[ It was and always would be as ugly as shackles. Weighted and heavy and they rattle, and everyone hears it for what it is. Carla's soft words in his ear you're obsessed. He is worse than obsessed, he simply has nothing else but his grief. Because once he lost that, he would just be ashes and shards to cut fingers on.

Wonders briefly, that for both their sakes that perhaps he should lie. Take her hand, kiss her brow with his scar marred lips and say the way shush her the way he had Emily when she'd clung to him. There, it is alright now, it will all be alright now.

It isn't, and it never will be again. The gesture dies before it gets anywhere near what might be called comfort for the pain she's in. He's shy on those gestures for those he doesn't know well, somewhere the demands of decency and the ever present feeling of waiting for the knife in his ribs. Different again with her, her and her old words out of a pretty young woman's mouth. Then again, he's talked to children that already have planned how they will die, so maybe that doesn't meant anything either. ]

To what end? I can not offer what I do not know to be true, I have always been a poor liar that way.

[ Still, -- that, he meets her eyes and the grief is there as much and as plain, he has had time she hasn't, and perhaps she will become the same. But it's bled out from the hot stab, it is dead and it is empty and it is dead. Nothing there, never will be again. ]

And what will you pretend?