“No, no, I’m not alright. I’m definitely not alright.”
How could she be?
They had hurt her, they had made her believe in freedom where they had never intended to give her any. So much blood, so many lives, all of it on her hands, in the hollow of her bones. Skeletons upon skeletons in her closet, and everytime she closed her eyes she could see them, he knew.
Nothing would undo what has been done.
But what else can he ask? What else can he say? Who is he, in the face of this vast, raw pain, of the enormity of her guilt? Her heart was like a treasure, her ribcage a dragon protecting it all costs, fire raining down on everyone who wanted to get closed. Donghoon knew, he was far from the hero. He was not the dragonslayer. He was nothing, nothing at all in the grand scale of her destruction.
There are no words for grief, for all memories slipping past your fingers and breaking like broken bottles.
So he said nothing, and crossed the distance between them, holding her close. He remembered, during her Tournament, how the earth had embraced her, created her own sanctuary. He wasn’t anything like that, just a coward trying to be a lionheart, just a white lie.
“I love you,” not still and not despite, but just that, just that, just always that. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
He just wished it hadn’t cost her what it did.