Of course he understood. He should have told her to run from him. Forget him. He was useless to her, he was always going to be this. The weak one. Old One he might have been but he'd been a fool to think he could escape one of his cycles unscathed. But he had warned them all, time and time again. He woke up in the world Lord Harry had created and as usual it was a mess, he'd hurt everyone Hal had loved and it had been Mitchell of the two that was the stronger. The young, volitile Mitchell, the one he'd been so impressed with when he'd first heard of him. First as a potential pawn in a wider game, and then rumours from Bristol of a vampire who'd gotten clean.
But even Mitchell had fallen. And now more than ever Hal worried it was only a matter of time.
"I do understand." he said finally. "I always have understood, but I was selfish enough to think that I could do it, that I could fight a 500 year cycle because this time would be different. Its never different Alex, he always manages to claw his way back." He hated the futility of it all. "I can say that I hope I won't make those mistakes. Say that this wasn't building from long before I even met you and that in a few decades it won't build all over again. I don't know why. I don't know what makes me different to all the others but this is me. This is something I can try to fight again. And I expect it will work, maybe even for 40, 50 years but he will return. You know that as well as I do and you need to decide if you can deal with that if he does. If you'd kill him to save me or wait for me to return. Lock him down or..."
He laughed bitterly. It seemed unlikely anything could put the monster down without killing him. He'd find a way out. He always did. It had taken Hell to give Hal the control back.
"I'm not fixed. If I was fixed hell would have taken him and left me. And I saw things down there, suffered things that I suspect will never leave me but as I said before I believe that I coped with it because it was no more than I deserved. It was penance for my many sins."
He sat down on the edge of the bed finding nothing out of place to take his focus.
"I'm clean. Suprisingly hell didn't think we needed to feed. I did wonder would it know me enough to sate the bloodlust and keep the monster but no. Its been 50 years since I've had a drop and 50 years of resisting temptations so from that side of things, you don't need to worry."