[Alfred closes in around him, pulling him in. He flinches. He doesn’t want to be here, to cry, to be touched. This is the man who killed Nyssa. The man who slapped him. But Oswald doesn’t have a choice when he just crumples into Alfred’s chest like a broken puppet, smothering howling, full-bodied sobs into his skin until he can barely breathe, can barely remember how to function as a person.]
I loved him -- [The words rasp his throat, barely above a whisper. Weak, trembling hands grasping at Alfred’s back.
He doesn’t know this body, the weight and shape of it. Doesn’t know these arms rocking him while round after round of wet, tearing gasps rack him senseless, every stolen gasp for breath sticking him like a knife. But for a brief moment in time, even as Alfred says all the right and wrong things, truthful things that both cut and comfort him, the world seems a little less empty, somehow, than Ed left it.]
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I loved him -- [The words rasp his throat, barely above a whisper. Weak, trembling hands grasping at Alfred’s back.
He doesn’t know this body, the weight and shape of it. Doesn’t know these arms rocking him while round after round of wet, tearing gasps rack him senseless, every stolen gasp for breath sticking him like a knife. But for a brief moment in time, even as Alfred says all the right and wrong things, truthful things that both cut and comfort him, the world seems a little less empty, somehow, than Ed left it.]