Sawtooth Spire But the bruises on your ego make you go wild, wild, wild

this time mahler did not respond with any sign of trepidation; only a long and weary moment in which he surveyed the rift between himself and this fierce, tormented woman he loved.
insurmountable.
uncrossable, for he did not know how to even lift the beginnings of a bridge, and with no energy to propel him, mahler surrendered in an internal collapse of cowardice toward the love that had burned hotly within him for years.
it was wylla. it had always been wylla. and now she spurned him, and he saw little reason to press her; mind worked wearily to justify: she did not want him, she had not wanted him for many months, and now she did not wish to salvage the scraps of what had been between them.
did he wish it?
you, his heart shuddered in throes of misplaced anguish.
"you," mahler breathed, voice a plume of white in the frozen air.