Which of us is the greater sinner...?

Anyone else got the new DN volume 2? How uh How we feeling about... this

From the drips of exposition we've gotten so far about the relationship between Risa and Satoshi, they seem to be... tense. Honestly, it makes sense; emotionally they've never been the most compatible, with Satoshi's stoic pragmatism poised to be forever at odds with Risa's more impulsive, adventurous nature. They're also both, of course, deeply traumatized people unable to find conscious solace in each other, since Risa's memory of Dark and Krad is gone. I'll be honest, I've never really seen the chemistry between these two as anything even remotely romantic; they are, to me, the saddest part of the fallout of Kokuyoku's completion and sealing. Satoshi has never seemed to feel any of the attraction or connection with Risa that he felt towards Daisuke (understandably, since they are two halves of a whole in the same sense that Dark and Krad are, bound to the completion of their story for good or ill.) What he feels for Risa, by comparison, seems to be closer to pity, and compassion- a desire to protect her from as much harm as he can when she's been determined from the start to throw herself into the thick of things; to make sure that she isn’t left behind with nothing, when Dark is gone and Riku and Daisuke have found their way to happiness with each other.

I want to be clear- I do believe that Satoshi loves Risa, in his own way. But he has not learned how to love healthily or well, and their relationship carries an inherently unbalanced dynamic- because he has knowledge that she lacks, about the source of a pain she lives with but can't name, and cannot share that knowledge with her without reopening wounds he has worked for years to bandage and stitch. He loves her knowing that his presence in her life is inherently deceptive, that the peace he gives her comes at the cost of essentially carrying on the secrets and lies that hurt her in the first place. With all this in mind, it makes perfect sense that he would cave to the ingrained habits of distance, of putting his work before his personal connections- even those of his wife, and his children. (It also occurs to me that the twins' friendship with Daiya implies that they know the secret of what happened to Dark, and have presumably been told not to share that information with their mother. The layers of mess in this family are already incredible.)

But even if it's not the healthiest it could be, a status quo has been reached. Satoshi and Risa are, if not quite happy, seemingly comfortable. The open wounds left by Dark will never heal, but Satoshi has given everything he can to give Risa a life where the pain of the stitches holding everything together is jarred to life as little as possible.

Trauma-? Well, if that's what he wants...

Pale fingers reach out slowly to drop an annotated original copy of Ice and Dark into the waiting sack, the pages yellowed with time and cover damaged almost past recognition, though the author's name- Kyle Endoyle- remains legible. Blue eyes remain unblinkingly focused on the thief as the volume falls wordlessly from his grip, only the thinnest sliver of a smile visible at the corners of thin lips.