[ the realization that reid is telling the truth sinks into him like a stone dropping through roiling water, and his stomach turns, just a bit. he has witnessed human bodies flayed and bloody beneath his blade, watched people die writhing and screaming and foaming at the mouth from his poisons, but never had any of those things given him this strange, small twinge of sickness that tenderness does. it puzzles him, and to a degree it frightens him; he doesn't know what to expect. the notion that reid truly hadn't meant to hurt him is strange and foreign. where is the mocking interrogation? where is the booming voice meant to humiliate him in front of anyone possible?
in that moment, he could say something cruel, something with a bite; he could sink any number of barbs into reid's flesh. but he does not. his tone is still cold and foreboding, but the anger has left it— emotion has left it. his mask rebuilds itself quickly and quietly; his mind rattles off prime numbers and chemical formulas to soothe him. ]
It is not your duty to apologize for a substance. [ he doesn't want to say its name. not yet. ] Apology cannot heal such a wound.
[ admitting it as such is a thing that he wishes didn't seem so appropriate, but he has had to do it before; all considered, he knows it to be a sickness. it is a wound and a healer all at once; it is heavy in his blood and on his mind and yet it will extend his life by the decades. and yet, for what? to remain captive all his life? it is such a bitter thing, medicine and poison as one and the same.
he wants to grip reid— the coward, he thinks, a wonder he's not been killed— by the chin and make him look at him, but he knows that his hands would not obey, would falter before making contact as they always do; he is not ready, not willing, to cross that border. too many of them have been crossed today. ]