[There was never a question. He listens. He doesn't interrupt her. Just like he's been listening and trying to understand. If he wasn't willing to listen, he wouldn't have come here. He would have let an uneasy, dishonest truce form, let all of this fester under the surface.]
[Because what is Trish to him? At the beginning she was nothing. A girl who might be an invaluable tool or might be an inconvenience. A girl he watched, forming an opinion about her in silence through observation just as he's always done, just as he's always been punished for. A girl he decided he admired, he identified with, from the firm way she held herself at a distance to the frustration at being left out of a series of events that was life or death for her.]
[He and Trish were never friends, but before he came here, she was the second closest thing he had.]
[So he listens, open ears and mind and heart. This has an unfortunate side effect, which is that he hears her. All of it — the parts that are easily digestible and the parts that aren't. It makes sense that she's worried about him. He didn't know, but he can understand it. It makes sense that seeing him imperfect, flawed, cracking is new to her. He hadn't considered it, but he can understand that, too. They don't really know each other. They don't.]
[He just hadn't considered the possibility that, presented with a lie that holds itself together and the real person he's been trying so hard to be, she'd prefer the former.]
[Maybe there's a part of him that's willing to entertain the possibility that it's more complicated than that, that she's letting her walls down in fits and starts, that it's as hard for her to explain these things as it is for him. But the inside of his skin is all fresh wounds, bleeding sap, new scar tissue cut open over and over again with every day that passes and Steve doesn't wake up and answers aren't found and he dreams of bodies and thinks of his failures and all the ways he fears he isn't fit anymore to be the person he so badly wants to be. Has always wanted to be.]
[Too soft.]
[He's angry, he notes. There are things he doesn't do when he's angry. For the people who matter to him, there is a special list. He will never raise his voice. He will never raise his hand. He will never stand in their space. He will never make this expression, or that one, or a third. He won't make anyone feel the things that he's felt. These resolutions are only half-conscious, but they're burned into him. Ever since he realized that people mattered to him — specific people, not the people, but those people who love him, who he wants to love — it's been the greatest cardinal sin, that kind of cruelty.]
[So he doesn't tell her any of the bitter ugly details about the body, even though they'd cut and he might feel vindicated for a moment, seeing it hurt her. He doesn't tell her that she's right and she doesn't know a damn thing about him, and maybe he should keep it that way. He doesn't get up and leave, leave, leave, go out to the tree where it feels safe and curl up tight and come down only to feed and rip out his pound of flesh.]
[There are a lot of things he doesn't do.]
[He doesn't hide his expression, neither the anger nor the hurt in it; mutes them, maybe, but doesn't pull the mask all the way up. He doesn't look away from her. After she's finished speaking, after he's digested it, the parts that make sense and the parts that go down his throat like nails, he nods.]
I see. You're right. I'm not the same here as I was when you knew me. At the very least, I don't act the same. I'm sorry that's been jarring. It's been a much more gradual process for me than for you. It's been—
[—a long year, of ice rink Christmas high school garden seaside Mista head splitting open bleeding vines down his throat ripped out and he's breathing and crying and remembering and held, and out of nowhere she's there, and he's trying, and it's not good enough, it's not good enough.]
[His voice wobbles, but doesn't stop, and he still hates it.]
—a process of adapting to this place and what it demands from me, and listening, and trying to do better. There have been side effects of this, obviously. When you arrived, I wanted to be a truer version of myself than I was before. I thought it would be better to be honest, to show what I was feeling as I felt it, because for that week you knew me I spent every second holding myself back. They tell me that's bad, you know? Maybe that was the wrong choice, I really don't know. It felt right at the time.
I can promise you that I'm not going to give up any more than I did then. It's not something I do. That much was true. I'm going to see this through to the end, and I'm going to come out in one piece on the other side. Any other option is unacceptable to me.
But I'm not okay, Trish. I'm sorry that doesn't fit the image you have of me, but I'm just not, and after all of this I won't sit in front of you and pretend that I am.
sends u an even longer tag apparently
[Because what is Trish to him? At the beginning she was nothing. A girl who might be an invaluable tool or might be an inconvenience. A girl he watched, forming an opinion about her in silence through observation just as he's always done, just as he's always been punished for. A girl he decided he admired, he identified with, from the firm way she held herself at a distance to the frustration at being left out of a series of events that was life or death for her.]
[He and Trish were never friends, but before he came here, she was the second closest thing he had.]
[So he listens, open ears and mind and heart. This has an unfortunate side effect, which is that he hears her. All of it — the parts that are easily digestible and the parts that aren't. It makes sense that she's worried about him. He didn't know, but he can understand it. It makes sense that seeing him imperfect, flawed, cracking is new to her. He hadn't considered it, but he can understand that, too. They don't really know each other. They don't.]
[He just hadn't considered the possibility that, presented with a lie that holds itself together and the real person he's been trying so hard to be, she'd prefer the former.]
[Maybe there's a part of him that's willing to entertain the possibility that it's more complicated than that, that she's letting her walls down in fits and starts, that it's as hard for her to explain these things as it is for him. But the inside of his skin is all fresh wounds, bleeding sap, new scar tissue cut open over and over again with every day that passes and Steve doesn't wake up and answers aren't found and he dreams of bodies and thinks of his failures and all the ways he fears he isn't fit anymore to be the person he so badly wants to be. Has always wanted to be.]
[Too soft.]
[He's angry, he notes. There are things he doesn't do when he's angry. For the people who matter to him, there is a special list. He will never raise his voice. He will never raise his hand. He will never stand in their space. He will never make this expression, or that one, or a third. He won't make anyone feel the things that he's felt. These resolutions are only half-conscious, but they're burned into him. Ever since he realized that people mattered to him — specific people, not the people, but those people who love him, who he wants to love — it's been the greatest cardinal sin, that kind of cruelty.]
[So he doesn't tell her any of the bitter ugly details about the body, even though they'd cut and he might feel vindicated for a moment, seeing it hurt her. He doesn't tell her that she's right and she doesn't know a damn thing about him, and maybe he should keep it that way. He doesn't get up and leave, leave, leave, go out to the tree where it feels safe and curl up tight and come down only to feed and rip out his pound of flesh.]
[There are a lot of things he doesn't do.]
[He doesn't hide his expression, neither the anger nor the hurt in it; mutes them, maybe, but doesn't pull the mask all the way up. He doesn't look away from her. After she's finished speaking, after he's digested it, the parts that make sense and the parts that go down his throat like nails, he nods.]
I see. You're right. I'm not the same here as I was when you knew me. At the very least, I don't act the same. I'm sorry that's been jarring. It's been a much more gradual process for me than for you. It's been—
[—a long year, of ice rink Christmas high school garden seaside Mista head splitting open bleeding vines down his throat ripped out and he's breathing and crying and remembering and held, and out of nowhere she's there, and he's trying, and it's not good enough, it's not good enough.]
[His voice wobbles, but doesn't stop, and he still hates it.]
—a process of adapting to this place and what it demands from me, and listening, and trying to do better. There have been side effects of this, obviously. When you arrived, I wanted to be a truer version of myself than I was before. I thought it would be better to be honest, to show what I was feeling as I felt it, because for that week you knew me I spent every second holding myself back. They tell me that's bad, you know? Maybe that was the wrong choice, I really don't know. It felt right at the time.
I can promise you that I'm not going to give up any more than I did then. It's not something I do. That much was true. I'm going to see this through to the end, and I'm going to come out in one piece on the other side. Any other option is unacceptable to me.
But I'm not okay, Trish. I'm sorry that doesn't fit the image you have of me, but I'm just not, and after all of this I won't sit in front of you and pretend that I am.