He doesn’t make it easy on her. Doesn’t give her the out—doesn’t let her take what is admittedly the coward’s way out. Part of her is glad to know that this part of him is the same. Glad to know that whatever has transpired between them, this has remained the same. That he is just as stubborn as her and that he has not yet completely changed to where she could not recognize the reflection of him.
The other part grows frustrated that he blocks the exit, even if not unkindly.
She stays quiet for several moments, her thoughts reeling and her pulse jackhammering in her throat. She considers running because she always does. Because it would be so easy to slip into her feline form and then disappear into the shadows. Part of her knows that he would let her this time—that he wouldn’t chase her and wouldn’t fight her. That he would accept it as the final stamp in their story.
So she is surprised when she stays.
Her expression doesn’t give, she doesn’t bend at all, but she doesn’t sever the tie with him completely. She just absorbs what he tells her and lets it sink into the very marrow of her. She wonders just how much he means it. How much he understands everything fractured between them. How well does she?
“Who said I let go of anything?” she finally responds, her voice a familiar rasp—even more husky for the things unsaid in it. She shakes her head, obscuring her silvery eyes with the roping tangles of her forelock. “I didn’t say you needed to stop it,” her voice is a little quieter here, although not entirely sweet.
“I just said that it can’t go back to what it was.”
She has ambitions and a plan—and they don’t involve him. She has children too, she thinks, and they aren’t with him, but she doesn’t quite venture there yet. Even she doesn’t know what to make of that.
she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed