"It was a long time ago." Even as he said the words, they weren't the dismissive brush off that they might have been another time. Kyle simply didn't know what to do with her sympathy, and felt uncomfortable sitting with it. It was a long time ago, and then again maybe not so long depending on your standards. Eight years, give or take some months.
Long enough that he could no longer remember with perfectly clarity the color of his father's eyes, or the sound of his mother's voice, though if he heard it again he would know it in an instant. The fact that he couldn't immediately recall it from memory momentarily frustrated him. Did it really only take that long for you to forget something so vital when they were alive?
He could still remember other things. Mostly he remembered his mother's unexpected gentleness, and his father's oppressively domineering nature that completely overshadowed her own. Mostly he remembered how alone he'd still felt, growing up with two parents who frequently left him in the care of those who could provide meaningful application to his abilities. When they'd been killed, Kyle had been unmoored, but the truth was that loneliness he'd felt existed long before he became an orphan.
A loneliness he felt a little less every day since he'd met her.
Freya's capacity for empathy and compassion towards him was intolerable. Everything in him warred against it now, his more destructive nature experiencing the fleetest of desires to destroy her and that impulse with it. Before, he would have. Now, Kyle knew that what he was feeling instead was a profound reluctance to do so, and that left him uncertain. He wanted her acceptance for reasons he still couldn't quite comprehend, whereas before he would have ruthlessly rejected it, and her.
Grief was not an emotion that Kyle dealt well with, but he knew he had felt it in his life. Grief for the loss of his parents, certainly, and for his guardian years later. That grief had quickly turned to anger, until it became anger entirely, and Kyle could no longer seem to separate the two. He'd forgotten what it even felt like until it suddenly all washed over him, puzzling him and overwhelming him all at once.
It took him a moment longer to fully understand that everything he was feeling right then, it wasn't just him. It was her. She wasn't keeping him out anymore. The shock of that realization caused Kyle to forget to shield himself from her in return, unable to maintain the emotionless mask that he'd adopted around her out of self-preservation. All of the loneliness he felt, the confusion and abandonment that had shaped most of his life, it rolled off him now in waves. No more hiding.
Kyle watched her look to something in the distance, to what he couldn't see, but his eyes never left her face. Having Freya looking away from you felt like being deprived of the sun, making Kyle feel far away from her even within the safety of their connection. It surprised him how much he disliked it, and ultimately that's what drove him to bridge the gap.
His hand covered hers, the first time he'd initiated physical contact outside of a fight with anyone. His dark eyes were wide with uncertainty as a result, but Kyle didn't pull back. He felt less fragmented when they were close like this. "We're not alone." Familiar words from lives past only rearranged. He was aware of it, and it only made him feel more self-conscious. Kyle let the words hang in the air anyway, a part of him already preparing for her to pull away from him and tell him to leave.