Author's Note: This is a continuation of part II of "Fragile and Composed" as well as a response to a haiku prompt.

Sometimes the breaking is soft...

.

Like captured water,
You hold me in your cupped hands
I flow on your palm

.

"Captive"

.

"You could love me for real."

She laughs at that, mirthless, wishing she could cry instead. She can't though. All her tears are spent, and there's nothing left to do but laugh at how irreparably broken they both are. Is there a world where this sad story ended differently? She used to hope so, but even that's gone.

"I did love you once," she says from behind glass-gray eyes. "Maybe I always will, somewhere."

He kneels before her, hands grasping the arms of her chair. "Tell me what I have to do." He bows his head in her lap, and she wonders if he has any idea how easily he could break her, if he tried. "I'll do anything."

Her father's first lesson: Be a still surface. Be a mirror in the dark. Reflect nothing. Reveal nothing.

"You could start by letting me go," she says, watching for his reaction. He goes still against her. Seconds tick by, and neither of them moves. "You're a liar," she continues, resisting the urge to wind her fingers through his hair, to tease him and bend him and rule him. Be ice, she thinks. Be colder than ice. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised."

He lifts his face toward hers, his brow furrowed, expression shifting too quickly to pin down. His voice is soft. "I learned from the best, didn't I?"

She knows. Oh, gods, does she know.

He offers her a rueful smile. "You know I can't go against him."

She takes a slow, deliberate breath. "You can't, or you won't?"

"Both," he answers, his weight pressing against her knees. How does he always manage to look like he's in such pain, as if her words are literally killing him? This would be so much easier if he didn't still make her feel. "How long are you going to punish me like this?"

She tilts her chin up. "Is forever too long?"

He lets out a short laugh and lays his head back down in her lap; her muscles tense at the contact. "As long as I get to see you, I guess it doesn't matter."

To hell with her father's lessons. She takes his face in her hands, lifting his head toward her, and a shock races through her entire body, like lightning skipping across clouds. "But you want more, don't you?"

His blue eyes go wide. "Yes," he whispers.

She runs her fingers through his hair, eliciting a weak moan. "You want me to touch you—" She drags her thumb slowly across his lips. "—and kiss you?"

"Yes," he answers, in a low voice that rattles her very bones with want.

"Let me go," she murmurs, "and I'm yours. All of me. Everything you could ever want."

He goes still in her hands, then closes his eyes. "Now who's the liar?" he says with a bitter laugh. "For a second there, I actually believed you."

When he opens his eyes, she meets his gaze head on. "I'm not lying," she says evenly.

He rises from his knees, hands still gripping the arms of her chair, pushing forward to completely fill her space. She lets go of his face and draws back, but there's nowhere else for her to go, nothing to hide behind.

"I told you," he says as he leans in, lips grazing her neck, the threat in his tone tempered by the way his voice breaks. "I want you to love me. For real."

"It's too late for that," she whispers, feeling his breath warm her skin. Be ice, be a still surface, be stronger than him, too cold to thaw, too distant to reach. That's the problem, though, isn't it? No matter what she does, no matter how hard she fights it, there's always a part of her that yearns for a part of him. Does that make her weak? Does it make her a liar?

"Don't say that," he says as he softly kisses her throat. "You don't mean that."

Her real problem is this: there's still a part of her that loves a part of him… and he knows it.

He leaves a trail of kisses from her throat to her jaw, each just as gentle as the first, before stopping shy of her mouth. He never kisses her there. She knows he's waiting for it to be real.

He could break her so easily, if he tried.

She thinks maybe she should let him.

.