I tried to sell my soul last night
Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
He had never exposed himself like this to anyone in his life. Never peeled back the layers of his own reticence to reveal the raw edges beneath. And he had never realized how goddamned freeing it could be. Never realized how much it had hurt to keep them wrapped and hidden away. And Ryatah, damn her, was the only one who could have ever made him do so. She could damned well deal with the consequences. The inconsistencies. The most awful parts of him that she once imagined she wanted to know.
He sighs when she replies, her voice wavering and thick with emotion, his own jaw clenching until a tick jumps in the pale lines of his cheek. “I came back because it was you,” he growls, his voice low and harsh with his own ruthlessly repressed regret and self-loathing. “Because even though I fucking knew you would never choose me, I couldn’t make myself stay away.”
Even now, he couldn’t seem to make himself stay away. He had run and run and run again, and always, somehow, he always ended up right back where he started. He could not fault her for finding her own happiness, even if he hated it. Could not fault her because she never would have found it with him. He had always known it to be true. His life had always been cold and cruel and brutal. The future would bring only the same, and even as crass and selfish as he is, he had never wanted that for her.
But there are no words he could find to tell her that. No way he can explain that is what had made him run. That that is what made him abandon her and their newborn daughter in that cave. No way to tell her that he hated children not because he didn’t care, but because having him as a father would be far worse than having no father at all.
Though it shouldn’t have, her question catches him off guard. His ears flatten against his neck, a visceral response to the sentiment. He had despised it when he realized his memories had been stolen, even if it had made life so much simpler. Still, it would be so easy to lie to her. To tell her he had been happier. But the truth is so much darker than that.
Lips tightening into a familiar scowl, his dark eyes find hers, a blistering despair hidden by forced stoniness. “I have never been happy,” he snaps, finding it a surprisingly hard thing to admit. “No, that’s a lie. I was happy once, and it wasn’t even fucking real.”
@[Ryatah]