4148/How Not to Heal

How Not to Heal
Date of Scene:	25 March 2018
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Matt brings Elektra to his apartment to heal, old wounds get opened up instead. Also, Claire might be a little pissed.
Cast of Characters:	Daredevil, Elektra

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Daredevil has posed:
Matt and Elektra had left Claire's by the window Matt had come in by. Sure, he lived a couple of floors above, but with him in his suit and Elektra's clothing growing stiff with dried blood this was the best way to avoid detection.

The air out here was chilly and the wrought iron of the fire escape shook a little as rushed past. Nothing either of them hadn't dealt with before. "Not the most pleasant way up, but better than having to explain the suit to my neighbours," Matt explains somewhat needlessly, before heading up the fire escape towards the roof and access to his apartment. He doesn't look back, trusting that Elektra, wounded or not will follow. Besides, any attempt to coddle her, would just make the next seven days worse. If there were going to be seven days.

Once they reach the roof access to his apartment he throws open the door and steps inside. The billboard across the way, lit up the inside with reds, yellows and pinks, giving Elektra enough light to tell very little had changed about it since her last visit. Matthew was a man of routines.

"So," Matt says taking off his cowl. "I guess we should talk about what we're really going to do," he heading down the stairs into the apartment.

Elektra has posed:
Elektra hadn't been keen on the fact that Claire lived so close to Matt when she'd dropped in on her for medical help. However, it couldn't be helped. All the reasons that she couldn't go to her own people, or a hospital, all still stood. Elektra had hoped he'd merely fid her scent part of the ambient nature of her having been around these days - not accounting for the thought that he'd be able to identify her by her blood scent alone. That had been a surprise. Or perhaps not so surprising.

Either way, up the fire-escape was what she was left with. And because she was herself, and stubborn, and trained to within an inch of her life not to give in to such things as the injury she'd taken, Elektra made the climb up to the access and followed him to his apartment.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Elektra answers as unhelpfully as possible.

Daredevil has posed:
Matt dismounts the steps flicking on a light switch as he does, for Elektra's sake, then turns his steps towards the big metal cabinet up against one of his walls. He exhales a "Heh," at her unhelpfulness as he moves towards the cabinet. He throws open the doors as he says, "What I mean is that I doubt you can stay for seven days without being missed," he says, kneeling to open a trunk at the bottom of the cabinet. He moves aside the false top, filled with his father's boxing things, doing so with the care of ritual, then puts the helmet in the space beneath.

He turns his head towards her, like the light a gesture meant for her sake, rather than his, he knew all too well where she was at any given moment. "I'm trying to help."

Elektra has posed:
"Ah," Elektra gives when it is made clear what he means, and not a jab at her suggesting she'll try to escape (which she hadn't ruled out thoughts of yet).

"I can be gone for a few days without much issue. There's enough of what I do being handled by electronic means. Only too long without my face being seen, someone is going to get the idea I'm weak and vulnerable to attack."

She shrugs, not yet suggesting at least one of the obvious solutions to that.

Daredevil has posed:
Matt pulls his batons and puts them into the box as well before rising again. He turns, arms crossed over his chest, vacant eyes turned in her direction. This was typical of them deciding to be apart then thrown back together. He hadn't decided what to make of it yet, cruel twist of face, or a chance... He doesn't let himself finish that thought.

"Then we'll get you back before then," he says, as much he might want her to stay, before it comes to the obvious solution, "If you're staying."

Elektra has posed:
Elektra quirks a brow. That was unexpected.

"So you're suggesting all that back at Claire's was posturing? So she'd believe we were listening to her?" So far she hasn't moved to take a seat or come further into his apartment. "I was under the impression you were on her side in this."

He's watched carefully for any telltale signs as to his thoughts, or truths or lies. And as far as obvious conclusions, he hadn't reached the same one as she had.

Daredevil has posed:
Matt frowned, "I wasn't posturing," he says considering his words, "I reconsidered," he explains.

Lowering one arm he reaches up with the other, to unzip the back of the suit, to get it ready to be removed. "Unless, you happened to mention that you were the leader of the Hand, Claire doesn't know all the facts," he says, shrugging an arm out of the suit, then, the other leaving it hanging down behind his waist. It was all done matter of factly, no teasing or allure to it, just something to keep his hands busy while they talked. "Besides, I know you, Elektra, you don't do bored," he says, before offering a wry smile, "So unless I was going to tie you to the bed," okay that may have been a tease. "I figure we may as well be realistic."

What he was saying was the truth, but like the little tease, there were hints to more behind his his words.

Elektra has posed:
"No. Though we were brushing up against the notion that I'm not as ethical as you are. I said I'd needed to make a point and had gotten careless. She asked a few things about me. But that other didn't come up in conversation."

She, too, considers his position.

"So, no. Claire does't know all the facts." His followup that she, Elektra, doesn't do bored, and he's being realistic makes her smile. "And since when have you ever been realistic about me, Matthew? Isn't that sort of your trademark? Unrealistic expectations of me?"

"Things between us could have been so much more if you'd only been willing to accept what you could not change. Though I've started wondering if you haven't been using it as a reason to keep me away because deep down you actually don't know what you'd do with me if I gave in. That maybe all this is some unconscious move on your part to keep your interst in something you don't actually want. As long as you've always got this tailor made reason as to why you can always say no, you're safe."

Daredevil has posed:
Matt frowns again his head tilting. "That's not what I meant," he says about the ethics. "Besides, it's not like I can throw stones at not telling people the whole truth. Most of my day is a lie."

He shrugs out of the rest of the suit, leaving him in his boxer-briefs, he kneels and begins folding up the suit. Her comment has him lowering his head. He stands, suit still laid out at his feet like a red shadow as he turns to face her, "I was trying not to this time," he explains, simply, quietly. "I understand what is at stake for you if you don't come back." He might not like what she did but he didn't want it to cost her life.

The rest of the words leave him blinking his slightless eyes and he lets out a breath. "I wish I could accept it Elektra, but," his mouth works soundlessly willing any other answer but the truth to come out but none come and the truth is all that's left, "But I can't. But it's not an excuse, not a reason to reject you even if you gave in," he says, his head lowers, "You have no idea how much I've wanted that," he raises his head. "I wouldn't turn you away."

And yet, when she'd made a lesser effort, right here in this room he'd done exactly that and set her down the path to the Hand.

He doesn't need to speak his admission of guilt, he simply says, "I'm sorry."

Elektra has posed:
Again Elektra chuckles, though the sound has bitter edges to it. "Wouldn't turn me away? Since when, Matthew? What exactly has changed that you woke up this morning and decided that today was the day you started not turning me away?"

She grimaces slightly, standing actually being tougher on the muscles of her newly stitched back than she expected.

"As for solutions, I was more thinking something of sporadic appearances. And if you insisted, there is still my apartment. Nothing says you can't come babysit me there if someone has to check in on me."

Daredevil has posed:
Matt is not having the rest of this conversation in his underwear, and so he moves back towards the stairs, Elektra and the bedroom. He notes the growing strain in how she carries herself, "Come on," he says, sliding open the door to the bedroom. "Take a seat at least," he says before moving to his dresser to find something to wear while considering her words. He stops mid way from pulling a pair of sweats from a drawer, he turns, "About before, when you came to me about the files, about us, I was wrong," he says putting the words out plainly between them. "You have no reason to trust me," he says. "But if you gave in," he shakes his head. "I wouldn't turn you away."

Her solution was definitely the better one, though it gave him pause coming with all the rest. He turns back around putting the sweats away and pulling out jeans. "And you'd be alright with that?" he asks her, sounding just a little bit skeptical.

Elektra has posed:
"Gave in?" The notes of her voice are rich with disbelief. Though she does relent and come take a seat - neatly upon the end of his bed. "What, if I came declaring I'd give up killing you'd not turn me away? Matthew, we both know that isn't going to happen so your declaration is moot."

She's still not convinced he wouldn't go running if she declared she'd given up killing for him. He might love her, but she wasn't convinced he actually wanted her.

"All right with.. what? You checking in on me? No, not particularly." She takes her own turn at half-truths. It's entirely possible she minded, but also secretly hoped he'd insist.

Daredevil has posed:
For a moment Matt had let a little spark of hope ignite at her question, if she gave in, would he still want her. Though her laugh and her words smothered that spark again, leaving him to reply, dryly, "Your words," it was his only defense but yet he didn't doubt she could read it all on his face.

Turning to find pants made things easier, let him shelter for a moment where his emotions were not so easily read. He pulls them on, then grabbing a belt turns to slip it through the loops.

He smiles faintly at her answer, he was off his game enough he actually had to listen to her heart to find the lie in it. He can't help but offer his own half-truth in turn, "Well, I could just stay," he offers, knowing that would come with its own set of complications.

Elektra has posed:
She was annoyed now, even though it only hit the edges of her voice; made her stiffen only slightly where she sat on the edge of his bed. "My words. Yes."

She'd caught that glimmer in him, even if it sat at odds with her belief he'd run if she truly offered him her word on not killing again. Though perhaps that was her own little telling of lies to herself. Like him, needing to believe he wouldn't accept her word, making it so she needn't ever give it.

Quietly, the depth of it all sinking in now, the futility of it all, and how empty it left her feeling, Elektra sighs, "Stay? To what end, Matthew. I'm actually sorry I suggested it."

It was too much like allowing herself to believe he might actually accept her for who and what she was - a thing she knew all too heart-breakingly well that he wouldn't. "I'll stay the night for appearances. You can tell Claire I came and you took care of me. We'll just both agree to not bring up the finer details of how long it lasted."

Daredevil has posed:
Matt caught that annoyance with only a slight twitch of his shoulders to give away that it stung coming so close to the death of that spark.

He felt unbalanced, ill, to keep coming so close, then having it all ripped away. It all seemed so easy, just say a few words and she could tear down the wall between them. It was a lie though, the words were just a start and he knew it, what came after would be the hard part, her struggle to make them true, his struggle to believe them.

He turns back, belt left hanging in its loops while he scratches his head. "I don't know," he answers. "I know what we agreed, that this was over and we were better off apart, but, it doesn't seem like either of us really wants that, does it?" he says his usually controlled features are writ large with his confusion and pain. "I don't know what's right, or what's possible, but I know I want to be with you Elektra. I just don't know what else I can say."

Elektra has posed:
It's a measure of her own inbalance that she doens't pay attention to him or his actions. Doesn't catch the slight twitch of shoulders, or the small betrayals that would have told her that her words had hit home. Or that he was just as unsettled about this all as she was, caught in a seemingly never-ending loop, like Groundhog Day, doomed to repeat themselves forever until one of them figured out the magic that would make it stop.

Or died. She supposed death was always a way out. Neither of them led particularly safe lives.

As he turns back to her, belt in hand, Elektra watches him, reading him. Reading those etchings of confusion and pain. "I don't know what to say, either, Matthew. I want to believe it's as easy as you letting me be me. I don't understand why it's all upon me to change. Why I have to give up me to be with you." She sighs and shakes her head, letting, for a moment, the sadness within her show. "I know you won't kill. I've accepted that, Matthew. But constantly banging my head against the wall of you expecting me to be someone else isn't fair to either of us. Can you tell me you can be with me without looking at me like I've somehow failed you by being who I am? Or that you can stop asking it of me, that you can accept when you walk in that door we leave the rest of our worlds behind?"

She knows he can't. It's mostly rhetorical. Or so she believes.

Daredevil has posed:
Yes, they were forever in this loop, going through each stage of it over and over before it came to the same impasse and begun all over again.

As for death? Heretical to his faith as it was, he doubted even that would bring them peace on this score. Still, despite the pain, he carried on.

Her words are grasped onto, considered, weighed, tested. Was there a way he could live with her, to let the doors of whatever room they were in shut out the rest of what they were. He wished to God the answer was yes.

Hadn't he made compromises with her already, looked the other way at the things she did. What was just a little more in exchange for happiness?

The answer he got back was: everything.

The way his head sinks and body curls in upon itself in its sorrow, answers her question before the words can leave his lips, he does lift his head though, to say the words, let her see how much it costs him, "I-I can't," he says barely able to force the words past his lips. "I'm sorry, I wish it were that simple but even if I did, even if I could, I wouldn't be me, I wouldn't be the man I hope you love." He his head sinks down again, "I'm sorry."

Elektra has posed:
He gave her exactly the answer she expected, even if, like him, she'd wanted to believe for a brief moment that he might accept what she offered.

"I know," Elektra breathes softly, rising from his bed, and letting her body adjust to being upright again. "The man I love.. Maybe that's what's wrong with us, Matthew. We both want the other one to change. I know you won't kill, but you're right, the Matthew Murdock who could look past what I do without comment isn't you. Only what does that say about us that we both claim we love someone we want to change? I'm not even certain that is love."

And she wasn't anymore. Not really. She kept saying she accepted him, but this was Matthew. His trying to change her, always caught on his ethics and unable to relent - *that* /was/ Matthew as much as his refusal to kill. And she didn't accept it.

"I think it best if I left."

Daredevil has posed:
Matt raises his head again as he feels her rise from the bed over the rustle of the covers. Her words open more wounds on his heart. The blood from them running together with the rest. "It's love, Elektra," he says wishing then he could see for just this moment, to truly stare into her eyes and show her the truth of that. "We might not love all of us, but, what we have, it's real," he says there's desperation in his tone, that goes beyond his conviction, but that he needs it to be true or one of the foundations he built his life on crumbles away to dust.

Even in the sorrow he can't help but offer a tight, pained smile, "I'm not saying it's not fucked up, but, I know it's real," he assures her.

He starts towards her, wanting to pull her to him, to feel her face under her touch, to let himself believe this wasn't the end, but her words stop him. 'I think it best I left'.

His first instinct is to stop, but instead he carries forward, taking her arm at first, but then, moving to kiss her, uttering, "Don't," as his lip approach hers.

Elektra has posed:
Dont, he says. Just like that. Don't. As though it's that simple.

Her eyes close as she bites down the urge to respond to him and stay - to give in to his plea and pretend none of their arguments exist. To believe he's right when he says it's love. That what they feel is love, even if she's not so certain anymore.

He's already stepping towards her when her eyes open; his hand upon her arm, stilling her. "I don't want to," Elektra admits to him, trying not to allow him to hear the want and need of her. Only anything else she might say is swallowed up in that kiss of his. The one argument they both reach the same conclusion in.

Daredevil has posed:
In the moment it was that simple. He didn't think he could shut out who they were forever but now, here, he could try. His stomach clenches in a rare moment of concern when he moves to kiss her, but when she tells him she doesn't want to go and kisses him back, the fear vanishes along with his words. They weren't doing either of the much good anyhow.

The kiss, and the slow passion of their lovemaking expressed it all so much clearly, the want for one another, the sorrow at what kept them apart, the regrets, the need to be in each other's lives, the anger at how much it hurt. It was all there, laid out elegantly and inescapably.

When it was over and Matt lay down beside her he was no closer to an answer than before, but at least it didn't ache as much with her there, the hollow left in her life by their split years past, comfortably, if temporarily filled.

Unwilling to give in to the deeper topics confronting them, he remarks quietly, in the half-light of his room, "You know, there'll be hell to pay, if we ripped your stitches," he says a smile playing across his lips.

Elektra has posed:
They hadn't ripped her stitches, though it was a close thing. And Elektra certainly did hurt more now than when she'd arrived at Claire's earlier in the evening seeking medical attention. Not that Elektra would admit that to Matthew.

"She'd likely be both smug and sanctimonious. I think they're okay though."

She's not lying on her back, having had to choose the side of the bed that she might lie on her left side, the injury on the right not allowing her to spend the evening lying on it, or remain fully on her back.

"You can check if you're worried." Mostly a joke.

She avoids the deeper things for as long as she can, too, reaching over to brush fingers along his cheekbone, and end with cupping his jaw with her right hand, slender fingers resting just below his ear. "Why can't we just be this? Just two people who do this?"

Daredevil has posed:
To Elektra's credit, Matt doesn't sense any sign of her discomfort, but she was always good at hiding what she felt.

"Sanctimonious?" Matt smiles, "I thought that was my job," he jokes before nodding. "But you're probably right."

The invitation to check is accepted with a wordless moment and a flare of Matthew's nostrils. His expression changes between one of concentration, to a small, slightly pleased smile. "No new blood," and," he hesitates again, listening as she moves, "And the stitches aren't broken. I can hear them strain," he says. Matt hid his gifts most of the time, so when the opportunity to demonstrate arrose he seldom failed to take advantage of it.

His smile becomes a touch self-aware as he adds, "Guess, smug applies to me too."

Then the distractions are past and the deeper things loom ahead of them, unchanged despite the moments they've shared.

The hand against the cheek feels good, so does the sense of her beside him. It was a nice dream, but the dawn always came. "For how long?" he asks. "And are we ever really going to be happy with this and not want the rest?" he ask. Not even sure what the rest was or if it was even possible. "I want you, Elektra, but I don't want to hurt us both in the having it."

And there were plenty of hurt to come from this: his friends, would never understand his relationship with the leader of the Hand, and the Hand would see the lover of their leader as a tool in their games. And yet, Elektra, even part of her with him, was too good to just ignore.

"I don't know," he says finally.

Elektra has posed:
"I know," Elektra agrees of it all. All the reasons he has for it not being able to work, she's had too. Even if they're both in their separate little hells thinking of them. She couldn't truly be part of his world - not and be who she was in her own. And in her world, her own life was under dangerous amounts of scrutiny, and in constant danger. Matthew would not only be a liability, but in probable danger himself. Eventually, if they figured out a way to be together, someone would figure out what he meant to her - eventually, whether they were together or not, someone would still figure out what he meant to her - and allowing this to continue only put them both in danger that she could end simply and painfully.

"The world always gets in," Elektra tells him softly. "Even if we were all you wished, the world would get in. It's inevitable."

And because it's inevitable, there really isn't but one choice around this. Perhaps if this is who they'd been the first time she left. Even if she'd perhaps been this when she'd returned. Only it had taken his rejection of her, and her offer, to set her along the path that, ultimately made it fully impossible to be with him, while finally being in a place within herself where she could accept the things she couldn't change about him.

The irony was painful.

Slowly, she sits up. Her back still hurts, but things haven't ripped open. Matt's smugness confirms that. "I'm sure you can think of ways to sidetrack Claire if she asks? Lie to her? Whatever you have to do. I'm just not certain this is the best answer for us, Matthew. Me being here, I mean. Too many wounds we risk opening."

Her voice carries notes of sadness even as it's matter of fact.

Daredevil has posed:
Private hell was right, and Matt's burnt hot fueled by his guilt over his choices. He'd turned her away when they had a moment where this could work, he'd let the Hand into their lives and made this impossible.

His breath was choked and ragged with grief. "I don't believe that," he says as he rises as well, sitting cross legged amidst the rumpled covers. "If I'd made other choices, things, they could have been different, better." He believed it too, that while their path would have been difficult had he just accepted her it would never have become impossible.

He turns his vacant eyes her way, "I'm sorry, Elektra. I've failed you."

The business with Claire is waved away, her grousing and eye-rolling wouldn't matter. Not after this.

He's silent after that, warring with himself, until he can form the words. "I know."

He rises from the bed, and comes to her side, his hand reaching up to brush against her cheek again, "What do we do?" he asks quietly. "I don't think forgetting the other exists is an option. And if there are ways I can help you," he nods towards her wound. "With this," meaning the Hand. "I want to. I owe you that much." Of course, it goes without saying his help comes with the caveat of his rules.

Elektra has posed:
"What can you do?" Elektra gets up off the bed, barely letting the brush of his hand upon her cheek register before doing so, and begins the slow, painful process of retrieving her clothing and redressing herself. "Try not to die. Go live a good life. Be happy. The usual."

She shrugs on her shirt, it being the first thing she finds. "You didn't fail anyone, Matthew." Except, maybe himself. "What's done is done."

Her words are terribly matter of fact. And it's not that she doesn't feel his pain, it's only that being here - being in this place where they continually circle around the matter of them - leaves them open to this same argument forever. It's the bandaid they truly have to rip off. Even if neither wishes to.

And in the grand scheme of things, it's her life that's going to get him killed. Which means it's her job to do the ripping.

"I'm sure you'll see me around. It's not like it hasn't happened before." Such a light attempt at humour. The rest of her clothing picked up, and she returns to the edge of his bed to finish dressing.

Her wound? That would heal. The rest? Well, The Hand was her life now. She'd made an educated choice, and none of the reasons for it had changed. Though there, too, was irony: Matthew, with all his Catholicism, and she was the one slated for martyr.

Daredevil has posed:
Matt's jaw clenches, his head shaking slightly. "What am I supposed to do with that?" he asks of her advice. Live a good life and be happy? That might work for other people but not for him. There was too much anger and darkness in him for that. Odd that it took her leaving to make him see it. "Live a good and happy life? You were the one always telling me that was bullshit," even if it wasn't in so many words. "And you were right, that isn't me, isn't the real me."

He breathes a sigh, "And I did fail you, Elektra. And I may not be able to fix it, but I am damn sure going to make amends." Even if he didn't know how yet.

The matter-of-fact tone, the icy cast to her demeanor, Matt didn't buy it, but it still hurt to be so close to there being a 'them' and then to have it ripped so completely, and coldly away.

There was no grand rhetorical point to his words, they were just pained gasps, as his heart bled for her.

Still Matt too had his pride, he staunched his wounds with a tourniquet and swallowed his pain down deep.

"I'm sure we will," he says his tone careful and controlled now.

He kept her at the edges of his senses while she dressed. As much as he had stopped his arguments, he hadn't given up. She may have chosen the Hand, but he still felt he'd forced that choice and to lose her to that mistake was unforgivable. He would do something, even if he didn't know what yet.

Smelling the dried blood on Elektra's shirt, he grimaces and stands up moving to his dresser, he produces an old grey sweatshirt, with Columbia Law stitched on the front. He turns back and holds it out to her, "So you don't have to explain the blood," he says.

Elektra has posed:
It seemed like a lifetime ago that she'd told him it was bullshit. That he wasn't who he pretended to be. And she still believed it. Only, only what were they supposed to do with this, with this whole, impossibly situation?

"Forget what I said, Matthew. It doesn't matter now." Because even if she weren't with the Hand, she was still.. Elektra. She still killed people. And much as she might try not to, she wasn't sure it was a promise that she could keep. Or that he'd be happy if she did. There was something about this push-pull that they did that kept them alive, even as it kept them apart.

She'd done what she could. Made it so he had enough that he'd have enough. That whatever path he chose from this point on would be out of freedom, and not necessity. He could do what his heart wanted - even if that also meant crawling rooftops at night and dealing with the petty thieves and minor thugs that called Hell's Kitchen their home, and continue his furtive nighttime visits to see Claire to be patched up. At least he didn't have to, to do the good he always proclaimed he wanted to do. His practice could be a thing of choice now. And in so many ways that relieved her, and absolved her of any guilt she'd felt about their past.

She could walk away in peace knowing she'd done truly good thing.

"You can't make amends, Matthew. These aren't people you can reason with. Your morals are delightfully yours, but they carry no weight in some worlds. Go live in the world you understand. My world will suck you in and turn you into something you won't recognize."

"Give me this, at least. Let it go."

His sweatshirt is taken with a murmur of thanks, much as she'd like to protest it. But he's right, it might still be night, but if she were seen, there would be awkward questions. Not that there wouldn't be questions about this as well, but they could be answered with the mostly embarrassed, or slightly offended. Blood stains could not.

She could, she supposes, give him one last kiss goodbye - there was a long standing tradition of kissing boo-boos better wasn't there? Elektra seemed to recall that in some far, distant past - only they'd been down that road before. A single painful blow now meant less painful cuts down the road leading to this same conclusion.

Instead she makes her way to the stairs to the roof access. "Be good to yourself, Matthew."

Daredevil has posed:
Matt makes a "Heh," at asking him to forget what she'd said. The message got through, they were stuck with it now. He was who he was. He knew she still saw it, and that the effort to 'save' him from his life as Daredevil was just part of what she needed to do to make this feel alright, but it still stung. "Don't do that," he says. "You've always understood the why of what I did, even if you disagree on my methods. I'll let you go, but let's not lie to each other," he says. He'd said, he'd let her go. It felt like his world was spinning out from under him, but he takes it stoically, the slightest flinch his only tell.

Freedom. That was a word Matt was little acquaintance with, and what little he had, came from Elektra. He finds none of that tonight. For the most part he felt little choice in what he did, the city needed him, he had a duty to save it, just as he felt a duty to protect the innocent. He was pulled in every direction but the one he truly wanted to travel, the path that ran side by side with hers. One that he couldn't walk for so many reasons.

So, he'd do what he did, out of a martyr's refusal to back down, all the while wishing for the impossible. It was a familiar feeling and in some perverse way, he felt comfortable with it.

When she asks him to give her his surrender, to accept that she was lost, he lies, "For you," he says. The vague answer soothing the twisting demands of his conscience.

He is glad when she takes the sweatshirt, it was dumb, but it felt like a tiny link between them, a spark of hope in the darkness that was fast closing around them.

When she moves to take her leave, he rises, and as before he grabs her arm and kisses her, if she allows it. A last blazing touch of lips and tight embrace, before, with effort, he let's go and backs away letting her leave.

The breath he lets go as she bids him farewell, is almost a laugh. "You too," he says, knowing that there was little chance of either of doing what the other asked.