He flinches, just a little, at her first comment. He'd known it would hurt, had known that there had been all but no chance it wouldn't - had been expecting it to hurt - and it still does. It's harder, too, to think of setting it aside, when it is something that has been so directly pointed, from one of the people he'd cared for most. But he has lived with sorrow for thousands upon thousands of years. He can manage a little longer, or so he imagines.
...And then she mentions a child, and any thoughts but that promptly flee his mind, leaving him blinking as he processes the news. Enough so that he does - for a moment - wonder if there is still a child. (Now that he's actually looking he can see the physical signs pregnancy has left on her body; small changes that he had all but written off as his memory being faulty after so long.) Logic kicks back in then - if there had been he would have seen it from the first. Thus, it is a matter of there having been a child. A potential that was never realized, and there's some part of him that might almost mourn that, deep under the tempering.
"Have I fallen so far in your graces that you assume I would even want to?"
There's hurt in his voice - how can there not be, at such an accusation - but there's echoes of loss, too. Of sorrow, both for what could have been and what was. He might not have had the chance to know Hemera's child - neither of them have - but he knows all too well the pain of losing a child. Even if his had managed to exist, for a time.
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Date: 2020-12-29 06:00 am (UTC)...And then she mentions a child, and any thoughts but that promptly flee his mind, leaving him blinking as he processes the news. Enough so that he does - for a moment - wonder if there is still a child. (Now that he's actually looking he can see the physical signs pregnancy has left on her body; small changes that he had all but written off as his memory being faulty after so long.) Logic kicks back in then - if there had been he would have seen it from the first. Thus, it is a matter of there having been a child. A potential that was never realized, and there's some part of him that might almost mourn that, deep under the tempering.
"Have I fallen so far in your graces that you assume I would even want to?"
There's hurt in his voice - how can there not be, at such an accusation - but there's echoes of loss, too. Of sorrow, both for what could have been and what was. He might not have had the chance to know Hemera's child - neither of them have - but he knows all too well the pain of losing a child. Even if his had managed to exist, for a time.
"Of course I wouldn’t have.”