the nearness of you
loid forger/yor briar | rated T | oneshot | 5.7k words
mild hurt/comfort, mutual pining, romantic tension, scars, tending to wounds, identity reveal (sort of)
A wife in tatters.
AO3
In the hour before Anya’s bedtime, Twilight had come to the startling realization that his daughter is growing up. The hem of her favorite onesie had hiked up to the bump of her ankle, bump of her wrist. Anya, heedless to many things, the intricate and crucial things—a father’s silent suffering, a mother’s concerning absence—hugged him good night, telling him that he’d be in “big, hugiant trouble” if she caught him staying past midnight waiting for Mama. Bond, whom he wished could speak and voice the wisdom that seemed to be held within his marble eyes, nudged his nose against his calf as if to show his sympathy for his companion’s indifference. Then, they had left him in a quiet apartment to fill the Yor-shaped spaces with his thoughts.
The first hour after the first snore, Twilight contemplated calling Yor, whom he presumed sat lonely at her desk, saving the country one file, one staple, one document at a time. It could be no one else. It had to be Yor to help carry this obfuscating weight that their precious girl was outgrowing her clothes—that they were becoming older themselves. That they were drifting apart.
Tomorrow, he'd tell her, they’ll go shopping together as a family for shiny new dresses, skirts, blouses, and pajamas. He will buy them in bulks—small, medium, large—so that he will never have to experience this silent heartbreak, this wearying awareness that he, shrewd and tenacious as he was, was powerless against the hands of Time. WISE would have to understand the incoming banknotes; this agony would last him for the entirety of Operation Strix.
Twilight dialed the phone and watched the numbers reel back and reset. He listened to each ring and hung up, assuming that Yor must have been on her way home.
He grieved the onesie in his lonesome. It would have been nice to hear Yor’s voice.
The second hour, he tidied up the apartment. Watered the plants. Wrapped leftovers in plastic. Played with his daughter’s toys. He created homes out of blocks, families out of plush—a fox, a bunny, a kitten.
Hearing footsteps outside, Twilight darted to the door, knocking the blocks over in his haste. His hand hovered over the knob. He listened a beat longer and knew by the slow drag of feet, by their unhurried stride that it was not Yor. Yes, he knew her by step, by breath. She would have silently stepped across the hall, keys jangling in her pocket. She would hum on particularly nice nights or mumble to herself when she was especially exhausted.
It was past midnight. Yor was not home.
Twilight wasn’t sure why he had decided to stay up that particular night. Yor had been late before. He knew that she could take care of herself. She had brought an umbrella to work that morning. She wouldn’t come home shivering. No colds would be carelessly caught.
As he cleared the rest of the dinner table—a silver candelabra, blown-out candles, unopened wine bottles—the answer he had swallowed whole made itself known. Somewhere, deep in the pit of his stomach, it was there anchored by reason. It would tremble at the raise of her lip, travel far enough to the heart where hundreds of buzzing bees would prick at his arterial lining for the chance of release.
Release had come close many times: mornings when she’d asked how he’d like his coffee; Saturday afternoons as she napped on the couch; nights he’d bandage the tip of her fingers after prepping dinner. It was a seed burgeoning into honeysuckles—honeysuckles that, as far as Twilight knew, had already grown in parts of his body and made his blood sweet as sap. They were honeysuckles that nearly sprouted from his mouth at the sound of his name or the touch of her palm.
Twilight could cut the vines and twine the flowers. He could dress up, slick his hair back, and have his shoes shined downtown. He could bow down like a gentleman, kiss each of his darlings’ dainty hands. A bouquet for Anya and a bouquet for Yor—their names written in his neatest penmanship on parchment. Anya would snap the honeysuckles from the vine and break their pistols off, supping them of their nectar. Yor would bring the flowers to her face and take in their scent, and Twilight, absently staring, would catch himself and clutch at his chest. Then, they would know everything. They would know all of the words he doesn't say.
It would be so simple to tie those feelings up with chiffon lace. Surely, it would save him the embarrassment of voicing those stubborn emotions that more often than not translate to knuckle biting, bedroom pacing, and worried, sleepless nights like tonight. But he knew by now that every day spent with them had watered the garden hardly contained within the bed of his skin. Giving each of them a bouquet would not capture even a fraction of how much he yearned to truly be on their side of the world.
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Yor returned home at three in the morning.
The rain had stopped two hours ago. She was drenched. Her umbrella, dry, dropped to the floor as she stumbled in her heels looking for her lost balance in the lightless apartment. Before Twilight could open his mouth to speak, she clutched at the breast of his shirt with the abject fear of falling, pleading with him through ragged breaths to hold her, to not let go.
He didn't. Twilight hugged her close, arms fastened around her back just beneath her coat. She winced. Her body burned hot from shivering, and her cheek, pale and wan, was cold on his collarbone.
Twilight called to her softly, called again to stir her. She could only sigh.
A hand slid from her back, up to her side, trailing to trace the curve of her face. Twilight hesitated. Yor pushed herself against him as if to feel for pressure, for validation that this warmth was his. The grip on his shirt loosened when she was sure that she had made it home. After a deep breath, Twilight stroked her jaw, coaxing her to spare him a look—just one—to know that all was right.
All was not right.
When she finally moved her head up to stare at him, Twilight nearly gasped. The color had wrung from her skin. Her eyes, usually so bright with curious wonder, had shrunk half a flame. The lip that would whisper his name could only quiver with dread. She shook in his embrace as she discerned his expression, anticipating a question and readying a stolid defense. Twilight would not have it. Yor, always so strong and resolute, felt so small in his arms. He absolutely would not have it.
He caressed her cheek and he swore his heart had stopped. Red smeared over her skin. But where? How? His hands cautiously slipped down the plane of her back. Yor mewled, and he knew.
All at once the corpuscles in his body rushed in surges to the tips of his fingers down to his toes, to the heart, the head. He must have been flushed red with how quickly the blood ran in his veins—how quickly rage consumed him. Twilight inhaled shakily, tempering those thoughts of twisted necks, mutilated legs, snapped elbows, and headless torsos; of bodies cold and ashen as Yor was now in his hold.
“Who?” he whispered sharply, using the last of his constraint as he eyed the front door. Ask, and she’ll answer.
“An accident.” Ask, and she’ll lie. But the eyes? No, they never lie. She smiled despite it all. This he knew was true. He slipped her coat off from her shoulders, letting it pool at her ankles. She held on tighter. “I’m so tired. I just wanted to come home.”
Twilight could have cried from the tenderness she seemed to have saved just for him. Gone was the wickedness in his body, relinquished to the dark, dark, night. He took her face in his palms, tucking the errant strands of her disheveled hair behind an ear. One of her earrings was missing. Twilight, shattered by this disquieting and crucial detail, waited for his tears to come. They never did.
“I’m sorry, Loid. You must've waited so long,” she murmured in his neck as he delicately lifted her up into his arms. “You even lit the candles for dinner.”
“How did you know?” Twilight asked, redirecting her guilt to the shadows where it could vanish alongside vice. He clung to softheartedness, to goodness, to kindness. Tonight, he'd give it all to her.
“I smell smoke on you.”
“You can?”
Yor cupped her hand over her mouth. “You haven't been doing anything naughty, have you?”
“Heavens, no.” Twilight forced a chuckle. “I guess I should have put on cologne before welcoming you home this evening. You're exhausted, and you come back to a reeking husband. How flippant of me.”
“Silly.” She rested her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes as he carried her to the couch. “It’ll stain,” she rasped, too exhausted to put up much of a protest. Yor sunk into the cushions.
Twilight kneeled down to remove the heels from her throbbing feet. His fingers glided down the bend of her calf, noting the runs in her black stocking that weren’t there this morning. The heels, he imagined, had worn down from frantic mad dashes down crowded hallways to deliver reports and proposals. Yor must have tripped somewhere along the way knowing how clumsy she could be. It would explain the scrape on her right knee.
Twilight didn’t allow himself to think anything else of it. He'd crumble the very second he did.
“May I go into your room, Yor?”
She seemed to have enough energy left to flinch at the otherwise innocent query. “I’m sorry?”
“Your clothes. Surely you weren’t thinking of changing without me tending to your…?” He could not bring himself to say it. To speak the very thing into existence would mean acknowledging the suppositions he had previously dismissed as soon as they were conceived.
Twilight, insisting that she give in to his request, kept his hands on her knees as looked up at her imploringly. The more she turned his words in her head, the more flustered she became. The implication made the hairs on the back of Twilight’s neck stand. Surely, she wasn’t thinking something so unseemly.
He counted the moles dotting along the sides of her face and neck—five—as she pondered the question, connecting them to constellations he’d read about as a boy.
Cassiopeia—Queen of Ethiopia. Boastful and vain, she had boasted that she and her daughter, Andromeda, were more beautiful than the Nereids. Angered by Cassopeia’s remarks, Poseidon, god of the sea, had unleashed a disgustingly powerful sea creature, Cetus, onto her kingdom. Ethiopia would sacrifice Andromeda to the beast by chaining her to a boulder by the sea to restore order to the kingdom.
Twilight pondered the tale—the bonds between a mother and her child, the consequence of vanity, the peace offering that is a daughter. He thinks of Cassiopeia and Andromeda, Yor and Anya. The hero Perseus, who had rode upon the Flying Horse to save the princess, would cease to exist. Had Yor been Cassopeia, Twilight knew, she alone could have protected Andromeda. There would be no need for epic knights in shining armor. A mother would have been enough.
Twilight imagined a woman with Yor’s features—a pale woman with a black cape for hair, pursed red lips, crows feet at her eyes. He thought about a mother, about death, and the selfishness in succumbing to it. Does Yor forgive her mother? Does he forgive his own?
And perhaps Yor had been Andromeda this entire time, chained against a rock as the sea rages and tears her hosiery, her skirt, her skin. Her kingdom—the house she once knew with the iron fences and rose bushes— was reduced to rubble by manmade terrors unbeknownst to myths and their slithery beasts. Only a cellar with a frightened boy cowered in its dark corners remained, waiting for his dear sister to come back.
Yor didn’t need a Perseus to fight this battle for her. But maybe, Twilight naively supposed, it wouldn’t be so bad to have one fight alongside her. A Perseus to patch her wounds. A Perseus to listen and to hold her when words succumbed to sobs.
"There’s a nightgown folded on my bed,” she instructed carefully, voice hoarse, as if it were some secret mission.
“Alright.”
“My pillows and blanket too, if you could.” She bit her bottom lip, thinking a request as simple as that could be a burden to him. “I think I’d like to sleep here tonight.”
“I can carry you to your bed, you know.”
“I’m so heavy, and—”
“Light as a feather.”
“But if you touch me again, Loid, who knows what I’ll do? I could kick you, or, or… I could slap you! You’d definitely bruise or bleed.” She was hysterical. From blood loss? Fatigue? “And if I melt?”
Twilight raised a brow, amused. “Melt?”
“Yes. If you touch me again, I fear my flesh might slide right off my bones. Might turn to goo.” Yor looked down at her lap, making sure that she was still all together. Then, she imagined herself liquified—a wash of taupe and pinks sluiced over the carpet—and gasped. “It would take forever to clean me up.”
Yor shifted on the couch, letting all of her weight fall to one side. Her eyes fluttered shut.
The entire room stilled. An austere foreboding, cold and misty, crept into the chasm that separated them. Moonlight caught in the dark curtain of her undone hair, sanctifying her with faint halation. Twilight clasped his hands together and called upon the angels—pulled them down by those golden threads stitched to billowing clouds— to do everything in their power to keep Yor awake.
“You mustn't fall asleep,” he said. “Not until I’ve dressed you.”
“Just a little tired.”
“Yes, darling, I know,” cooed Twilight, slipping her hand in his. He rubbed the smooth swath of skin above her knuckles with his thumb, absolving her of the unspoken remorse that was written all over her, that was slashed onto her back. He would take it from her. He would bear it all. “It will only take me a moment.”
The fondness that he never knew he could possess with Yor shocked him, terrified him. What would be more difficult, he wondered? To turn his shoulder and leave this sentimental mood? Or for a subliminal confession he so desperately wanted her to understand to plague her mind?
Every red flag was raised and yet here he was, groveling before his fallen Madonna. One word and it would be done. Yes—Twilight took that risk, a leap of faith. He chose the latter—the novelty of infatuation, of being completely and thoroughly consumed by the off-chance that Yor, too, harbored symptoms of a heart starved of the kind of feelings reserved for two.
Yor swallowed thick and squeezed his hand weakly. She nodded, and Twilight, the ever loyal husband, obeyed her command.
Quickly, he minced to his room, careful to not wake Anya. Underneath his bed was his personal first aid kit of gauze, sterilized needles, tourniquets, adhesive plaster, tweezers, wound washes, and antibiotic creams in a worn cardboard box so cleverly labeled “TOOLS'' in hasty print. Somehow one of Anya’s pink star-printed bandaids had made its way inside. The alarms went off in Twilight’s mind before he remembered that he had absently slipped an extra band aid that was in his pocket in there after he had patched up Anya’s knee. (Just the other weekend, she had somehow fallen off a bicycle with training wheels. It was an understated art how kids seemed to find the danger in otherwise safe devices.) He gathered an arm-full of these things and pushed past his bedroom door with his back.
Then, Twilight’s hand hovered over the doorknob of Yor’s bedroom, bracing himself for the metaphorical crossing between flatmates and something more. Her room, steeped in the indigo night, pulled him in before he could reconsider. The lace curtains billowed out toward him, swathed him in dove white. Before he knew it, he was caught in a whir of Yor.
This room was indisputably her. It was furnished simply: a bed, a dresser, a cabinet, and a vanity. A patched pilled quilt Twilight presumed had been from her childhood was tightly tucked down under the sides of her mattress. Her uniform—an impeccably ironed button down, a green vest and skirt—hung from a hanger on the corner of her cabinet. Anya seemed to imprint herself here too; another fox plush toy sat against her fluffed pillows, waiting to be cozied up against a warm, beating heart. Adorned on the walls were not posters or prints, but rather Anya originals in crayon, pastel, pencil, and acrylic.
Yor didn’t seem to hold on to a lot of things—or perhaps there wasn’t a lot of things to hold on to—before she lived here, but he knew by the multiplying photo frames—water-stained shots of Yuri, Forger and Briar family portraits, picture day at Eden Academy— that slowly, she was carving a permanent home here.
Capless tubes of lipstick—reds, pinks, nudes— were strewn across her vanity along with ticket stubs to matinees they’d seen together after work. Lacquered dishes with tableaus of rolling fields and carnivals held her precious pearls, her golds, her handmade beaded bracelets. A green perfume bottle with a tasseled pump spray shimmered under starlight. Like a gem, its glean enchanted him into a sandalwood-induced stupor.
Twilight stared into the looking glass as a mirage of Yor nimbly braided her hair into a neat side-plait. She patted her face with loose powder and slid pink lipstick over puckered lips. Yor then dabbed the pad of her finger on rouge, dotting along the curves of her cheekbones and tapping the excess at the corners of her eyes. So mundane was the act, so effortless and easy, that Twilight felt apologetic for having peered into such a private ritual.
Clearly, he had overstayed his welcome. Twilight nearly tripped over his feet as he moved to gather her beige nightgown and pillows, refusing to let curiosity get the better of him. Beneath her pillows, however, was a familiar trinket.
His engagement ring to her—that grenade pin! Twilight was unsure why she had decided to keep it after all of this time: he had wedded her properly thereafter with golden bands and bridal bouquets. He blushed immediately at the prospect that Yor wanted him to see it. Though slim, there was still the statistical probability that her request for her pillows was a subtle declaration of love—that the ring signified everything she had locked away in her heart and in his own. Could she have planned this? Left the ring under her pillow that morning for him to find? Did she anticipate working off hours so late into the evening? Orchestrate this entire scenario down to the last cut?
It was no accident, this much he knew. But how else would one rationalize those injuries? Why was she soaked when it had stopped raining hours ago? If someone had attacked her tonight, did she not have enough trust to confide in him? If she did not care enough to tell him, then what was that grenade pin doing under her pillow?
Twilight all but stumbled out of her room. He was WISE’s most cunning agent—its most calm and calculated—yet his mind could not quite wrap itself around the idea of Yor potentially reciprocating the feeling he knew he had concealed in some taped-up cardboard box tucked away in his house of bones. There, compartmentalized, were all of the trinkets he thought he'd forgotten: wooden guns, jazz records, a bloodied eyepatch, and burned polaroids. Underneath the old items lay a letter with his heart, scrawled and signed with a name long discarded:
Yor,
I love you most ardently.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
Rowan
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Wound wash in popcorn bowls. Heart-printed face towels for rags. Gauze cut by pink blunt-tip kiddie scissors. A wife in tatters and a husband desperately attempting to stitch the remnants back together.
“I have to—”
“You can't.”
And for five minutes, they exchanged various iterations of these very words. Yor had managed to unbutton the first three buttons of her blouse before stubbornly crossing her arms over her chest, refusing any treatment from Twilight.
Twilight scooted to the edge of the wooden table he sat on, close enough for their knees to nudge. Their eyes met briefly.
Yor much preferred the Moon’s gaze. Moonglow, Twilight figured, could not touch Yor in those damning ways she'd come to know about during the war or in cautionary tales. It could not bruise, breach, break skin. It could not promise her love but at least it gave her assurance of forever. And who was Twilight to contend?
“Yor,” he started futilely, voice softer than he would have liked, “you can trust me.”
The words, like steam, evaporated from her tongue. She clutched the bust of her blouse shut.
“I do.” She was red in the face. He could feel her jittering. “It's just—oh!—I don't know! You weren't supposed to… No, not like this.”
“I’ll close my eyes, touch you only where I should. I’ll be gentle, quick, so please,” plead Twilight, weary and desperate, “let me care for you.”
“You've cared for me the entire night—every day I’ve lived with you. You've welcomed me so into your home, your family, and yet here I am,” she rasped, voice caught on a chord, “proving time and time again that I—”
Twilight's heart dropped to his belly; he felt as though he ought to apologize. For what, he was unsure. There must have been some kind of shortcoming from within him if Yor was unable to articulate her troubles.
Her vagueness, though, seemed purposeful: she would trail off before giving him any indication as to where the root of her problems lay. Twilight secretly thanked her for it. They could, even for a while longer, keep up this charade. He could still love her with her back turned—love her in sight.
“You’ll hate me,” whispered Yor. “You'll despise me. I know it.”
“There’s nothing in this world that could ever make me hate you.” The statement unknowingly gave way to the garden tucked away underneath the surface of his skin. Could she smell the roses on him? The freesias? Yor could not be so dense to not understand his heart with the way he leapt at her assumption, fitting himself to the gentle carve of her profile. Twilight is close, so close that he catches the moon’s glimmer on her eyelashes. He resists the temptation to eclipse it with a kiss.
“You wouldn't understand.”
“Then help me to.” Twilight just could not stop at words, no. When did his hand connect with her knee? When did his fingers move to guide her face back to him?
Yor forced herself to look once more at his gaze, agonizingly adamantine. Resolute. She began the process of unbuttoning her shirt once more, keeping her eyes trained on him.
“Anya grew out of her pajamas, you know,” he droned—a distraction—as he anxiously watched the tips of her fingers. “Wrists and ankles and all. They’re poking out the sleeves. I was thinking,” Twilight swallows thickly, “we should all go out this weekend. Buy some new clothes for her.”
Yor stilled, staring at him with unblinking eyes. She bit her lip and, almost as if to present herself to him, laid her hands beside her thighs. The dark sweep of her hair fell over the hunch of her shoulders. Twilight followed its movement.
Anger was a lit match that burned through the sprawling cord that maps over the expanse of her skin. He stared at the curve of the chest, her heart. Twilight traced the long jagged line of white raised skin down to her right side. Pink stars exploded and dwindled down her hip, dying dust disappearing underneath the waistband of her skirt.
Twilight could stitch a disjointed timeline from the color of her scars alone: faded cat-scratches from her childhood, raised cuts from debris, bullet wounds red and unforgiving, and knife lacerations that had just begun to scab over washes of blue and purple.
Perhaps she could see it on his face, his steely countenance. He had become all hard edges and wrinkles as he scrutinized the marred canvas of her skin. The irony was cruel. Yor, always so gracious, so kind, was seamed with silvery stitches, stained with colors that belonged on sprigs. He was in pieces.
“They grow up so fast,” said Yor wistfully, almost as if to lament the skin she had no choice in claiming. “They come and they go, don’t they?”
Twilight knew all too well that her words meant much more. Yes, he wanted to say, we did. And he’d hold her the way his mother had when days were brighter—the way he holds his daughter now. He’d hold the girl as long as she needed to be held: late into the morning, late for work; in the afternoon when the sun laid over them thickly; into dusk with the stars shut off, dark and still.
There were things Twilight could never understand about Yor, things that she would never divulge to him. But there was nothing as certain and true as the kindness of skin, of a hand over hers, of a brush on the curve of her cheek.
“I’m going to take your…” Bra felt too vulgar of a word. He improvised. “This off.”
Resigned from her initial embarrassment, Yor simply nodded, moving to rest her chin on Twilight’s shoulder. She held onto the sides of his shirt, a half-hug.
Faceless women. Powdery perfume. Wine-stained lips agape, mouthing different names on the nape of his neck. Bodies full in contour, stuffed with down in all the places meant for squeezing. It was muscle memory at this point—the snap of a clasp, the inevitable plunge into passion, and the hangover in the morning. But when it came to Yor, he couldn’t help but feel as though it was an act most sacred. There was no other urge than to press her wholly against him, to feel the pressure of her entire being on him as he wraps his arms around her, merging into one. Deeper than lust, than desire. This much, he longed for Yor Briar.
The straps slid off her shoulders, leaving pink indents in her flesh. His mind blanked. He stopped breathing.
Hands moved on their own, wetting towels in washes, laving it over her back. She’d wince. He’d whisper something sweet. Rinse and repeat. He created a cage out of action, keeping all thoughts and emotion locked away.
“Is it bad?” she asked.
“Not so bad,” Twilight assured. “Nothing that needs stitches, at least.”
“Oh.” It was empty exchanges like this as more and more questions hung over them. Together they cowered under their weight.
“I know that this is… uncomfortable.” It was awkward, to say the least. He tended to her back, arms rigid so as to not touch her more than he needed to. She leaned forward, chest to chest, so that he could somewhat peer over her shoulder to see what he was doing. Skinship didn’t seem to bother her—rather, she was too exhausted to care or give it any deeper thought. The turmoil within Twilight, though, waged. “Just a while longer. I need to dress your wound. You’ve been a very good patient up to now.”
“I’ve been good?” It warranted a chuckle from Yor.
Twilight flushed, conscious of his entire existence. Too embarrassed by his words, he froze, hands dropping down to the small of her back. “Are you…making fun of me?”
“No. Not at all.” She laughed halfheartedly once more, pulling back slightly to look at him. “So this is what you’re like with your patients. You’re kind and your hands are warm. It’s hard to not like you.”
“Oh, please.” Briefly, he met her gaze, tore from her immediately once he remembered the precarious position they found themselves in. He looked past her. He would be a gentleman.
“That’s who you are. You’re warm wherever you go. You’re warm when you’re here, warm when you’re away.” He looked past her even as she moved to touch his face. “You’re warm even now, when I’ve been so cold. Yes, I’ve been cold to you, haven’t I?”
He said her name, so he thought. She closed her eyes. All it took was this for Twilight see her for who she was. Goodness, through and through.
“Sometimes I think… I think I was born like this. Cold-blooded. ” A beat of silence. “That I might be the way I am forever.”
“I know you, Yor.” He blazed a trail to the side of her face, flames lapping her skin. She shuddered as he whispered low against her ear, lips brushing with every word. “I know you. And if... If you're cold now,” Twilight said, “I'll wrap your blanket around you.” It sounded like a promise—one Yor was sure she would not be able to keep.
“That's the thing.” She shook her head. “I’m not so sure you do.”
This he could not refute. Her past was a mystery to him. Dead parents and a younger brother. She had only herself. Twilight often chose not to speculate about her life; he knew he’d go down a downward spiral coming up with many iterations of her girlhood—rather, lack thereof. What kind of jobs did she take to support her younger brother? Who did she meet? How did she remain soft despite it all—the war that had unknowingly brought them together?
How did she get hurt tonight?
Who had hurt her?
Her eyes, glassy, stared at him in resignation. “I’m scared, Loid. Terrified that one day, you'll come to realize who I truly am."
Yes, he did not know the crucial makings of Yor. Didn’t know the smell of her childhood bedroom. The names of lovesick suitors that, over the years, tried to win her hand. He didn’t know the stations she’d tune in to as a girl on lazy Sunday afternoons under the syrup sun when all the initial excitement of the weekend had worn off. But what Twilight did know was the scent of her shampoo as they drove down cobblestone paths, top down, hair tickling his face as she watched the scrolling scenery in awe. He knew the way her face would glow as she smiled, how everything about her flowered. The feelings Anya, he harbored were certain. Wasn’t this enough?
Twilight gently wrapped around her. It was the best he could do despite the uncertainties that continued to gnaw at him. She melded into him, and, perhaps swept by the moment, did exactly what he had been thinking of doing the entire night.
They kindled, and the fire spread.
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It was relatively quiet as he cared for Yor. The small cuts she visibly had on her arms were covered in Anya’s pastel bandaids. He tied the wedding white gauze around her bust as if it were a ribbon to a gown. She was pink in the night, hot with pining much like Twilight.
Sucking on a breath, Yor raised her worn arms as Twilight slipped her nightgown over her head.
“You’re staying home tomorrow. No ifs or buts,” he directed as he slipped her skirt off from underneath.
Yor hummed in compliance, refusing to look him in the eye, refusing to acknowledge the audacity of that act of utmost affinity—the chaste press of lips.
Twilight was no better. He’d gone too soft, sappy. Too stupid. To make up for the many missteps of the night, he would be calm, collected. The anger and contentment conflicting within him would have to wait until he’s in the confines of his room where he could turn in his bed over thoughts of Yor.
He tossed the blood-soaked rags in the bowl and stood up, moving to position her pillow near the arm of the sofa so that she could finally lay. Twilight pulled the pilled quilt from her room over her body. She looked so small, so snug.
“You were out in the rain too. You most definitely caught a cold.”
“Definitely?”
“Yes.” Twilight swept his palm over her forehead. “Definitely. I’ll be here with you, though. I need you there with me this time. I need you strong when you see how fast Anya has grown.”
“It must have been hard on your own, seeing Anya grow.” Yor smiled with mirth and his heart swelled. He looked away, lifted his chin, and cleared his throat. “I’ve always been strong, though, so you don't have to worry—"
“No,” he interjected, a little too strongly. He kneeled down next to her, and he said, in the most tender voice he could muster, “Did you forget that you’re married? Married to me?”
“I didn’t,” she mumbled timidly. “But there's no one here to watch us. Nothing to prove to anyone.”
With a knowing smile, Twilight responded, “Precisely.” Yor blushed, turning to the other side to face away from him. He reached out one last time before retracting his hand out of contemplated bashfulness. “Get some rest. I’ll be in my room reading. Don’t hesitate to call out to me if there’s anything you need, alright?”
He waited ten heartbeats, waited for a last minute request. Waited to hear the inflection of her voice just before she’s taken by slumber—the voice that would lull him to rose-scented dreams.
As he got up, he imagined that she had said his name. Then, again, “Loid?”
“Yes?”
Her back was still turned away from him, face toward the back cushions.
“I’ve got so much to tell you, but I don't know where to begin."
“We’ve got the morning,” he told her, himself. “We’ve got the rest of our lives for me to learn all of you.”
Yor turned to him. Twilight bowed before her, laced their hands together. She squeezed.
"For now," Yor said, closing her eyes, "thank you."
He leaned down and tucked a flower behind her ear. A wind overtakes them. Pink petals flitted.
