Dear god why did you show me how to open the cage.

—

Love is what cages us and love is what sets us free.

Gale had messed up.

He’d fallen for you hopelessly and dearly, but in his love, he had stifled you. He admired you, depended on you, and envied and feared you.

He trusted in your strengths, and feared his weaknesses. He treasured you and cursed you because every day he was with you was a day he could not grow in your shadow.

He adjusted his life to fit you into it, even when it worsened his own, all because he wanted things to work that desperately.

But Gale also knew better. So much better. A bird that spends its life in a cage is better off dead, and he hoped to never, ever, subject you to a life of captivity.

So, he had to set you free.