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It is not the Wood, but it is a forest all the same. Once the night falls, it closes in around them like a thicket of darkness. And the way she stands at the edge of the firelight, ears perked as though to listen to every sound he cannot hear, and all that she cannot that she wishes she could, tears at the scars on his own heart.
“Fran?” And maybe it’s selfish of him to ask, but he can’t not and leave her to this alone. “If... there is anything I can do, anything at all, I-...”
“No.”
It stings his pride. But he sucks in a breath, and nods his understanding – what understanding he is capable of – all the same.
Her ears pivot back, and as he moves to leave he feels her fingers on his cheek, nails scraping lightly the skin beneath his ear. Reaching for her hand as he turns back toward her, he finds her studying him; her eyes are imperceptivity dark, and he feels he is drowning him them.
“Already you do all that you can.”
On a whim, more than anything, he touches her face in kind. She blinks once in surprise, and again more slowly before he lets his hand drop. Her nails skim off his skin as he steps away and leaves her to it.