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“Because you thought they’d accept what you are if you only reduced yourself enough.”
All alone now, she missed him so intensely, her bones and skin ached for the familiarity and comfort of a hug.
She was carved out and empty. An abyss instead of a human.
“But at this point I suppose I deserve to burn. I wonder if you’ll burn, too.” His face was so close the words brushed against her lips, and his mouth crashed against hers.
Trapped in Spirefell, she was latching on to any glimpse of kindness, any sense of tenderness her mind could fabricate. But it wasn’t kindness. He wasn’t kind; he simply wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t as monstrous as he could be. And for Helena’s fracturing mind, an absence of cruelty was sufficient solace. For her starved heart, it was enough.
“That’s all this is. You can’t bear being alone. You’ll do anything for the people who’ll let you love them.”
Become so obsessed with finding my vulnerabilities that you don’t notice the ones I’m making in you.
“It would be too real for you, wouldn’t it? If it was someone you knew. I think that’s why you haven’t. You’re afraid I’ll mess with those clear lines, so you’re making up all these excuses
“You made me feel like the parts of me that aren’t useful still deserve to exist. Like I’m not just all the things I can do.”
You’re being driven by the guilt over crimes you never committed, that you think you deserve to suffer for,
But worse still was knowing all that and still craving those rare moments in which he was gentle. Because that was all she had left.
“You don’t get to lie to me and then get angry when I make the mistake of believing you,”
“In the future, perhaps tell me what you want instead of expecting me to fail where it’s convenient to you. Maybe then we’ll both end up less disappointed in each other.”
Her body was shuddering, but she cried silently. There was a trick to sobbing like that; it was something a person had to learn to do.
“After you nearly bled to death here, I thought, at least I can keep her alive. She deserves to have someone who cares enough to try to keep her alive. I thought eventually you’d give up. But you will do anything to save the people you feel responsible for. Of course you’d weaponise your guilt in order to use mine.”
If he expected more than that, he would have to wait. And earn it. She looked up at him, willing the words to form, but they stayed trapped in her throat. She was so tired. Life had been cold for such a long time.
He wouldn’t let go. He gripped her tighter. “You are not expendable. You don’t get to push everyone away so that they’ll feel comfortable using you and letting you die.”
“You are not replaceable,” he said, his hands trembling against her shoulders. “You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people.
“I don’t want to always be alone,” she said. It was easier to be honest in the dark. “I want to love someone without feeling like if they know, it’ll end up hurting them. People who love me always die. No matter what I do, it’s never enough to save them. I have to love everyone from a distance, and I’m so lonely.”
“You don’t have to push me away to protect me,” he said in a hard, familiar voice. “I can take it. You can stop being lonely. I won’t misunderstand. I know you just want someone to be with.”
Her need to love people and her desperate longing for them to love her back—she had given that up, locked it away and buried it, giving its place to the coldness of logic, realism, and the necessary choices of war. This could only lead to ruin.
“Being alive is not the same as living. I hope someday you’ll have a chance to realise the difference.”
I thought that we could suffer enough to earn each other.”
She didn’t know if she could be a good mother, or if wanting to keep this baby wasn’t just her selfishness rearing its head. Her inability to let go. To love someone. To be needed.
“We have to stop hurting ourselves for each other,” she finally said. “Both of us. We’re not going to last if this is the only way we know how to love.”