“I… Heard a little bit of what she said, miss Annie.”

Andromeda froze, then slowly turned to Connor, “Yeah?”

“She really knew how to get under your skin, didn’t she?”

She puffed out her cheeks in a long wheeze, “Yeah,” she said.

The silence that hung in the air between them was long and stilted and, much like a novice stilter, crumbled easily at the slightest push.

“I'm not gonna pretend to know you, miss Annie. Your business is your own. But as long as you're in my town, I'm here if you'd like to talk."

All the gears in Annie's head ground to a sudden halt, she could swear smoke would pour out her ears any second. Talk? To a person? In real life? The thought left her dumbstruck. Tears leapt to the corners of here eyes unbidden and she tried to blink them away. Like hell she was going to cry over a little thing like this.

"Um... Yeah. Sure." She rubbed her eyes into her sleeve furiously, pushing her glasses up onto her forehead briefly before they plopped back back down to the bridge of her nose when she was finished. Then she shuffled back into her room unceremoniously.

Connor poked his head around the doorframe, "Is that a 'I'm game to talk,' yeah sure or a 'Please leave me alone,' yeah sure?"

"Yeah." Annie flopped down onto the bed to stare at the ceiling.

"Well that's just plain unhelpful!" He trotted in behind her. She heard the click of her door closing and the creak of Connor settling into the room's solitary chair, "You know, I haven't actually spent much time in the motel's rooms. It looks nice though."

"It's better than sleeping in a tent."

"I'll bet!" Connor laughed. It was a pleasant sound, the sort of deep lilting laugh that comes from genuine joy that one could feel in their bones and just had to share with the world. It wasn't loud, exactly, but it had a presence that couldn't be missed; like the warm rays of dawn that creep through the window and alight along your skin before you're fully awake and willing to open your eyes.

[might need a bit more filler here]

Annie sighed, then took off her glasses and set them on the dresser beside the bed, "Fuck it, fine. What do you want to talk about, deputy?”

“I’m primarily concerned with the scary-looking heavily armed woman who broke into your motel room. But if you don’t wanna talk about her you don’t have to!” he somehow managed to make that sound cheerful.

“Of course you do,” Annie cupped her hands over her face briefly and pressed her fingers to her eyelids, “We used to be friends, I think.

“Were you close?”

“I trusted her more than anyone in the world. And she…” the tears welled up once again and she rolled on her side to face the wall away from Connor, “She broke my heart.”

”That’s awful Annie, I’m sorry. What, uh, what happened?” he asked.

“She sold me out.” Annie laughed bitterly, “She’s the one who… Ugh! It doesn’t matter anymore. It was a lifetime ago. I left because of her, let’s leave it at that.”

“Left where?”

“Therult. I was born there."

Connor was quiet for a moment, studying her before he said, "Is it true y'all have red eyes? Is that why you have the glasses?"

Red eyes. That's the first thing anyone asked about Therans. They were a symptom of blood magic usage which, to be fair, was a common enough practice in the Theran Empire. Especially when you compared it to the surrounding countries that banned its use outright. But that's not something Annie was eager to tell the Paladin of the Lamaryll Union no matter how nice he was.

"Some of us do." She said.

"Huh. I wonder why?"

Annie shrugged noncommittally and made a vague "I dunno," noise. Connor seemed satisfied with that.

"You couldn’t stay?" he asked.

"I wanted to be my true self. They made it very clear that wasn't an option, so I left."

"I know the feeling," Connor said, "My 'ma wasn't all that welcoming when I came out either."

Andromeda sat up to stare at him, "What?"

"Yeah, she wasn't thrilled about it, kinda made it into a whole thing. My 'pa took to the idea like a fish to water though, said he'd always wanted a son and all that." He shrugged. 

"Seriously? You? Connor Kenton McFucking Junior?" 

"Oh yeah, he loved the 'Junior' bit. He got all teary-eyed when I told him that's what I wanted to be called," he paused, "Huh."

"What?" 

"You really do have red eyes," Connor tilted his head to the side not unlike a confused retriever, "They're pretty, like rubies."

She blushed and turned away. Nobody had talked about her eyes that way since... Well it had been a long time. "Thanks, Connor."

“It’s just the truth Miss Annie, no need to thank me for it!” Connor beamed. Something about it irritated Annie.

"You're too damn nice, you know that?"

"Well, I think that's better than being too damn mean. Don't you?"

Andromeda was far too much of a grouch for this line of thinking, but she supposed she could see his point. So she just grunted irritably.