The assessment was over, and with the rest of the assembled soldiers, Ber let out a quiet breath of relief as Abbott dismissed them. Focused on his own match, he hadn’t paid any mind to who had turned up late or why, nor did the occurrence particularly trouble him. Not only was their tardiness not his problem, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Besides, he was busy enough dealing with the challenges in his own life that he had no time nor inclination to deal with those in other peoples’ lives too, so when he happened to catch sight of Haider standing there, bright red for whatever reason, he merely offered her a nod and carried on.

Somewhat surprised, Ber glanced to the side when Haider suddenly joined him, but he didn’t mind her presence as much as he did that of some others so he felt no particular desire to chase her away. He also didn’t have much of anything to say to her either, so they took a few steps in awkward silence before she broke it with a compliment. He looked at her again. “Uh, thanks,” Ber said. “Yours too.” From the beginning, it had been clear that Haider’s partner would pose just about as much of a challenge to her as Fletcher had to Ber, though whether Abbott and the rest would see that as personal prowess of the victor or a failure on the loser’s part remained to be seen. And as long as the outcome kept Ber in the military, he didn’t much care either way.

When Haider extended the invitation for food, Ber shrugged. “Sure,” He agreed easily, starting to redirect his steps toward the mess hall. Apart from the routine patrols, they hadn’t scheduled any work for most of the soldiers for some time after the assessment, presumably because they had wanted extra time in case something ran long. Regardless, Ber now found himself with a rare block of free time, and for once, he thought he might get to enjoy it. “So you’re a medic now, huh?”

Ber’s nose wrinkled somewhat at the mention of reading. In theory he understood the importance of putting to paper the events of patrols and training and whatever else they wrote reports about, but in practice, he imagined that doing so was a painful experience rivaled only by reading them. It was so much easier and quicker to just tell and show people what they needed to know.

Still, Haider seemed happy with her new training despite the reading, so he supposed that was good for her. “What do they have you reading about?” Ber’s personal knowledge of healing had been limited to downing healing potions to fix whatever had been injured - and now doing the proper exercises to stretch his shoulder so he didn’t accidentally re-injure it.

“That doesn’t sound very conducive to healing,” Ber said somewhat skeptically, before he glanced over and read the humor in the smirk on her face. Oh. Well, his point still stood: at least with injuries like the ones that landed him in the infirmary after the ball, being tied up likely would have done more harm than good. “Is that a big problem, people skipping out?” In some ways, Ber couldn’t really blame them: it wasn’t like the infirmary was a fun place to be.

Ber’s metric for the severity of injuries that required at least an overnight stay in the infirmary had become a little skewed. For his sole experience in the matter, he’d been too hurt to even consider attempting to escape on his own, let alone actually trying to do so. His recollection of the early days made it easy for him to agree that it was worth a stay in the infirmary.

For other, lesser injuries, he was less sure. Reason dictated that the medics probably also knew when it was worth keeping someone a little longer, but if they had given their patients healing potions and wanted them to just sit in bed, he didn’t see why that couldn’t be done in the relative comfort of someone’s own bed. The end of his own stay had been met with such impatience, though his hesitation to venture into the more crowded areas of the military wing had tempered it.

“I mean,” Ber started, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. “Couldn’t you let the people who think they’re fine just.. walk out and learn for themselves that they’re not fine?”

There was nothing wrong with letting the idiots be idiots as long as they only hurt themselves, right? Maybe that was why he wasn’t a medic.

Ber paused for a long moment. “Bleeding out seems like a good way to learn that you’re not fine,” He offered with a shrug. “Memorable, at least.” If the wounded soldier didn’t die, he supposed. But even if they did, then surely it would still be a valuable lesson to everyone around them? And the military would be down a soldier, but they’d be down a stupid soldier, so was it really that much of a loss?

Barring the general outlook that loss of life ought to be minimized, he admittedly couldn’t see much of a problem with letting idiots be idiots.