Soma sits next to him on the couch, legs pulled up beneath them, leaning nearer, halfway into Louis's lap. Small, scarred hands raise, settle on his cheek. Their eyes are so wide. "Do you -- want me to be Cruz?" It's a sincere plea; no cruelty in their voice or hand or desperate heart. "I would be, if you -- wanted."
A shoulder reflexively tenses as Soma grows closer, but nevertheless they are welcome to do as they so pleased. For a brief moment Louis considers reciprocating the closeness, somehow —— but it’s such an inane concept by then that he merely continues to cup his hands over his knee, accepting the revenant’s touch. It wasn’t as if this was out of the norm, and Soma’s advancements had been a gentle ( but strong ) chip into Louis’s defenses.
That is to say, the way his expression just barely made way for anguish when she mentioned Her name so easily -- Soma didn’t know it : blissfully simplistic at times, bless their heart ; but there were times where their gentle chip in his defenses could be better likened to a ravenous knock.
Last thing they needed was any added suspense, so he swallows and searches for a way to shut them down like he ought to. What was almost certainly an inoffensive question, if taken seriously, could spiral into the root of some irreversible damage. He’ll find the words in him.
“...Cruz is gone forever,”
he says. He hated asserting it, but it was a better response than a gaping mouth and glassy eyes.
Not a single day goes by where he doesn’t wish She could still be here, beside him ; quite like the vessel that surely remained. He doubts that even when all battles had been fought, all enemies fell ; no matter how many times he folds into himself and forgets, there’ll always be the ghost of a memory haunting him. Always reminding him of one of the biggest mistakes of his mortal life. Forever so filled to the brim with the love he’ll no longer get to experience.
Cruz is dead, he resolves. She died a torturous, painful multitude of deaths- all because of his own stifling sense of ( morality ? cowardice ? love ? ). And now She was broken to pieces, memory spread into the wind and machinations planted into the very being that sat upon him. Somewhere in her heart.
“——So... there’s no need,” since Cruz would already live forever. The words come ambling out like he’s more so trying to convince himself than Soma.
It most certainly was not a denial.
