Maybe their fates were sealed the moment they became a team.
Arish tries to shake that thought away. He's been spending so much time around people from Research that he's starting to sound like them. But years in the Oldest House sink into his bones like rot. Like the beginnings of a cavity, just barely a sensation, until a sudden shot of pain, and then nothing again.
Its haunting. To not have them here. To have kept each of his old Ranger team's pouches, heavy with the weight of the silver bullet, courtesy of Jesse Faden.
Maybe it's wrong to keep them. They're secured in his things, under a spare change of clothes, always stowed away, always in the back of his mind. Maybe they haunt him because he holds onto these tokens. Though he can't bear to think of the alternative, of getting rid of them. Donating them feels like a bad omen. Destroying them feels disrespectful.
Hell, maybe the first misstep was commemorating the event at all. Playing into the archetype with silver bullets. Adding meaning to it by each getting one, by hearkening back to the AWE in the first place. He tries to remember his early ranger training and the newer studies Luck & Probability staff have thrown his way. Was their doom made more likely by playing into this? To barely escape with their lives in the first place, and then all meet their ends together?
Something in him flares at the morose train of thought. Defiant and flippant. Protective of his friends, gone as they are. Protective of himself. (Protective of the little guy.)
No, no, there's no point in speculating. It happened. And who's to say it wasn't helpful? Lucky, even? Maybe these silver bullets kept them safe in ways they never saw over the years. Maybe the fates brought them together so they would survive Albany.
Maybe he's not haunted. Maybe they're all watching over him.
Six pouches in his locker. One around his neck.
Seven's a lucky number, right?