[private] I'll cross that line

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you Gale’s carefully maintained stoicism wavers at the sharp bark of Mazikeen’s laughter, but he doesn’t react to the sarcasm in her greeting with anything more than a flicking ear. He can tell that she is watching him even as he focuses on the horizon behind her, and her orange gaze has never reminded him more of fire as he feels it flicking across him. This assessment feels different than the others. Perhaps it is because he still does not understand why she is here. When he had been considering reasons earlier, few of them had included her both looking for him and being angry with him. None of them had been the possibility that she intended to keep the promise she had made him. “Check up on me?” He repeats slowly, struggling to process what she’s said as his eyes narrow in confusion and finally meet hers. The clarity of them shocks him, and Gale forgets what he’d been thinking about entirely. She can still do that, even after he’s spent months telling himself she couldn’t. She’s talking too, but Gale is missing what she says until the pause finally draws his attention and he hears ‘the fact you don’t care about me’. Gale shakes his head before he realizes it, grasping for his earlier stoicism but coming up short. Instead he takes a breath to calm himself, and finds that it smells of Mazikeen and her mountains. When he releases the breath, it is with a long sigh, and another shake of his head that is more self-directed than the last. “I shouldn’t have let you think that.” He finally says when he meets her eyes again. “I thought it would make things easier, but I don’t think it has.” It certainly hadn’t made her stay away. He shakes his head a bit, buffeting away imaginary arguments before he continues speaking. This time his voice is more measured, slower as he thinks carefully over each word rather than spill them out in his customary babble. “I won’t hold you to that promise, Mazikeen. I accepted before I truly understood what the future holds for me, and that was a mistake.” It’s not quite an apology, but his lack of omniscience is also not his own fault, so it felt appropriate. Gale thought he would feel better after that admission, better after relieving Mazikeen of what must surely be her final reason to come to Islandres. @[Mazikeen]