Sometimes she thinks there’s no reason, no purpose. She’s been laid down too many times in the dirt to get back up but whenever she starts to believe it, that’s when she gets the motivation to get back up again. The curse of being, seemingly, immortal. Echidna has lived too long, in her mind she’s too old to care anymore. About herself or about him or anything else. He doesn’t look at her like a puzzle anymore, something to understand, he sees only the worst parts of her. The pieces she wants to keep hidden because they are painful and she’s more like him than she might admit in that aspect. She folds in on herself, she throws away the pieces she thinks are broken or damaged and tries to start over. But it always brings her here, to this same spot. Feeling miserable and too emotional about dumb stuff.

At least he’s talking, even if it isn’t what she wants to hear. He says sometimes they do just go away and her shoulders hunch forward, her face wilts only slightly. The past was good for biting her in the butt, which was her own fault for being stupid, not thinking ahead. He talks about mistakes and she shrugs a little, she knows she’s made plenty. From the beginning until now, there have been so many, too many to count. But she never much thought about them before she met him, they were just things that happened to her.

They keep trying, keep failing. He looks away from her and the at her and she meets his eyes in that moment. His next explosion of words is to dredge up her mistakes, her problems, those little secrets she hates to admit to. Echidna holds her breath until he’s finished and her eyes never leave his face, never look away to the sky or the grass or the trees. She has so many things she wants to tell him right now, confessions. That’s what he wanted, after all. He wanted to pull and rip out everything by the roots until she was as a dead as he is to the world around them. Maybe that’s what she needs, she’d be happier that way.

I’m an idiot, Quinn. I think I know what’s right but I have no idea. I’m not a good a person and I’m sure you’ve realized that by now. All those temper tantrums I threw over those other people make me embarrassed now. I didn’t even care, not really.

Echidna thinks back on the avalanche that caused her to become such a retched thing and it’s almost too much. Makes her body tense up. I didn’t care if you went after a thousand other people so long as you came back to me. I was stupid enough to believe you didn’t love me anymore, you didn’t know what to with me. I should have asked for reassurance but I’m too prideful. I should have told you I wanted to be a mother, love our children, but I was too cowardly.

She isn’t sure what else to talk about or admit to. The pain in her chest is growing by the second and all those feelings she keeps in a little box are trying to get out. I didn’t talk about Cash because I didn’t want to talk about him. He helped me survive, I felt like I owed him. That’s it. I was paying a debt and how was I supposed to know you’d steal my memories? Echidna sighs, wonders if this is even worth it. Somehow, they always ended up here.

I was wrong. I saw you breaking, saw those changes, and I just bit down on my own emotions and I let them eat me up until I couldn’t offer you anything. Echidna sets her jaw and looks away from him out towards the forest, the in-between. You tried, I know you tried, and I can’t blame you for not wanting to try anymore.