@crueltyerror said: ' You could not have changed what happened. ' / nat, to steve
head remains firmly in his hands, palms digging into his eyes as if the pressure could relieve the ache settled deep into his bones. kind as her words were, reassuring as her solid presence there beside him always was, he did not deserve it. not the softness, not the chance to take some of the weight from shoulders that are already overburdened.
the guilt planted in his gut has had decades to sprout and climb like ivy through his chest and constrict his throat. every misstep, every life he could not save, every bad call, even his own ignorance— all caused it to grow and thicken and threaten to choke him. and some days, the real bad days, he wishes it would. he wishes he could put him out of his misery so he could feel like he wasn’t struggling under the weight of the world and its expectations, as though he hadn’t picked it up of his own volition all those years ago.
but the root of it all always comes back to the same faces, the same moments. he feels his mothers cold hand in his own, watches helplessly as james’s slips away from his and disappears into the wind and snow. his memory is perfect to the point of being a doubled edged sword; he can not forget. every soul he’s failed, every mistake he’s made, every word spoken he’s come to regret, it all lives inside his skull and taunts him when he closes his eyes.
and here nat is, offering something that feels too much like an excuse.
you couldn’t have changed what happened.
but if he’d done something differently, used a different strategy, made a different call, maybe he could have. maybe no one would have been lost, maybe no one would have gotten hurt.
“it’s still my responsibility,” he manages to choke out past the thickness in his throat, “i can’t change that, either.”
