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There is a difference between wanting and Wanting. This is something Purple has found to be very important over her years.
They sound the same — maybe one has more emphasis on it than the other — but what they mean is entirely different. There is the shallow kind of wanting, the passing-thought kind, the kind that makes you think "hm, I want some ice cream today," or "that new game looks cool." That is the kind of wanting that is feasible, that you could go and fulfill at the brief moment it exists, given enough time or money or energy.
Wanting is something else. Wanting is a beast of a thing, that digs into your heart and drags tears from your eyes even as you try so hard to keep them down. Wanting hurts.
Purple wants often. She's gotten good at ignoring it, at noting the thoughts and letting them pass, because she will never be able to follow them without risking a meal. She Wants less, but when she does Want, it spears through her heart like a sewing needle, going in and out, in and out, again and again, and she can only ignore that for so long until it overwhelms her, leaves her gasping on the floor for air that will never taste clean again.
Purple hates Wanting. Because what she Wants is something she can never have.
Sitting in her King's messy, messy living room, both of them silent and exhausted from the day they just had, Purple leans just slightly into his touch as he tightens the wrap around her torso — not her chest, not her stomach, her entire torso, because he had hated her so much in that moment — in the hopes that her lightning burns will heal before they get infected, and with her eyes closed she can imagine it's her mother's hands, and she Wants. She Wants to be back home, carefully still after training with her father and listening to her mother's voice as she explains what she's doing and how well Purple is handling it. But she cannot have what she Wants. And it hurts.
There is a difference between wanting and Wanting. This is something King did not realize until just now.
They sound the same — maybe one seems lighter on the soul than the other — but what they mean is entirely different. There is the surface kind of wanting, that may seem all-consuming but really is not, like his want to destroy Minecraft or get revenge on the company that killed his child. That is the kind of wanting that is easy to think about, because a normal person would never be able to accomplish it, and it seems so much easier with the language of the world on paper in your hands.
Wanting is something else. Wanting is on a level all its own, that rips cries from his throat and punches holes in his walls that he could repair but doesn't want to explain. Wanting hurts.
King wants strongly. Or, at least, he did. He wanted so much to do to a world what that world did to him, and the thought of it taking him down with it passed his mind. He Wants even more so, Wants to see the face of his child, his Gold, his little Marigold, making some expression other than the twisting terror that warped them into something almost unstickly, and it drags him down into deeper depths that he can't even try to escape, lest the energy spent doing so turns out to be the last of its kind.
King is unused to Wanting, but he already knows it can never come true. Maybe that is the worst part.
Sitting in his living room, his testament to grief taken too far, silent and exhausted and holding a girl equally so close to his chest after treating hers — because he had struck her down with so little hesitation in that moment, nothing but annoyance in his mind, not even anger, just annoyance, and how could he have made her pay the price for that when she was so young? — King Wants. He wants to keep this child so close, so safe, because she should never have been involved with him in the first place. He Wants it to be Gold that he's holding. And it isn't. And it hurts.
Together, they sit, and together, they Want, for opposite things that are so very, very similar. Purple is having trouble breathing— it's not because of her injuries, or because the bandages are too tight. King's eyes are stinging— it's not because of the dust stirred up, or the concussion he almost certainly has.
They both know this about the other. Neither of them know exactly why, or why the other is holding back so hard (one does not want to be seen as weak, one does not want to burden the other), but regardless they do not speak. They just let the other Want in their presence, one leaning reluctantly into his chest while one carefully presses her closer.
Later. Later, they will explain their Wanting and their wanting in simple terms, short sentences, words designed to dance around the center of things so as to not hurt each other with the knowledge. Later, one will try to leave and the other will insist she stays, at least until she heals, and she will accept in a way that means she knows she isn't going to win that argument. Later, one will sleep on the floor while the other takes his bed, and he will wake up with aching joints and palpable regret.
He will look at the child, sleeping uneasily beside him (and she will not be sleeping, she barely slept at all, unwilling to let herself with the state she is in), and that regret will evaporate because she deserves so much better than everything he gave her over these past few months. And he will oh-so-gently tuck her messy hair back behind her ear and tuck the blanket snug around her shoulders and limp away to get something to eat. And she will feel the familiar sting of Wanting, again, half-believing those hands belonged to her father or her mother and Wanting so desperately to feel one of them kiss her forehead like they used to, before mother got sick and died, before father got sick and left. She won't let it show, of course.
Later, they will eat together.
But that is later.
Now, right now, they press themselves into a ball of two half-alive people, silent and exhausted and none the wiser to the fact that they will remain together for one, three, five years after this, only knowing that right now, they need someone, or else they will fall apart. Only knowing that, right now, they are all each other has.
King closes his eyes. Purple shifts her head. They lean on each other, and that is good enough.
They lean on each other, and it makes the Wanting hurt a little less.