The little dun is not quite sure what to make of the expression on Khar'pern's face. It is not quite pity, but it is not quite not, either, but something in between. Some sort of kindred appeal that makes Róisín's jaw set and her gaze slide away again. They might have both served as Prime Ministers of the Peak, but it was Khar'pern who the valkyries kept coming out in support of, far happier with her warmongering and missions of retribution than they had been in Róisín's attempts at changing both Peak and Lagoon for the better. What little reprieve she'd managed had been hard fought for and short-lived.

"Trust me, I've heard plenty about how quickly my attempts at peace were destroyed." She answered, her lips tightly pressed together. It hadn't taken long after her disappearance for the Peak and the Lagoon to leap once more at each other's throats, for the sisters to imprison the men and then lapse back into sullen silence as they always did. It had made her even more bitter at first, and that was remarkable only because at the time she hadn't thought she cared about anything at all anymore.

"It was a mistake to come here, I think." The last two words slipped out before she could cage them, evidence of her own uncertain resolve. She wasn't sure what she had hoped to find in returning to the Peak, but it was not this. This felt as empty and devoid of warmth as it had before, all purpose and idealism leeched out of it. What point would her presence here make? What purpose would it serve?

None. But neither would returning to the Ridge where she remained an unhappy, bitter observer of a life she would never have for herself. Róisín had no idea where she belonged or what she needed in this life, she knew only that this would not be enough. Being a sister meant nothing if there was no sisterhood to belong to. "I don't know what I expected to find," she murmured, shaking her head and looking away from the gray mare and her adorable child. To her surprise, the filly was soon under her own belly (a feat all on its own considering Róisín's shorter stature), causing Roi to flinch as she craned her head slightly to keep an eye on the girl. It had been so long since she'd had a bevvy of children running around her like her younger days in the Ridge and her heart ached for the lightheartedness of those moments. There had been serious moments, too, of course. Sadness and loneliness, too. But there had been more joy there than she had ever found in these lonely peaks.

In her early years, she had never pictured herself as a mother. She'd watched her mother pour everything she had into her children, had watched her risk it all to protect and care for them. It was part of why she had decided to become a valkyrie in the first place, so she could protect mares like her mother from their fates. The little dun had always believed herself to be too selfish, too proud, too wary to ever allow herself to succumb to something as draining as having a family of her own, but something in her had shifted during those lonely months of exile in the Ridge, watching Tyr spread his revolting scent all over her childhood home, watching him dote on and care for and protect Oswin the way she had always wanted her father to do for her family. It had made her wonder if her own upbringing had been more of a fluke. It made her wonder if she might be as wrong about motherhood as she had been about everything else.

"Why do you stay here?" She finally asked, tearing her mismatched gaze away from the filly bobbing about underneath her and lifting it back to the Prime Minister. "Why have children if you hate their fathers so much?"