it's collision in the best way. like a tension off a coiled spring, finally jumping back into place : all he needed was for her to say it. the blooming curve of his lips barely classifies a smile - just a wide gash of a mouth to show teeth, intimately violent in all - if not the only - way he's ever known; his language. " you've answered your own question. " there's a certain triumph in his tone, like it's more of a fight than a confession, even as his words strike confusingly tender, " why do you think i'm still here after all this time, waiting? "
" you know, it was so cathartic to kill you, every time you looked at me with those clueless eyes. ... it was easier. " he said, remembering the awful, dread-filled looks from her as he'd burned her to ash & gutted her, until warm blood kissed his body like tears. licks his lips. " you were infuriating, & your deaths were beautiful. it satisfied the frustration & the confusion, & gave me new hope for a new version of you, but i wanted ... "
he stops, like even admitting it would be too much. it still is, the sheer feeling worming into his chest like a parasite, an aching sore. he holds onto the arbitrary fear that he'll spill his guts just for her to look at him like a stranger again, but he speaks through the bit tongue. " i wanted something permanent. real. & here you are. so i'm not sorry. because now all we have is this. we have it. "
he can't be any nicer. he's forgotten how. maybe she'd someday coax that from him, like a reluctant compromise, but all he can do now is to put the facts in front of her, the inevitable truth of how their new normals would bring them together, cause them to clash like the continental drifts of the earth, inevitable.
