Well... shit. The depth of feeling he had toward this girl knocked him stupid sometimes. He wasn't sure he was convinced she was right about Melpomene, though, because admitting that all her fight might've come from fear felt like a step too close to admitting there were times he fought out of fear as well. Melpomene was a goddess, he and Marcie were human, and the thought that loss could terrify all of them equally was difficult to comprehend.
He didn't try to comprehend it, and he didn't let Marcie go. There'd been a couple of girls at his school that'd got pregnant and gone through a similar thing, the name calling and the ostracization and all that, so it wasn't hard to imagine the things people would've said to her. "Fuck, if I could go back and smash that guy," he whispered to her. "Smash all of them for you. Bastards."