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It was supposed to be him. He wishes he could say it to her. He dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it arrived. She would dismiss it too; a ridiculousness in the incredulity. No. Everything is a knot that untangling would cause a wider-spread chaos now. Of course, he did not expect to find someone he could connect with, someone whose mind was open, and sharp. Someone that he craved until she became real in his arms. This was a trouble he shouldn't have engaged in, shouldn't have humored the depths within him to concede to. He warned her, she gave him space. Why could he not simply have stayed quiet, stayed sure, stayed away?
It should've been him. His plan was never guaranteed, but he knew what he was gambling with. Knew the pieces he had handled, imperfectly, through the dreams over time. Still, when he awoke, the weakness left a hole, a craving of another sort, the lost, everything lost, torn, pulled asunder. It was him. The only one who could do it, who could help the shell of this world.
All of the People, their graceful music, their souls in hopeful sorrow, a freedom that he could grant. That he had to grant. Now? A scramble, no time for regret, no time to plunge into the despair that lingered, looking for a vulnerable moment. There had been but one option, a desperate plan. On view, just another example of the dangerous world to to their shadowy, coarse existence. A rare miscalculation, and another. Then one more. Oh.
He glances at her next to him, left hand reflexively palm down over her heart. She shakes, in the middle of one of those nightmares that come. He lets her work through it for now, but her rapid breaths, her shaking, it indicates a greater trauma that she will need help to escape. He takes her hand, the unmarked one, and closes his eyes. This hurt, this trauma, it is another thing he is responsible for.
But now, here they were. For her, it shouldn't have been him.