Firefly Glen yomblod

All this unspooling of emotions, of his hopes, of their future -- severed Anselm cold.

And Heda - he could not profess to imagine how she felt, carrying this ugly truth in her heart. He stayed the impulse to reach for her as she rose shakily - it would be entirely human of him to want to help her up, but his own deeply undying sense of self-preservation stopped him cold.

And the realization that he'd executed such an unfeeling decision unconsciously caused him to pause and share a wide-eyed look with Heda. She would know, she would see it, and it would likely hurt her further.

Was that not the final shape of their relationship anyway? Fumbling blindly over unseen scars, reopening them again and again --

Do you think I just want to disappear, Anselm? Of course he knew the answer to that. He worked a reply in his unwilling throat that never met the life of day. There was nothing that he could say to undo or change any of this. Her questions went unanswered, for Anselm could not summon the strength needed to break through his wall of tears to speak.

 But do you think it's good for him to see me like this?

His sense of fatherhood warred with pragmatism. His sons would feel robbed of being by their mother until her last breath: as a child, he would want to stay. But pragmatism was an unfeeling kind of intuition, and it forbade him to risk his son's lives for their own closure.

Are you certain this is vhat it is..? Disbelief still hung in cowls around him, even though he knew it was foolish to think anything other than this very real horror -- this very real nightmare -- was systematically undoing the very concept of Heda and her life as they spoke.