"What do you think they wanted you to remember?" Yseult arches a brow at him, but fondly. "These things. Not that." She gestures at the wall across where they stood, rotting away. She rubs his back, palm brisk over the curve of his spine as he curls forward, and sighs. "You can't allow what happened to poison everything."
Her hand slows as she hesitates, thinking of leaving it there. It all seems too obvious to bear speaking aloud, and she's never had his ease with words. It all comes out simple and childish when she says it, almost insulting. But it must need saying or he wouldn't still be this tense beneath her hand, still watching the spectral dust pile across the room, the fading glow around the door frame.
"I've told you stories about my family," she says, hand settling but fingers picking at his collar, smoothing wrinkles that may or may not exist. "My aunts and uncles and cousins. All killed. Faster than your friends but just as cruelly. I haven't forgotten. But if I never thought about my aunt Sorcha and her box full of beads, or the stray cat she took in, or how she taught me to read palms--. If I only thought about the last time I saw her, when she was lying in the road with her throat cut so deeply they almost took her head off, that would be like forgetting her. Forgetting everything that mattered about her and replacing it all with her killer and what he did. He doesn't deserve to steal her place in my mind that way."
no subject
Her hand slows as she hesitates, thinking of leaving it there. It all seems too obvious to bear speaking aloud, and she's never had his ease with words. It all comes out simple and childish when she says it, almost insulting. But it must need saying or he wouldn't still be this tense beneath her hand, still watching the spectral dust pile across the room, the fading glow around the door frame.
"I've told you stories about my family," she says, hand settling but fingers picking at his collar, smoothing wrinkles that may or may not exist. "My aunts and uncles and cousins. All killed. Faster than your friends but just as cruelly. I haven't forgotten. But if I never thought about my aunt Sorcha and her box full of beads, or the stray cat she took in, or how she taught me to read palms--. If I only thought about the last time I saw her, when she was lying in the road with her throat cut so deeply they almost took her head off, that would be like forgetting her. Forgetting everything that mattered about her and replacing it all with her killer and what he did. He doesn't deserve to steal her place in my mind that way."