flew me to places I've never been
Everest nodded—once, shallowly. The way someone might confirm receipt of a message rather than agree with its content.
Ranking places by difficulty. He’d thought of that, too, but hadn’t known how to quantify it. The weather changed. The people changed. He changed. Still, he added her suggestion to the mental list with the sort of automatic efficiency that had once been charming and now was just the way his brain worked again.
"That’s reasonable," he said at last, about the hour. "My mother used to do it for my dad. She said that adding structure to a difficult interaction can reduce anticipatory distress."
His hands stayed folded. The tea sat untouched. There was no visible tremor now, but only because his fingers were locked so tightly together, his knuckles slightly pale. His gaze hovered just below her face, flicking to the steam curling above her cup.
"You’re not hurting me now," he said, too quickly. "I mean, not more than anything else." A pause, then a correction: "That wasn’t meant to be unkind." He exhaled softly through his nose. "I just don’t know how to be the person you remember. I don't think I'm capable of it, and I assume that part of your visit here was at least to see what sort of person I am now." Gods, if he could have met her gaze, he would have. Instead, he considered a scratch in his table he'd never noticed before.
"I know we only had a few interactions prior to my infection." Enough to know what he was like, but perhaps not to realize the truth of what he'd been trying to tell her that day on the shoreline.
Ranking places by difficulty. He’d thought of that, too, but hadn’t known how to quantify it. The weather changed. The people changed. He changed. Still, he added her suggestion to the mental list with the sort of automatic efficiency that had once been charming and now was just the way his brain worked again.
"That’s reasonable," he said at last, about the hour. "My mother used to do it for my dad. She said that adding structure to a difficult interaction can reduce anticipatory distress."
His hands stayed folded. The tea sat untouched. There was no visible tremor now, but only because his fingers were locked so tightly together, his knuckles slightly pale. His gaze hovered just below her face, flicking to the steam curling above her cup.
"You’re not hurting me now," he said, too quickly. "I mean, not more than anything else." A pause, then a correction: "That wasn’t meant to be unkind." He exhaled softly through his nose. "I just don’t know how to be the person you remember. I don't think I'm capable of it, and I assume that part of your visit here was at least to see what sort of person I am now." Gods, if he could have met her gaze, he would have. Instead, he considered a scratch in his table he'd never noticed before.
"I know we only had a few interactions prior to my infection." Enough to know what he was like, but perhaps not to realize the truth of what he'd been trying to tell her that day on the shoreline.
but now I'm laying on the cold hard ground
