[A low, retching sob bursts from him and he clamps down on it fiercely, feeling it press and claw at him desperately from the inside. It hurts to think, to breathe, his chest in spasms with every raw, sharp intake of breath he’s forced to pull through his nose. He’s not ready to be touched when the elf reaches across the distance, but he never would have been even with all the time in the world. He lets him coo and trace the rigid line of his jaw with loving fingers like he used to. He lets him move him gently like a broken wooden doll, a mouth pressing to the stiffly twitching line of his own and coaxing him into a meaningful kiss he doesn’t feel. What helpless, strangled noises aren’t trapped low in his throat he stifles against Zevran’s lips.
On some level he’s aware that the words twisting into him are meant to be a kindness, and he doesn’t know when it all begins to form an impenetrable haze around him. Or when he shuts down and folds in, his eyes filming over with death of a different sort. Another kiss comes, short and stingingly sweet, and he gives it nothing it deserves. He can give it nothing at all. Giving in and giving out and there’s nothing left in him to give. Changes have been set in motion and he’d be powerless to stop them if he had wanted to.
‘I am too far gone’, he’s told Julia more than once. ‘There is nothing you can do.’
The apology long-sought is more of one than he’s ever gotten in his life for anything, and now that he has it, it sits there in his hands like a heavy weight and he’s at loss for what to do with it. It’s not the panacea he had hoped for; it does not bring with it satisfaction, even of the bitter sort. It just is, and he’s sorry too. Not for what he’s done so much as all that he hasn’t in his lifetime, more than he will ever know how to express.
His short, hitching gasps begin to peter out and he straightens his shoulders, head tilting, the set of his jaw betraying what is otherwise a tired, but almost defiant impassivity. At least he knows now. There’s nothing left to doubt as his castle of sand lies in ruins at his feet, to be swept away like the one he’d built for Hector.
And at last it comes, raw and barely above a whisper. A single word.] No. [Wetness clings heavily to his lashes, eyes unfocused and gleaming incandescent in the dark. He swallows, nearly choking on a clot of phlegm and saliva sticking in his throat.]
‘tis I who is sorry.
[Above all things, for having been honest. For having gone and humiliated himself and never being able to undo it. How much safer, how much easier it’d have been to keep hiding behind hollow laughter or a painfully wry joke, suspecting but never having the courage to ask.
Tics tug at the corners of his mouth as viciously as ever and he tenses his jaw and bites down hard on his cheek. Chest surging, air puffing in and out his nose.]
You have all you need now. [He manages when the moment passes. Looking at Zevran with different eyes, he hasn’t it in him, here and now, to do anything with anger other than to let it bleed out of him. Come the arrival of the morning light, there is no saying the sort of man he will be.] The hour is late.
[He doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore, let alone with his one true friend. He wants more than anything to be able to say that there are pressing matters that need attending but there aren’t, a lack of purpose and direction haunting him since the dawn of his second life. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will be lost in an indistinguishable blur, he thinks, as have all the days that have come before. Empty and wasted, unwanted.]
action
On some level he’s aware that the words twisting into him are meant to be a kindness, and he doesn’t know when it all begins to form an impenetrable haze around him. Or when he shuts down and folds in, his eyes filming over with death of a different sort. Another kiss comes, short and stingingly sweet, and he gives it nothing it deserves. He can give it nothing at all. Giving in and giving out and there’s nothing left in him to give. Changes have been set in motion and he’d be powerless to stop them if he had wanted to.
‘I am too far gone’, he’s told Julia more than once. ‘There is nothing you can do.’
The apology long-sought is more of one than he’s ever gotten in his life for anything, and now that he has it, it sits there in his hands like a heavy weight and he’s at loss for what to do with it. It’s not the panacea he had hoped for; it does not bring with it satisfaction, even of the bitter sort. It just is, and he’s sorry too. Not for what he’s done so much as all that he hasn’t in his lifetime, more than he will ever know how to express.
His short, hitching gasps begin to peter out and he straightens his shoulders, head tilting, the set of his jaw betraying what is otherwise a tired, but almost defiant impassivity. At least he knows now. There’s nothing left to doubt as his castle of sand lies in ruins at his feet, to be swept away like the one he’d built for Hector.
And at last it comes, raw and barely above a whisper. A single word.] No. [Wetness clings heavily to his lashes, eyes unfocused and gleaming incandescent in the dark. He swallows, nearly choking on a clot of phlegm and saliva sticking in his throat.]
‘tis I who is sorry.
[Above all things, for having been honest. For having gone and humiliated himself and never being able to undo it. How much safer, how much easier it’d have been to keep hiding behind hollow laughter or a painfully wry joke, suspecting but never having the courage to ask.
Tics tug at the corners of his mouth as viciously as ever and he tenses his jaw and bites down hard on his cheek. Chest surging, air puffing in and out his nose.]
You have all you need now. [He manages when the moment passes. Looking at Zevran with different eyes, he hasn’t it in him, here and now, to do anything with anger other than to let it bleed out of him. Come the arrival of the morning light, there is no saying the sort of man he will be.] The hour is late.
[He doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore, let alone with his one true friend. He wants more than anything to be able to say that there are pressing matters that need attending but there aren’t, a lack of purpose and direction haunting him since the dawn of his second life. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will be lost in an indistinguishable blur, he thinks, as have all the days that have come before. Empty and wasted, unwanted.]