It's wrong of him, to be angry with her. He knows that. She hasn't done anything wrong. She didn't plan for someone she knew to arrive. All she did was welcome someone to this strange place, find a moment of familiarity and solace. Share a moment of happiness. The obvious warmth of a reunion with someone important to her, someone tall and dark and graceful.

It isn't her fault, either, that he did not get to experience the same. Because that's how it is, isn't it? How it's always been, in his life. Not the hero. The sidekick. The comic relief. No one ever comes back for the comic relief, and if they do...it's a joke.

He's accepted this, a long time ago.

So why, he wonders, does he feel now like his chest has been hollowed out? Why are his eyes raw from crying? Why is he sitting in a pitch-black ballroom, clutching a tiny, worn, tear-stained book of love poetry white-knuckled in clawed hands? Why does he flinch as she calls out to him, sounding like she's seeking confirmation of something?

He watches her as she approaches. She looks...afraid. Her nose is twitching, like the rabbits in the snares his father had taught him to set so long ago. Alfred didn't have the heart to finish things with those rabbits, either. And now he's the hunter, the one who quietly drained a third of the blood from two strangers in an alleyway on the way back home because he felt like something in him was crumbling.

There is a moment of hesitation before he speaks, tone hollow, dark, shaking.

"...I didn't think I was doing any more good, there." A slow blink of those bright eyes. "And you were...busy. So I thought I would let you be."