You know I love you.

It was a consolidation of affections that should be unnecessary, but Nymeria craved it regardless of her mind's logical reasonings. He and her, they were born for one another; the blood that ran through them both, hot and fevered, was not so easily forgotten. And yet—and yet—despite this, this matter of shared blood and amniotic fluids—always was that distance growing between them. Here and now, tucked away beneath the velvet shade of the trees, that abyss felt insurmountable, even moreso because Volterra was a hero or a demon chiselled in mortal flesh. (She rather thought she had more in common with shit than him.) We are made to be together; that's what she always thought (and she would be damned if she didn't think Volterra thought that too)... but they couldn't be together, not really. They chafed and strafed against one another, igniting sparks: together capable of god-sent warmth on a night cold as death, or burning down a forest.

She should know better than to do this to someone like him...
A tear becomes two, then four, then eight, and they were not all fake.

Lil does not infringe upon her mind, not now. In the back of her mind, she feels his nebulous presence hovering with uncertainty and distress. He wants to help, to drain her volatile emotions away—but he won't, not because he couldn't but because she puts up barbed wire and cement walls between them. Let me, he implores her once again, and she ignores him in favor of memorizing the sound of Volterra's pained cry, the anguish in his eyes. You can't do anything.

Everything up to this moment is inconsequential. I don't think anything will be worth this. She's got something sharp and hard around her heart when Volterra speaks to her in their tongue. You're supposed to be all business. What was business compared to this? The agony, the torment—get your fucking shit together. The tears sliding down her cheeks come to watery halt; Nymeria smiles tentatively, achingly, and for once she lets Volterra see her in all her raw-boned ugly. There in her teeth is a sneer, in her eyes mocking love, in the curve of her neck depraved longing, and in the flick of her ears hate: but painted front and center is an echo of long-cloaked fear wrought unto her very bones. Maybe it's a warning for him. Maybe she wants to show him all that was all wrong with her. Maybe she wants to know if he would be as repulsed by her as she was.

“I'm sorry Volterra... maybe I should just go. I'm not helping anything.”