The hunter feels a quick, burning sensation as the mare's muzzle collides with his own finely chiseled features. It is rare that he feels another's touch; after all the time he spends alone aside from with Manhattan, he does not have the opportunity for contact. He has never before thought it might be something he needs. Its instances have been rare reactions from the soon to be dead or his own cruel mother; most recently, the sting of the sensation had come from his foul encounter with Adrixaura.

But there is something different about Aylin's touch, and something different about this day. The hunter cannot stop hearing Manhattan's thoughts coming back to haunt him, her insults borne of her love for him, ruddying with the darkness of her hate. He knows he has taught her to feel this cold and awful unkindness, he has given her this capacity. He wonders if he has ruined her.

He hears Aylin calling for Roanne to stay, but the Sentinel has long since gone. "I cannot claim to be my father, nor can I claim to feel what he felt," Knox answers in the only way he can. He sounds cold, like a machine. He wonders why he is like this when so many others are not. He sees the emotion in Aylin's green eyes, eyes that he pulls from a memory falling from Roanne's shattered heart, eyes that he knows are her mother's, and wonders if his eyes are void of such light. Are they cold and unfeeling as he feels? Does he show any life inside of him, any sign that his heart still beats?

When she pulls away he expects relief from the pressure to reciprocate her emotions, but instead he sees her choking back tears. He can sense her wanting to come closer, but something keeps her at bay. What is it that makes him so hard to relate to? What is it that made her call for the Sentinel, a dead stallion who she'd never even known, when he stands alive and well before her? Is he that awful of a beast?

He wants Manhattan back. He wants the soft brush of his companion's black fur against his cannons, he wants the familiar sensation of wind against his young body as he runs by her side chasing game. He wants her back because she is the only being through which he can feel, the only beast that tries to understand him. And he has hurt her, he has sent her away. The pain that wells within him is very real and strong.

Knox pushes forward. His body moves to collide with hers, to fall against it and into it, perhaps to understand the sensation of being cared for, perhaps to understand care at all. He lets himself fall apart in front of an almost stranger, lets himself whinny helplessly as he drapes his heavy head across her shoulders, as he turns his neck to brush his nose against her cheek and seek out comfort. This is touch, he tells himself. Touch is expression and understanding, the closest one can get to reaching out. It is opening oneself to vulnerability and exposing oneself in a way he has never before been able to do. Even now, he is not sure if this cathartic experience can be enough.

Because it still hurts. As he moves to bridge the gap between himself and Aylin, as his mind pulls at the distance between his bonded's mind and his own, as he lets out words in between choking breaths, ("I can't understand him, I can't be him! Feeling was bred and beaten from me, and I'm left to be this, this... husk! What am I? I feel nothing, I am nothing," he wails,) it all still hurts.

Emotions become words. The words are unchained and dramatic, but every last one is true; every last one is some scrap of a feeling felt once long ago and then locked away until now, when he has at last served his time and may go free. "How do you cope? In this world where so much hurts and so little brings us joy, how do you keep on living, and how do you not want to die?"

He speaks to her through his pain, through his loss and all that hurt which he has caused in his short life. He must start again, he thinks. Must repent for his sins in some way, must become something new. He has to embrace the ability to feel, and the understanding that he can be more than what he is.

If only he can know how.