"I think I've grown to love you, Magda. Not in the way you deserve, but in the best way I can. And I'd be yours, if you'll have me that is."
She isn’t sure what to say to that revelation, but it’s certainly not the implication of silence. It hadn’t started out this way, it was never supposed to evolve into anything beyond the camaraderie they had, and yet there they both are, toeing a dangerously thin line between one and the other. Magda didn’t expect to say it. She thought they could just carry on in their own little way, warm and together but without labels and without that accursed word.
Love is the complication that neither of them need. She’s been in love before, still is in love, in fact, with a rosy cheeked boy from Dusseldorf, but look where that love got her. She’s still bleeding inwardly from the loss of that man, still sore and scarred from burying their child and watching him lay ruin to all concept of the word fidelity. Magda had vowed she wouldn’t love anyone else, she’d sworn it, in blood and sweat and tears, because she couldn’t suffer that agony again. But then there was Charles. Dear, sweet, obscenely stubborn Charles - and that called into question everything else.
He wasn’t perfect, but maybe that was part of the appeal. She’d seen him at his worst and still she’d stayed. The anger, the frustration, the hurt and the fear. She’d seen it all, but through that trauma she could see the little cracks in his cocoon, the wall he was hiding behind toppling down brick by brick. How many times had they just sat and talked? How many times had she tentatively coerced laughter from his lips and a wry sense of wit she’d thought was long since dead and buried? She’d do anything to keep that smile on his face, to stop him from rebuilding that isolating barricade to keep everyone out.
Magda cares too much and that will be her downfall. It’s ridiculous to deny it isn’t it? To tell him that she doesn’t feel the same and walk away, when she’s almost certain the action would grind whatever’s left of an already broken heart to dust. She can’t pretend that the touches haven’t been more frequent, that she hasn’t found reasons to spend time with him and revelled in the joy of careful proximity. Her embraces are near permanent, a kiss to his forehead often becoming one to the cheek and even on occasion the daring touch of his mouth.
“Charles I…” She has to speak, she can’t leave him hanging there without an answer, but the conflict of interest is gnawing at her. Her fingers subconsciously trace the ring on her finger, the ring she refuses to take off because to her it means something, it’s more than a legal bond, but one of lifelong promises. It’s the hope for something that comes after the darkness, the comfort that serves as a reminder that once upon a time, somebody wanted her, that somebody loved her and didn’t think she was just another stain.
Maybe now she doesn’t need that reminder. She’s got the tangible proof of such sentiments sitting right in front of her, but oh how it makes her heart ache. Magda doesn’t look at him for the longest moment, she just stays silent and still, processing it, trying to encapsulate what she feels and whether or not it constitutes a sin to move on. She hasn’t felt lonely for a second in the weeks they’ve spent together, hasn’t felt lost or surplus to any requirement. She’s felt loved, first and foremost but more importantly she’s come to feel much the same way about Charles.
A caramel coloured hand reaches out for his own as she settles beside him, fingers lacing with that damnable piece of metal still intact. She’s confused without a doubt, but there’s one very simple, undeniable truth in all of this. “Kocham cię.” The words are quiet, uttered only in that soft little whisper as she turns her glassy eyes towards his face and tries so hard not to cry. Why couldn’t this be simple? Why did something so wonderful also have to hurt so much?
It hasn’t quite dawned on her that she’s allowed to love them both. That in two distinct ways, love evolves over time, it takes shape and changes. She can still care for Erik without being tied to him indefinitely, and she is more than free to love Charles, because there is no grand crime in love. “Kocham cię.” She says it again, a little louder this time when she’s reaching for his cheeks, thumbs smoothing across unruly stubble when she’s creeping in closer.
It’s quiet and calm when she draws her forehead to his own, when her eyes are watering and she’s settling there nose to nose. Her hands are shaking, lips so close and yet so far as she sounds out that repetitive little mantra. “Kocham cię, Kocham cię, Kocham cię.”
