“You can go now,” she said, no life in her voice.
“Honor, listen to me,” Hancock said, an urgency she’d never before detected in his voice brushing over her like an electric shock.
She stared mutinously ahead, her gaze fixed on a distant object as she continued to retreat more and more into the silent void she’d built around her.
“Damn it, Honor. For once just listen to me. I know you hate me. Despise me. You have every right. But I need you to listen to me. Your sacrifice will not be in vain,” he said fiercely. “Your bravery will not go untold. Your courage will not be forgotten. You will not ever be forgotten. I swear that to you on my life.”
“What does it matter?” she asked dully. “I will die a coward, begging for death, wishing with all my heart and soul to die. How is that bravery or courage? I never want my parents to know the truth of my death. It’s kinder to tell them I died in the bombing. Can you promise me that at least, Hancock? Can you do them this one small kindness since I know you won’t do it for me?”
“No,” he said in a pissed-off voice. “No, I will never let them believe you simply died. I will tell them the truth. That your life and death meant something. That your death saved hundreds of thousands of other people. So they never think your death was senseless and random. They deserve that truth.”
“So it doesn’t matter what I want, but then that should be obvious to me by now,” she said, self-loathing filling her for even considering for a moment that it would.
She turned up her face to him and saw him recoil from whatever terrible look was in her eyes. Or perhaps it was the lack of what he saw in her eyes. Life. Meaning. That she no longer cared and had given up. Finally defeated.
“Why did you kiss me?” she whispered fiercely, hating herself all the more for this display of utter weakness. “Why bother making me care? Making me think you cared at least on the level of one human caring about another? Do you despise me so much then? I can’t conceive of the kind of hatred that drives you.”
She shivered and ran her hands up and down both arms, folding inward, becoming smaller and more inconsequential with every passing minute. Preparing herself, her defenses, strengthening them for the terrible future that awaited her.
“I care,” he denied harshly. “I care too goddamn much, and that’s why I’m so fucking pissed off, Honor. Because I’m not supposed to care. I’m not supposed to be human. I’m a killer. A mercenary. Call me what you will, but it’s all true. Every possible terrible thing you can conjure. It’s true. But you can never say I don’t care, goddamn it. Because I care too much.”
In that moment, Honor knew. She knew that Hancock wasn’t quite as incapable of emotion as she’d thought. That he likely hated what he knew had to be done. But that wouldn’t stop him because he believed in whatever his mission—job—was. And in order to, as he’d put it, save thousands of other lives, hers must be forfeit.
And he hated that.
But he hated that he cared even more.
How lonely and stark must his existence be? Devoid of all the things she took for granted being raised in a huge, loving family, surrounded by unconditional love and support. Things he’d obviously never had—never would have—because he’d never allow himself to have those things.
He didn’t think he was worthy or that he deserved them.
She hated him for betraying her, but she understood in a twisted way. In his own way, he was honorable. Doing what most couldn’t do but had to be done to rid the world of monsters. Even become the very thing he hunted. A monster of the worst kind.