This was wrong. This wasn't what she had been expecting. Di was certain she would find someone who would speak against the Sufferists solely, who would talk about the importance of the hemospectrum or praise the Empire. Instead she found someone who wanted to condemn all of trollkind.

When he leans forward one leg instinctively steps back so she can lean away, frown deepening.

It couldn't be. Could it? Being brought back from the dead, even the people of this time couldn't do such a thing.

...could they? The more she thinks about it the more uncertain she becomes, and when Di opens her mouth to respond she falters. Di doesn't like to think about Signless' last moments. She wants to remember him as he was in life, when he was himself and not driven to rage by the torture of the Empire. It was why she refused to ever use the title Sufferer, and loathed the sign that had been given to him. They are not things he should be defined by.

Yet, ignoring or forgetting them would also be terrible. With her conviction that this was not Signless becoming more and more brittle she did not want to erase or devalue what he had been through.

She swallows and finds her voice again. "And what of the innocents? The ones who still believe and still practice?"