It should have been so easy, to drive her home and let all that which he owed sizzle and be spent in their silence. Poorly kept suspension and a stick shift. Bare pedals and dirty floor.  A few bad jokes to elicit her sympathy, a few good ones when she wasn't expecting it. He had a girl that reminded him of Reno, somewhere in the middle of all the heartfelt, hot dalliances after Miranda. The girl couldn't do anything about herself around him. New to the city, she relied on him, and he was happy to pick up circumstances he knew. But sharing rent and fucking isn't exactly penance, so she was stuck never being enough, while becoming increasingly useless. It was a good picture for a while, and then he unfolded with all his broken glass and torn-off steel edges. Unknowingly, he'd designed her after Reno, which was wretched and unavoidable. She held on, and he squeezed her for forgiveness just like this - boy from the mountains turned some social genius at the outskirts of the touching circles. He shouldn't have shown her powders for her anxiety, or let her find someone who was deep in the manufactured dreams, also. She was part of the city, now, wilted away from him, sending text to his old phone.<br/><br/>But she could never be a younger sister running after him to their ring of rocks in the woods. Their Castle Gray where he would start them off in preconceived gender roles and she'd play along until she got hungry, and changed the plot on him. Until his jokes made her laugh hysteric instead of bubbling. Until they were tired of stick-and-twig treachery and leaves being the wing-winds of foreign, angered armies. Until her plotting became too much like her movies, her adult heart showing and worrying him. No. The city girl couldn't be her woodland darling.<br/><br/>It was worse, then, that he saw her in Reno, too. But the angry funeral girl was more formidable in all the things she was shaking about than his rotting concrete ghost. She did not let herself be convinced, not content to seethe while he lifted his machine ontop of her father's. He didn't get to light that cigarette. When he let go, and she started, and failed to say her part, he wanted to reach again, to piece her together. Another contained panic in the new wide of his eyes. Insult, the primal kind, like he'd swept dirt onto the very base of her. He was afraid of her, and for her. It left him without contingencies. No practiced, subtle theatrics that spoke directly to an available part of her. And that left him scrambling, ugly like the unknowing.<br/><br/>Maybe he had the mind to retort. That was how the animals from these woods were. Defensive, hissing. He owed her her words, but that didn't mean he wanted to hear them. So the chill in blackened eyes warmed, like churning oceans keep the plains of ice from closing. With men, sorrow and guilt takes out their interest in warth and war. Well if this isn't home where do I go to mourn my father? This isn't just your sorrow, Reinu.<br/><br/>Her confession about nightly reunions without him hit him harder. One leg back, like he might run. Trip over their father's grave. This wasn't mourning, anymore. This was for him. Welcome home, brother. Had he hoped to hide in her newer misery to nestle his way back to holding her hand? All it ever took was three hours, nomatter how mad she was. The anger stayed in his blood as adrenaline, and it pasteurized his guilt. He didn't want the continued expanses of her love. It would have been easier to make something new. He'd come to repurpose, not to reapply. It was too honest, and by the look of her, it was against her will. He should go, wait by his own vehicle. Shook his head, stop it.<br/><br/>"If not today then when?" He didn't want to give this, but pinned between everything that Reno was and Jonas, it came out anyway. Even shadows can run out of places to go in a sunless town. Playing in the woods during a particularly wet summer evening, he'd slipped when catching her after a high throw, and she had hit the ground hard. The thuds were sickening and he worried about her little bones. Her limbs were streaked in red beads and lines. She had a hard time trusting him then, of course. After some sweet talking and big promises, it started to wear on him, that the girl he loved the most looked at him with angry, unreasonable eyes. His voice was the same as back then, but fewer parts insult and a fresh infusion of self-importance.<br/><br/>"It's like this between estranged people, Ren." he bit and stabbed the blade of his fingers back at the stone he'd come for. "I get to see you when you can't see me. I'm here so I didn't NOT go. So there wasn't nothing." His fists were better than hers, his knuckles were even, because he knew what fists are for. Or so he'd argue, but he was pressing them against his chest when he turned, eyes rolling in something poisonously frustrated. When he looked at her again there were creases on the leather and his palms. How was he still holding her keys? "Can I please just do something?" Like he'd asked her every day since he left. Shoulders lowered from the abuse of his own anger. He was tired too. "I don't know. If helps, which it shouldn't, I was miserable too. I don't know." He was becoming wild again and he didn't mean to. Fucking life that he lead. A shrug, because that's how you answer when you can't. "Look. It's either this or next time I see you it's like this too." Another gestured toward the man in the ground. No doubt in his mind he'd survive her. His arms came up, finally, like this was the last of it. What a cop out, but what else was there? "Maybe I just came back to check on Castle Gray? I'm half certain you haven't been keeping up with maintenance." It was a joke, because it was a game, but his voice lost none of its gravity.