There's no harm in accepting a good thing when it comes your way.
He'd believed that, once. Time and again, he'd accepted the unexpected into his life--after, sometimes, a short struggle--and believed it to be for the best. Until Ben. Until what had come his way had been himself, and that had been disastrous.
He couldn't accept the responsibility for ruining another life. Not again. And this girl, this fiercely independent soul, was looking to him for guidance he couldn't give himself. And he was leaning in, despite all his training and his defenses. Which, it turned out, were for naught. He was rusty. And tired. And she had no idea either how dangerous he was to her, or how much a danger she posed to his equilibrium here.
"The lesson is over," he said unnecessarily, standing up abruptly. "As is this conversation." He stood for a moment, head bowed, struggling with how to apologize when he wasn't sure what for, or why he needed to get away. "The... demonstration today has left me in need of time to meditate. I suggest you occupy yourself with your exercises."
There. That would have to be polite enough for now. He didn't know what he'd do if she followed him, so he didn't look back. Instead, he strode off away from the dwellings, lamenting the fact he'd shown her his own private valley.
But it wasn't her he needed to get away from. The hollow feeling followed him, dogging his attempts to walk it off or meditate. It was the difference between mere absence, and lacking. Somehow, she'd blown a human-shaped hole in his composure, and the stiffness of his awakening humanity pained him. The patterns of his normal life here no longer made sense, though he tried to go through the motions.
He kept seeing her eyes, hearing her words. Feeling that little tug towards her as he remembered the warmth rushing in to meet him as he opened himself up to her probing senses. He could not allow himself to feel that again. It shook his resolve. To what, he was not yet certain.
He spent the rest of the day avoiding her, though returning again and again to their conversation in his mind. And at night, lying on his pallet in his stone hut, he waited for sleep to claim him, not aware that it was not entirely his conscious mind which was holding on...
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He'd believed that, once. Time and again, he'd accepted the unexpected into his life--after, sometimes, a short struggle--and believed it to be for the best. Until Ben. Until what had come his way had been himself, and that had been disastrous.
He couldn't accept the responsibility for ruining another life. Not again. And this girl, this fiercely independent soul, was looking to him for guidance he couldn't give himself. And he was leaning in, despite all his training and his defenses. Which, it turned out, were for naught. He was rusty. And tired. And she had no idea either how dangerous he was to her, or how much a danger she posed to his equilibrium here.
"The lesson is over," he said unnecessarily, standing up abruptly. "As is this conversation." He stood for a moment, head bowed, struggling with how to apologize when he wasn't sure what for, or why he needed to get away. "The... demonstration today has left me in need of time to meditate. I suggest you occupy yourself with your exercises."
There. That would have to be polite enough for now. He didn't know what he'd do if she followed him, so he didn't look back. Instead, he strode off away from the dwellings, lamenting the fact he'd shown her his own private valley.
But it wasn't her he needed to get away from. The hollow feeling followed him, dogging his attempts to walk it off or meditate. It was the difference between mere absence, and lacking. Somehow, she'd blown a human-shaped hole in his composure, and the stiffness of his awakening humanity pained him. The patterns of his normal life here no longer made sense, though he tried to go through the motions.
He kept seeing her eyes, hearing her words. Feeling that little tug towards her as he remembered the warmth rushing in to meet him as he opened himself up to her probing senses. He could not allow himself to feel that again. It shook his resolve. To what, he was not yet certain.
He spent the rest of the day avoiding her, though returning again and again to their conversation in his mind. And at night, lying on his pallet in his stone hut, he waited for sleep to claim him, not aware that it was not entirely his conscious mind which was holding on...