Traejan tried to start.

“Kyso–” he began, but the old man had turned his attention away from him – back to Althea.

“Oh, need to cool down do you?” he said with good cheer. “I have to thank you again. That was an astonishing performance.”

Althea began to slowly nod, and Kyso happily continued, smacking his hands together in glee. He walked up to Althea, slapped a hand on her back. She shuddered in response, expression darkening as he continued.

“I haven’t seen that good a bout in almost three hundred years. Anyone who can take a walking mountain apart – can take on anything.”

She turned to face the old man, mouth open.

“My congratulations,” Kyso offered, still grinning widely.

“Oh–” she turned away, holding her face in her hands. She then turned back sharply, fury returned – glaring back and forth between the two of them.

“Do you think I should have – could have, possibly enjoyed that?” she demanded of them, gesturing angrily. She pointed back into the hall.

“What I had to do back there,” she stopped, seeming to have trouble finding the proper words, “was not for your entertainment!”

Traejan stared at her, shocked. He turned to Kyso, who was equally surprised. He turned back to the Consortian woman, uncomprehending. Goshram was a bully; a monster who brutalized or killed anyone who ever got in his way. He had deserved the beating. She shook her head.

“However much a thug Goshram is, he’s still a human being.” She spread her hands out. “Like all of us.”

“He’s not–” Traejan started.

“Don’t interrupt me! I’m came here for all of you,” she raised her voice with a conviction that he hadn’t yet heard from her. “However miserable the conditions we may live in, we are human beings, we are all Consortia! If we revel in this petty streck, we may as well admit that we deserved what the Macros did to us – do to us! Is that clear?!”

He couldn’t do anything other than nod. She looked back over at Kyso who was starting to nod, then glared daggers back at Traejan, started to shiver violently. She hugged her bare arms and ran back into the hall. The wind slammed the door shut behind her

Traejan looked at Kyso, feeling ashamed. Kyso looked smaller, cowed, turned away guiltily, following her back into the warmth.

Was she right? Could they have deserved what the mechs had done to them? Were he and Kyso no better than the rest back in the hall?

What did she know? She hadn’t tried to help these people. She hadn’t been repeatedly insulted, humiliated and beaten for the thought, the effort. Althea Ram had probably had spent her life on a Consortia world where everything was handed to her, where no one had to fight for their lives just to eat. Who was she to judge any of them? Who was she to judge him.

A sudden wind bit into him, through his coat, reminding him where he was.

Strecking Goshram. Traejan had no sympathy for the bastard, none at all. The man didn’t deserve a gram. And Althea – how could she pick a fight – then berate them?! He shivered, cursed, then stumbled through the snow back into the hall – back to the warmth.