He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to be left to complain to himself, wallow in his misery, contemplate horrible deeds and never move to start them. He wanted to be left alone so he would be treated like the monster he was, deserving no compassion or companionship. The brute was dangerous; he'd raped and killed and thought nothing of it once, and those he surrounded were always at some sort of risk. He could not give up Phoenix Valley; Iskata had entrusted the lands to him in her stead, and even if he was some sort of terrible, unforgivable freak, Jefferson knew honor. He knew trust, but he hardly practiced it. He knew kindness, but he hardly gave himself room to show it before realizing that he'd gotten too soft.
The three children he had met had been at least a year, meaning that his history of rape and killing were still in a recent past. Perhaps he was different now, perhaps Geneva had managed to break some of his walls one way or another. He might have admitted to it. But what she did, what she constantly tried to do, wasn't worth it. Needless to say, after such an episode, Jefferson had earnestly expected her to turn her back and leave. He'd expected it to be that easy... or that hard. But like she always did, like he should have expected her to do, she intercepted him once again. Her stance was so uncharacteristically bold that she did not flinch when they bumped noses, nor did she make the means to avoid the collision. Jefferson stumbled back, eye wide with irritated disbelief.
The brute's first reaction was a noisy groan and an overdramatic rolling of the eye. "Dear God, when does it end?!" His neck bristled and the idiot resisted every urge to bare his fangs and snarl, now knowing well that scaring her away wasn't even worth the effort. "You've got your shit, and I've got mine. Isn't that good enough for you?" He sighed and fell limply onto his haunches, throwing his head back and glaring ruthlessly at the sky. His voice dropped to a normal level, however, and he heaved a long sigh before speaking. "All our stories are the same. We live, we forget, we regret, we die. Sometimes you love, and sometimes you don't." He thought of DaVinci quickly and his complicated, troublesome love affair. After a pause to breathe, the brute dropped his eye to the girl again. "You're a lover, Geneva; I'm not. You can't change who I've turned out to be. We can't all end up happy." Emerald pierced.