[Training] pulse of a steady beat

Deimos He didn’t miss the way her face fell, and somewhere along the etching of his spine, his guard came back up. Unyielding, unbending, waiting for the lines to be cast, for the patterns to settle, stoic, resigned to his fate. Where he reached out and others went in different directions, where family became nothing more than a passing figment, a memory wrapped and trapped in heartache. Where he strived and tried and it still wasn’t enough. He was used to being abandoned – left behind in a myriad of ways. And it quietly, silently, crushed him each time, until he’d eventually become a desolate figure, trying to keep his head above the surface. Doomed and damned to repeat the cycle, even when he’d acknowledged he needed people; just the same as everyone else. So Cordelia’s response left him surprised, bewildered, eyes widening, jaw a little slack, before a whisper slid in between all the ruminations, all the expectations. “Oh.” A light laugh filtered and flickered from his lungs in spite of it, the breath following only collapsing the ramparts he’d slowly been building over the surface. Relief, maybe, over all the other tides of presumptions. “I am sorry for it just the same.” A smile etched its home in the corner of his mouth, and if it was sad or pensive, he said nothing of it. “We can always go back one day.” Halo was the goal anyway – even if King’s End harbored other promises and possibilities. Out of sight and out of mind Make everything alright So let the sky and sea collide Just not in our lifetime