[He doesn't get a chance to defend himself against Frey's accusations. This is an onslaught. Relentless. He whips the knife - her knife - out in time with Aleos's first step, the blade glinting defensively. As the earth lurches with Aleos's rage, he has to fight to keep his balance. Even after the other boy is restrained, he does not lower the knife.]
Shut up! You don't know anything! [He can excuse everything with those simple words, everything he's ever done.] I didn't...I didn't mean-- [But he did mean to hurt her back then. Cut the strings tying them together and break free. Freedom isn't what he found afterward, not in the emptiness of his chest when he shut the journal and crumpled into tears.]
You don't understand! [The fear of being left behind. The need to be the one to do the leaving. Hurt them before they can hurt you. He didn't think he had a choice at the time. He didn't know what else to do, he was scared.] I came back to her, didn't I? We were friends again...she said she needed me! She needed me...!
[His voice strains beneath the weight of everything he wants to say, everything he can't say because he doesn't know how. It's too raw to tame into words, too large and unwieldy to fit inside something as compact as a sentence. Even as he clings to excuses, tries to wrap himself in the absence of responsibility, he wishes he had never done it. He wants to take it back. The pain she must have felt, the pain he dealt himself, the long empty months without her, wasted, when she was still in the village and he had the chance to be by her side. A chance he might never have again.
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Shut up! You don't know anything! [He can excuse everything with those simple words, everything he's ever done.] I didn't...I didn't mean-- [But he did mean to hurt her back then. Cut the strings tying them together and break free. Freedom isn't what he found afterward, not in the emptiness of his chest when he shut the journal and crumpled into tears.]
You don't understand! [The fear of being left behind. The need to be the one to do the leaving. Hurt them before they can hurt you. He didn't think he had a choice at the time. He didn't know what else to do, he was scared.] I came back to her, didn't I? We were friends again...she said she needed me! She needed me...!
[His voice strains beneath the weight of everything he wants to say, everything he can't say because he doesn't know how. It's too raw to tame into words, too large and unwieldy to fit inside something as compact as a sentence. Even as he clings to excuses, tries to wrap himself in the absence of responsibility, he wishes he had never done it. He wants to take it back. The pain she must have felt, the pain he dealt himself, the long empty months without her, wasted, when she was still in the village and he had the chance to be by her side. A chance he might never have again.
It's another reality he doesn't want to face.]