He'd been more right than she was willing to admit. All of this infinite time and she still would not learn. Such infinity was useless without wisdom to accompany it. The very wise were only those who had such experience and insight that it far exceeded that of their peers and juniors. Akheron thought that perhaps anything could be understood if the time were taken. That compassion and cunning, those two most important facets of the thing, could turn from the first drips of the spring thraw to the rushing torrent of the mountain. Yet Styx did not see, and perhaps could not see, and so she was ice.
Something about that saddened him beyond words.
"No, thank you," he declined again.
To need only one thing. To want only one thing. Akheron felt the constriction of it in his chest. Ugly, sharp, wheezing breaths were all that he could muster for a handful of seconds. Was this what she loved, in her own world? A creature who lived only to hate? Hate was simpler than love. You had only to release yourself from responsibility. Find something or someone to blame for your ill fortune and the ill ghosts that haunted your every step. Love, and to be loved, in the face of all that was terrible... endless courage to match that endless life.
She knew nothing of that, either.
He took the seat beside her. One hand undid the buttons of his coat, quickly and methodically, so that it hung open. The memory of that tight wheezing was still in him, and his chest felt looser still, despite the serpent that still clutched at it. Akheron, just as quickly and just as methodically as before, seized her hand in his. Skin as pale as snow, and just as cold. The heat in her had never existed at all, he thought, or perhaps had been replaced by something else. Her hand was brought before his eyes. Yes, quickly. Yes, methodically.
"What of me is in you?" he asked quietly. "What has happened, to bring you to such a state?"
He did not describe the state to her as he had before. She knew it well enough. She existed only there. And despite her anger at his words - as though he seemed to know her, though he truly did not - Styx realized the barest beginning of it.
Akheron wondered finally if she was even equipped to answer so simple a question. What could harden the heart into so cold and hard a shape that it could not even choose a love, and love completely?