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“Seriously?” She let out a funny noise and then picked up a piece of her quesadilla and started eating it very quickly.
“You’re going into social work. I didn’t think you’d buy into some kind of therapy stigma thing. I only suggest it because I was doing some googling into raven mockers, and admittedly, nothing much came up. Your kind is pretty rare. But there is a precedent for species who have out-of-control violent tendencies, and therapy is often really helpful in those situations, and—”
“Youareafraid of me.” She stuffed the rest of the section of quesadilla into her mouth and chewed.
“I swear to you, I’m not.”
She swallowed and wiped her lips with her napkin. “Just admit it, Niles.”
“Why? What is this?”
“I could have killed you. And you’re afraid of that.”
“Look, I don’t really think you would have,” he said. “I was passed out. I couldn’t stop you. And you stopped yourself. So—”
“You’re taking that to mean I have control over myself when I go into that, and I don’t.”
“You have to,” he said. “Because nobody is completely out of control. Nobody is pure instinct.”
“Well, maybe raven mockersare,” she said, eyes flashing.
“Look, if that’s true, then there’s no hope,” he said.
“I guess there’s not,” she said, and her voice cracked.
He reached for her. “Don’t be like this.”
“Listen, you don’t think I hate myself?” Now, she was crying.
“That’s not what I want from you,” he said. “You’re afraid, too. You’re afraid of yourself. And I read some stuff about vampires—”
“Vampires have control,” she said.
“A lot of them don’t feel like they do,” he said. “And they’ve used therapy to get a handle on themselves. And I know about this to some degree. When my fangs come out, I have felt the urge to pounce on someone andreallybite them. You think holding that out of fights is easy? I mean, not that I get in fights, really, because I’d rather just talk things out, but when I was younger and drunk, a couple times, and I guess I’m just saying—”
“Well, you didn’t do it, did you? You didn’t use your venom against someone in a fight. So, you don’t get it, because you do have control over yourself.”
“I think what you’re feeling is… You feel like, if you allow yourself to have control over this part of you, that it’ll mean you’re to blame for things? And I get how hard you are on yourself. So, I get that you think it would crush you. But, here’s the thing, you don’t see yourself clearly. You don’t see how strong you are. And the benefit of having control over—”
“It’s a fairy tale, Niles,” she said, laughing bitterly. “There’s no control over this. This is just how I am.”
“Okay,” he said, raising both of his hands. “Okay, this is why I said we shouldn’t do this now, because—”
“You can’t accept me,” she said. “You are afraid of me, and you only want me if I can be something other than what I am.”
“I would call that a radical interpretation of what I just said.” He shook his head. “No, I want you. Whatever you are, however you are,you. I pick you. I’m saying, this hurts you, and if you felt you had some more control over yourself, maybe—”
“No,” she said. “You either accept me or you don’t.”
“I don’t think it has to be like that,” he said. “I don’t think we have to accept the parts of ourselves we don’t like. We can change them.”
“Right,” she said. “But when have you accepted anything at all? When have ever you done anything except leave or run away or sabotage things? Because you always have to befree. And that’s what you’re doing right now. You’re trying to get out of this.”
“I’m not.” His nostrils flared. “No, I’m telling you, you areit. I’m in this. But it’s insane to say that something that is physically dangerous to other people is some aspect of your personality that we just ‘accept.’ It’s not acceptable to hurt people.”
Her face crumpled. “I know. I know. That’s why I shouldn’t even bealive.”
“Oh, fuck, Dahlia, that is not what I meant.” He was angry now, but she’d made him angry. She knew him well enough to push on the buttons that hurt the most. He knew he should comfort her. Look at her, falling apart there, sobbing. He could see all that awful self-hatred bubbling up in her, and normally, it would trigger something protective within him, but right now, it just made him angrier. “Make it like that if you want, sure. You know, maybe you’re just too young to be ready to think maturely about this.”
