[She looks at his hand, worn with years, the callouses and the dirt under his nails. She looks at his face - unsmiling, deeply shadowed with time and care, pale beneath the tan. She looks at her love for a long, long time, and her own heart stutters in her chest, aching heavy against her ribs. She can almost see the thoughts behind his sharp, light eyes; can all too easily feel his guilt, aye, and understand it, too (or think she does, at least). It wasn't your fault, she wants to tell him, but she, too, balks at the lie.]
[She doesn't take his hand. Perhaps that would be the right thing to do, perhaps that would be a gentler way to bridge whatever space of years suddenly yaws between them. What she does, instead, is throw her arms around his shoulders and, going up on her toes, embraces him tightly, whether he will return it or no.]
Don't 'ee look at me so, Roland Deschain. [Her voice is muffled a little against his shoulder.] Ye made your choices. I made mine. Don't 'ee look at me like I'm some millstone ye've carried.
If it was your life or mine, I'd choose it again.
[Does he know, she wonders, even as she says it, that there was more in the balance than those two lives? She'd choose him over her again, sure; in an instant she'd take that screaming death over the stiller, slower death of small-town poison and arthritic hands on her body. But still, what she's saying verges so close to a lie, because it hadn't been just his life or hers. The emptiness in her belly speaks to the heavier cost. Does he know what he lost?]
[If not, she won't tell him. Won't ever tell him. One look at the weight in that face shows he's lost plenty and enough, without stacking new grief where it needn't sit. She can carry some of it without his help.]
[She pulls away, just a little, just enough to press a kiss to his weathered cheek. She isn't crying, not quite, but her eyes sting as if from smoke.]
I'd choose it again. [She sounds a little firmer, this time.] I'd choose thee again. Hear me, Roland? So don't dare look at me like that.
no subject
[She doesn't take his hand. Perhaps that would be the right thing to do, perhaps that would be a gentler way to bridge whatever space of years suddenly yaws between them. What she does, instead, is throw her arms around his shoulders and, going up on her toes, embraces him tightly, whether he will return it or no.]
Don't 'ee look at me so, Roland Deschain. [Her voice is muffled a little against his shoulder.] Ye made your choices. I made mine. Don't 'ee look at me like I'm some millstone ye've carried.
If it was your life or mine, I'd choose it again.
[Does he know, she wonders, even as she says it, that there was more in the balance than those two lives? She'd choose him over her again, sure; in an instant she'd take that screaming death over the stiller, slower death of small-town poison and arthritic hands on her body. But still, what she's saying verges so close to a lie, because it hadn't been just his life or hers. The emptiness in her belly speaks to the heavier cost. Does he know what he lost?]
[If not, she won't tell him. Won't ever tell him. One look at the weight in that face shows he's lost plenty and enough, without stacking new grief where it needn't sit. She can carry some of it without his help.]
[She pulls away, just a little, just enough to press a kiss to his weathered cheek. She isn't crying, not quite, but her eyes sting as if from smoke.]
I'd choose it again. [She sounds a little firmer, this time.] I'd choose thee again. Hear me, Roland? So don't dare look at me like that.