— I'll break you a hundred different ways —
He is exposed like this before her, and he isn’t sure if she even can grasp the full truth of it. He is baring himself to her, in every sense of the word. Stripped to bone, so that she might see the cage of ribs that would hide the heart that beats when he is fleshed and alive; a heart that would likely always be hidden from her, no matter how much he would fight himself over it. They have known each other such a short time, and yet still she has given him glimpses of what he could be – of what he could have – if he could only learn to be different. If he could only learn to be something not so harsh and cold, if he could only be something that could keep every part of her safe. He could protect her, physically, this he knows. But he isn’t so sure if he knows how to handle that delicate of heart of hers, that sometimes he thinks he can see beating even beneath the red of her flesh and the armor of bone.
When she touches him, he cannot feel it, but he can imagine what it must be like. How her breath is warm when it whispers across the red-stained bones, and how her touch is feather-soft in its wake. But not being able to actually feel it is as good as torture, as he tries so hard to imagine and conjure it out of thin air. “I suppose I am,” He agrees with her in the grating yet hollow of his voice, tilting his head so that the empty void of his sockets might look at her better. He reaches to touch her, then, even though he knows that as his the bone of his nose and jaw traces along the arch of her neck, that he will feel nothing. But she will feel it. She will feel the hardness against her satin-soft skin, she will feel the way he lifts just slightly away as he skims over the red and raw wounds that outline her armor.
And then there is the sensation of his bones against her bones, and even without all the receptors and nerves, it forges a connection that burrows so deeply into the marrow of him that it is like an electric shock. He presses his skeletal frame into hers, as though the warmth and fullness of her body might somehow remake him anew, letting her delicate exploration of him continue. “Sometimes,” he says into the strands of her mane, and he finds himself wishing he could feel the stray wisps of hair against his skin like had not so long ago. “But it doesn’t last long.” It has always been a gruesome transformation, but one that left behind only phantom pain. A pain that he can hardly remember once it has past, or perhaps he has just learned to accept it.
The flat bone of his cheek rests against her skin, but her quiet confession stirs him to move. He runs the blunt edge of his nose along the curve of her jaw, and up her cheek and into the groove of her throat. He can almost imagine what she smelled like; the same way she had before, of ash and the sea and blood. “I’m sorry,” and here his voice lowers in pitch, apologetic and quiet. “I wasn’t trying to scare you. I just didn’t want you to have to see everything.” And I don’t want to leave you, he wants to reassure her, but he doesn’t. He wants to tell her that he doesn’t want to leave her alone and waiting, but somehow he knows that is a promise he cannot keep, and for now the kindest thing he can do for her is to not promise her anything at all.
— and I'll make you remember my face —
