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#honestly my brain is chaotic laudna thoughts like all the time
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Look I talk a lot about how much Imogen loves Laudna and everything, but I’ve only just realized I rarely talk about Laudna.
Imogen’s love is loud and honest and all-encompassing.
Laudna’s love is quieter. It’s fetching water and making sure Imogen has a cloak when it’s cold out. It’s comfort on bad nights and in big crowds and when everything feels like too much. It’s making sure the cabins and shacks they find always feel warm, like home.
She’s so protective of the things and people that are important to her. But part of why her love for Imogen feels so different is because Laudna has tied her worthiness of love to the value of what she can do for people.
The overt care and desperation (like threatening Ashton or lamenting to FCG when she and Imogen were fighting) come from her despair at failing in the one thing she feels she was meant to do: protect Imogen. 
I’ve brought up her conversation with Ashton before, but it's the most honest she’s ever been about how she sees herself and what matters to her. And the way Laudna sees it, she doesn’t matter. She’s never mattered, not really. The other children she grew up with, Delilah, the people in every town from Whitestone to Gelvaan have shown her how little she matters to anyone.
So it’s not surprising that after Dusk shows interest, Laudna is confused and upset. She mentions not accessing that part of her brain in 50 years, but she’s only been dead for 30. 
Laudna has never thought of herself as someone worthy of love. 
I think that’s why there’s also a difference in how Laudna relates to herself and the world after her resurrection. Though Imogen always reassured her, Laudna still put herself down and brushed off the things that hurt her as unimportant.
That’s happening less and less. Partly because she’s tired and scared and dealing with so much. She never wanted to be that kind of burden to her friends, and it’s not something she can just brush off anymore.
But it’s also hard to ignore that you have worth and people that love you when they drop everything to race across the world and literally beat the shit out of your demons for you.
Laudna is slowly coming to terms with the fact that she has people who love her just because she is who she is. Her existence is enough.
And as we saw with FCG finding their soul, that can be just as scary. If she has worth, then what happens to her is important. Her wants and needs and who and how she loves are all important.
That’s a lot to reckon with, but I think once she does, Laudna will finally have the freedom to love as loudly as she pleases.
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