By the time their charge stirs, they have a fire going, and a pot of stew in the middle of being made. It's made from a combination of hastily transported provisions and some local wildlife that met their end on the wrong end of a dragoon's lance.

"Ow," she declares, before even opening her eyes.

"Morning, sunshine."

This is going to be hilarious.

That sentence barely even registers before she's sitting up with a dagger in her hand looking ready to use it.

... Then she spots Cynric.

"Uh?"

"That was mean," says Cynric, to Jacqueline. Then to the woman who just got startled awake, in a much more gentle tone: "Hey, hey, easy, it's okay. I've got no idea what she's about, but you're not in Ishgardian hands, she just. Showed up and wanted to help take care of you. It has been very confusing."

"Not... in Ishgardian hands," she repeats, slowly, sounding like just saying that sentence aloud is not enough to make her believe it. "In... a cave. With the Azure Dragoon. I. Why."

"Maybe I fell in love with you and wanted to come confess my feelings to you."

"What."

"Eat up," she says, gesturing towards the stew. "You probably need it."

"It's actually not ready yet," says Cynric, helpfully, "needs a bit longer for all of the meat to cook through."

"No, no, go back to that other thing, that. The words you said did not make sense but you sounded weirdly serious about them?"

Jacqueline shrugs. "Who knows. But you said lots of things, expecting them to fall on deaf ears, didn't you? Well, when you spend a decade listening to this monomaniacal dragon talk incessantly about revenge," she continues, tapping the crystallised eye attached to her shoulder a third time, "it doesn't take a genius to suspect that maybe the story the church feeds us is lies and maybe it was Ishgard that started this mess in the first place. I think that is the more important bit."

"... I don't. I don't have enough head for this right now. Ow." She flops back onto the bedroll and stares at the cave's ceiling. A little dazed, she says: "Come by again later, Vethrione's out of town for the week, can I take a message for when she returns."

"Did. She. Recruit you? Accidentally?" says Cynric, blinking.

"Oh, no, nothing that big, I still want to mount Nidhogg's head on a wall. ...a castle wall, probably. On the outside."

“Buuuuut you do not want to drag the both of us off to a cramped Ishgardian jail cell to await our execution for heresy?”

"I do not love the thing where we have killed maybe a few hundred dragons, total, and they've killed thousands upon thousands of us over the war and you're aiding them... but no, I don't. Not right now."

“We are not thrilled at the killing of thousands upon thousands of people either,” points out Cynric. “Especially when they’re innocent and uninvolved like most of them are.”

“Don’t you know heretics don’t need to work with the dragons, they just need to not work with the Holy See?” says Iceheart from her bedroll.

"That's news to me, actually."

“Don’t consort with dragons. Don’t acknowledge the intelligence and culture of dragons. Don’t acknowledge that dragons might have a point somewhere under all the murder. Don’t talk to dragons. Don’t look at dragons except if you are in the process of trying to kill them. Any thoughts that are even vaguely not anti-dragon, heretic, to the headsman with you.”

“That’s an exaggeration,” says Cynric.

“You try not to use exaggerated idiom when you feel like your head has been kicked in by a whole host of paladins.”

"I think the only paladin present was Lord Aymeric, actually. But your point is well taken."

“What do you want, hasn’t my day been terrible enough already.”

"I want to hear your pitch. And to behead Nidhogg but at this point that is mostly personal and nothing to do with the war."