Sooyeon knew... she knew why this was all so hard for him. And it was not easy for her, either, if she was being fully honest with herself. What he had done...
Who could ever fully excuse such a thing?
But the Leo, then, had been hurt. And scared. And cold in his actions. That Leo was a different person than the man who stood in front of her now. Wasn't he?
A boy lost. Terrified of losing his path again. Of losing Taejin.
She knew, too, there was an anxious part of him still afraid to lose her, as well. It was something they both had to reconcile with in their own ways.
He said he did not deserve her forgiveness, and Sooyeon understood why maybe he felt it unearned. There had been a long while after he had told her what he had done that she was unsure of her capacity to forgive him for it, too. There had been fear, then, that he might one day find the need to do the same to her. Nights that she had woken up in a cold sweat from nightmares about it.
But time apart had offered her perspective. Leo, on the other hand, did not have the luxury of stepping away from himself and considering the roots of his past decisions.
Sooyeon drew nearer as Leo stared at his trembling hands. Were the small, smudged, graphite and ink stains she saw on his fingers crimson and flowing for him? Bloodied and capable of unbearable cruelty?
There had been a time she may have seen the same. But now, she saw only the truth of them. Strong, gentle, hands of an artist. A lover.
She gave him only a moment more for reflection before placing her hands in his. Her fingers smoothed over his palms, as if to coax away the blood he must have seen.
"A part of you still believes that because at the time it had felt like the only choice."
She shifted her right hand further up, until her finger tips settled against his wrist, traced softly over his pulse. "Leo, my love, you are kind. So kind," She told him, fingers stroking there at his wrist, as if trying to coax his heartbeat into understanding his softness. "You aren't the monster you see yourself as. Fate has been cruel to you, taught you some of the hardest lessons a person can learn, and you have endured. Not without scarring, not without mistake. But forever with kindness. The deep, unyielding, capacity for love."
With this, she slowly pulled her hands away, but only so that she could carefully take both of his between both of hers, holding them there like they were precious. Something to be protected. "Even if you spend the rest of your life unable to forgive yourself, it won't change what's happened," A horrible truth, but a truth nonetheless, and Sooyeon was not the kind of woman to lie about such things. "But the person you're still struggling to forgive doesn't exist anymore. Not in the way you think he does. He's a shadow, Leo. Nothing more. Not now. You don't have to forgive him, but when the day comes that you can fully understand him, know that forgiving him is okay. You don't have to repent for this forever. You carry forward and try to make up for it, instead, with kindness. First for the rest of the world, and someday, for yourself."
Sooyeon brought his hands up to her lips, pressed a kiss there against the place where they joined. "When things are hard, come to me, okay?" As he was doing now. "No masks. No lies. Just honesty, as you've given me now." It must have been a hard thing to admit that a part of him still believed what he had done had been right. It was a hard thing for her to hear, as well. But she knew where it stemmed from- or, at least, she thought she did. And she would forgive him time and again for all of it. "We'll take this a day at a time. And I'll be right here with you through all of it. Whatever comes."
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