At least Winter would not be haunted with guilt and worry. He hoped that he had judged her character right in that regard. It was part of the reason, maybe, why he had never spoken about this with anyone. The people he was close to would either be deeply upset or put him under surveillance for the rest of his life. Winter may disagree, he thought, but she wouldnât make this her own.
Xavier snorted when she finally responded. âYeahâ, he agreed dryly. âThree times. I think thatâs called cheating death. Iâm not superstitious but even I have to admit that maybe this wasnât meant to beâ This, of course, referring to his continued existence. Indeed, he could not shake the feeling that his surviving had disrupted some kind of universal balance. âThere isnât something you can say that I havenât thought about beforeâ, he admitted after a long pause, letting himself fall back onto the couch. At last, he was feeling a buzz but was unsure whether the alcohol or his recent confession was to blame for it. âIt simply is what it is nowâ
She had to admit, three was a larger number of close calls then most faced but he was a soldier, that was to be expected. He continued on, assuring her that he'd heard it all before but she highly doubted that. This was a witch so closely tied to death that she intimately knew what it's breath on her neck felt like, what his cold hand grasping her heart felt like.
"You might have cheated death, but I've defied it. I've died twice now. This is the third body I've occupied. My third chance at life." She took a long sip of her drink. Let him ponder over that and see if he'd heard it before.
"The first time I was burnt at the stake. It was only a matter of time, I was living in Scotland at the height of their witch hunts and had somehow made it to 91 years old. It was only a matter of time before the finger was pointed at me," though it was irritating to know Peter had actually been the one to officially throw her under the bus, or rather on the pyre. Still, she likely wouldn't have made it much longer if he hadn't.
"The second, I was sent back to the death realms by my vessel using the very spell I'd acquired to save her," there was a bit of venom behind her words, the betrayal still aggravating but Winter's feelings on the vessel still walking this island were complicated at best.
"Now I hope never to face death like that again," it was the very reason she came back to study necromancy. She took another sip of her whiskey.
Finally her eyes met Xavier's with an open vulnerability to them. "It's a hard thing to shake off. Death, I mean. It's grip leaves scars no one can see," she might not suffer from guilt as Xavier did, but Winter suffered none the less. His guilt matched her fear in it's unrelenting control over them. They both shared in that much.
