[It strikes him in the chest, just above where Creed had struck him - around the solar plexus, so he can't breathe. No, he thinks, but yes, too, because it makes sense, doesn't it. Maybe not to someone else, but to him. He has felt the death instinct. Been betrayed. Been lost.]
[Not lost enough to do it like that. Not so explicitly. He dares someone to shoot him instead of taking the gun in his own two hands, because he's a coward; because he's a Sharpe. But he feels the insistent tug of hopelessness all the same.]
[It hurts, knowing that Beyond feels it, too, and he wonders if this is how he makes other people feel sometimes, at the same time as a small, ugly part of him feels relief at finding kin.]
action.
[Not lost enough to do it like that. Not so explicitly. He dares someone to shoot him instead of taking the gun in his own two hands, because he's a coward; because he's a Sharpe. But he feels the insistent tug of hopelessness all the same.]
[It hurts, knowing that Beyond feels it, too, and he wonders if this is how he makes other people feel sometimes, at the same time as a small, ugly part of him feels relief at finding kin.]
If you had, would you be happy?