[She pulled away her hand, and he felt the loss of the contact between him as more than just a sense of touch. For a brief moment it had felt like it belonged there, fixing a piece of him that had broken off at some point in the past.
And then the feeling was gone, almost as if it hadn't existed.
Almost.
But even though that had faded, her words still hurt somehow. He could hear the pain in them, and he realized that, while true, he shouldn't have said some of those things in the way that he had.
He didn't counter the first two, because he still believed them to be true, just not in the way he thought she did. The last, though, he corrected.]
You've always been my equal, Rose.
[Because that much had always been true. If anything, she was a step above him now.]
You've never told me.
[He both did and didn't want to know. But, if she wanted to tell him, now or someday, he would listen.]