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There are things he doesn’t say.
Not for lack of wanting to, is the thing. There’s a lot. He tries, stutters internally, struggles with it and gets frustrated and gives up. It was true before everything fell apart, but he thinks he was maybe getting better, maybe, and then it all got worse again, and Beth isn’t easy to talk to.
Except when she is. Because there was that one night. A bad day and a good night - or he’s prepared to call it good. Closest thing to good in a while. A memory he’s been carrying with him in the days since then. They haven’t talked about it - she hasn’t mentioned it and what happened and what she did for him and what he did to her - and he hasn’t known how, but he wants to. Again, maybe.
A lot of the time it comes down to various species of maybe.
He talked to her and it felt… That part wasn’t good. But it was being opened and cleaned and stitched up again, and it hurts and it itches but it could be healing now.
He talked to her and it felt necessary. But he doesn’t know if he learned anything. If he’s better at it than he used to be, talking. He suspects something like that doesn’t get learned in a single night, and it doesn’t get taught in the same.
But she is teaching him.
Later, after the fire, watching her curled up and sleeping under the trees, sharpening the knife he stabbed over and over into the wood, listening, looking, taking it all in. He doesn’t understand her; he knew that already but now he’s twice as aware. She’s a mystery. She’s a puzzle. She’s complicated.
She’s beautiful. He doesn’t exactly know in what way, or how he defines beautiful in this case, but she is. Not like people usually use the word. Something, like her, a good bit more complicated.
He reached out tentatively and touched her hair, and she muttered and stirred and he pulled his hand back like she had burned him.
Later he’ll do it again, over and over: touch her, and try to learn.
But there are things he wants to say, and he doesn’t. In the days after he tries to show her in so many ways; he helps her with things, the fire, setting up camp, and he always did before but he does it more now. He brings her things; he has squirrels or rabbits but he also finds some berries, he finds some mushrooms he recognizes as safe to eat and good raw, and once - and has no idea what to do with that but the impulse is there and he obeys it - he brings her a bunch of asters he found in a patch of sunlight, all purple and gold, and he brings her a piece of delicately shaded rose quartz he finds in a stream bed, and she takes these things and looks at him and he can’t read her face, and he looks away.
He is trying, in every way he can think of, to say I’m sorry.
I’m sorry. What I did was horrible, I’m a piece of shit, I have no idea why you tolerate me, I have no idea why you did what you did, I have no idea how you are what you are but I need you not to leave me and I’m sorry.
He doesn’t know how to say any of this. But he’s trying.
She never gave him any cause, in those days after the moonshine and the fire, to think she was bitter about it or that she blamed him or that there was any resentment. As far as he can tell, she’s forgiven him. But this isn’t about currying favor, and it isn’t about getting her to like him. It’s not about that at all. He’s not trying to buy anything from her. He’s not trying to pry anything loose.
He just wants to say it. He wants to say it so badly.
I’m so sorry.
It shouldn’t be this hard. But it knots up in his throat when he looks at her and thinks about what he could have done to her, what he almost did, really hurt her if he got drunk enough and angry enough and sad enough, and he hates that, and he needs to tell her, and it really shouldn’t be this hard.
It beats against the inside of his skin and he sort of wants to give her the world. That’s weird, right?
That’s pretty weird.
I’m sorry.
On watch, he looks at her sleeping with her head pillowed on her arm, and he wants to touch her again. Careful. Soft. Like he’s erasing the way he touched her before, covering it over. Like that would be possible. Touch her, stroke her hair, try to be good for her. Try so hard. If she would let him.
Try to tell her that way. Looking at her. Hurting and wanting to give her everything.
I’m sorry.
Except maybe that’s not all he’s trying to say.