[She can't even look at him when he says that, and the pressure on her wrist is almost a welcome distraction from the pain in her neck and the pain in her heart. It's practically tethering her to reality, right now, or as close to reality as it gets in a magic castle. Tess' head hangs, top of her head nearly brushing his chest, and she stares down at her feet for a long, hard moment.

Well, she supposes, if anyone's going to kill her, it should be him. She'd rather die in his arms than like an animal.

But she isn't going to die in his arms, and she knows that. That isn't how being infected works. That isn't how becoming Infected works. It's never simple, never that easy. There is no rose-tinted option to it, there is nothing poetic or romantic about death, certainly not when it's to be put out of your misery when the cordyceps has wound its tendrils tight into one's brain and latched on to whatever part of it gave humans souls.

For all their jokes, real romance died twenty years ago, on the same day that the American South went up in riots and violence and the flare of flames and gunfire alike.

Jesus Christ.

She looks up at him again, feeling disgusting for showing weakness when she's spent her entire adult life crafting herself to be anything but, and there's a tightness around her cheeks and throat that hurts. Maybe all people are cowards in death. Noble cowards, with all this self-sacrifice going on, but cowards nonetheless.]

It already hurts, Joel, please don't make this hurt more than it has to. Come on, baby, this is as much for you as it is for me. I don't want you to have to handle it at all.

[She could shoot herself just for letting her eyes well up, truthfully. Men. They want to be alone, and then they need you with them, and she, like an idiot, indulges Joel. Tess heaves a hard breath.]

But if that's what you need, I can wait. Just a little bit longer.