Re: Marta / Seven
[Everything, every motion leading up to this moment, it has all been a question. He's given her plenty of ways out, ways to escape the seeking upturned palm and the soft, uncertain lift of his gaze beneath dark eyelashes. And god but he'd be lying if that long, drawn-out pause didn't manage to twist around the beating of his heart like a vice and squeeze tight.
And then it's there. Her hand. Soft, small and warm against the worn and calloused lines of his palm, given tentatively but given all the same. And then he isn't in the mood for asking questions, and he's tugging on that arm, pulling in close and reaching out with his free hand so that it might find its way around Marta's slender shoulders and slide up into the midnight strands of her hair.]
I'm sorry.
[The words come on a ragged breath, murmured into the place where his lips press against dark hair that covers her temple. And he is - sorry. Sorry for the solemnity that makes him sound like a fucking asshole, sorry for the bitterness that seeps out of his pores when he senses the distance that she has deliberately placed between them. And more than anything, he is sorry that she's had to live through the horror of waking up in a body that has been violated. All of this, he communicates with the inflection of pain in a quiet whisper.]