There is something so unusually open about Ramad's gesture that for a split second, Kai completely believes him.
He shuts his eyes as soon as he realizes it, a grimace on his face as he forces it back down, swallowing what feels like a huge lump in his throat. He can't. He can't trust Ramad, or believe him, regardless of what he says. Ramad telling the truth looks the same as Ramad lying. He has to remember that. He has to.
He takes in a deep breath, opening his eyes again to stare down the man in front of him. "Give me one reason I should let you." Allowing him to follow them is, in a way, still giving him some level of trust. Knowing their movements, and with Ramad's skill set, knowing some level of their plans. Kai and Ziede and Tahren can all communicate without words, but Ramad is smart enough to pick up Witch speak for communicating with Tenes and Sanja, assuming he hasn't already. It is opening them up to a risk.
Ramad's expression melts to something a bit... softer, somehow? It's more guarded than it has been the past few moments, if only because those moments have been entirely raw, but there's a good humor there that Kai's seen glimpses of before, hints of a face that used to smile more openly trying to come back to life. He knows that this is crazy, that he's probably crazy, that Kai would be crazy for letting him come with them,
"I suppose I should say that you need me because you're all terrible liars, whether you outplayed me or not," it's a joke, but he's also deadly serious as he rises slowly to his feet to come around to Kai's side of the fire. He moves slowly, hands slightly out at his sides, as non-threatening as he knows how to make himself, until he can, also very slowly and carefully, sit next to Kai, instead.
There are other ways to make this point, less dangerous ones even, but sometimes actions speak louder than words,
"But I know that's not enough," he contemplates what he's about to do before he does it, not because he's afraid, but because he wants to make sure he's serious. And then he holds his hand out to Kai, palm up, close enough to make it child's play to grab it. "I'm not asking you to trust me," he repeats, "Keep me where you can see me, I will understand. But I trust you."
"You don't need to lie when you can just kill everyone instead," Kai responds dryly, but it's a toothless threat and they both know it. Ramad is living proof of it. But it's certainly the sort of thing people would expect a demon to say; perhaps it's the sort of thing Ramad would have believed about him before meeting him. At this distance, though, Ramad can probably see that the sentiment behind it is just of someone who's tired.
Kai watches him both as he approaches and as he sits, trying to read anything off of him to give him a reason to refuse. He doesn't see it, and he's not sure which would be worse, for Ramad to be lying to him again or for him to not.
Ziede speaks up through the connection, enough to say it's his choice. Kai wishes it wasn't.
He sighs, reaching up to scrub at his face. His stupid, weak heart. "Fine," he manages, hoping he sounds stern, "But the second you turn on us..."
"You wouldn't need to kill everyone if you lied more instead," he points out, but it's as toothless as Kai's comment, more a joke than anything else. He nods at the terms, vague as they are, and withdraws his hand to a slightly safer distance,
"If nothing else, trust my intelligence enough for me to know that if I betrayed you again, you would be the least of my worries," he glances towards where he suspects the rest of the party (and most importantly Ziede) are, a slight, wry curve to his lips.
Kai snorts- vengeance for Kai might be slightly less horrible than vengeance for Tahren would be, but that's not a sure thing and even then it would be very slight. "Good," he says with a nod. So it seems... that is that.
The rest of them don't come back immediately, and when they do Ramad gets about the welcome he'd expect- as in, Zeide and Tahren both stare him down as if daring him to even think about anything, Tenes giving the others a slightly confused look but then nodding politely, with Sanja being the only one who seems genuinely happy to see him. Dahin more or less acts like he's not there.
Kai doesn't speak much for the rest of the evening, the group having gone out to get some supplies and settling around the fire. Sanja picks up most of the conversation, asking Ramad where he was and then proceeding to grill him on anything else that comes to mind- she's smart enough to know that there's something uncomfortable about his reappearance. There's a little bit of Witchspeak between Tenes and Ziede, probably explaining why the hell Ramad hasn't been immediately chased out, and if Sanja runs out of conversation Dahin will take over with some incredibly niche history that Ramad would still probably find interesting. But unless Ramad tries to draw him in again, Kai won't participate at all.
It's... a better reception than he was hoping for, all told. He answers most of Sanja's questions as best he can and if he's cagey about a few of them, well, some of them are maybe a little too pointed and searching and he doesn't reprimand her for them either.
It's all far more than he could have asked for, but he still feels a tiny spot of hurt that Kai seems to not want to participate even so. He knows that's... incredibly foolish of him to feel, but he feels it anyway, examines it that night when they've settled down to rest, turning it over in his head. In the end, though, he's not entirely sure what sits more ill with him-- Kai's lack of participation with him, or the lack of participation with everyone else. Was he like that before? Ramad is ashamed to realize he has no idea.
He does behave himself, though, whatever the others might feel about him. He won't go out of his way to "prove" himself in the coming days, he knows that's a foolish concept. But he does try to make himself useful all the same.
(And if Kai avoiding him and the others being uncomfortable about him means he ends up "babysitting" more often than not, well, he does have a soft spot where Sanja is concerned, it seems, which he feels no need to attempt to explain to anybody. That he might be the one actually being "babysat" here only makes him grin a bit more.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
He shuts his eyes as soon as he realizes it, a grimace on his face as he forces it back down, swallowing what feels like a huge lump in his throat. He can't. He can't trust Ramad, or believe him, regardless of what he says. Ramad telling the truth looks the same as Ramad lying. He has to remember that. He has to.
He takes in a deep breath, opening his eyes again to stare down the man in front of him. "Give me one reason I should let you." Allowing him to follow them is, in a way, still giving him some level of trust. Knowing their movements, and with Ramad's skill set, knowing some level of their plans. Kai and Ziede and Tahren can all communicate without words, but Ramad is smart enough to pick up Witch speak for communicating with Tenes and Sanja, assuming he hasn't already. It is opening them up to a risk.
no subject
"I suppose I should say that you need me because you're all terrible liars, whether you outplayed me or not," it's a joke, but he's also deadly serious as he rises slowly to his feet to come around to Kai's side of the fire. He moves slowly, hands slightly out at his sides, as non-threatening as he knows how to make himself, until he can, also very slowly and carefully, sit next to Kai, instead.
There are other ways to make this point, less dangerous ones even, but sometimes actions speak louder than words,
"But I know that's not enough," he contemplates what he's about to do before he does it, not because he's afraid, but because he wants to make sure he's serious. And then he holds his hand out to Kai, palm up, close enough to make it child's play to grab it. "I'm not asking you to trust me," he repeats, "Keep me where you can see me, I will understand. But I trust you."
no subject
Kai watches him both as he approaches and as he sits, trying to read anything off of him to give him a reason to refuse. He doesn't see it, and he's not sure which would be worse, for Ramad to be lying to him again or for him to not.
Ziede speaks up through the connection, enough to say it's his choice. Kai wishes it wasn't.
He sighs, reaching up to scrub at his face. His stupid, weak heart. "Fine," he manages, hoping he sounds stern, "But the second you turn on us..."
no subject
"If nothing else, trust my intelligence enough for me to know that if I betrayed you again, you would be the least of my worries," he glances towards where he suspects the rest of the party (and most importantly Ziede) are, a slight, wry curve to his lips.
no subject
The rest of them don't come back immediately, and when they do Ramad gets about the welcome he'd expect- as in, Zeide and Tahren both stare him down as if daring him to even think about anything, Tenes giving the others a slightly confused look but then nodding politely, with Sanja being the only one who seems genuinely happy to see him. Dahin more or less acts like he's not there.
Kai doesn't speak much for the rest of the evening, the group having gone out to get some supplies and settling around the fire. Sanja picks up most of the conversation, asking Ramad where he was and then proceeding to grill him on anything else that comes to mind- she's smart enough to know that there's something uncomfortable about his reappearance. There's a little bit of Witchspeak between Tenes and Ziede, probably explaining why the hell Ramad hasn't been immediately chased out, and if Sanja runs out of conversation Dahin will take over with some incredibly niche history that Ramad would still probably find interesting. But unless Ramad tries to draw him in again, Kai won't participate at all.
no subject
It's all far more than he could have asked for, but he still feels a tiny spot of hurt that Kai seems to not want to participate even so. He knows that's... incredibly foolish of him to feel, but he feels it anyway, examines it that night when they've settled down to rest, turning it over in his head. In the end, though, he's not entirely sure what sits more ill with him-- Kai's lack of participation with him, or the lack of participation with everyone else. Was he like that before? Ramad is ashamed to realize he has no idea.
He does behave himself, though, whatever the others might feel about him. He won't go out of his way to "prove" himself in the coming days, he knows that's a foolish concept. But he does try to make himself useful all the same.
(And if Kai avoiding him and the others being uncomfortable about him means he ends up "babysitting" more often than not, well, he does have a soft spot where Sanja is concerned, it seems, which he feels no need to attempt to explain to anybody. That he might be the one actually being "babysat" here only makes him grin a bit more.)