Arrow Lake Hold it, even though it kills you slowly

surprise was a method of understating how taken aback mahler was by takiyok's admission. if he stood in stoic quiet before her for several long and agonizing moments, it was to process the progression of her words. she was ... revealing — the revelation was less stunning than the dawning dread that he must somehow answer.
and so mahler gazed mutely at the winterwhite while all emotion fled his features; it was some moments later before he returned to himself and a gentle affection began to suffuse his lilac stare. "i have long cared for you, takiyok," came the gargoyle's gentle rumble as he saw in the fire of the woman's eyes how she had struggled to give such to him, to open herself. and in himself, there was only a rejoining call of fear. 
she had suffered beneath stigmata's decision, she and ketzia both.  and mahler, unable to categorize himself in terms of romance, had not sought a pairing since marigold's death. who could know the machinations of a mind that fell beneath no tangible binary? 
if allowed, mahler reached to takyiok now, wary of a woman for whom he cared deeply, but whose emotion he feared ran more deeply than his own was able to articulate. could she exist at the side of a man locked into the coldness of his inner self, unable to voice those things? he did not know, but he was unwilling to force her into discovering such things for herself, not after she had already felt so much pain.
and there was the matter of stigmata: his kill-brother and takiyok had come together in an agreeable sense, but if mahler were to put himself forth between them, a negative change in dynamic might come to pass.