‘ i’m asking you to love me hard for the next few minutes . ’
She’s never asked such a thing of him, and yet he finds himself obliging in the stillness. Brutal hands freeze about the inkwell and pen, eyes rising upward slowly at the sound of such unfamiliar vernacular; she has asked much of him in time gone by, but never such nebulous this. Never such dangerous that. He is uncertain what she asks of him now, and so he answers her in return with lips sealed and attention piqued. She asks him for trinkets, favors, advantages in this veritable underworld they have created - and a case of mistaken identity; this is no Persephone - but never this. Never love.
And yet, always love.
LOVE ME HARD -- she asks. He isn’t sure he’s loved anything hard before. Such simple instruction, such heavy connotation. Such easy obligation. He wonders if he is even capable of such a thing. So often he snaps his fingers and mountains move; such is the benefit of growing such deep roots into the veins of the city, into the bones of its people. She is outfitted with finery - that she so often rejects, for prideful demons are her company-keepers. She is offered protection - that she shirks, for strength comes from unexpected places. She is offered the world - but only in exchange for loyalty, for discretion, for this. Not love. He’s never asked for love.
Nor has he given it - nor had he planned to.
He leans back in his seat, hands falling from the tedium which had so occupied him until her arrival. Gaze set upon her blazing look, he folds his hands upon his lap, gripping and pulling down hard upon the sudden urge to rise, to go to her, to strangle the uncertainty and disquietude from her voice. The urge strikes him to turn away, to shy from the implications laden upon the question, and yet he cannot. Blazing gaze meets blazing look; she is raw need, and he the answer. The chair beneath him creaks, stirring him from his silence, from his uncertain reverie; instead, he searches with little pretense, allowing his eyes to rake over her visage in search of cut, scrape, bruise. There is nothing incriminating here, nothing to alert him to a sudden need to disappear as was so characteristic. Disposals were often necessary, though Megara could no doubt save herself.
Call it protecting assets, assuring investments; it was easier to think this way, when he dirtied his own hands in the name of -- important people. He finds it wholly impossible to think of her as anything else, as anyone capable of being loved in such dangerous capacity. But here he sits, staring into the maw, demanding to FEEL.
She has not spoken, and so neither has he; Holden can only assume she waits for an answer - though he will never know how to answer such a request. How is a soulless thing meant to love? To hate; that would be a much easier request. But he has never denied her before. One way or another - denial has never been the final trial. And so whatever she has done, whatever horrid thing she has brought to drop upon him, like a cat presenting its master with a bird’s carcass, he is certain that it will not change a thing.
And so he answers: “Of course.”