"I'm sorry."

"........what?"

"You were right. It was pointless to try to engage, it's a spirit, of course if spirits could leave peacefully they already would have—how's the village, did you manage to seal the cave—"

"Yes. And we got an Eden adventurer to come watch over the seal until someone can actually deal with the spirit."

"Good," he breathes. "But it could've gone a lot worse if—"

"You were not wrong."

"—huh?"

"It's... the point. The whole point. Of doing this. It's helping people. Even Surt. It's just helping people. That's what we're for."

"...yeah, but—"

"It's a good impulse. I didn't have it, but you did. Helping people. Even if it doesn't look like they could be helped."

"...Annika I think that demon had even odds of destroying our souls if it had killed us, our resurrection points wouldn't have caught us."

"It's better to die of being kind than to live as a coward who can't stand up for what he believes."

"Are you praising me, Annika?"

"Yes. Obviously."

"What about Surt?"

"Don't take stupid risks. Don't throw your life away. Surt is more important." She takes a deep breath, because this whole feelings thing is not something she's super used to. "But being kind to a lost child isn't throwing your life away, and it worked out in the end.

"Would you have done the same if I hadn't been there?"

"Of course not. If you hadn't been there I'd probably have turned away before we got to even see her."

"So you did what you did because you trusted me to have your back. And I did. So it wasn't a stupid risk. And it wasn't a bad decision. It didn't work, but it wasn't a bad decision."

"Isn't that an oxymoron? A good decision that didn't work?"

"You don't know the future. A decision is good or bad depending on what you know when you make it, not how it turned out. If it had worked it would've been... very good. So even if it wasn't very likely to work, it was still a good decision."

"...alright. Thank you, Annika."

That fucking smile again. She hates it.