"I should have been there."
Claire's voice trembles in a rare moment of self-doubt. She couldn't protect someone she cared about. That shouldn't have felt so new...she had never been great at being the protector.
But she never realised just how incapable she really was.
Her fingers briefly flutter over the scar on his neck before her hand drops to her side and her gaze drops to the floor between them.
"I'm sorry."
(from @heaven-made-sister )
"Claire." Zeno wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close to his chest. She was his family. She was his savior. She had saved him from a life of experimentation and misery.
"It was not your fight, and it was not your fault. Even if you had been there... you would have just gotten hurt."
How could he tell her that this would never be her fault? That it hadn't been her fight, her responsibility? And he was alive now, he was alive and he was here with her, living in her brother's house like a ghost.
"You're here now, that's what matters."