[Initially, L stiffens and shudders at that touch. Such aches tend to get worse before they get better... but under Myr's gentle fingers and the warmth of the bath water, it is, in fact, getting better. The knots are thick and ugly between thin skin and brittle bone. He pulls his arms a little closer to his core, both to conserve heat and to quietly conceal recent and deliberate injuries.
He didn't expect Myr to allow him to insist that it could be sustainable, with the right combination of determination and insanity. For him to argue that case successfully would take more energy than he currently possesses by far, to the point where somehow it's actually easier to try to answer Myr's question, as well as the one he's really asking.]
Pride...
[L confirms, pausing. These things are all intertwined, tangled in messy knots.]
...and revenge. For the ways he thinks I could have helped him more.
[And there's real bitterness and frustration, there. He had tried to help Niles, or at least it had started that way. For however pride and stubbornness had warped his motives toward malice at the end, it's an old and tired story for L, extending a hand toward a world that would cry out for help and reject him in the same breath. L's retaliation might have been overkill, for Niles' attempt to strangle him and the grazing bullet wound to his thigh, but if he had done nothing... well...
Niles wouldn't be after him. He would probably break even on the pain and physical suffering, considering what he's currently experiencing at the hands of a persistent stalker. But pride is everything, because in the moments L exposed a fledgling altruistic streak, Niles was unhelpful, ungrateful, and seemed to have no shortage of entitlement for how his help arrived and performed. And things had gone wrong at just about the mark, L believes, where he had snapped and behaved not like an object or a slave, but a petty, flawed, immature brat of a human being who refused to lose an arbitrary game.]
Under the circumstances...
[Physical, mental, emotional]
...I truly don't think that I could have helped him more.
no subject
He didn't expect Myr to allow him to insist that it could be sustainable, with the right combination of determination and insanity. For him to argue that case successfully would take more energy than he currently possesses by far, to the point where somehow it's actually easier to try to answer Myr's question, as well as the one he's really asking.]
Pride...
[L confirms, pausing. These things are all intertwined, tangled in messy knots.]
...and revenge. For the ways he thinks I could have helped him more.
[And there's real bitterness and frustration, there. He had tried to help Niles, or at least it had started that way. For however pride and stubbornness had warped his motives toward malice at the end, it's an old and tired story for L, extending a hand toward a world that would cry out for help and reject him in the same breath. L's retaliation might have been overkill, for Niles' attempt to strangle him and the grazing bullet wound to his thigh, but if he had done nothing... well...
Niles wouldn't be after him. He would probably break even on the pain and physical suffering, considering what he's currently experiencing at the hands of a persistent stalker. But pride is everything, because in the moments L exposed a fledgling altruistic streak, Niles was unhelpful, ungrateful, and seemed to have no shortage of entitlement for how his help arrived and performed. And things had gone wrong at just about the mark, L believes, where he had snapped and behaved not like an object or a slave, but a petty, flawed, immature brat of a human being who refused to lose an arbitrary game.]
Under the circumstances...
[Physical, mental, emotional]
...I truly don't think that I could have helped him more.