It was Geneva's turn to surprise him with emotions and faces he hadn't seen in her before, and unsurprisingly, he was thoroughly surprised. Her ears turned, her gaze averted, her heart must have been pounding: the cyclops could see it clearly, and he regretted having been angry at all the second her expression shifted. When he'd questioned her, she relaxed -- but an expression of a sad sort of perplexion darkened her pretty face. She'd never known her mother; he could emphasize, as the Colibri Soul that had mothered his litter was not even a face in his mind, empty of childhood memorizes. He didn't know the touch of his parents, the methods in which he was raised, or if he'd even been happy. He didn't know what his world had been growing up. All he knew was that somewhere along the way, he'd raped and killed and ruined.
She mentioned a Jordan. The way the name rolled off her tongue, he knew this Jordan was -- had been -- something special. ...Why did that put him on edge? Something turned in his stomach. Who the hell was Jordan? What did he do, break her heart and leave? That fucking...
His thoughts had gone as such until she broke the silence she began when she continued. Everything she said, everything she mentioned about changing to a new person and becoming unrelated to who she was -- it was like a mirror. Jefferson's eye widened and stared in sheer, shocked disbelief, his lips tightened, his ears tipped in a mild distress as if he couldn't believe what she was saying. I became a mother. He'd just "become" a father. The second she looked away, he snapped back to reality and straightened himself, though the shock and awe was no different. Shame crossed her face, darkened her delicate features, brought dirtiness to something beautiful. His brows furrowed. Jefferson didn't want to see her like that: shamed, sad, embarrassed. Every time he'd shouted at her, it had been what he'd both wanted and didn't want; the second such a reaction came from something he hadn't done, it broke his heart because he couldn't do a thing. Granted, had he been the one to make her so upset, he could have killed himself for doing it in that blind fury of his. However, none of this crossed his mind.
Jefferson might have stepped forward to comfort her, might have brushed against her in the way she did he, but he didn't. He stood stiffly on his three legs, the fourth slightly bent off the ground as always, as the ocean waves wriggled up between his toes. He stood like a rock in the water: unmoving, unyielding, untouched. However, his emotions fought internally, compassion creased his face like heartbreak, and he couldn't seem to move. Now that that name -- Jordan -- had been raised, Jefferson was suddenly afraid to touch her for different reasons than he had before. Beforehand, it was because he was the leader, and she was some nagging little girl who wouldn't leave him alone. But now... it was because he somehow didn't have the right to. Like it somehow wasn't his place or he couldn't bear to do it.
Realizing he'd been silent all the while, the brute turned his green-eyed gaze to the water. He didn't know what to say, that much was obvious. Instead, he glanced back up at her with a more collected gaze -- a most shocking one, in fact. As if the masks were gone and the masquerade over, it happened.
His other eye opened.
It was sightless and a terribly pale color, but it was open. Jefferson looked at her with both eyes, though he saw through only one; the brute suddenly had no energy to hold it shut as he always did, had no drive to keep that flaw hidden from the girl who already knew everything about him and wasn't worth withholding anything else from. He hadn't opened that eye in months, and never before around someone else. Hell, not even Addison had seen, and she'd lived with him and crawled into his bed on multiple nights of nightmares and terrors. He breathed in, he breathed out. "Who was Jordan?" The cyclops said quietly, raising his head. He spoke gently, encouragingly; it sounded like something she hated to admit. She'd made him do it, and though he hadn't admitted it... somehow, it had helped. It was her turn.