#as of 3x09 they're in it for life but that's not a sudden episode development

[raayllum]

Could Rayllum have possibly broken up after the "you never did" scene in 3x08?

Oh, not at all. Even when Rayla sees Callum coming up to meet her on the pinnacle, what, maybe 20 minutes later? She’s still torn up over their fight, but she’s also not mad and she’s not, most notably in my opinion, defensive. She makes her boundaries clear — “I don’t want to talk about it, I’m not going to change my mind” — but Callum also makes it clear he’s not going to step on them: “No no [that’s not what I’m here to do.]” 

She’s not happy. It was an emotionally charged fight and they both said some pretty hurtful things. But they’ve also worked through far worse with far less reason to — everything with the Egg, Harrow, Soren and Claudia. And my next meta is likely going to touch on this more heavily, but one of the things that 3x05 always impresses upon me is how much, post the awkward aftermath of their first kiss, how much Callum and Rayla (Rayla, understandably, in particular) do to make sure their friendship stays in tact. 

“We walk away and this never happened,” is to save embarrassment for her, of course, but Callum is plenty embarrassed and flustered too. But he’s also still her best friend and she’s still the most amazing person he’s ever met, and they know it, and they don’t want to lose it. So Callum helps her up from the ground and Rayla has him hold onto her with little fuss, she helps him up the ambler and they figure how to deal with Nyx together. 

I’ve written about Rayla’s “You never did,” before, and I know I’ll touch on it again, too. I once said she said it in order to hurt him, in a way, because he’d also hurt her, but as an extension: she says it to shock/wound him enough to back off. And while she feels it’s true in the moment, they both know how untrue it really is; Callum likely knows her better than anyone else.

Rayla and Callum are a couple that bickers, and occasionally fights, and they do disagree fairly often. But every time they do disagree, or even argue, they also choose one another and their relationship over any obstacle that gets in their path. 

When Callum offers the Egg to Rayla, he proves that he trusts her whether she tells him the truth or not. When the truth about Harrow does come out, Callum chooses understanding and forgiveness over grief and hurt; when faced with the severity of Callum’s illness, Rayla chooses concern, forgiveness, and compassion over anger, about as unconditionally as it can get: “It doesn’t matter what you did before.” Whenever the world asks them to put something above their relationship, they say almost always say no, and when they don’t, they almost always agree on why they’re saying no. Even Rayla, in her initial decision to stay at the Storm Spire, makes sure to put her relationship with Callum as a priority and make sure he’ll have something to remember her by. 

But at the end of the day, every obstacle they’ve overcome has brought them closer. They’re both stubbornly compassionate people who cared deeply about each other at first against their better judgement, in some ways, and now actively choose to. Nothing’s gonna ever break them apart. Not permanently. And definitely not a fight that, I think at its core, in many way demonstrates just how much they care about one another.