I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
It is not lost on him.
The way she averts her gaze.
How she takes great care to do it even.
Because he watches her closely, studies her when he should be scanning the gathering shadows around them in search of their daughter. She could be lurking there, tucked neatly behind any number of trees, watching them, waiting for them to notice her and cursing her when they don’t. But his eyes are on her alone. Because he loves her even if he doesn’t know the right way to do it and he wants to know what goes on inside of her head. What drives her to all that madness.
He considers her answer a long moment before he nods, conceding. Of course there must be a reason, he realizes. He is a simple man who has never had any real need for philosophy. He has certainly never discussed it but she has shown him so many parts of himself that he never knew existed and there is no reason that this should be any different. There is no reason she should not make him wonder about his own place in it all.
He pauses to collect his thoughts, tries to force them into patterns that make sense before he speaks. “I think you’re right,” he says and nods, shifting his focus to the path ahead of them, uncertain he wants to be able to gauge her reactions to the things he says. “If there were no reason for it, it wouldn’t be fate, would it?” he asks. He is desperately out of his depth and it shows in his lengthy pauses. “It would just be chance,” he answers his own rhetorical question. “I guess it’s up to us to determine what the reason is.”
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
