He knows. He knows she doesn't love herself — he knows it with the familiarity of his own degraded self-worth; because he has seen it, time and again, in her own actions and words; because it has been at the core of their tragedies. There's a pity he feels: a true sadness and tenderness that ends in a soft ache, hearing the tremble of the confession and watching the crystal beads of tears as they find their paths down her face. His thumb grazes the line of her jaw, slipping across the wetness that hangs there. He wants to touch it, to feel it in kind with his heart. To soothe it, knowing there is nothing he can do for her but this.

The scent of her hair envelopes him; drowns the salt of her tears. He feels them on his neck as he pulls her in close, eagerly; earnestly. He knows it is what she needs. It is what he needs, his head turning into her, nose pressing into the silk and fragrance. He's silent, for a moment, considering whatever roads she might take, whatever steps she might consider, are not for him to decide. He cannot follow. He cannot conceive any for himself, for them, past this; his hands rubbing her back and cradling the nape of her neck. Mourning whatever loss this might constitute. Whatever desires he has felt unfulfilled.

"I don't know." Despite the centuries he has spent loving and losing, he does not know. Camille was right. He spent his time in life avoiding the agony of loss. He did not know how to say goodbye before death, nor start anew here. But there is an anew here, and of that he is not afraid.