[ And how glad he is now, to see Gale reduced to that most desperate of vampire tricks.
He leans on the cold artifice of love. He had loved him, Gale implores. His approximation of the one thing he can no longer hold in his own hands; a warm and beating heart. Emotion. Attachment. Core pieces of the human condition. Veins that have long since run dry for Gale and all like him. Perhaps he had once understood these things; perhaps these moments of long-ago warmth echoed back to him now.
This changed nothing. He could not understand what he once did. This was simply one of the many things one must shed when passing into unlife.
Perhaps, charitably, Gale thought that he felt love for him. Godfrey knows better. It is his nature; to invert something as selfless and beautiful as love into something so malicious and self-serving. To turn such emotion into a leash or a cudgel, to use it to pull lesser beings into subordination. At best, Gale thought him no better than a particularly attractive dog.
At worst, he sought to press the soft spots in his heart which no longer existed. Certainly.
Godfrey's gaze drops, and he lets the declaration sit in the room a moment.
Then, he takes a breath. ]
You loved that I loved you.
[ This is the kindest rationalization he can offer.
no subject
He leans on the cold artifice of love. He had loved him, Gale implores. His approximation of the one thing he can no longer hold in his own hands; a warm and beating heart. Emotion. Attachment. Core pieces of the human condition. Veins that have long since run dry for Gale and all like him. Perhaps he had once understood these things; perhaps these moments of long-ago warmth echoed back to him now.
This changed nothing. He could not understand what he once did. This was simply one of the many things one must shed when passing into unlife.
Perhaps, charitably, Gale thought that he felt love for him. Godfrey knows better. It is his nature; to invert something as selfless and beautiful as love into something so malicious and self-serving. To turn such emotion into a leash or a cudgel, to use it to pull lesser beings into subordination. At best, Gale thought him no better than a particularly attractive dog.
At worst, he sought to press the soft spots in his heart which no longer existed. Certainly.
Godfrey's gaze drops, and he lets the declaration sit in the room a moment.
Then, he takes a breath. ]
You loved that I loved you.
[ This is the kindest rationalization he can offer.
More sternly; ]
You will not pretend it is the same.