She doesn't expect him to reciprocate the small written gesture of faith, and when he doesn't her expression doesn't so much as flicker. It has taken her years after so much loss to trust again, and even then she was so careful about who she did trust. She's had a long time to learn how to give people that power over her again, and Nill doesn't think Linden ever had that kind of opportunity, save for maybe Stephen.
It takes her a moment longer to write this time, and she's obviously a little more hesitant than she was for some of the previous messages. Her smile doesn't fade, but it does take on a gentler note, maybe even just a touch more somber. When she holds it up again her handwriting is smaller, purposely angled this time so that he won't need to move to make sure it doesn't line up with the cameras. This time when she lifts her other hand to brush against the force field her fingers linger there.
I do. they're complicated, but do you know mine?
They aren't complicated for the reasons that Linden has been told about. The trust that is saved specifically for physical contact is not one that Nill knows how to give most people, or to stop thinking about, and it might be a long time before she could manage much in that regard, but it's not the really complicated thing.
The thing that complicates it the most is the voice of a dead boy bouncing around in her head, "It's just you. And if you marry someone else I'm definitely not going to be happy about it. But I guess I'd try to understand. Eventually," followed by her own typed words, "I'm not going to marry someone else. That isn't something you need to think about."
It wasn't about marriage, not really, it was about love and he had been such a jealous person that Nill is certain he would never have understood.
She would tell Linden about him, that she loved him but only ever told him lies, that she never let him know about her if she didn't need to with the excuse of keeping him safe, but Nill is terrified that if she referred to him as anything other than the boy she got killed that the Capitol might try to bring him back. She would never be selfish enough to let them do that.
no subject
It takes her a moment longer to write this time, and she's obviously a little more hesitant than she was for some of the previous messages. Her smile doesn't fade, but it does take on a gentler note, maybe even just a touch more somber. When she holds it up again her handwriting is smaller, purposely angled this time so that he won't need to move to make sure it doesn't line up with the cameras. This time when she lifts her other hand to brush against the force field her fingers linger there.
I do.
they're complicated, but do you know mine?
They aren't complicated for the reasons that Linden has been told about. The trust that is saved specifically for physical contact is not one that Nill knows how to give most people, or to stop thinking about, and it might be a long time before she could manage much in that regard, but it's not the really complicated thing.
The thing that complicates it the most is the voice of a dead boy bouncing around in her head, "It's just you. And if you marry someone else I'm definitely not going to be happy about it. But I guess I'd try to understand. Eventually," followed by her own typed words, "I'm not going to marry someone else. That isn't something you need to think about."
It wasn't about marriage, not really, it was about love and he had been such a jealous person that Nill is certain he would never have understood.
She would tell Linden about him, that she loved him but only ever told him lies, that she never let him know about her if she didn't need to with the excuse of keeping him safe, but Nill is terrified that if she referred to him as anything other than the boy she got killed that the Capitol might try to bring him back. She would never be selfish enough to let them do that.