[Leto's sweet voice shines so much brighter in entreatment. Softened for a moment through that question's focus, and the purpose that proximity lays down between hunched shoulder blades.
Haunted things can hardly outrun their own shadows. And like any haunting it will, habitually, loiter in the margins at times not so dissimilar as these, lancing like the sharpness he imbibes by way of tender fingertips.]
Even if I did, what difference would that make?
Those children won't come back. The other Gur won't stop themselves from their resentment or their blame: it was Cazador that wanted it, I'm still the one that did it.
[Bare skin upon bare skin; the warmth of Leto's touch smooths across the measure of his spine when he turns to glance behind him, trailing over countless scars. Numbness back to feeling; deadened nerves to shallow dips that shiver to be traced. There's naught but Leto in the mirror, and so the look he aims— resolute and beseeching— has to be leveled directly at its target.
For it means the world that Leto cares. Knows he'd endure, yet still thinks to coax him back to comfort just for comfort's sake just so that he won't keep gnawing himself raw like the animal that he once was when fear ruled him. It means the world— Thedas and Faerûn, both— that Leto won't just leave him to it, and that's what tips the scale the other way, heavy though it stays: amplified emotions mired in distress don't war with something muted, only the blazing flare of affection that enwreaths a lifeless heart. Saturates it, now.]
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Haunted things can hardly outrun their own shadows. And like any haunting it will, habitually, loiter in the margins at times not so dissimilar as these, lancing like the sharpness he imbibes by way of tender fingertips.]
Even if I did, what difference would that make?
Those children won't come back. The other Gur won't stop themselves from their resentment or their blame: it was Cazador that wanted it, I'm still the one that did it.
[Bare skin upon bare skin; the warmth of Leto's touch smooths across the measure of his spine when he turns to glance behind him, trailing over countless scars. Numbness back to feeling; deadened nerves to shallow dips that shiver to be traced. There's naught but Leto in the mirror, and so the look he aims— resolute and beseeching— has to be leveled directly at its target.
For it means the world that Leto cares. Knows he'd endure, yet still thinks to coax him back to comfort just for comfort's sake just so that he won't keep gnawing himself raw like the animal that he once was when fear ruled him. It means the world— Thedas and Faerûn, both— that Leto won't just leave him to it, and that's what tips the scale the other way, heavy though it stays: amplified emotions mired in distress don't war with something muted, only the blazing flare of affection that enwreaths a lifeless heart. Saturates it, now.]
I don't care if the world hates me, my Leto.
That you don't is enough.