Coriolanus had had absolutely no intention of scaring his girl, even less so when she'd been doing something as sweet as trying to find something for his birthday. As if she could give him more than she already had by simply being with him.
He just needed to make her understand that she can't wander around freely as she used to. She's everything to him, so therefore, she's a target. He rested his chin on the top of her head, only reaching because of the boots he bought her and rubs her back to calm her. Livia had mentioned they'd spoken about the subject and what her suggestion had been. It'd had surprised him, to hear her say she was encouraging his Lucy Gray to do that but he wasn't going to look a gift horse too closely. It didn't matter anyway as she was still healing and he didn't want to push his girl too much. But it's the thought that counts, certainly. Just the fact that his Lucy Gray was concerning herself with pleasing him in a matter as small as a birthday gift genuinely warmed his heart, though only making him feel guiltier about the incident. It just happened and already he wants it far in the past.
He released her still stiff body and before he could kiss her forehead she quickly turned and speed-walked back into their bedroom and slammed the door. He'll have to apologize to her later, truly she wasn't really to blame for his stress. His position at work was rising and while that is precisely his goal, it doesn't come without hardship. He was only able to leave work as early as he did because he can continue the job from his home office.
He sat behind his large metal desk, turned on his workstation and pressed his thumb in for access. He was immediately flooded with notifications for updates on the project he'd forcefully presented to his boss. All of them looking for solutions to problems that haven't arisen yet just in case they do. Poking holes in his plan, his rivals made sure to pick through it with the finest toothed combs they could. His ascent would mean their stagnation or reassignment, or worse. All of their employments are precarious, none of them being considered so essential that they can't be replaced. There's in fact always someone willing to work for less and do more. But no one had superseded him in utility yet. His brain had an unfortunate talent for torture, but he's far from the only theoretical sadist working under Clyborne.
'Perhaps that's the problem,' he thinks 'there's too many of us.'
His Lucy Gray needed to learn this too. She's not entirely inexperienced, she knows to a certain extent how cruel people can be. But she's experienced an unusually high amount of kindness to really grasp the depravity of human nature.
'I think there's a natural goodness built into human beings.' She'd said so many years ago, and he knew that idea of hers hadn't changed.
He knows she's right in that it exists in some, surely in his girl herself and it's tragic that those end up punished due to those who were born wrong. He's under no misapprehension that he was also one who was, born wrong. But it's necessary to keep the evil majority in line. The good, the truly good like his Lucy Gray, his baby girls and any others they may hopefully have soon, even Sejanus and from what he's seen Holy May, were unjustly punished and it's all the fault of the wretched. That and partly the naïveté imbued into those that are truly good, causing them to believe that everyone is like them. Coriolanus was no truly good person, but he could hardly watch that goodness be destroyed in his songbird, or any of their hatchlings. Keeping their goodness, their purity, their hearts intact are part of why he does what he does.
He'll get her to understand, even if that means saddening her. He'll remind her she'd never have to live among them, she'll never have to witness any of their ugliness, never have to spare another thought for them.
He's angry with himself for flying off the handle, it puts a damper on what he was planning to do. Her tri-locket is finally complete, with her mother's, father's, brothers' and Si's photo portraits inside them. He'd wanted to make them look like they're smiling but it made them look uncanny, she'd be disturbed. All of the photos apart from his son's look somewhat cold, being that they were for identification purposes, but he figured any likeness of them would please her. He'd ordered color behind them, Silas Ocher's in a light lilac on the silver, highest around her neck, her mother and father surrounded by a warm yellow and placed on the gold thin chain laying lower on her chest, each on one half of the second locket and her siblings in a field of green on the last bronze. The last one with her brothers opens into three slides.
'Well, if anything could save the night in case my apologies can't, that should.' He thinks to himself.
