He was being unreasonable and he bloody well knew it; he just wasn't willing to put down the pride. There was far too much at stake if he did and he wasn't ready, on any level, to let her know just how much he needed her. It was that which had kept the hurtful words tumbling from his mouth and that which had him ready for her to leave now.

But she didn't. Instead she answered him back and the words struck a nerve though he couldn't have said why. They simply did.

"Gotta have the last damn word, don't you Char?" But she wasn't done. Not close. Her hard shove gave him clear indication of that, though it did little to move his actual body.

"No, that wouldn't be enough for you either, would it? It won't be enough until I've felt just as low and worthless as you did-"

That slashed deeply at him, his jaw tightening and his hold on the neck of the Newcastle nearly strong enough to shatter the dark glass. She couldn't begin to understand what he'd been through. Alone.

She'd not been there those long nights when he'd drank pot after pot of coffee and watched the telly to numb his mind and keep the flashes of green from intruding into his memory. She'd not been there when he'd muffled his sobs with a well-placed silencing charm to his door, his heart breaking for the loss of Sarah and Summer.

And her.

He could deal, to a certain degree, with the death of the women he loved; it was far more a test of his courage and his fortitude to move forward with any true certainity when he wanted to take a step back and fly to the arms he knew were only an apparation away.

She was here now; in the flesh. And his body cried out for him to simply draw her to him for what felt like the millioneth time. And yet again, her words held him at bay.

"I didn't come here for this. I've said my piece, and that wasn't cowardly, Leathan, no matter what you accuse me of, it wasn't."

"When the fuck did I ever call you cowardly?" he asked, his voice tight as he took a step closer and pressed his hand to the door effectively locking it shut. "Though, perhaps that's just the right bloody term for you, isn't it? Your place goes up in flames and you run off to hide; I come out to visit - hell, even at your own fucking request - and you invariably panic and send me packing. Coward. I've never called you that; but it fits you like a bloody glove."

As he spoke he had moved incrementally closer to her, his voice dropping lower in the same moment until his words were a mere whisper as he glowered into her brown eyes. "You never thought, for one minute, that maybe I wanted to share your pain and loss; but then, I was fooling myself wasn't I? I'm the fucking idiot for ever thinking that maybe you actually gave a damn about me."