Blake had been all but unable to touch Kate of his own accord the past few months, but that was hard to remember when Blake held her against him, his tenderness obvious even in his unconscious state. It hurt. It hurt more than Marc wanted to admit to himself. He wasn’t used to standing on the outside, looking in. Earlier, he had tried to comfort Blake and been rejected—twice. To see his Childe find comfort in someone else was like a knife pushing into his gut, even if that someone was Kate. He knew why Blake had turned to her, of course. He understood that in Blake’s mind, Marc’s face was still the face of his jailer; it would always be. Blake had progressed a lot, and he could see more in Marc than the creature who had tortured him for countless years, but Marc knew that a monster was still the first thing Blake saw in him. It hurt because Blake was his Childe. It was Marc’s job—his responsibility, his reason for being, or at least one of them—to take care of him. It hurt for other reasons, too; there were words Marc had never said to Blake, words he would never say, but that didn’t mean that the feelings behind these unspoken words didn’t exist.
