It felt like a shock went through him when Lydia touched his face because he hadn't expected it, such a gentle and benign brush of fingers from a woman who, in his eyes, was anything but. Perhaps that was why it was so hard to see Lydia cry, knowing that he played a part in that pain for her. Because Lydia was strong. She was one of the strongest women that he knew, powerless when it came to physical advantages and yet somehow so powerful in her own way. She was a survivor, and seeing her so broken, so tender, was almost unsettling. And yet, somehow, comforting. If Lydia could be broken, and raw, and human, then perhaps the guilt he carried along with the pain and the worthlessness he felt from his past didn't make him horrible, just as she said. Perhaps it made him human. Like her.
His head tilted into her hand a little, welcoming her touch, and he looked at her with a strange mixture of doubt and hope. He felt like it was wrong to make that decision. But god, did he want her to be right. The was one thing that was for certain, though; he felt a weight lift when she told him that she wasn't mad at him anymore. She should be, he though. She should have been mad at him because he had put her in a position that Isaac himself hated to be in, and he could have never forgiven those who put him there. But that was the difference between he and Lydia, he supposed. He was dragged down by the things that had happened to him in the past. Lydia was strong. Stronger.
"What if I can't do it?" His words came out in a rasp, as if scraping against his throat against the effort being made to keep them in. He looked down at her with something new, with a fearful uncertainty, but it didn't look as if it came out of nowhere. The expression hadn't necessarily changed on his face as much as it rose to the surface, because it wasn't a concept that Isaac hadn't thought about before. A wall had come down, and she was seeing something that was always there. It was just something he was usually better at hiding. "What if I can't move forward? I don't want to be like this anymore, Lydia." His lips pressed together tightly and his throat moved with a swallow, that shine in his eyes returning and this time Isaac didn't bother to push it down. He was scared. He was terrified.
"I don't want to feel like this anymore. I don't want to think about her every time I'm with a woman, I don't want to be kept awake at night because every time I close my eyes I see her face, I see her - I see her on the ground, I see her-" Isaac's hand moved to cover his mouth as if to physically silence himself before dragging down his face and dropping loosely. "I don't want to be trapped anymore. I don't want to miss her. I don't know what to do, I've tried, I've tried everything and I don't - nothing is working and I can't -"
His eyes closed as he inhaled deeply, his fingers now moving into his hair, and there was a slight tremble to them as he worked to contain himself. "And I feel like shit. I feel like I'm just insulting her, like I'm betraying her because I just don't want to think about it anymore, I don't want to see it anymore, I don't want to smell it anymore, I just don't, because some days I feel like I'm going to be okay but some days I feel like I'm just falling apart. And this was my last resort, this place, and it's not working. I don't know how to make it work. I don't know how to make it stop. I just want it to stop."