He slipped the ring on her finger, with a hesitance in his eyes and an eagerness in his hands. He hadn't received an answer, just a couple of logical excuses, and the gasp of a 'No' his heart had fluttered at but his head chose to ignore. His favorite but masking smile graced her lips, and a flash of something not so innocent in her eyes.
Then he said the words which paralleled ones she tried every night to forget, "I wanna take care of you, so that you'll never have to worry about anything, ever again," She looked at him, her eyes a beautiful crusade between who she appeared to be and who she was. Wonder and despair clinked swords until she couldn't bear to lie to him with her eyes any longer, and looked down at the modest ring that symbolized her future.
The diamond wasn't her concern. She noticed the loop, a perfect circle. Never ending, never starting- the ring was infinite. Could she be his forever? She wasn't with him in that moment, but faraway. Like at night when she let her mask fall and looked at her self in the mirror searching for what she had become accustomed to hiding. When she allowed herself the bittersweet punishment and redemption of remembering a time when she danced, in the room of what her father would call a deviant freak, but of what she would call a hero, carelessly and happily.
Her soon to be fiance's words only touched her because of their closeness to ones said in another lifetime, heard by a Marion and not a Kate, said by not a man but a woman. Met with rejection and fear where his words were met with acceptance and conformity.
Happiness is subjective, she thought, faith is infinite and never-questioning.