11-20-2021, 11:23 AM
selaphiel
But it is, can’t she see that?
If only he had been able to tell her that it was time to kill Gale before he had sunk his teeth into her. If only he’d been able to warn her. If only he’d been able to make himself useful in all the ways he had so desperately wanted to be useful to her.
He had vowed to protect her to the best of his ability and he had failed. It is his fault but he does not argue. He just lets the truth settle a little deeper into his bones, where it has lived since she’d looked him in the face and told him that he was nothing.
He does not argue, he just watches while the truth calcifies.
There is nothing he can do to stop this fresh wave of tears and he swallows thickly, meeting her gaze. He would have died for her, he thinks, if he hadn’t been such a coward. He would have laid down his life to protect her just as she had done for him if he had not been making himself scarce instead.
He failed her and he’ll have to live with that.
He failed his mother, too, and he’ll have to live with that, too.
And perhaps this is why his happiness at having his friend back has been dampened so. Because so much has changed since they walked together in the sun and decided that they were friends.
He cannot conjure up a smile, even when she smiles at him.
Instead, he merely exhales and nods, eyelashes fluttering.
“I knew you were still in there somewhere,” he says. “I could tell it in the way you were trying to protect me even when you were trying to hurt me.”
She has been protecting him his whole life, he realizes.
“I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I’d given up on you that easy.”
He tries to say it with some levity. He tries to smile.
But he fails to do either.
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
@Mazikeen