[ He shrugs, like it doesn't matter. And maybe it doesn't. The one time he should have died, he knows he died... he woke up here. He doesn't get to stop, not yet. He still owes the world too much.
He's surprised she hasn't let go, suspicious, but if she wants to drown a little longer, that's her decision. He's too tired to fight any more. And in a way, he's horribly, pathetically grateful that for one moment he isn't alone, even if this is just a pale mockery of the home he once had, this holding hands with a woman who is using him in her own way just as surely se he was used in the dark days that followed the calamity.
The secret of it is easy to divine, for anyone who can wade through the emotional flood. He doesn't hate other people, not really. He simply hates himself and projects it outward, so that he can maintain that isolation that is simultaneously refuge and punishment.
He hates this thing, and he hates that she's seeing him for what he is, but there's some part of him that's just as pathetically grateful that there was one person he could actually help, even a little. That there was someone he could almost care for in his broken and fumbling way. His failures are so broad that he counts his smallest successes like a dragon hoarding gold. ]
Next time, call your mate. If he worries at you, it's because he cares about you.
no subject
[ He shrugs, like it doesn't matter. And maybe it doesn't. The one time he should have died, he knows he died... he woke up here. He doesn't get to stop, not yet. He still owes the world too much.
He's surprised she hasn't let go, suspicious, but if she wants to drown a little longer, that's her decision. He's too tired to fight any more. And in a way, he's horribly, pathetically grateful that for one moment he isn't alone, even if this is just a pale mockery of the home he once had, this holding hands with a woman who is using him in her own way just as surely se he was used in the dark days that followed the calamity.
The secret of it is easy to divine, for anyone who can wade through the emotional flood. He doesn't hate other people, not really. He simply hates himself and projects it outward, so that he can maintain that isolation that is simultaneously refuge and punishment.
He hates this thing, and he hates that she's seeing him for what he is, but there's some part of him that's just as pathetically grateful that there was one person he could actually help, even a little. That there was someone he could almost care for in his broken and fumbling way. His failures are so broad that he counts his smallest successes like a dragon hoarding gold. ]
Next time, call your mate. If he worries at you, it's because he cares about you.
Let him care in his own way.