It was a little unusual that Temperance had asked to meet him in Skia. Typically, he found his way to her cottage on the outskirts of the city, where he helped her brew potions or collect ingredients or assist with any number of little chores around the house while he visited. A run with Artos and some tea and biscuits would usually round out an enjoyable afternoon. But she had offered to meet him further into the city on his next day off, so he obliged.

Despite her short stature and dark hair in a sea of dark hair, Temperance was easy enough to find. Hands in pockets, Ber sidled up to where she stood outside a tea shop that was notable only because he thought he’d glimpsed Melody disappearing into it once or twice when he was on patrol. “Hey,” He said as he approached, a genuine smile on his face. The witch returned the smile and took his arm, and together they stepped back into the street. Without any idea of where she wanted to wander, Ber was content to let her lead, and out of habit, he found his gaze scanning the area as they walked. Until she spoke up.

The soldier turned to look at her. “That was the only time I haven’t been on time,” He pointed out, though his words carried little heat. “And I told you, it was because I had to help Brekker with something.” He huffed, feigning displeasure. “Besides, I wasn’t that late.”

At the mention of Woodwick, Ber wrinkled his nose. “Then I’m glad we’re meeting here and not there,” He said, even if Temperance had stayed away for different reasons than he would have. As far as he was concerned, running into the lieutenant once at her little cottage was one time too many, and he did his best not to think about the increased likelihood of a reoccurrence now that the man was apparently working with Thom. It was bad enough seeing him at work, honestly - why did Woodwick have to invade Ber’s outside-of-work life, too? Maybe, if he was asking for the messages back, the two men were forever done with whatever business they had between them, and the two parts of Ber’s life could stop blending together so uncomfortably.

That, however, soon became the least of his worries. The most pressing of his concerns now stood beside him with a presence about her that he’d never seen before.

“Uh,” He said smartly in response to Temperance’s invitation for an apology. Technically, yes, he probably shouldn’t have taken that tea from Whitby, but was trying to give it to people whom he thought would enjoy it truly that much of a crime? Using it to make someone happy was better than letting the tea go to waste, which was what would have happened because Whitby definitely wasn’t returning to that room. Sure, it had tasted bad, but he had had no way of knowing ahead of time that it would be unpalatable. Besides, Temperance had been happy enough before she’d figured out where it had come from, which was never supposed to have happened anyway, so what did the source of the tea really matter? It had done its job, no matter how temporarily.

Ber didn’t quite understand what part of it all warranted an apology, but after years in the military wing, he had learned that sometimes placating someone else was the easiest way to move forward. So he gave Temperance what she wanted and hoped that would be that: “I’m sorry about gifting you tea stolen from a murderer’s apartment.”

That was, in fact, not that. Temperance, it turned out, was not as easily placated as some of the officers in the military wing. Given that they were intended to admonish rather than express genuine fury, the slaps to the chest barely phased him and caused more emotional distress than physical; Ber found himself sharing a somewhat embarrassed commiserating look with the male half of the pair they passed.

However, she did bring up a valid point. He had never considered that the tea itself could be dangerous. Why would he, when Ber had figured that it was something Whitby had saved to one day drink himself? Now that Temperance brought it up, it probably would make sense, though, if Whitby had some sort of poison sitting around if he was a hired killer. The soldier had just assumed that any poison would have been in potion form and that Whitby would have been more the type to cut a man’s throat rather than poison his tea. But perhaps Ber was slightly biased given his experience with the last man whose throat the murderer had slit.

While he pondered that new perspective, the witch at his side continued her scolding. Ber looked at her when she peered up at him. “I didn’t lie,” He felt obligated to point out. “Just… left out some irrelevant details. I did think Whitby collected tea - why else would he have so much? - which makes him a tea collector.” As far as Ber was concerned, the man could have been both a tea collector and a murderer; one activity didn’t exclude the possibility of the other. “And he wasn’t coming back for it, so he basically gave it away.” A pause, then he added, genuine, “But I didn’t think about the fact that it could have been poisoned. I didn’t mean to put you and Thom in danger like that.”

Biting his lip, Ber glanced away and offered a shrug. Admittedly, there was a very good reason he had been vague on some of the details surrounding the tea’s origin, but if Temperance had been telling the truth when she said that she didn’t mind that it had been stolen, then that reason was now moot. Though the witch was never supposed to have discovered that the tea was anything more than what he’d presented it as - he swore Woodwick had some preternatural ability to ruin everything - he had expected the theft to be the most objectionable part of the entire affair, so the lies of omission had been to make a less pleasant reality more palatable. He was not prepared for the way that she focused on what he considered the lesser crime.

As Temperance continued explaining her perspective, he listened and tried to reconcile her request with his experiences in the world. “I do trust you,” He said, brows furrowing slightly as voicing the words hammered home the truth of that statement for him. Trust was a tricky beast. Day in and day out, he trusted that all sorts of facts would continue to hold true - that his fellow soldiers would have his back when he needed them to, that nobles would never think highly of commoners like him, that he could handle whatever life threw at him to name a few - but trusting someone on a more personal level was vastly different. The individuals to whom he dared gift a piece of his heart could be counted on one hand.

Ber trusted Temperance more than he had trusted someone before.

Weeks of conversations around the dinner table and walks through the forest and preparing potion ingredients in the greenhouse had grown into months that had grown into seasons. In the first few weeks, he had expected that once the novelty of helping the poor soldier wore off and she saw how little he truly had to offer her in return, the invitations would stop coming. He had prepared for it. But they hadn’t, and somewhere along the line, he had started trusting that they wouldn’t, that she and Thom and Melody and Artos and Edith would all become - if not permanent, then at least long-term - parts of his life. Did Temperance not know that?

It took a moment for him to find the right words. “I do trust you,” He reiterated, tone carrying the weight of his conviction. “You can trust me, too. And I know I can tell you things.” He gestured vaguely with his free arm, referencing the entire matter as a whole. “This just—” Just what? Bending the rules, finding the loopholes, sidestepping the truth to accomplish his goals - he had mastered all three by the time he had entered mandatory training, and the subsequent years spent in the military wing had only honed already fine-tuned skills. Applying them to the tea situation with Temperance had only felt natural, a continuation of what he’d been practicing his entire life. As words failed him once more, Ber shrugged again. “It wasn’t supposed to make you feel bad.”

Ber listened without comment to the witch’s words, turning them over in his mind for the wisdom that they held. She wasn’t wrong, necessarily, but… He would think on it. Maybe she had a point. Strange was not the word that Ber would have used to describe the unwanted collision of the two parts of his life. He supposed it was strange, but more than that, the exposure of some of his favorite people to his least favorite person was unfortunate and highly regrettable, even if he could have done nothing to prevent the encounter from happening. But discovering the tea had been necessary for decoding the messages, so the soldier merely grumbled, “I guess it’s good that happened.” Then again, if Woodwick had never shown up at the greenhouse, then Temperance and Thom would never have discovered just how much he was hiding from them, and he wouldn’t have spent part of this walk being berated about it.

Truly, Woodwick ruined everything.

But Temperance seemed to be happier now as she promised that she would never let him forget this incident. With a long-suffering sigh, Ber ran a hand over and, hand still over his mouth, looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Must you?” The words were a good-humored complaint. “Don’t you have enough to haunt me with already, without including this?” Their various interactions over the past few seasons had included no shortage of embarrassing stories that had been turned into inside jokes that he had no chance of escaping.

Temperance pulled them to a stop in front of a little bakery. Ber joined her in peering in through the window, though he turned and looked at her as she threatened to unleash Melody on him, but before he could respond, she had changed the subject and started pulling him into the bakery. Because food was a much more preferable topic than the one they’d been discussing, he let the tea matter drop and made an appreciative noise as they stepped into the little shop. “Smells good,” He observed, looking around at the baked goods for sale. “What are you thinking of buying?”

Was that what having a family was all about, mercilessly retelling everyone’s embarrassing stories until the end of time? Ber wouldn’t know. But the thought of laughing at one of Temperance’s or Thom’s or even Melody’s embarrassing stories around the dinner table, years from now, had a warmth bursting in his chest and a pleased little smile turning his lips upward, even as the unexpected flood of emotion had him glancing away.

“Cinnamon raisin bread?” At Temperance’s words, he repeated the flavor of bread to himself and peered around at the offerings, though he only found what she was looking for once she pointed it out to him. It looked good, but then, so did everything else in the bakery. Ber shrugged. “I’ll try some, sure.” When it came to food, he was easy to please.

Soon enough, they had their items, and Temperance tugged him over to a table in the corner. Curious about the bread that the witch had bought for him, Ber ripped off a piece and popped it in his mouth, deciding that Melody had no idea what she was talking about. He nodded his approval at his companion and swallowed another bite - just as she asked about Zevran. Caught entirely off guard, he choked and bent over in his seat, coughing to clear his throat. Eyes watering slightly, Ber glanced back up at her. “You know Zevran?” He asked, though the mere fact that she was asking that question answered his very question. Clearing his throat again, the soldier nodded as a delayed answer. “Yeah. He spends a lot of time in the military wing, and we spar together. How did you meet him?”

“I didn’t realize you didn’t know,” Ber said honestly, once he recovered. Shoulders lifted in a shrug. Almost everyone he spoke to on a regular basis spent a significant amount of time in the military wing, and it went without saying that they all suspected war was on the horizon, even if it hadn’t been confirmed by any of the officers yet. Although Ber might have had Zevran himself as his source, plenty of nobles had attended open court, and fueled by the influx of unfamiliar faces, rumor spread faster than wildfire through the barracks. No one had to inform anyone of anything because they simply all knew. “It never came up, so I figured you didn’t want to talk about it.” War wasn’t exactly a happy subject, even if it had noble causes.

With another shrug, he elaborated, “No official announcement’s been made, but they’ve called everyone home from Coheed and Cambria. They’re recruiting a lot, too, and they gave us a bonus for reenlisting.” He grinned and told her the amount, before lowering his voice and leaning forward slightly to add, “Zev also said he met with the Captain Commander. He asked him a lot of questions about Elderkeep and the Eldouir, which I don’t think he’d ask if we weren’t going to fight them.” Ber took another bite of the bread. “So it seems like it’s just a matter of when, really, but I haven’t heard anything about that.” He frowned slightly, thinking about the plight of the Dresmondi. “Soon, hopefully. Things sound really bad in Dresmond.”

After a brief, thoughtful silence, Ber blinked at Temperance. “I really didn’t tell you about Zevran?” After a season of sparring and hanging out together, the other man had simply become part of the soldier’s life, unremarkable but no less important with his consistent presence. “He and Rune are...” His voice trailed off as he tried and failed to find the right words to describe their friendship and what it meant to him, but perhaps his smile said it all. “I’m glad you got to meet them. I’m not sure how many people they’ve really been able to talk to while they’ve been here.”