He'd flown to her, heart twisted in his mouth, barely able to blurt the words before he'd choked himself into silence. Unable to explain, unable to do much but shake or nod his head for the demon that clawed inside his breast threateningly. You'll hurt her too, it giggled insidiously, a promise in its oily voice. You never did deserve her. And it's laughable that he's only slowly realizing how he's beginning to feel for her when he's so afraid of breaking apart her delicate nature with his tainted weight. How can he tell her, when only the barest blossoms are struggling upon the crag branches of his burnt past and wounded heart? He could not destroy that hope that maybe he's not so broken as he thought, that she could feel for him what he might finally be relearning once more. Except...his mind flashes back to the foul words that had dripped out of his mouth, vile poison that he'd confronted Tandavi with, and he sways to an abrupt stop where he is.

Which is...where?

He'd simply been walking, Brisa trailing after him, not knowing where he was going or what he was doing. Why had she trusted him? Why had she followed after him so complacently, so lovely beneath the summer moon? Turning her ivory coat into a vision of purity that he knew he would burn away the moment he touched her. You kill everything you touch, the voice noted primly, as if it did not kill Kaj to hear it inside his head. Wondered where it had hidden away all this time, waiting for the right time to emerge when his family was already few and struggling, ready to tear them apart and leave him standing in the ashes hopelessly. 

He turned to her, wondering where he could find the words to say how she made him feel like his heart finally had a purpose again aside from keeping him alive (and how he hated it when it did that, sometimes) but how he was so very afraid that he'd break her so much worse than Note ever had. Her tender, gentle family with their quiet smiles and loyal hearts did not deserve the storms he always brought alongside him. He was undeserving, and he could not punish her that way, by revealing the budding emotions only to tell her that he could never freely offer it to her. 

"I've become a monster," he manages to wrangle out of his closed throat, turning to her like she held salvation and absolution in her eyes. "Someone I considered my niece...she said a careless remark in her grief and I - " eyes close unbidden against his own self-hatred, wishing he had the strength to cast himself into the fires of the Heart. The Falls would be better off that way. "I've been patient so long, and I just...I lost control." His body shakes as he tries to keep away the tears, for he will drown in them before he ever sees light again. 

"I don't know what to do," he managed to say, and he wants to tell her I love you or maybe I never thought I could feel this way again but instead he stands broken in silence before her.