Stop her! his instincts and his body screamed at him at once. His muscles tensed, ready to block her, especially when that knife came out, but Desmond simply lay there. His mind was coming up with ways to escape, how to survive, and the rest of him was calm. Resigned. He felt the blade on his throat and if he was going to die again, this wasn't his top choice, but it wasn't the worst either. She'd get her revenge and a kind of closure, at least.

"I already had feelings for you, before it happened, you know that." It was intentional, to get him to trust her, and possibly to want her. "I was in a coma because I couldn't handle what I did to you, Lucy. I didn't want to be awake, to be alive, after that. But I had to finish the mission. The mission you put me on." There were tears in his eyes too, partly from his own pain, partly from hers, from what their fucked up lives made them do. "I'm not going to say I didn't fucking hate you too, when she showed me it was a lie. That it didn't keep me up at night, knowing that everything I thought was special between us was a fiction." Desmond just looks at her helplessly. "But I could never hate you as much as I hate myself."

He stayed still and breathe evenly. "I didn't love you then, because I didn't know you. But here? Here we've been real with each other. There's less lies between us, not like there were." Desmond reaches out with his hands to gently touch her knees where they are straddling him, nothing more than warmth against her. "It wasn't all fake, and I know that now. I see you. You let me see you. I don't give a shit, what they did to us, who they made us be. I forgive you for everything you thought you had to do. It's over. We're just Desmond and Lucy here."

He looked her right in the eye this time. "I love you. And I know you're not going to hurt me. I just need you to believe I won't hurt you again either."