Of Crows and Songbirds

That was a terrible excuse. He settled for silence for a moment, watching her to see how she would react.

She had a spike of anxiety when he didn't answer but didn't let it show. That'd been a solid excuse. A Southerner -- fear of hypothermia -- it made sense. Especially given the fact that they'd almost frozen to death on the way here.

She dropped her gaze, hoping he was just fishing for a reaction and that he'd believe her now that she didn't give one.

He was still quiet. A slave, in his experience, had high tolerance for pain but quite often tried to relieve themselves of any agony as soon as it was safely possible to do so. And he had no doubt Tadaaki would have offered to help. In the very short time he had known the man, he'd surmised the fellow wouldn't be able to see other people suffering without trying to do something to relieve the pain.

Her heart was beating so hard it felt like it was in danger of bursting out of her ribcage. She swallowed hard, keeping her gaze on his feet. This was a manipulation tactic -- Aleth had used it on her himself and had drilled it into her as well. He always said that guilty consciences felt the need to fill silences.

Which is what this was.

He was trying to bait her into feeling the need to justify herself. To make her run her mouth and dig herself deeper into a metaphorical hole that he'd be able to fill in over her head once she climbed into it.

And it wasn't going to work.

She hated silence like this -- and she was fairly certain she may have a heart attack if he kept it up too long. She was entirely too weak still to tolerate the amount of anxiety he was forcing upon her.

But she wasn't going to crack.

She'd learned to be very, very quiet.

She was sweating. Figuratively, at least. Gaius was sure of it. He figured he'd let the silence drag on for another minute and then ask his next question.

Should she say something?

Her inner defensive strategies were warring.

On one hand, good slaves were seen and not heard. On the other, she was always supposed to be charismatic and make conversation and move past wildly uncomfortable situations such as this.

But. Then. This was intentional.

There was nothing anyone could say to convince her otherwise.

He was actively trying to bait her.

And they both knew it.

Which meant silence was the safest option. Even if it was agonizing.

"How did your companions react to finding out you were female?" he asked finally, picking up as if nothing had happened.

Thank fuck.

"They'd already known," she said, still blushing a little but she looked back at him. "The slavers had me strip down right beside the cage before I even got in, so they all saw... they didn't really mention anything about it, though. Didn't really come up outside of the one time Tadaaki tried to convince me to take the binder off, once we were free."

"And yet you didn't, despite the pain."

“I didn’t,” she agreed. “For the reasons I mentioned. Sir.”

"How long were you without food?"

“Three or four days… I think, sir,” she said. “I was a bit delirious the last few days — I’m not sure I trust my own memory of what happened at the very end. Sir.”

"How often did you eat before and after escaping?"

What was this — was he trying to calculate her percent body fat? Plot out her caloric intake and expenditures? Why the fuck was he asking about this out of all the things he could have asked about instead?

“They gave us a little every day, sir,” she answered. “Not much. But some… and we only got one little bundle of food as we were escaping to split between the three of us. We rationed pretty heavily… so… we didn’t eat much, sir, for the past several weeks.”

He gave a slight nod. "Who ate the most out of all of you?"