She can feel the tension ebb and flow in the muscles of his hand. The desire to retreat into yourself, hide away from the sharp edges, from the memories that only remind you of how broken and fractured you really are. But he keeps coming back, keeps opening up pieces of himself, and she's grateful for that. Grateful that he's seen the broken pieces of her and hasn't retreated, either.

The way he describes it makes her uneasy, wraps around her lungs and squeezes. "That's where he took you." When he'd disappeared. That's where he'd trapped him the second time. When she wasn't around to stop it.

Her fingers curl against his, like she needs the assurance that he's here. That he'd made it out of that place, made it back. Twelve memories doesn't seem like nearly enough. He deserves better. Deserves more, a hell of a lot more than most of the humans she knows.