send ‘ you don’t love me, ’ for my muse’s reaction ( accepting ) // @youngwiife
confrontation. it is thick in the air, lingering in his every breath, filling his lungs with its heaviness and dragging him downward. his shoulders have hunched, and for several minutes, prince andrei fails to do so much as acknowledge the presence of his wife, uninvited and standing in his study. it is not that he believes she shall leave and take with her this dreadful silence if he persists in saying and doing nothing. instead, what he is to say, how to respond, is lost on him completely. nothing is clear, and all seems still more terrible than before. how much longer must he wait to escape to his awaiting glory in the war? before he may enter into a world full of the practical and unemotional calculations which he is so much more able to understand.
she is right. prince andrei does not love lise. he does wonder if he ever had. if at the time of their courtship, the pressure he had felt had been due to some love which had since faded —- and had not been fully a result of his father’s urging him to wed, or of the constant nattering of society, the gossip concerning what they’d called an ideal match. it seems too difficult to tell the two things apart now that the pressure has passed and consequentially has been repressed. that he feels so inclined to lock away the memories does not incline him to think that the formal affection he’d felt had been love.
“ what nonsense is this? ” his words do not cut that conflicting air but make it thicker still, and with a certain sharpness, he turns to face his wife and rises to his feet. there is no way he may remain seated. anxiousness, which makes him both feel too light and too heavy, which makes him shiver despite the heat that creeps up the back of his throat, has inexplicably infected him, and he cannot bring himself to be still. his rebuke is icy and hard, and hides all those doubts which trouble his soul.
prince andrei does not approach, but his weight shifts forward as though he might, and he only thinks better of it as he poses to her a question which intends to create distance rather than seek answers. “ tell me, eh? what is the meaning of this, lise, why do you bother me with it? ”
