It is easier to be angrier at someone else than angry at himself.
It’s so much easier to harness the anger, the confusion, and let it point outward. It’s so much easier to just let it unravel and maybe it is that relief that lets him forget any sense of common decency that his parents had tried to teach him. He had once been kind, he thinks somewhere in the back of his mind. He had once been wild but joyful; he had known what it meant to be gentle with strangers, to be concerned.
To not so easily unlock the fury that simmers behind his heart.
But he is a wild, feral thing now and he reacts to his pain like it. He lets it leave him furious and cruel because it is so much easier to be angrier at her than angry at himself. It is so much easier to be angry with her than be honest and admit that he had actually been afraid for a stranger—he had cared.
The fact that she reacts the way that she does, nearly afraid and then apologetic, does nothing to slow down the heat that tears through him like a storm. “No, you were obviously not thinking,” he snaps and then he jerks his head. “We need to step back. You need to get to away from the ice,” he nearly nudges her, nearly forces her back and would carry her to the solid ground if he could.
When they are far enough away that he no longer is concerned about immediate danger, he is surprised to know that his pulse still races. Maybe it melds dangerously with his exhaustion or his confusion about the current state of his life, but he doesn’t question it. Instead his stormy eyes cut back to her, studying her without blinking, without shielding her from the full force of his intensity.
“Why were you out on the ice in the middle of winter?”
BRIGADE
when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake