Bounty hunting is a complicated profession

Hurt

Talk? — you thought bitterly without even looking at him.

How were you supposed to have a talk like that? Shit! You were so upset and you couldn't even voice it out or get it across to him!

"Hey" he said closer to you this time in a quiet tone as he gently rubbed your arm. You pulled away from his touch as if it had given you an electric shock and you could instantly feel the distress emanating from him, but you didn't care. You couldn't care, you didn't have it in you to care about him or his feelings at the moment.

"I'm not going to make you wear that thing while it's on, I know you don't like it." he said after a moment, his voice strained.

Well, not liking it was a gross oversimplification. You scoffed at him.

"I just want him to make it look like it's working when you wear it. It's the only way we can walk into town without them shooting at you as soon as they see you. It's the only valid excuse I could have to bring you with me without you using your powers or being a threat to them."

That made sense and the rational part of your mind knew it, but that part wasn't working right now and all you could think was that that still didn't explain why he had kept it. It wasn't like he knew it could come in handy in the future.

"You kept it! Why?" You signed furiously as you felt a burning, prickling feeling in the inner corners of your eyes. You blinked rapidly and stared away from him.

"I don't know, I just did." 

Pointing at yourself you signed "Scary".

"No. That's not it!" He objected, hurt either by what you implied or how you were behaving. Again, you couldn't care if he was hurting, not now.

You sneered at him in disbelief. 

You wanted to scream, to shout at him, to ask him — no, demand him — to tell you a truth that you already knew; that he thought you were dangerous and unstable, and that if he had doubted you, just for a second, he would have put that thing back on you again.

Until this moment you hadn't wished harder to have your voice back, not being able to talk, shout, scream, let it all out, was despairing. You were so angry and disappointed, you were having a hard time holding back your tears.

"Look, I know how it looks but I never intended to put that back on you. I took it off, put it away, and forgot about it." He insisted against your disbelief. "Found it just now, when we picked Cara up."

You shook your head again, angrily.

"Scary" you signed again, the tears threatening to overflow.

"I never said that was a bad thing!" He snapped, suddenly raising his voice and startling you so much that for a second you even forgot why you were so angry. He exhaled slowly in an attempt to calm himself down. "Yes, I called you scary but I never said that meant I thought you were dangerous. I… I didn't say that to you as something bad."

Even though now he was talking in a calm voice, that one second of shock had been enough for you to sense how disgruntled he was feeling — almost as much as you were — and most importantly, to realise he was telling the truth after all.

However, it was extremely hard for you to just let it go and stop being upset with him. You were still feeling betrayed and hurt and, as much as you knew he wasn't lying, those feelings weren't fading away anytime soon. You were normally able to control your emotions quite well, except for anger. Whenever you got angry you had a hard time calming down — even if you were aware you were in the wrong — and this time wasn't going to be any different.