Actions will speak louder than words

Erize's mind wanders into a sea of thoughts while she's in the medical ward of the barracks, tending to her wounds. She has a roll of gauze in her mouth and she had just finished removing first the bullet in her arm and then the one in her shoulder with the use of forceps. She then poured a disinfectant on the bullet wounds as she remembers what Melissa said to her about treating the bullet wounds. She wonders what could happen if she didn't know.

Looking down on her legs she realized that the burns on them weren't as severe as she guessed they would be. She thinks that maybe wearing armor actually helped in reducing the damage of fire to first degree burns. She's happy on that side knowing that her legs can still be a prized asset of hers.

"Hatch is gonna kill me-" She said to herself while looking to the side where she had thrown aside her armor, her uniform, and her sword. "I can already hear him tellin' me how difficult it is to patch breast-plates and vambraces."

The young Cerenian woman grabbed the roll of gauze from her mouth after patching the bullet wounds with a second-type bandage before applying the gauze around her shoulder and then around her arm. She then sat down on the recovery bed and with her right leg propped up she opened a salve container, scooping a handful of the salve and rubbing it on both hands before massaging the ointment onto her leg, she repeats the process with the other leg before wrapping each one with the gauze. Erize comments that she looks like a ghoul with all the gauze wrapped on her legs and arm.

There's a sudden knocking on the door. It was Andrew.

"Erize are you decent?" He asked while waiting outside the door. He wants to know if Erize is dressed properly for him to come in.

"Ah no, I'm naked. Give me a second to get dressed," Erize answered nonchalantly but with a voice loud enough that Andrew could hear outside the medical room –As well as the other anti-mages who were walking down the hallway, now with flustered looks.

While grabbing her clothes on the pile she had thrown, she realized that Dyrnwyn is still wrapped up by Melissa's tattered red cloak that's miraculously still in one piece after Erize had carefully unwrapped the cloak from the blade.

"Alright, ya can come in now. Ya saved me a lot of time actually, I wanted to talk to ya about somethin'."

"I know, and I'm here to tell you that I can't do anything about it," Andrew immediately shoots down whatever Erize was going to ask of him as he enters the medical room. His burned arm still has Cecil's sleeves as its bandages, and there are bloodstains all over it.

"There has to be somethin'! Look what if I vouch for her and say that she attacked me out of self-defense? You're going to have to be there though to vouch for her too since she also attacked ya." Erize starts drawing a plan to change Melissa's sentence, but not having a full grasp of the situation, she fails to see the holes in that plan.

"Let's say you do try to defend her, and let's say what she did was out of self-defense against you. We can't ignore that she turned the bell tower into a magic construct. She also caused the mass panic in the west-side just to find a 'cerulean witch' that she assumed was me." Andrew argues to Erize. Usually, he acts a lot easier with her when they disagree, but this time that's not the case at all. While making his points, his voice is flat and unsympathetic.

Drew is forcibly removing the veil of naivety that's clouding Erize's eyes into thinking Melissa is purely just a misunderstood witch. However, to Erize this sounded too callous to be coming from Drew, who she sees as a kind and reliable friend and even as a brother-figure.

Andrew could see that he had letdown Erize by the look she's giving him, an expression of shock and disbelief. He's fine that Erize doesn't understand if it meant keeping her away from any unnecessary danger. The same can also be said by how he feels with his loved ones.

"Also, I didn't just come here to tell you that I can't help you, but I'm also here to keep you from leaving this room until you tell me you won't do anything reckless," Drew followed up as he stands against the door, preventing Erize from leaving. "You can hate me for this-"

"There's no way I can! Even if I wanted to, I couldn't! 'Cause I know you're trying to keep me safe -ya have always been like this!" Erize clenched her hands into fists. She's seething and she wanted to punch Andrew, not for all the things he's said, but because of how he shoulders everything on his own, without so much as an attempt to try and reach out to her.

Erize hates it. She hates that Andrew's right and that Melissa was wrong for what she did.

"But is that really right!? Tell me, Drew, is it right for her to die for being lost?! Do ya think it's right for her to die without at least being given a second chance to right the very wrongs she did!?" In a fit of intense emotion, Erize didn't realize that she had grabbed Andrew's shirt collar and had been clutching on it. It wasn't until Andrew held Erize's hands with his own that she noticed.

As she was about to apologize, Drew spoke.

"It isn't."

He wanted to say that he knows that he would be in the same position as Melissa if he had lost everything in life. He would do nothing except pursuing the person responsible and take revenge -but something was stopping him. He was in no position to say these things after he had heartlessly taken the one memento Melissa had left of those she had lost.

"I'm sorry."