How long can I be a sad song?

Secrets I have held in my heart
Are harder to hide than I thought

Part of him is grateful that she breaks down her responses in such short, digestible ways. It helps him keep things a little straighter in the crowded, loud areas of his mind. But he can't find any words to give her until she has responded to his various, rambling hysterical recounts - until she leans back slightly, away from the closeness she'd been providing. He wants to reach for her, to cling. He wants to wallow. To cry it out in her arms. But it's clear she doesn't want that for him, and he can't make her comfort him the way he wants.

"I still feel guilty," he murmurs, voice strained and thick with recently shed tears. Truly he doesn't feel guilty for helping Edmund and ensuring his safety, and he'd still rather those men had died than his brother, but he feels guilty for feeling that. Shouldn't he be more appalled? More devastated by his brother's actions, or even just the loss of life he'd witnessed? His mother will understandably assume he is guilty for those souls departing even in self-defense, and he doesn't deserve her misplaced comfort when his morality is clearly questionable, but Jude reaches for those empty words all the same. "I - I'm going to tell the Dragoons though. So other people don't get hurt." Even if it will all be a lie, and the unicorn protectors are effectively wiped out now.

As for his father, well. Jude doesn't have the mental bandwidth for that topic. But Sohalia he can speak on.

"She didn't tell me something bad that happened to her. And I understood why, but I asked if she'd hidden anything else from me - and she said she still had feelings for someone she went on a few dates with." Inhaling a wobbly breath, Jude's fingers dive into his curls, head still in his hands. It's easier to get it all out that way. "I promise I made sure to talk to her about - about whether we're monogamous or not," he ushers out almost pleadingly, wanting her to be proud of him, to know he'd tried to do all of this the right way. The way she and Harper had taught him to. "And the person she still has feelings for is someone I know. Someone I kinda liked too, but - but we were together." Or should he say are? He doesn't even know anymore. But Jude had forsaken that interest in Koa because Sohalia had wanted monogamy, and in Jude's mind, that had been the end of it.

So why hadn't it been that way for Sohalia?

"At first it was just that, but then she kept going back and forth on whether she wanted to do anything about it. But then saying she'd always choose me." Which should have been comforting, but Jude hadn't taken it that way - as he makes clear moments later. "But that's not fair to Koa. That's not what polyamory is supposed to be." Right? It's a silent question, because his mother had taught him these things and Jude needs the reassurance that he is correct. "And if that's how she felt, and she'd always choose me, then why didn't she just do that?" The moment they'd said they were monogamous? Why the belated reassurances and certainty when he'd given her the same dedication from the very start?

I'm standing at the edge of the world
Where do I go from here? Do I disappear?

Jude