I want to scream, but I'm struck dumb by all the other emotions raging in me: both my own, and the ones I now feel from Tiana.

"H..." I try to say the rest of the word, but my voice won't come.

It doesn't need to because she knows how I'm feeling. I feel her feel it: the shape of my question.

"The Decay," Tiana says.

"I kn-know that part," I manage to stutter out. "But when?"

"Since we broke up. I... keep being drawn back to you. Kept, even since that night I left. I wound up in your apartment. You were gone. And it was there. Waiting for me."

I can imagine it all too clearly.

Tiana, teleporting in. Scooping the Decay off the bed and swallowing it. If I hadn't been so fucked up emotionally, so utterly compromised by everything that'd just gone down, I'd have felt it happen. Felt it slide down her through.

I'd have been aware of it when I saw her at her office.

I need to know why. It's a need so urgent that Tiana to flinch as it crashes into her. She holds up her hand, and I try to stem the tide before it overwhelms her. I focus on the pure sensation of it, and try to shape it. To make it not so loud.

Tiana sighs, relieved, then locks her gaze on me.

"You were warm." And I feel a giddy rush of emotions from her. Joy, and safety, and security. This is what she thinks about me. It's not just sex to her.

It's remarkable. And terrifying. And I want to fall into it. Knowing that she thinks of me this way almost knocks free all the doubts.

Almost.

But I cling to them because I know how important they are. How much hurt she's caused. That I can I feel the way her lightness — the effervescent buzz that just thinking of me brings — dims in the face of my distrust doesn't make me stop.

I have to say this, even if it's clear to us both.

"I don't know how I can ever trust you again." Something dark and sharp within her crackles at the suggestion. It's not hurt by what I said. Instead, it almost feels like it's feeding on it. It wants more of my saying things like this. More than anything, it wants Tiana to know how unworthy she is.

Tiana nods. "You shouldn't."

I feel that spiky thing inside her revel at what I've just vocalized. It takes my statement, my doubts, and magnifies it. The jagged negativity of it thunders through her, the reverberations of it only growing.

A feedback loop of pain, and shame for feeling it.

It's my problem to fix. I know this. It's like a fixed, sharp piece of glass that every emotion she feels cuts against, stuck at the core of her being. And now we're connected. I can't un-feel what's spilling forth from her. It eats at the happiness she feels for me.

I can't not help her.

So I roll my shoulders back and rise to my full height. If she can't fight this on her own, then I will fight it for her. She doesn't need to be a hero. I can. "N-No. That's what it wants from you." I feel emboldened saying it.

"It...?" Tiana's voice is so small, it comes out as barely a whisper.

I blame myself for putting it there. There's a reason they call it Decay. The only times I've ever seen it used was by Desdemona, and the results — the people she hurt just by using something of mine and imbuing it with a touch of magic — were crushing.

She brought good people low with it.

And it turns out that all Tiana needed to do was to take enough into her for this to happen. To thrust something into her that cleaves away the warmth she wanted from me. Because I get it now: how lonely she's been. I thought I knew before, but feeling it?

I have to do this. I have to fix this.

"I can feel what's going on," My words aren't unsteady any longer, and I take her hand in mine. "There's a darkness in you, Tiana. A darkness that tells you that you're not worth fighting for, and that you don't deserve to have good things in your life."

The dark thing jolts at being named.

"It wants you to think that you aren't ever going to be enough." I bring her into a hug. She doesn't resist, but she doesn't wrap her arms around me. I can feel her tightening around the shards that I've put into her.

The darkness my Decay created. "You are enough, Tiana."

She disbelieves it. The words don't help to counteract the tug that's bringing her into herself. No, it's not that they don't help. They hurt. My words make the shards inside her crack and pop and snap outward.

"What can I do?" I plead to her. "Please tell me how I can help."

There's a need forming in her. A need to get away from the pain that's cutting into her, from the gravity well that pulls everything she is into the path of those lacerating edges. "Please?" Tiana buries her head into my chest.

It's the only solution I can offer her right now.

I hug her tighter as my tail curls upward. Finally, she wraps her arms around me and returns the hug. She needs this, and I can help her. My tail's tip opens, and I feel the way even just knowing it's there eases her pain.

It slips around her for the first time in far too long.

Her pain quiets as the muscles of my tail lift her upward. She holds onto the hug as long as she can before she's pulled free.

I feel myself hurtle through space and find myself back at my apartment. Gone is GirlCon. If I couldn't feel her thrashing to get deep into me, I'd have worried she left.

My muscles contract one more time, and she slips into my void. The tentacles wrap around her wrists, then bind to her ankles. More of them encircle her knees, and pull them apart. With each action, I feel her warm back up. Loosen and go slack — physically and within the core of her being.

If the feedback loop before was pain, now we're experiencing one of pleasure. I drive her to new heights as my tentacles slide in and out of her. No part of her body is free from my touch. My caresses. She welcomes them all.

Every part of her bathes in the warmth I have to offer.

We lose hours and hours as her orgasm bleeds into my orgasm bleeds back into hers. Again and again.

For however loud she is as she screams until she goes hoarse, her mind is quiet. Blissful. At rest. Free to distend and elongate, rather than bundle itself up into a tight ball of anxious pain.

When she's slipped into unconsciousness, I withdraw, but leave her suspended within the void.

Only then do I blink my eyes open and remember that there's a world outside of us.

I check my phone. So many notifications. A tendril retrieves Tiana's phone and feeds it free of my tail.

Even more.

I put her phone on the nightstand next to the bed, and I give her five more minutes of rest before the tentacles begin to unwind. She stirs just so as I bring her free, moaning ever so slightly.

Then her breathing picks up. Fear and terror grip her. She bucks as the nightmare takes hold.

I hold her tight. "It's okay, it's just a nightmare."

Tiana pushes back from me. "No!" She moans, and I release her. She clambers backward, and spills onto the floor.

"No! Please, stop!" She screams, and then she's awake, shaking with fear.

I sweep her into a hug. She lets me, and sobs quietly.

I accept, then, that there is never going to be an easy way out. Whatever will come of this is gonna hurt.

I just have to be a hero enough to endure it.