Re: the lighthouse, inside.
She looked at him, and she wondered at that hoarse patience that never abated. It reminded her of something forced, something familiar, and she wasn't surprised it was here. There was some understanding of this place, of her situation. The lightkeeper wasn't particularly perceptive about herself, but repairmen had come lighthouse in the past, and she was good at remembering the things they saw in her cold and shaking form, even if she wasn't good at finding them there herself. But there was no cure for the lightkeeper, and so she would stay inside this crumbling husk. "Just give up," she echoed at his comment about coming full circle, and there were days she wanted to. There were days she wanted nothing more than to sit upon the ornate stairs that would corrode too early, and just stop. But she wasn't a quitter, and that was what made them different. She would fight until she drowned, even if it happened over and over again.
He was right that they weren't the same, but the lightkeeper regarded him with yellowing eyes in the darkness, a match for the light and its doused mate, and she tipped her head to the side to reveal a waterfall of black hair in the slight light from around the barred door. Her hair dripped black into the water growing higher at their feet, and the color left behind an unhealthy pallidity in long and tangled hair. "It's not enough for you either, idiot," she said kindly, despite the words and the crags in her voice. "It's safer. Safer isn't enough."
But he kept at the buttons, and she decided that a show of faith went a long way. Her fingers moved from his wrist, and a second later she caught the shirt in that careless throw. The shirt was warm and dry, and that was all that mattered to the lightkeeper. In the gloaming, she turned her back to him, and she reached back for his wrist and brought it high to her back, where the dress fastened in soaked eyelets to her hip. "Undo them?" she asked, and the fingers that touched his wrist trembled enough to indicate why she couldn't do it herself.
Around them, the lighthouse shook violently, bricks crumbled and pieces of stone fell and sloshed into the water at their feet. The mortar protested and slid from between bricks in chunks, and the coldness felt more oppressive as the structure around them shook and shook. "It happens sometimes at night. It won't last long," the lightkeeper promised, like the tower falling on their heads was nothing to fear. She was accustomed to the tremors now. "You're talking about you, not me. Why's it matter? Why's what's good for you not good enough for me?" she asked. She was just talking now, salt-burned voice to fill the silence as she waited to see if he'd help with the dress that weighed more than the water it could hold. His shirt clutched in her fingers, she continued. "I got a problem. I can't be stuck here." She twisted his shirt between her fingers. "There's someone who needs me to be more than this, and I can't be. I can be, but it'll be bad. I know that don't make sense to you, but it's like being sick, and there's medicine that can make you better, but the side effects are worse. But you need to be better, so what do you do?"
She looked over her shoulder at him in the dark, and despite the salty voice, she sounded young. "I know you don't like me. I can tell. You talk like I tire you."