Re: marvel: eddie/muerte
[Retiring without him was a massively different situation to imagine, for her. It involved much more darkness, and a much shorter timeline. And yet, it didn't feel (to her) like she was placing every hope on him. But he'd dug his way into her exisistence in a way that she couldn't ignore and couldn't deny was good. And then he'd offered something she hadn't even thought to want. She wasn't completely surprised at the direction her choices were taking.
But she couldn't say all those things, not yet, maybe not for a very long time, but she hadn't thought that what she had said would spark as much of a reaction as tears. It worried her, alarmed her in a way she didn't know what to do with.] Is it... [Her heart beat harder, reminding her of that first time through the door, when she couldn't catch her breath, and everything was too overwhelming to deal with. The speed of her breaths increased, shallow, and she tried to slow down without much success. The logical part of her mind was trying to remember him saying that he wanted to love her, but the panicking majority only held up the banner that read that he wasn't yet.
And then he was turning himself away, angling his shoulders like he was trying to make a wall of his own body between himself and her. She heard the sigh, saw the movement of his arm that she knew translated to a tired rub at his own jaw. Saw the way he didn't, couldn't, look at her. The simple statement that felt like a heavy rock into a pond, sinking to the bottom. It sounded (to her, in that moment) like an exhausted sacrifice to help someone that needed their hand held to find their own life. And that - she couldn't have that either. She saw something amazing - his dream of a shop full of life and color and good people - crumble away into dark, angry, bitter obligation. It cut at that place inside of her already hurt and bleeding from millenia-old memories.]
Oh. [The sound was punched out of her.] Oh, no. [Her weight shifted back on her heel and the rest of her body went tense.]