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"I think that happens to people that die and come back, or came to the brink of death. There's something... Not right about them anymore, and it comes down to why they were reborn, why they came back - was it for good or for bad? And how can you tell, really? It's not until you see what's in someone's heart that you really understand what's going on, and then it might be too late."

She thinks, then, of Voldemort, of how it felt when she had realised what had happened to him - the split souls, the knowledge of how he had done it, murder upon murder, each one 'special' to him, how he had lost his heart and his soul, how everything about him had been wrong. He was borne of love potion and could never understand the emotion - perhaps he'd never had any hope of not being 'bad'. It might be the same for this Lady Stoneheart; brought back from death with memories of pain, hurt and vengeance on her lips.

How could anyone escape that fate?

"There's no way to hope that she will find some kind of sympathy and remorse. All we can do is hope that, one day, there's a way to draw her back from the hatred - to try and show her a better path, otherwise she has to go for good."

Death was about the only end he could see for her. Gendry could not fathom how a creature like her could live at all in that state. When all that was left for her was a broken and ravaged body, there couldn't be anything left after that. Not even after all his deaths had Beric been left in such a state.

"Lord Dondarrion had died too. Six times before that. It changed him too, though never like her." He frowned, feeling a deep sense of remorse for the loss of a man who had inspired so much in him. "But it must have broken him too, for him to pass it on to her."

There isn't hope, not really, when it comes to the dead - Hermione had seen it. The Drabwurld might have deluded her into thinking that people might come back after one, if they'd been given a shard, but beyond that? There was no real hope. They simply had to realise that trying to draw someone back from whatever beyond they'd gone to was not going to work - and it wasn't fair on the people who might have found peace.

"Lord Dondarrion might have been far stronger than anyone might have been able to guess," Hermione says quietly in return. "But I don't think he died with the same kind of hatred and need for payback that Robb's mother did. I know how he died, and that sort of betrayal will haunt you, even as a spirit." Pursing her lips, she shifts, a little awkwardly. "Maybe he had hope, and that hope failed him, but at least the hope was there. I'm sorry that it didn't work out the way you wanted."

He had shared more just then than he had with anyone in a very, very long time. It was a lot for him to say as much as he had and he never really knew what to do with sympathy. Sharing any kind of feeling with anyone was an awkward experience that he didn't rightly know how to return. After all, he'd saddled his own burden on top of her now.

So it only naturally fell upon him to rise above it. He rubbed at the tip of his nose, looked one direction and then another, and only finally back at Hermione. "What's dead is dead," he concluded. "I'm sorry for all that. You've plenty of problems already... you didn't need mine too."

Hermione isn't offering him huge amounts of sympathy - she's just standing there, trying to wrap her mind around it. It's magic she's never heard of herself, magic she could never begin to want to understand... But isn't that the same as the magic of Horcrux making? She'd never wanted to understand that, to wrap her mind around it, but she had. She'd been forced to, against her will, because she had read the books and had known she needed to prepare herself.

She hoped there would never be a time where she had to worry about this sort of magic.

Stepping forward, she reaches out and squeezes his hand gently before she nods.

"I learned a little while ago that problems don't seem as heavy when you share them with someone." And then, finally, Hermione shrugs a shoulder. "Now - has the tree given you anything?"

He had picked up the helmet before, though he'd done nothing to really show it off to her. The bull shaped helm might have been expertly craft, but it seemed a paltry gift after the memory he'd been made to share. Given the choice, he would have vastly preferred to simply put the days of work into simply making it again.

But she was kind, at the very least, and he didn't mind so much that she initiated contact again. There was no rush of sudden memories this time, but only instead the warmth and comfortable presence of a hot furnace from the forge he'd spent so many long hours around as a growing boy. It was where the helmet had been cast.

"This." He offered it for her to see. "I made this, more than three years past."

Hermione can feel the warmth - or she thinks she can, at least, and it makes her face feel hot and prickling, as if she's flushing instead of standing in front of hot coals. Lifting her head, she steps forward to look at the the helm, tilting her head to look at it; she doesn't try to reach out and take it away from him, nor does she ask that he pass it over, she simply basks in the fact that he's sharing the chance for her to see what he was given, something unique and important to him.

"I see what you mean about the metal on the planet here," she says finally. "If this is the sort of thing that's possible in your world then there's no point wasting materials here. It just doesn't seem like it would ever really work or come to it's full potential - even under the best of hands."

Moving back a step, Hermione gives Gendry a bit of space to breathe.

"It's beautiful, and really well made. I'm impressed."

He might not have looked it, but he was an artist, and the evidence of that was in his hands. But more than that, he was a critical artisan and while her words were appreciated, he held himself at too high of a level to simply accept them.

"It's amateur's work," he admitted before placing it on his own head. Only then did a grimace appear and he gave it a knock knock on the top of it. This was strange.

"Oh."

"It might be amateur to you, but it's incredible to me. I can't even imagine it."

Which is true. Hermione might have commissioned work from the blacksmiths at the Citadel, but she had never been any good at it herself. Maybe, if things had been different, she'd have learned, but she never had the chance, not really. She was always far too busy with all her work, with fighting, with the war... All of it.

Pausing, she frowns, tilting her head to try and peer at Gendry through the mask. "Oh?"

He tilted his head back down at her and only then did he take the helmet back off, flipping it over to stare inside. His complaint was incredibly petty, admittedly, but it still nagged at him anyway.

"I had this in the Drabwurld. You remember those little shadow beasts that only seemed to be scared of hounds? This was my reward, my boon, for helping out some. Only they'd enchanted it so it was always chilled inside." Gendry's expression twisted into a reluctant and embarrassed smile. "Not that it needed that, but it was... nice."

There had been something rather nice about wearing the helmet on a hot summer's day as well and how it kept his head cool, rather than bake it. He'd learned to make that particular enchantment himself, though he'd lost that power along with his Shard.

"Oh." Hermione knows she's repeating herself, but she steps forward to look at the inside of the helmet before she pauses. Gendry is without his shard and, therefore, without his magic - unless he had some natural ability that she didn't know about - but she pauses, hesitating for a moment, before she tilts her head up and looks at him with a shyness she can't quite force away.

"I remember. Things don't always need to be enchanted, but it does help more often than not. I remember when Lancelot taught me the rune for 'warmth' when he was stitching it on his blankets - it was a little ridiculous. I've never been all that good at sewing."

Tilting her head up, she pauses for a moment.

"Do you remember what the enchantment was? Or if it was a rune? I could recreate it for you."

He traced it with his finger inside the helmet, but stopped before he finished and instead tilted it back towards himself. If she could manage it, that was just as well. But he was suddenly very aware of what he was requesting and he was already in her debt for getting this far. Besides that, he knew good and well it was trouble getting too involved with pretty girls. He was flustered enough already having to deal with grim memories, much less conversation and receiving favors.

"It makes no matter," he insisted very suddenly before placing it back on his head and so out of her reach. "It's not so hot here or on the ships. This will do."

Hermione blinks in surprise, but she doesn't protest. To her it was a simple offer, borne of friendship rather than anything else, and she didn't really see it as anything that Gendry would ever owe her - she just wanted to help, since that's what she does. It's what she's always done, and considering that this man is only person that remembers the Drabwurld, just like her, in a way she can't forget... It makes her want to keep him a little bit closer. Still, she fights back her arguments, nodding her head.

"Of course, that's fine too," and she smiles. "There might even be a cold snap on the fleet one day and then you'll be glad for the stuffy helmet."

At the very least, he returned the smile and spoke with experience. "Might be I'll make an even better one. Enchantments are always stronger when forged with the steel."

There might have even been a metaphor there, something about friendship and forged in fire. Or perhaps it was just Gendry only accidentally appearing to be saying more than he actually was. Either way, it was something of a relief to have someone like Hermione around. Not because of the utility of what she could do, but simply because it meant that perhaps the last two years of his life amounted to more than just the nothing he might have otherwise assigned it. She reminded him that this part of his past mattered.

"That would be just as amazing. Maybe the next planet will have better materials and a good forge and you can have as many attempts as you'd like. It's entirely possible, given what I've seen so far."

Poisoned moons, planets where touch inspired memories... It's nothing like the Drabwurld but it has the hallmarks of it all the same, just as she'd expect. Solais and the Seelie had taught her that the Drabwurld was the root of all the universes, all the worlds, and if that was the case then it was the start of this one, too, with the fleet and all it's crew and the ridiculous television show. Lifting her shoulders, she manages a smile.

"And if not then you have your present as a good back up."

In the end, he decided not to talk about his intentions to stay on the planet. If he was going to be dragged along with this fleet to gods only knew where, then perhaps it wouldn't be nearly so awful as he imagined it. Though it did seem particularly awful.

"Thank you," he managed to say in a moment of unusual maturity. "For all of it."

Perhaps others might have done this too, but that didn't matter. Good people weren't perhaps so rare as in the world he hailed from, but that didn't lessen any of. She had done it for him. Gendry would remember that.

Hermione isn't sure if she'd make the same choice as Gendry; if she was able to stay here then she would, she's sure of it, and she would make herself comfortable. What she wants most, of course, is to go back to the Drabwurld, to John and Dorian and Gilgamesh, to the memories of Nico and Nasrin and Katsa, all the things she cares most about, but - she can't do that. She has no control, again, and it's frustrating.

She just has to deal with it for now.

Smiling, she nods her head. "Of course, I didn't mind at all. I was glad to help, Gendry." And there's an unspoken promise, there, too; if he ever needs help again he can ask her.

It was his intent to at some point make this up to her. For all she might claim to not have minded, he'd done a very good job of upsetting her before. He would have to right that at some point.

"I think I'll stay here a bit." He stared up at the tree thoughtfully. "It's peaceful here."

And he also had a notion that he might linger about and see what others might get. It was an interesting thing that was going on here and he wasn't content to simply take his helmet and return to the life he was trying to make here. This was worth spending some time alone with his own thoughts, which weren't entirely bitter and angry for once.

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