I was hoping you wouldn't see me like this

RORY

In that silence, he knew that he had hurt her. It was loud enough for him to hear, to feel as it crept like cold through the door, and he just kept wondering: did monsters have feelings?

Was he one, for not opening the door?

How much could they know about him, anyway? About Karlia? About the way her hands, too, moved when she was thinking? He swallowed against the hard and painful lump in his throat, wanting nothing but to open the door and hide himself away in her arms, kept safe from the world outside by the presence of his sister—she had always taken care of him, hadn't she?

"You should've come sooner," he said thickly, trying to hold back the tears threatening to spill from his eyes. "Before the dark."

(Before I couldn't trust anything—)

Not like this—not when she knew he couldn't open the door, that he couldn't do anything, but oh... Oh, how he wanted to, how his heart hurt, how he chuckled weakly at the barb she sent through the wood and into his heart. If she was real, Talys would be happy to see her.

He heard her get up again, a sound that was so human that how could it possibly not be? Her knuckles on the wood, little brother, his resolve so close to snapping because all he wanted was to see her face again—

"Yeah," he said with forced brightness through the tears. Was she real? Would she be okay, if she was? Would she be there if she wouldn't be? He swallowed. "Just... just be careful, okay?"

as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.