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In his dreams, he holds her.
He holds her like he never did in life. He doesn't know if they're standing or kneeling, doesn't know where they are – if they're even safe. All he knows is his palm is pressed gently to the back of her neck and his fingers splay through the soft strands of her hair. Her face is buried in the crook of his neck and their torsos are pressed flush, softly molded against each other until there's no room for anything else in the world. Sometimes, his other arm tightens around her waist until he's sure he can feel her heart beat right against his own, so tight that he hopes their ribs interlock like puzzle pieces.
He can't smell in his dreams, never could. He aches for it now, to be able to breathe in the scent of her hair where his nose is buried in it. He doesn't know what he'd smell. He remembers the smell of her apartment, and he remembers the smell of the diner grease she always complained trailed her home after work. He doesn't know what scent would cling to her box dyed blonde hair like this, if the soapy clean scent would be tinged with tea tree or vanilla. He just knows that he only ever had one chance to find out, and he'd failed to notice it in the moment. When he thinks of that memory now, all he can smell is blood.
Sometimes, when the memory grows too much, he superimposes a false copy over it. In the fantasy, she shoves him back, maybe slaps him again. In it, he's wearing his gloves, as if that makes the blood spray land on a person different to himself. In it, she stumbles out of that elevator and her look is a sneer of outright disgust. In it, he never lost anything because nothing was ever even in his grasp.
It makes it easier to handle, if he can poison the roiling waves of emotion until they're nothing but self-loathing and hatred. It's a comfort, not to have that tinge of hope twisting his insides with the possibilities of what could have been. The benefit to being the villain in a story is the throughline; it paints every action so easily with its awful consistency. There can be no choices when the narrative demands evil deeds.
But the fantasy isn't true. She had sealed her lips to his, letting him press into her everything he didn't have the time or courage or capacity to say. His hands had been bare, palms and soul bearing the terrible weight of everything he did next. And the last time he had ever seen her, her face had been stricken with horror.
He never sees her face in the dream, pressed as she is to him. He doesn't think he wants to, no matter how much he longs to pull her back and see her just one last time.
He doesn't want to know what expression would stare back.