He watches her with an intense gaze, as she tries to hide her worries from others. He knows why she does this. She doesn't like asking for help. She sees it as a weakness and despises it. She would not allow herself to indulge in this weakness. She will protect everyone else by sacrificing herself.
She does not understand the enormity of this decision.
She does not understand that in a world where everyone else is a possible enemy, she is accepted with trust and awkward, rough affection.
She does not understand that what she had planted, had grown because of her diligence.
She does not understand that the more she tries to keep them from harm's way, she endangers herself horribly, and while she understands that this is the necessary price, she does not understand how her suffering will affect those who have come to love her...once they find out. If they find out.
She understands all the right things, yet none of the important things. Or maybe she just does not recognize what is important to others may be different from what is merely for their own good.
And while it was well and good for the others who do not know her well enough to notice...or who are fooled well enough by her...it is a poor comfort to him, and to those who do see through to her.
Personally, it is almost an insult how she consciously tries to keep him at arm's length, only to unconsciously pull him to her.
By trusting him to be there for her.
By allowing herself to be careless knowing he would find a way to fix things.
By coming to him, when she needs answers...or even comfort.
For showing him something she daren't show anyone else: That she, too, needed others.
That she would trust him enough to show him a side of her that she finds absolutely untenable:
Her tears.
Proof that even she is human. That she, too, can hurt. And that it is not a physical blow that would fell her, but rejection from one she had believed to be her friend.
It was not the man whose name she whispered when she was unconscious.
It was not her family members, or even her grandfather.
She had come to him, without thought.
He was her first choice.
And yet she still tries to maintain what is only a semblance of a gap there should be between them.
She only thinks of what is good for the others. What was good for him. The right choice. No matter the price she paid. But each time she paid dearly for walking the straight and narrow, she wasn't the only one who suffered.
She may have spared the others, in their ignorance, but she had not spared him. And each time she hurts, each time she bleeds, so does he.
And so no matter how much she tries to protect him, it makes him bleed.
He wonders if she will ever understand this, but he shakes his head.
No matter.
His blood was the least of what she owned.
And bleeding for her...
...bleeding with her...
...to be the one she can show her real self to, he would endure anything for it.
Because in these moments, there was only the two of them. In this moment, more than any other, did she belong to him.
And that was the only thing that mattered.