiral further, before he could choke on the regret of speaking at all, Lilliana reached out and gently pulled his hands away from his face, not forcing, just guiding, as if she were reminding him he didn't have to hide from her to be allowed to exist.
He let her.
That alone felt like an admission.
Her expression was composed, the kind of composure that came from being raised to keep her feelings neat, but there was a tightness around her eyes that hadn't been there a moment ago, and the faintest press of her lips as if she were holding words back until she could choose the correct ones.
"I understand," she said quietly, then corrected herself as if precision mattered, as if she owed him honesty rather than comfort. "No… I cannot pretend I understand fully. I have not been in your exact position."
Her hand lingered near his, hesitant, then settled lightly over his knuckles, a careful, almost formal touch, warm despite how small it was.
"But what you are describing is not strange, and it is not shameful. Your body and mind are reacting to something severe, something you were not meant to treat casually."
Lilliana watched him for a moment longer, then, as if she reached the end of what she could say while sitting properly, she shifted, leaned closer, and wrapped her arms around him.
Tight.
Awkward.
Yet sincere.
It wasn't elegant, and it wasn't practised.
Her posture stiffened for half a second as if she was unsure where to put her hands, but then she held him firmly, arms locking around his shoulders like she had decided it didn't matter if it looked strange, because he needed it.
She was trying.
The realisation hit Soren with a small, startled warmth, and a faint smile surfaced on his face before he could stop it, because it was almost absurdly human, this noble professor who could hold herself like porcelain and still choose to hug him like she didn't care if she cracked.
He returned the hug carefully, arms going around her without pulling too hard, because he was very aware she was smaller than him, very aware of rank and propriety and how much she might be risking, and yet his body leaned into it anyway, greedier for comfort than he wanted to admit.
It had been a long time since anyone had held him like this.
The warmth eased something inside him that he hadn't known was clenched, and his breathing slowed without him having to force it.
"I'm not very good with words," Lilliana admitted, voice soft against his shoulder, and there was the familiar professional phrasing, the careful honesty, "and I don't wish to say something thoughtless simply because it sounds kind."
She pulled back just enough to look at him, her hands still on his arms, grounding him.
"But you are not 'weird', Soren," she said, and the way she used his name again was quiet, deliberate, like she wanted it to mean something. "There is nothing wrong with you for feeling disturbed by violence, even when it was necessary. If anything, the opposite would concern me far more."
Soren swallowed, blinking hard, the alcohol making every emotion feel too close to the surface.
"And Mr Felix is not wrong for reacting differently," Lilliana continued, tone shifting slightly more formal again, as if she were trying to be fair. "People grow up under different expectations, different… exposures. Some become accustomed sooner than others, sometimes not by choice."
Her gaze stayed steady on his, and for a moment she looked older than she had any right to, not in age, but in the weight behind her restraint.
"However," she added, and warmth seeped through the professionalism again, "the fact that you are hurting, that you are reflecting on it rather than discarding it, tells me you have not lost your humanity. It tells me you are kind, even when you are frightened."
She lifted a hand and brushed his cheek gently, fingers light as if she were afraid of startling him.
"So please, do not punish yourself for reacting like a person," Lilliana said, voice softer.
Soren let out a shaky breath that almost sounded like a laugh, except it wasn't funny, it was just… relief, thin and fragile.
He wiped his face with the back of his hand, more from habit than effectiveness, because his skin felt sticky with tears and the early morning air was cool enough to make them cling.
"I don't want to be like that," he admitted, quieter, the words scraping out of him, "like it's nothing."
"You don't have to become indifferent in order to survive," Lilliana replied immediately, and there was a firmness there that sounded less like a professor and more like a promise she was making to herself. "You only need to learn how to carry it without letting it consume you."
Soren stared at her, because that sounded… impossible, but it also sounded like the first sensible path anyone had offered him, something between pretending it didn't matter and drowning in it.
Lilliana's hand moved again, and this time she did something that made his stomach twist with an entirely different kind of discomfort; she smoothed his hair back from his forehead with a gentle, almost absent motion, like she had done it before, like it was natural to take care of him.
"Remember your promise," she said, voice returning to that careful, professional cadence, though her eyes softened. "Come to me before you decide that a bar is your only option, alright? I cannot prevent you from making choices, but I can at least ensure you are not making them alone and intoxicated."
A small, restrained smile touched her lips, and it looked different from her usual polite one, warmer, faintly self-conscious.
Soren's chest tightened again, because the thought of her searching for him, worrying, was both comforting and horrifying.
"Thank you," he said quietly, and he meant it in the plainest way, with none of his usual sarcasm, because if she hadn't found him he wasn't sure how the night would have ended, and that was the part he didn't want to examine too closely.
Lilliana studied him for a beat longer, then tilted her head slightly, as if remembering something, or as if she had been deliberately not asking until she was certain he was steady enough.
"So," she said, tone attempting casual professionalism and failing at the edges, "you mentioned a 'stupid mistake' you nearly made."
Soren froze so completely it was almost comical.
"Ah…" he managed, eloquent as ever, because how did you explain that you had stood outside a brothel at dawn considering whether to rent someone's warmth just to delay facing your own mind, how did you say it without sounding pathetic, or worse, without sounding like you were inviting judgement from the one person who hadn't judged you yet.
Lilliana's eyebrows rose a fraction, not accusatory, simply expectant, and there was a faint glimmer of something almost teasing under her concern, like she was trying to coax him back into the world where conversations could be normal.
He cleared his throat, looked away, then looked back, searching for any phrasing that didn't make him want to crawl under the bench.
Lilliana waited, patient.
Soren tried to speak.
Nothing coherent came out.
He ended up spending a long Sunday morning trying, and failing, to dodge that question.
————「❤︎」————