[That there was a restless darkness in his friend, Myr knew; one could not love a demon without a crack in one's heart. Linden's strange way of considering the world--his terrible earnestness in unapologetically arguing the monstrous--hinted at the denizens that lurked in the depths of that chasm.
It's not so much he suspects that "Linden" is a constructed persona, a simulacrum puppeted from the inside, as he knows a very great deal about the art of wearing an unalarming mask in a world easily frightened. That Linden's sometimes (often) so awful at it is...
Endearing, in the strangest way. That longing to belong, even if it had pushed Linden into the SQUIP's arms, speaks to the Faun's own heart, reaches for him like an outstretched hand. Given the chance to seize it and maybe--oh, Maker, grant it might be so--draw his friend from the dark...
How could he do otherwise but keep reaching back?]
I... [Even if it requires staring his own terror in the face. He wants to explain so badly his heart could burst with it.
He doesn't want to explain to the point it chokes him.]
I don't know I...can speak of it. I don't--
[He isn't fine, he's not, teetering there on the edge of a worse fall than earlier. Casting about for any handhold to keep from slipping, he seizes for something he can treat with academic detachment.]
Have you--back on your world--your folk understand minds well enough to make them, [at least he assumes, if Linden knows the SQUIP and Connor well enough to describe them,] --why can s, something be so terrible you can't speak of it? Or am I--
[...just a coward, like he'd always suspected since that day.]
no subject
It's not so much he suspects that "Linden" is a constructed persona, a simulacrum puppeted from the inside, as he knows a very great deal about the art of wearing an unalarming mask in a world easily frightened. That Linden's sometimes (often) so awful at it is...
Endearing, in the strangest way. That longing to belong, even if it had pushed Linden into the SQUIP's arms, speaks to the Faun's own heart, reaches for him like an outstretched hand. Given the chance to seize it and maybe--oh, Maker, grant it might be so--draw his friend from the dark...
How could he do otherwise but keep reaching back?]
I... [Even if it requires staring his own terror in the face. He wants to explain so badly his heart could burst with it.
He doesn't want to explain to the point it chokes him.]
I don't know I...can speak of it. I don't--
[He isn't fine, he's not, teetering there on the edge of a worse fall than earlier. Casting about for any handhold to keep from slipping, he seizes for something he can treat with academic detachment.]
Have you--back on your world--your folk understand minds well enough to make them, [at least he assumes, if Linden knows the SQUIP and Connor well enough to describe them,] --why can s, something be so terrible you can't speak of it? Or am I--
[...just a coward, like he'd always suspected since that day.]