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The kiss was quick... but it felt... electric, in some way. Unlike anything else he had felt, even if the list was actually pretty small. She was gone before he could do much about it, however, probably on reflex as he... never really tended to reciprocate much.

Alas.

He leaned back on the couch then, letting his eyes drift closed. Really, he was just glad to be actually... home. What had been two weeks for Raven, and everyone else... had been much longer for him. More like months.

Yet, in a sense, he was not looking forward to explain himself. To explain himself, he would have to explain... everything. He had never done it, not really, not the whole thing. What would she think of him when it was all done with ?

He had no idea that she held a fear very similar to his own.

"Black, please." He was going to need it.

...This was not going to be fun, and he damn well needed the caffeine first. And he did just that, taking a glup and only slowing down when he nearly burned his tongue. That was not pleasant.

"Well... I had a life before this one. All fa'e do." Apparently he was taking 'everything' rather literally. "I wasn't... sentient, for most of it. Someone gave me orders, I followed them. I was a tool, existing to be used in any mean that was necessary, from controlling Aion to guarding a princess. I've done... alot of things, that I don't think I would have done if I had been able to choose. Murdered people, wiped entire races clear off the planet... Everyone keep telling me I should not feel responsible for those things... since I couldn't refuse. But I never quite feel that way. And then... then I was given a soul." His hand went to rest over the core in pure reflex, but it closed in onto nothing. "I ended up dying before I could really do anything about it. To make up for the wrong I've done, if that was even possible at all."

He paused then, apparently needing one more shot of caffeine before he could dare continue again. "I've feared many things - im not going to pretend otherwise - but I think that was the thing I feared the most. That I would go back to that... that it would happen again. All one needed to was shatter the soul gem... and ill'd be gone. Not dead, per se, but honestly I always felt death would have been better than just being a mindless tool again. And then there's Ex. He was there in my past life, he had been the one to create me. There was something about me... that allowed him to take me over. He wanted to use my body as his own and kill me. He's batshit crazy, Raven... He would have killed you for no reason other than to hear you scream. He'd have killed everyone I cared about because they dared care about me. I lived each day, each moment in fear that one day, ill just fail, that the spell that had been put on me to keep him out would fail, that my soul gem would shatter, that he would just kill me and..."

This was too much, really. There was a reason he never spoke of this. She would hate him - who the hell wouldn't ? Sei certainly hated himself for this... all of this. His hand was shaking so much he nearly dropped the cup, and he had grap it with his left to stop it. He was not looking at her, could not dare to, blonde bangs creating a thick curtain, hiding his eyes from view.

It would not stop her from seeing the tears run down his cheeks.

"I wanted to kill him. Ill'd never wanted to do anything like that, but I wanted to kill him before he could get a chance to kill me. I wanted to ******** him over in every damn way I could. I felt Aion re-active... and I freaked out. Flipped out. It just seemed like the first step that would just end in him taking me over. I couldn't just let it go... so I went." <******** coffee, he needed some damn vodka. Or whatever it was that Naolin had given him all this time ago.

"Thing is... Only magic could bring Aion down. I've never been very good at it. The spell that kept Ex from talking to me got done in when Zero was attacked... or so he told me. I turned his taunting back on him, and he told me... that I had magic indeed. My blood, my lifeforce. The only thing I wanted was to blow up that thing... So I used that, with some kind of... thing Anastacia brought to focus the magic. I didn't think about what consequences it might have. Couldn't, when so many things were at stake." His own sanity first of all, given what he had just revealed to her. Someone could only take that kind of paranoid fear for so long before losing it.

He paused then, letting his cup down onto the table in front of him, reaching for his bandaged wrist to loop it off. It was used more for covering rather than a real bandage, and there was a rather nasty scar on his wrist right there. A matching set of round scars on both the over and underside. The place where he'd driven Zero's saber, the only thing he knew could pierce metal, though.

"I can't tell you what happened after that, because I don't remember it." The mind had that power, to simply block what was likely too traumatizing to remember. "But I woke up like this. Human... but not quite. There is still power in me, I can feel it... but some of it is gone. I was... a living machine, a machine the behaved just like a living body. That kind of thing... can't just really support itself just like that. I pulled though... But im not sure how. Ill probably never know how. But this... this is not a bad thing. Ex can't control me anymore, he can only control machines... In a sense... Im free. Im finally free of that past I hated so much, of much of the things I feared." There was no longer the shadow of a god looming over him, threatening to end him and the lives of everyone he held dear. It would not simply end like this, he was not naive enough to think so... but it was a relief.

And so he went silent, still not daring to look at her - hadn't for all the time he had spoken, very well expecting he was about to get slapped. Or worse. Much worse. He tried to steel in his mind, to be able to take her rage, fury and hate in the best he could.

((TL;DR : someone call a wahhhbulance. Thank god he's not -always- like this @w@))

Nothing was ever easy indeed. He had gotten what he had wanted, ultimately, but there had been quite a sacrifice for it. And he very well could have died. But he hadn't, and he figured that was the important thing. Why worry about what could have happened NOW ? It made no sense.

"Yeah..." He finally answered. It was over now. Well, for the most part, that is. He slid one arm over her, apparently quite content to just act like her pillow and not move for a good while.

It was only when she spoke again that one eye slid open, almost lazily. He said nothing, for what seemed to be the longest time... then cupped his hand around her chin, not the careful half-touches of before...

And he gently slid forward to kiss her. A true kiss, something he had not been able before, something he would not have even dared to dream about before, with no fear of hurting her, and complete control of his own self.

That seemed answer enough, really.

"You know." He replied, letting her lean against him once more. "I totally could, too."

Good thing that nothing was stopping him. He only had the rest of his life to figure it all out, which did not seem like such a bad thing.