[It's kind of Kit to make his presence known, respectfully and in the hopes that he won't hear any more of what he shouldn't. Through no fault of his, it's already too late for that. Before those creaking floorboards can make a noise, Vandelin lets out a sob--and for one long frozen moment, he feels dissociated from it, as if adamantly rejecting the notion that so vulnerable a noise could ever come from his own throat, until another follows on its heels, and his heart drops low with panic. Why can't he make them stop?
Kit's footsteps freeze him in his tracks like the petrified rabbit he feels like, and before he can think, he's bolted out to the darkness of the living room, away from him, anything he can do to put distance between himself and the man who was never supposed to know any of this. Shivering in his hastily-donned smallclothes in the drafty room, he wedges himself into a corner.
he didn't say that he didn't say that he didn't say any of this, none of this happened, none of this is happening, none of it has to be real, he doesn't mean it he doesn't mean it it's not my fault it was never my fault it wasn't]
I'm sorry.
[It's the first time he's cried in well over a decade, and even now, he would have denied he was doing it until he heard his own voice choked with tears. He can distance himself from his own body as thoroughly as he needs to, but he can't run from what he knows of Myr's pain anymore; he can't hide from the too-vivid thought of him lying with hollowed-out eye sockets in an infirmary bed and wishing for death, worse, wishing for Tranquility, and even in the face of all of that, of all of that, still loving Vandelin more than Van has ever earned in a lifetime.]
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Kit's footsteps freeze him in his tracks like the petrified rabbit he feels like, and before he can think, he's bolted out to the darkness of the living room, away from him, anything he can do to put distance between himself and the man who was never supposed to know any of this. Shivering in his hastily-donned smallclothes in the drafty room, he wedges himself into a corner.
he didn't say that he didn't say that he didn't say any of this, none of this happened, none of this is happening, none of it has to be real, he doesn't mean it he doesn't mean it it's not my fault it was never my fault it wasn't]
I'm sorry.
[It's the first time he's cried in well over a decade, and even now, he would have denied he was doing it until he heard his own voice choked with tears. He can distance himself from his own body as thoroughly as he needs to, but he can't run from what he knows of Myr's pain anymore; he can't hide from the too-vivid thought of him lying with hollowed-out eye sockets in an infirmary bed and wishing for death, worse, wishing for Tranquility, and even in the face of all of that, of all of that, still loving Vandelin more than Van has ever earned in a lifetime.]
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Maker, I'm sorry--