impossible reasons

Smiling at Amalia slightly less coldly when she took him up on his challenge, Loren nodded. ”Looking forward to it.” Weirdly enough, he was: unlike most of the people he’d encountered, the baker didn’t try to tell him everything would be okay, maybe because she knew that it might not be. Indeed, she’d died once already. In fact, his estimation of her rose. If she was willing to tolerate him, invite him in, not let him get away with his shit or coddle him, then maybe she was worthy of his time after all. Of course, that might change once they actually got to know one another. As he spoke—of his past, of his traumas (some of them at least), of how truly fucked up he was—she didn’t say much, just leaned on her staff and watched him with dark eyes, he could feel the shadows creeping in. This time, however, instead of directing them outwards as he had been recently, he just allowed them back into his heart and mind. They settled in comfortably there, familiar to him. After all, he’d lived with them for as long as he could remember, and for most of that he’d turned them on himself, letting them dig their claws deep into his soul. Maybe it was better for him to be angry. But that didn’t make it better. The touch on his arm brought him back from the dark place he’d wandered, and turned to stare at Amalia with wide and haunted eyes. ”Don’t I?” It seemed to be what everyone wanted from him: sweet Loren, the bumbling and shy librarian he’d been once upon a time, before life began to put him through the wringer. The one who always tried to make up for others’ mistakes, to clean up everyone’s mess. There were ironic echoes of that in him even now; they showed up in the way he forced himself to try to protect people, even at the expense of his own well-being and friendships with them, in the way he didn’t sleep or eat so he could get a bit more work done. However, people would probably just argue that it was selfish pride, not anything else. And he was tired of arguing with everyone, including himself. Amalia seemed to think her words might bring him some comfort, but the Launceleyn shook his head, the motion jerky. ”I spent a year broken. And now...now I don’t know how to be anything less than perfect, even if it’s perfectly cruel.” He could feel his grip on himself slipping, and he shivered from the cold without and within. When she tried to coax him, he shook his head again, this time a little sadly. ”I need to keep singing.” After he scared the luxere off during his fight with Phoebe, he needed to make sure they came back. LOREN Not quite an open book