[ The longer the seconds drag, the less she knows what to say, and the worse of it is anything she'd just say as the first flare of her anger fades back a touch, or even what she might say as an aside, snide or annoyed or exasperated. It gets gummed up. Having to actually write it. It's not the same as speaking. As her mouth just opening and words falling wherever they might. It's not the same at all. It reminds her too much of her therapists' office. Makes her have to actually think of her words.
Which just makes it frustrating beyond belief. Because then she does. Have to think of them. Order. Direction. Everything.
He's not wrong, but he's not right either, and none of it is as simple as it's no one's fault. There is, he isn't wrong about one piece, so much. So much happened. So much went wrong. Didn't stop going wrong right up to the end. Hasn't stopped going wrong since they woke up here. Right now. In this place. Missing one of their number again.
She has to blink when the question appears, snapping her from the snarl of her own thoughts, frustration soaked through still trying to find the right thought to even rummage for the right words, and where even thinking about thinking on that had spun it even further. When the question is so. Middle of the road. But it's not. It looks it. But she knows him. Can feel it. What it actually is. It's a prompt. A check. It's own version of an aside.
No sweeping anything off the table. It's --
It's that moment, in the living room, earlier this week even.
Looking over her shoulder and finding him sitting there, patiently studying her, through whatever fuss she decided to throw up first. Still there. Mingled under the look of not quite being certain what to say to her after so many years, but that other thing, still. Too. That patience. A game aged as old as both of them, as any number of those moments. His patience, and her lack of it.
But he isn't here. He can't see her. Still there, laying on her bed, staring at his last four sentences like somehow she could find the right words, when she never tries to at this point, cared about right and wrong, or had to puzzle it out as a thought-out choice, has never had something between her and just letting it fall out, until this day, and never had something that was even a cent toward having her own words, her own some kind of version of "a voice," even still soundlessly, after this day of silence.
He doesn't. Know.
And some part of her can't help wondering how he could ever just not-know. Think she wasn't. Still there.
(Which just then has to ask, how she can still that transparently stupid even after what happened earlier?) ]
Maybe.
[ Is a little petty, but it's not as petty as it could be. As not saying No, when she knows she's not angry enough at this second to mean it that way, and none of this is light enough to mean it in trite fashion either. It's stupid, and a little petty. But she presses send on the single word, and still says it, says something, anything, that says she is despite whatever letters make it up. ]
no subject
Which just makes it frustrating beyond belief.
Because then she does. Have to think of them. Order. Direction. Everything.
He's not wrong, but he's not right either, and none of it is as simple as it's no one's fault. There is, he isn't wrong about one piece, so much. So much happened. So much went wrong. Didn't stop going wrong right up to the end. Hasn't stopped going wrong since they woke up here. Right now. In this place. Missing one of their number again.
She has to blink when the question appears, snapping her from the snarl of her own thoughts, frustration soaked through still trying to find the right thought to even rummage for the right words, and where even thinking about thinking on that had spun it even further. When the question is so. Middle of the road. But it's not. It looks it. But she knows him. Can feel it. What it actually is. It's a prompt. A check. It's own version of an aside.
No sweeping anything off the table. It's --
It's that moment, in the living room, earlier this week even.
Looking over her shoulder and finding him sitting there, patiently studying her, through whatever fuss she decided to throw up first. Still there. Mingled under the look of not quite being certain what to say to her after so many years, but that other thing, still. Too. That patience. A game aged as old as both of them, as any number of those moments. His patience, and her lack of it.
But he isn't here. He can't see her. Still there, laying on her bed, staring at his last four sentences like somehow she could find the right words, when she never tries to at this point, cared about right and wrong, or had to puzzle it out as a thought-out choice, has never had something between her and just letting it fall out, until this day, and never had something that was even a cent toward having her own words, her own some kind of version of "a voice," even still soundlessly, after this day of silence.
He doesn't. Know.
And some part of her can't help wondering how he could ever just not-know. Think she wasn't. Still there.
(Which just then has to ask, how she can still that transparently stupid even after what happened earlier?) ]
Maybe.
[ Is a little petty, but it's not as petty as it could be. As not saying No, when she knows she's not angry enough at this second to mean it that way, and none of this is light enough to mean it in trite fashion either. It's stupid, and a little petty. But she presses send on the single word, and still says it, says something, anything, that says she is despite whatever letters make it up. ]