Xue Yang can say it as many times as he wants. It will take a great deal of time to really sink in.
That Xue Yang loves someone, anyone. Much less Xiao Xingchen.
Yet...Xingchen feels how those hands tremble and shake. How all of Xue Yang shakes - or perhaps he's fooling himself and foisting his own tremors off on another. He presses his lips together as he tries to focus on breathing. On pulling himself together.
And strains to listen to what he's told now. Then shies away at the implications laid horribly at his feet. Death hadn't gotten him anywhere before, so he has to figure out a way to go forward.
Somehow.
'I don't want to torture you.'
Words that poke at him, but there's none of the familiar attacking that he associates with Xue Yang. He swallows hard, shaking his head silently.
"None of that...should have been done to you. Or any child." Step by step. Move forward. Find his balance.
Somehow. No matter how it hurts.
"If..." Can he even offer a chance? Another chance? Is he betraying poor Zichen? His master? Zichen's temple? Everyone this man has hurt? Maybe.
Another breath and he forces his fingers to loosen.
"Would you do those things again here, now, if I...stay with you?" If he gives himself, will others be saved? That would just be right, wouldn't it?
No. No he doesn't understand the depths of Xue Yang's emotions. He doesn't dare.
Much belated CW warnings: suicide and eye gore woops!
That Xue Yang loves someone, anyone. Much less Xiao Xingchen.
Yet...Xingchen feels how those hands tremble and shake. How all of Xue Yang shakes - or perhaps he's fooling himself and foisting his own tremors off on another. He presses his lips together as he tries to focus on breathing. On pulling himself together.
And strains to listen to what he's told now. Then shies away at the implications laid horribly at his feet. Death hadn't gotten him anywhere before, so he has to figure out a way to go forward.
Somehow.
'I don't want to torture you.'
Words that poke at him, but there's none of the familiar attacking that he associates with Xue Yang. He swallows hard, shaking his head silently.
"None of that...should have been done to you. Or any child." Step by step. Move forward. Find his balance.
Somehow. No matter how it hurts.
"If..." Can he even offer a chance? Another chance? Is he betraying poor Zichen? His master? Zichen's temple? Everyone this man has hurt? Maybe.
Another breath and he forces his fingers to loosen.
"Would you do those things again here, now, if I...stay with you?" If he gives himself, will others be saved? That would just be right, wouldn't it?
No. No he doesn't understand the depths of Xue Yang's emotions. He doesn't dare.