[It's a familiar thing, this pain. The needles that dig down deep, the rattle in his bones and the bright sparking lights, the ache of it exquisite and terrible and almost (almost) comforting. It's only the reactions that seem all wrong and for moments that stretch out over a dark horizon he's unable to discern even that. The feelings that come instead, the pride and the wanting, the words that are almost like encouragement rather than scathing and designed to cut, to wound-- how he wishes he could have claimed the same thing for himself.
But then everything shifts, again the unfamiliar merges with the known because all this cold clinical whiteness has a sense of home about it, the only kind of home he's ever been able to claim for himself. But it's both right and wrong, and the woman - the girl - standing there smirking at him now, all shadows and the redblack stains of blood-- he knows her. Something fills him then, and even as he knows what he's supposed to do here, he shakes his head.
He won't.]
I can't fight you, Ma'am. It wouldn't be right.
[But everything about this situation says he's going to have to, anyway.]
no subject
But then everything shifts, again the unfamiliar merges with the known because all this cold clinical whiteness has a sense of home about it, the only kind of home he's ever been able to claim for himself. But it's both right and wrong, and the woman - the girl - standing there smirking at him now, all shadows and the redblack stains of blood-- he knows her. Something fills him then, and even as he knows what he's supposed to do here, he shakes his head.
He won't.]
I can't fight you, Ma'am. It wouldn't be right.
[But everything about this situation says he's going to have to, anyway.]