“I didn’t have a choice.” [ for thomas. 8′) ]

{ Profound & Emotional | Always Accepting }

“At which point?” These arguments were fast growing tedious. Just as the feigned attempts at a return to normalcy felt as though they were choking him, the fact James kept slipping back into this dialogue of fault and blame only further illustrated why neither one of them was in a position to pretend the world hadn’t changed.

His fingers shook against the soft fabric of a cravat he had failed for the seventh time to tie on his own, proving that satisfactory fashion was not a skill one maintained after a decade with no cause for it. He had enough small and painful reminders of the truth without horrible clashes like the storm that was about to break now. 

“I am not disagreeing with you James,” He had never once faulted the man for leaving – in that there had been no choice to which there would have been a favorable outcome. Nor did he intend to begin faulting him now. The trouble was differentiating what the man was bloody well excusing, and more often than not it tended to be everything that came after that event. 

Slamming the useless silk onto the table, he gave up on the effort entirely and gripped the back of one of the chairs to keep himself from picking at anything else. To keep himself from fidgeting, or pacing, or any other physical activity that might further his own agitation as he forced himself to focus on James, and whatever war he was presently facing.  

Taking a breath, he charged forth into the veritable battlefield that was laying waste to the mind before him, armed only with intellect and devotion against ghosts whose names he didn’t even fucking know. “What I am saying is that  – for years now, you have made many choices. You cannot say that you didn’t because we both know that is false. As for what motivated you to make those choices — be they what they are, they drove you. You can own them now, and move forward from it, or you can continue to insist there was no other way in which case, I do not know how to help you. I am no more equipped to fight your demons for you than you are to fighting mine, damn it all!”