Duty and Memory [Delirium]
The punches broke out quickly, he could remember that. No great surprise there. The Hob had performed some transgression or other, and Lorica jumped in to defend some honour as if he was a fish breathing in water. For him, there was no other choice to even be considered. The Hob'd clearly had some training, his chops in a fist-fight couldn't be faulted: ducking and pulling a retreating weave smoothly before driving home a forceful offensive. The first connection could almost be felt across the room, and the second was driven home immediately afterwards, with no let-up.
Then it blinked, eyes flicking over to him before down to the dart that had been slammed through its chest. There was a vague hiss as the wound started to smolder quickly, a caustic black smoke spilling out along with pulses of ichor. Rex talked him down calmly from finishing it, as it dragged the now tipless javelin from itself; and coughed up blood in wounded confusion.
Rosalba, of course, fed it an Amaranthine. When confronted over wasting a fruit that could have helped a Lost (never one to stand up for herself) she sheepishly, blankly commented that it was going off. Mr. Sleete had confronted Snaggle over attacking a dignitary, but was brushed aside: restraint is no virtue when protecting a motleymate.
Above all the drama and anger, he'd have done whatever it took to protect Lorica. Always. Striking down a Hob was not something he'd even considered, it was a response as reflexive as the rising of his chest. As seamless as the intervention which had begun the brawl. And that was why he was never told, when his brother-in-arms headed off to his death, in order to protect the Free. It was that which had kept his last chance to bid him farewell obscured by a secret. Lorica had known, so he'd kept him ignorant. He'd always been too considerate for Snaggle to stand...
And now he was here. Like so many others, but not at all the same. Being told by Galehaut tidings of his Freehold. Snaggle bit back his own view of the state of their creation, simply mentioning that he'd left. As Lorica had suggested, in his last and only letter to him. This was just an apparition, he told himself. He'd scanned Satrap Sam last night with his own eyes: a happening to fool the eye, not a person who'd torn themselves from the grave. An occurrence, a phenomena. Just a memory. Not a mind. Not another chance.
He tried to bear this in mind as they shared words, as he stayed silent, as he headed inside to avoid Moorcroft.
Later he'd remember that this wasn't like the reappearance of the Satrap. That Sam had returned from the past, whereas the Lorica he met was very much dead (like Crystal, like Moorcroft, like Scarlet, like bullet-holed Velvet...) He would try not to reflect upon how this would have changed things, of how he would have treated that meeting differently, of what would have happened if he'd performed a Warlock's Gaze across his fallen peer. He would fail.
Doubt can eat a man alive. But he'd always found faith a struggle.