[If he listens hard, he can hear that, hear the slightly off, syncopated rhythm of both hearts as they continually catch up to one another and then fall apart, catch up and fall apart.
He does, for a few long moments, because it's soothing. Even when he tells himself he needs to step back now, that it's just the flood, it doesn't mean anything other than what it does, that Anya is affected and they need to make a contingency plan for how to navigate it, how to meet her responsibilities, how to avoid someone else taking advantage of it. He wonders if it's struck, if she'll die or if her own heart will be sufficient.
But falling the other way pulls more strongly; wanting to take it as a sign, wanting to love her again for being something that they both have to know she isn't. He has plenty of reasons to love her. She doesn't have to be a goddess. But when he draws in a breath to ask another question, to ask what she needs him to do, the weight of everything else presses into the space just a little bit more and his breath hitches.
Everything in his chest, his throat, his head feels like it's constricting, and he waits for it to loosen again, draws another short, hoarse breath when it doesn't; when he finally pushes breath back out, his vision is blurring. He wants so badly to ask her to just tell him what to do, to fold quietly and gratefully into that kind of willing and unthinking obedience, and knows how unfair it is to ask it of her.
But he's fighting back against too much else right now and his next inhale is as choked as the previous, thicker.]
We should... we should... [He shakes his head. He doesn't know what they should.]
no subject
He does, for a few long moments, because it's soothing. Even when he tells himself he needs to step back now, that it's just the flood, it doesn't mean anything other than what it does, that Anya is affected and they need to make a contingency plan for how to navigate it, how to meet her responsibilities, how to avoid someone else taking advantage of it. He wonders if it's struck, if she'll die or if her own heart will be sufficient.
But falling the other way pulls more strongly; wanting to take it as a sign, wanting to love her again for being something that they both have to know she isn't. He has plenty of reasons to love her. She doesn't have to be a goddess. But when he draws in a breath to ask another question, to ask what she needs him to do, the weight of everything else presses into the space just a little bit more and his breath hitches.
Everything in his chest, his throat, his head feels like it's constricting, and he waits for it to loosen again, draws another short, hoarse breath when it doesn't; when he finally pushes breath back out, his vision is blurring. He wants so badly to ask her to just tell him what to do, to fold quietly and gratefully into that kind of willing and unthinking obedience, and knows how unfair it is to ask it of her.
But he's fighting back against too much else right now and his next inhale is as choked as the previous, thicker.]
We should... we should... [He shakes his head. He doesn't know what they should.]