Oh, how it pains him! How violent the start of his heart as that solitary tear cuts a path down her cheek. But he does not trust himself to touch her. How had he ever trusted himself to touch her at all?
So, he stands there with a vicious twinging in his chest and he watches her and the brow furrows, puckers in a concentrated frown. He had not meant to hurt her, but then he never did. “Don’t cry, Charity,” he murmurs and then he sighs and he shifts and thinks that the dead and the dreaming should be so thoroughly consumed by such tangible pain.
There is a violent ache in the parched column of his throat and he exhales a shaky sigh. She touches him and this feels real, too. How could he have known that the dead and the dreaming were capable of so much feeling? “Don’t be sorry,” he whispers in turn.
He drags in a shuddering breath then, forces open his eyes. “What mistakes could you have possibly made?”
But the bastard heart swells when she speaks next. It means perhaps more than it should to hear her say it. She does not remember him, therefore could not possibly know that she never wanted to forget him. But she packages it up so sweetly that he does not hesitate in stowing it away in the hollow cavern of his chest.
“If I can,” he murmurs and nods and takes one shuffling step backward to look her in the face. “Do you remember Dusk?” he asks then and swallows thickly, steels himself against the inevitable.
Perhaps it is cruel, the way he pauses and then says, “Dusk, our daughter.”
