He listened.
She asked for one near-impossible thing after another. No, sometimes it wasn't her, it was him. Glenn Burnie had a lifetime (and two deaths, if one tallied that account) of horror to stretch his limits past that of the average person, even the average Myrkener. On this night, he had bypassed them twice over. There was a toll. There were consequences. One of these was that she could get her words in edgewise without him intervening.
"Second thing first," he began, tankard forgotten, not that it would have done him much good spilled anyway. "I know when I hear what I might say to someone else. It'll sound ridiculous, demean you or me or this, but you've been to Myrken. You've seen them." His voice trailed off and his eyes went slightly stormy once again. "Damn it. I'm going to concede your first point if I go that way." He placed both palms back over his eyes and looked as if he might scream. His nostrils flared. That was the end of it. He took a long breath and tried again.
"Fine, first thing first," Burnie was impeccable, a bastion of control. He had an answer for everything. He never needed to take a breath. One could not trap him or hold him for he always had the words to escape. If she gained nothing else on this night, she'd have an image to match the one she'd bullied out of him: Glenn Burnie repeatedly at a loss. "We're tied at the wrist. You don't escape me. I don't escape you. I've seen too much. You've seen too much. We've been through too much. We know too much. We may have put off dealing with tomorrow until tomorrow, but tomorrow will come, whether we like it or not. We can argue all day and night about how we ended up here, but we've ended up here. I can't imagine you not regretting it in this moment," and there was a smile, though his eyes were sad, "and I don't blame you for regretting it in this moment, what fools and tangled webs and all that, but here we are and here we'll stay, even if it'll be letters between us again. I don't regret it. I'm glad to be here with you." Then, because he'd said that much already and because she wasn't wrong. "I may need them and I may go find them, and soon, fairly soon, I may even go back to Myrken, because however dangerous and reckless my heart may be, however mad I might be deep down, you've let me see tonight that I am not what I was then. Whatever my restraint holds back, it is not that. So yes, I may need them, but I need you too."
Then, far more softly, because he would not run from her words, not even directly to her as he just did. "I believe what you say. I'd say it to another without hesitation. Maybe I'd convince them to do more than believe it, to actually feel it. I believe it, thank you, but the memories still make me feel less complete, not more so."