"This is isn't love," Carlye whispers, "If you don't want to talk about it."
Slowly, Hawkeye begins to shake. "It's not all that easy."
They don't sleep, in the quiet room, and suddenly, the bed seems to big, and suddenly, they seem too far away.
"A romantic cop-out." She pauses.
"Make an exception." He looks away, a familiar lump forming deep in his throat, as he struggles to control the shaking.
"It's all or nothing." Echoes bounce through the room, and Hawkeye hears this, pains from this. Carlye closes her eyes to the pain. "Something's changed. We're not -- what's happened to us, Ben?"
He rolls away from her touch. Fighting the alarm in his voice, he repeats, "Ben?"
"I can't --"
"I'm not ready for this -- this sort of thing."
Carlye lifts her head, peering around, puzzled. "What sort of thing?"
"This." Wildly, he waves an arm. "You. Me. Us." A visible discomfort appears. "Commitment."
Silence presses down on them, weighing them, measuring them. They try to tell themselves the lies of comfort to make themselves forget, but the silence hangs above, a constant reminder.
"I love you, Carlye." He sits up, reaching an arm out to hold her, capture her.
"This isn't love." She slides away.
He watches her intently avoiding his gaze, and ignores the distance between them that is suddenly so large. "It's not so black and white, it's not so simple. It's -- it's --"
"We can't -- I can't do this, Ben."
He panics. "Hawkeye."
"Ben." Slowly, a lone tear spills over, making it's way down her cheek. "I need more, Ben."
"I can't give it to you." Hawkeye wildly grasps for straws, hoping, praying, for something, anything. "I'm sure there's something in between, something --"
"There's nothing." Carlye slips from the bed, from the warmth, and that word hangs for a moment, striking them.
"Nothing?" A frantic whisper, hardly audible.
It occurs to them both, what's been happening around them without their knowledge. "Please, Ben --"
Anger replaces the pain, and he silently slams a hand into the mattress. "Goddammit, Carlye, I --"
"You don't."
"I love you, I do! Every time you sneeze I know it, I know I love you. Is that nothing? This -- this force? Is it so much a damn nothing that you can just -- just throw it away? I can't -- Carlye, I thought we had something."
Carlye turns away, reaching for her shoes. She silently laces them up, finishing as she tosses an answer over her shoulder. "I need more than something, Ben."
"Please, don't do this."
She turns around, looking him right in the eye, ignoring the tears of them both. "I didn't do this. You did."
Hawkeye reaches a hand out for her and she flinches. "I've done nothing."
"Exactly."
"Carlye, please --"
She shakes her head. "You should have thought about the consequences." One hand on the door, the other quickly wraps a shawl around her shoulders.
"Carlye, I --" Hawkeye blinks, the image of her blurring before him. He works to free his throat of the emotion building up. "I love you."
A sad look, and she opens the door. "This isn't love."
No goodbye, and suddenly, the bed seems even larger, the distance even greater, and the silence even more so.
