[Isaac twists his face away, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he draws his knees to his chest. If he's grateful for anything at all, it's for the shadows that hide Hector's expression from him and that afford him the same inscrutability when a tic pulls at the corner of his mouth and he shakes, staring hard into empty space. He scrapes his dagger off the cave floor, gripping it by the blade. Squeezing slowly. The sting is keen but controlled as the edge slices into his fingers, everything he needs it to be, and he lets his eyes slip shut to focus on the fresh welling of blood. Just breathing and breathing, struggling to keep his head above all the chaos and the noise threatening to pull him under.]
...Safe.
[He repeats, quietly, with the leering sneer of a man who doesn't believe in the word. He swallows against the burning lump of shame in his throat.] And then what? Walking longer yet to the ends of the earth? Setting out to sea, perhaps?
[Any mention of 'we' is carefully left out; he doesn't know what his own intentions really are any more than he knows Hector's, beyond the immediate plan he's laid out. But it's easy to assume that somewhere along the way, there'll be a parting of ways; one last goodbye, before hell would bring them together again.]
poor Hector cares too much
...Safe.
[He repeats, quietly, with the leering sneer of a man who doesn't believe in the word. He swallows against the burning lump of shame in his throat.] And then what? Walking longer yet to the ends of the earth? Setting out to sea, perhaps?
[Any mention of 'we' is carefully left out; he doesn't know what his own intentions really are any more than he knows Hector's, beyond the immediate plan he's laid out. But it's easy to assume that somewhere along the way, there'll be a parting of ways; one last goodbye, before hell would bring them together again.]