[ There is a time she would have flown into a rage; self-righteous, defensive, accusatory. Bright and fierce and vicious, hot enough to parch her tears and consume the very air. Words chosen and sharpened to wound in retribution.

Now she only freezes for a moment. Looks away sharply. Loses her softness, stops breath, becomes a sculpture of herself. Listens to the words that spring into her throat—

How dare you speak of him so, you have never cared to understand—
What security do you think you could offer me—
A fine thing, to feel steadier about a future in which I am unhappy—

— and says none of them. Closes her eyes instead, and tries to breathe past the knife so casually buried in her back in the name of caring for her.

Finally she manages, although she does not look and becomes no softer. ]

He did not abscond, and his presence was an anchor of surety in my life such as I had never known. His loss has ripped every vestige of security I had come to believe in from me, and has spilled over the entirety of my life such that I trust in nothing.

Why is it you think I cannot bear to see you with Bastien, why I am forever begging for reassurances, why I am so desperate to believe you need me and yet nothing is enough?

[ She looks at her hands and shakes her head. Murmurs: ]

You would not wish this on me if you knew what having him had been.