When she crawls to him and shakes and cries in his arms, he strokes her hair and tells her that he loves her, and that it will all be all right in the end, and he's such a fucking liar. Nothing will be all right, and they both know that. The heels of her hands dig into his shoulders as she clings to him, her fingers like broken spider's legs and black and swollen to sausages with bruising, and he ignores the agony her slight weight on his broken body sends roaring to life. He tells her that he loves her, over and over while she shakes with tearless sobs, and he remembers the first time that he told her he loved her.