[She doesn't mutter. The word is clear as a bell - but it's soft, resigned, factual. There is no bitterness in it, only the weight of what she knows to be the uncomfortably heavy truth; no anger, but the faintest hint of something like sadness.]
['Or worse,' she wants to add. She doesn't. (That isn't a train of thought that she wishes to follow, especially not in his presence. They would undoubtedly have made her hurt him, too. Tried to, at least, and she, no matter how much she has grown, yet possesses a deep-seated fear that she would give in, were she truly to be tested. She can't allow herself to take that kind of risk.)]
That's why... I didn't have the chance to introduce myself to you for a long time, even though I wanted to. It wouldn't have been safe for either of us.
[And there are a thousand things she wants to tell him, almost as many that she wants to apologize for - but the most pressing, the one thing that she can't hold back, stems from his behavior, from his lingering anger; when she says,]
... But I'm... sorry. [It's in a peculiar sort of tone, made so by the nine-hundred-ninety-nine other reasons she has to say those words. When she clarifies which cause it is this time, it evens out.] For not finding some way to help you.
no subject
[She doesn't mutter. The word is clear as a bell - but it's soft, resigned, factual. There is no bitterness in it, only the weight of what she knows to be the uncomfortably heavy truth; no anger, but the faintest hint of something like sadness.]
['Or worse,' she wants to add. She doesn't. (That isn't a train of thought that she wishes to follow, especially not in his presence. They would undoubtedly have made her hurt him, too. Tried to, at least, and she, no matter how much she has grown, yet possesses a deep-seated fear that she would give in, were she truly to be tested. She can't allow herself to take that kind of risk.)]
That's why... I didn't have the chance to introduce myself to you for a long time, even though I wanted to. It wouldn't have been safe for either of us.
[And there are a thousand things she wants to tell him, almost as many that she wants to apologize for - but the most pressing, the one thing that she can't hold back, stems from his behavior, from his lingering anger; when she says,]
... But I'm... sorry. [It's in a peculiar sort of tone, made so by the nine-hundred-ninety-nine other reasons she has to say those words. When she clarifies which cause it is this time, it evens out.] For not finding some way to help you.
[Not until the end, that is.]