One of the first things Kieran learns about Lauren is that she can tell when someone is lying. He knows this before he even actually sees her eyes for the first time, or before she tells him her name.
And because he knows Lauren can tell when someone is lying, he lies to her from the very first moment, their first meeting. To test her skills, to make her aware of certain facts, and also to get her attention. Even though he’s the one lying face down on the ground with his hands cuffed and she’s holding a gun to his head, Kieran is the one in control of this conversation.
Since that first meeting, he’s stopped lying to Lauren. If he doesn’t want to say something, he just doesn’t say it. Irony, half-truths, and answers phrased as questions are all missed by Lauren’s detector, and Kieran is observant enough to know that.
And he takes advantage of it.
When Lauren, furious and desperate, asks him if he enjoys his murders, if he's proud to be the most dreaded assassin the city has ever known, Kieran never gives a straight answer. Each of his answers is carefully phrased as a question in which he can easily hide the truth and true emotions.
We see only one sentence written in red in their entire argument, but that is only when his self-control is shattered to dust.
As time passes and their relationship mends, Kieran stops using even these little tricks to get around Lauren's ability. He has a very good idea of how important honesty is to Lauren, so he sticks to the truth if it is even remotely possible.
When he comes to Lauren to try to convince her to cancel their deal, his words are full of lies. Bright, red-glowing, clumsy, and unvarnished. They are pathetic and desperate lies, and he's gotten too used to telling Lauren the truth for them to work.
But I wonder what if they meet again in the cave and this time Kieran says and does anything to push Lauren away? What if he says words that are cruel and mean, yet shaped to sound like the truth to her ears, so that she runs away from him again, rejects him, has a reason to hate him and never comes back. So that she's finally safe from who he is and what that entails.
I think he'll at least try, and I think it won't work, because Lauren knows him too well to have to hear a lie to know the truth.
I really hope that instead of running away, she just hugs him tighter, telling him that it doesn't matter what happened or what's going to happen, because she's not going anywhere.
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