Those words. Those two words actually made him recoil. It was as if someone had replaced Kurt's blood with oil, his entrails with wild snakes, and filled his throat with worms. He felt sick and shocked at the sentiment that Mila, the most important person to him, the girl she loved more than himself, had just expressed.

  I'm weak

  How many times had that baleful sentenced taken root in his mind? When he had been but a toddler, already strapped to an artificial respirator. When his mother had died, and all he could do about it was cry. When he had truly realized that he alone, from amongst the other menbers of the order, had no sort of magical gift or talent.

  I'm weak

  The feeling that had guided most of his decision making throughout his life. The one that had so damn nearly plunged him in an inescapable spiral of hating his own weak self, and then hating everyone else for no clear reason just to get the briefest of respites from the crushing self-loathing, projecting the feelings of disgust and mockery he deep down knew only he felt onto others.

  And now that same feeling had taken hold of the one person that had saved him from it.

  It was almost fucking comical.

  "W-Weak?" Was the only thing he could say, his brain too overwhelmed with emotion. "Mila, you are not..."

  "I am!" she exclaimed. "And why the hell wouldn't I be, uh?! I have done nothing to be strong! You did! You trained, and went into every quest that you could! And when you finally got some magic of your own? What did you do? You trained the shit out of it until you were the strongest you could be! And what the hell did I do with mine? Nothing! Look at this!" She punctuated the 'this' by raising the squirrel construct to eye level, nearly jamming it against his face. "I could have done something like this years ago if I had put my mind to it. But I didn't want to experiment with my powers, or even use them to fight because it didn't feel right to use the nature spirits as weapons."

  She scoffed, the gesture coming out like she was spitting in disgust.

  "It didn't feel right," she repeated, her tone downright caustic, almost hateful. "My entire life has been the same: Someone getting hurt to protect me. At least when I was a regular human I had the excuse of being defenseless. But after I was reborn? I just kept being rescued and protected, not making any serious effort to actually grow strong despite having all the tools I needed, and last night was nothing but the perfect example of it. The one thing I actually added to this group, my 'guidance', became useless the moment that woman told us where her group was headed. I'm useless now, I can't..."

  "Shut up," came a strained voice through gritted teeth, and Kurt was actually surprised to find that it was his own, the harsh words having escaped his lips before he knew. "Stop spouting that... idiotic spiel already! Do you even know wahat you're talking about?! You say you're useless?! Just because you can't kill stuff as efficiently as I can? What kind of fucked up way of thinking is that?! If there's one person in this world that shouldn't have to deal with that fucking spiral is you!"

  Mila looked at him, puzzlement piercing her rage and loathing for a moment. "Spiral?" she asked, cooking her head to the side, twisting the path of her tears. "Wha-What are you talking about?"

  He had said too much. His worry for the girl he loved and the rage he felt at... everything, really, for making her feel like that had caused him to run his mouth, and now he had no option but to keep talking, to reveal just how much he knew about weakness and the special kind of self-loathing that its recognition brings.

  Mila knew something about already, because he had told her himself. About being born with weak lungs, about his mother, his magicless state-as well known in the order as that already was. She knew about it just as he knew about her rebirth as a fae, and for the same reasons, because the trusted each other with it.

  But Kurt, unlike Mila, had kept the sheer extent of how much it had affected him, on an emotional level, even from her. What was his younger self to say, really? That he was scared and unhappy from the moment he woke up till the moment he fell asleep? That the only, literally the only, part of his life that managed to make him feel good about himself, an endeavor where even his martial arts and monster slying and other badass bullshit had mostly failed, was her and their friendship?

  Of course I couldn't, he thought with some scorn, That would have made me look weak, and needy, and I just had to appear strong. The person I trust the most, and I still keep stuff like that from her.

  But he just couldn't keep doing that anymore. Last night-no, this entire quest had been nothing but one big lesson on just how foolish he had been acting, trying to always appear invincible, as if he was immune to everything and anything the world could throw his way just because he knew how to wield a sword, or make himself superstrong, or throw a fireball.

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  As if being able to kill and destroy made him some kind of ubermensch.

  And now Mila was feeling just as he had felt all the time before knowing her. How he still felt sometimes. And in the face of that, there was exactly one thing he could do, one thing he probably should have done years ago.

  He had to show her just how weak he was.

  "You feel like the most loathsome thing in the world," he began, and this time it was him who averted his gaze, not being able to give voice to such horrid feelings while looking at her. Not yet. "You feel like you must hide yourself and how weak you are, because if someone, anyone, sees your true, weak self, then that's everything they'll ever see, a weakling that can't do shit by him-herself. And the shame that prospect bears to you makes you want to bury yourself where no one can see you, and then just... stop moving forever, because even that can't be worse than feeling like this for the rest of your life."

  He stopped himself, and a crushing silence fell between them both. After a few agonizing seconds, Kurt brought himself to look at Mila. She wasn't crying anymore, so atleast he had that. The thing was, she wasn't doing much of anything else besides just...stare at him as if this was the first time she saw him in her entire life.

  In a certain way, she was.

  "Hey, at least you're handling it much better than I did," he said in the most casual way he could manage, the right corner of his mouth raised in a tired smile. "At least you don't go around trying to pick a fight with everything around you. Remember how much of a jerk I was when we first meet? It took a six years old you crying to shake some niceness outta me, for Pete's sake!"

  Slowly, carefully, Mila began to show emotion again. That emotion? An indescribably pure worry for him, so great that all of her previous turmoil seemed to vanish, if only for the moment.

  "Do you stil feel like that?" she asked.

  He simply shrugged, trying to lighten up the conversation just a bit. "Sometimes, when I isolate myself for whatever reason. Or when I feel like I could go back to being 'weak', however it is that my mind interprets that word at any given moment. That whole teaching Pneuma thing Blair tried to make do really triggered some dark shit. I.. know she didn't know what she was doing to me with that order, and if I think about it critically I know she has more than a few points, but the truth is, that the idea of being weaker than the people around me scares me to kingdom come," He grimaced, and he had to steel himself to share what came next. "And that fear, oh boy, it made me do some stuff I really am not proud of. Like teaching that class wrong on purpose."

  Mila's eyes bugged out a bit, and she leaned closer. "You did what now?"

  "Teach the class wrong on purpose," he repeated, finding it increasilly easier to share. "That magical artifact that Mr. Anderson made to assist with the class? Some piece of junk my sister made as practice. Does nothing but glow until it runs out of energy. Doesn't even emit any magic. As for the actual lessons and explanations? Well, those were a mix between truths and lies. I actually taught them how I believed Pneuma worked like back when I was still figuring out," He chuckled in mild embarrasment, and shrugged. "I told myself that it was just fair, y'know? I had to almost die to unlock it, and then figure every aspect of it on my own, so those already magical SOBs shouldn't just get the skill and the knowledge to use it for free. Them knowing it exists and being given some even parially true pointers was already very generous, I told myself."

  "Is that so?" asked Mila as she slowly approached him, her face difficult to read.

  Was she mad? Oh crap. He had not accounted for that. He knew he had acted wrong but, had he really acted so terribly that he had managed to elicit rage from Mila of all people?

  "I-I... Uhm" he stammered.

  And then Mila raised one hand on the air, holding the squirrel-construct on the other, and his mouth sealed shut. Was she going to...? No, it couldn't be that. It could never be that, not between them.

  Right?

  "Mila? Are you-"

  "YOU. ARE-" She brough her hand down in a deadly arc, and kurt actually winced, closing his eyes in preparation for the impact. He knew that it wouldn't hurt him even if he didn't use Pneuma, but physical pain was the furthest thing from his mind.

  But when none came, he still found himself surprised.

  "Pretty childish, when you want to be." Came Mila's voice, piercing through the self imposed darkness he was experiencing.

  He opened his eyes, only to find Mila's face just a foot away from his, barely any streness to be found on it. He also grew aware of what she had done with her arm when he saw he pale knuckles occupying the lower rim of his field of vision, and he finally noticed that he could not breat in through his nose.

  Because she was pinching it, and playfully at that.

  "Why didn't you ever tell me you had that just, boiling in you head?" she asked, though her tone was as far from accusatory as Kurt could imagine. "Jeez, feeling like that since before we meet, and I start crumbling down less than a day after feeling it for the first time. Not making me feel better here, pal."

  Her smile receded a bit, and what she said next came with no whimsy in its tone whatsoever.

  "How?" she asked simply. "How do you feel something like this with any amount of regularity and don't just... break down even a little bit? You said you felt like this even after we met, that you were feeling it the day of the class. I didn't notice a thing. I thought we could not lie to one another at all, that we know each other too well for that. I seems like I was wrong."

  "The thing with that, Mila, is that I don't really have to try much to hide it. I've been feeling like that for about as long as I have memory. I've just, I don't know, learned to live with it, to the point that 'normal' me and 'i feel so weak I wanna die' me act almost exactly the same. It is not lying at this point."

  "I don't think I can do that," she said sadly. "Feeling so terribly and just... acting like normal. I don't have it in me to do that, I just don't."

  "Nor should you," Kurt quickly retorted, "Learning to live with this isn't something anyone should have to do, and definitely not something one should strive for. What we are doing now, talking and crying and all that ugly shit, that's the way one should tackle it. Believe me, anything that's the opposite of holding these shit feelings in is bound to be the right choice. Don't you feel better now, at least a bit? 'Cause I sure do."

  "I...kinda do, actually," she admited. "Less lonely for sure. To be honest, the idea of having to keep secrets from you felt almost as bad as the other thing. It's just that-"

  She threw her head back.

  "I STILL FEEL WEAK!" she exclaimed, though her words seemed to lack the practical totality of the vitriol she had displayed before, her proclamation sounding more annoyed and tired than truly despairing. "I really don't wanna let you guys doing the heavy lifting while I contribute nothing, but I don't have the first idea on how the hell I could get stronger! It's so frustrating!"

  "That it is, yeah," said Kurt in full agreement. "I do have an idea, though, if you wanna hear it."

  "I'm listening," she said, not looking like she was. She was now lying on the ground, face up, her arms and legs extended as if she had been frozen while making a snow angel. The squirrel-construct was curled up on her stomach.

  Chuckling, Kurt got up on his feet and walked towards the girl.

  "Well, I already have experience teaching Pneuma wrong," he said, stopping to lean over her frame, his head casting a shadow on her face. "Wanna help see if I can teach it right?"