Half
And another of Athena's prompts. I'll give a pass on multiple sentences of prompt when they're this much fun to write. XD (In hindsight, maybe I should've cheated and said 3 sentences of prompt = 15 sentences in response, but I'm enjoying abusing the English language to keep these at five ...)
"Half the time I want to kill you."
"Right, and what about the other half?"
"I want to kill myself for feeling what I feel."
"You won't do either," she says, and those green eyes regard him shrewdly, seem to peer into his core, stripping away flesh and bone and dispassionate pretence until she can see to the heart that has always been laid bare in her hands (that beats faster even now at the touch of her gloved fingertips through his doublet, at the spark neither of them is ever armoured enough against).
Half the time, but that has changed from the first, and he finds he's having to remind himself more and more often of all she's done, because with her there memory threatens to eclipse her sins (and his own), and he wonders what if, wonders if he can be forgiven his own deeds while condemning her for hers, wonders and remembers and wishes, yearns. Death would be easy and solve nothing, and if dreams of his hand wrapped tight about her throat make him ache even as those of her delighted laughter do, that only serves to prove that they have broken each other past all hope of mending, damaged each other beyond measure, and it is fitting that she alone should make him burn, because that way he will at least not ruin anyone else.
She's still looking at him, chin tilted up in challenge, eyes chips of jade in a porcelain face as cool and closed as any doll's, but he knows she's nothing of the sort and that to hurl her to the cobbles beneath would shatter nothing save perhaps an illusion, and yet he wants to all the same, because his face is just as much of a seeming and he wants truth and the heat of her to drive away the chill that lives in his bones and threatens to consume him; no matter why it is she heats his blood, she at least (alone) makes him feel alive.
"Perhaps," he says, and does not try to disguise the bitterness, the anger, "I'll do both."