[ There is nothing that releases in her at this. The opposite, in fact; she turns and curls, knees pulling towards her chest as the wretched thing that made its home in her hears its name and wakes to stretch its claws and whisper expendable to her as it turns to its work of weaving the threads spun from her amorphous fear into something real and solid. ]
But you would love her still, unerringly. And with enough time she would trust it just enough to let you love her, and if she would have you you would go.
[ It's tight, unhappy. ]
And because she would be fearful and suspicious, so recently trusting, she would need the whole of your attention, and you would give it.
[ It is a picture of herself in part, although she can't connect it. He is new to her, she is afraid of trusting because no-one ever stays. It doesn't matter that this woman isn't here, because the thing that makes her truth is saying
See, already lost. ]
I would not blame you.
[ Looks like yours, but see? Remember? Not yours. ]
You're right, [ is what he starts with, after a moment to take that all in because he doesn't know what else to say at the first. ] I would love her unerringly. I don't think I can help it. I don't think I'd want to try.
And you're probably right. With time, she could come to believe me. [ He reaches his arm up to trace along the side of her face, from her temple down to her cheekbone. ] Though, Gods, I doubt she'd ever want the whole of my attention for very long, I drive her mad enough as is. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I don't know her as well as I imagine I do.
Maybe she would ask that of me. [ Loki's fingers spread across her cheek. ]
But I don't think I could give it. Not at the cost of casting you aside.
[ This isn't a matter of... hierarchies or rankings, in his mind. A love is a love is a love; he can't measure them that way, not so soon into having this feeling. He's not sure he'd like to develop that skill at all. ]
It is not a game where there is one or there is nothing.
Perhaps you wouldn't blame me. [ He moves forward, kisses her forehead, before whispering against her skin: ] You'd blame yourself, or decide that you weren't enough and turn away from me, and I wouldn't want either.
[ Her face crumples at the kiss on her forehead; at the words that come after, because she is doing that now. Because once when she was young a Duke's son swore for a year he loved her and then made her nothing, and now she is always looking for clues to see if that is true. And she can always find them. She sews her proof from patches: a word here, a moment there, until she has a quilt that can cover her. ]
You are right, I would. I am.
[ Alexandrie leans into his lips, hand coming up to curl around his where it rests on her cheek. ]
There are a hundred ways I fear to lose you, and I cannot stop myself from living out them all.
[ Hm. His stomach does something unpleasant at her admission; he takes no joy in being right, in this case. He wants to tell her not to, but he knows a similar flavor of self-loathing well enough that demanding it to stop is not the way of things.
One merely has to outlast it. ]
I'm still here. [ Just. So she can focus on that, maybe. ]
I... remember what you smell like. I look at the portrait you drew. I look around at all the unfamiliar things and flex my fingers. I conjure an image of you and I remind myself that I would fight for you.
[ She doesn't know why she can't feel it. Byerly says that too— I'm still here— as if it should make her stop being afraid. Yes, they are here, but here now is not a promise of here in the next moment, and the next moment is the one in which they might suddenly be gone.
It births a new thought: perhaps that isn't the case for everyone. Perhaps for some 'here now' does mean here in the next moment.
She sets it aside for a moment in favor of being reassured because he worries...
And then wonders why it is she feels the fear of loss is better proof of love than presence.
She turns her face into his hand to kiss his palm. Then, curious twice over now, ]
Do you think love is something that is as likely to disappear in the next moment as it is to persist?
[ He doesn't know what's caused her to ask that question but the sense of it, the shape of that query, of that fear, is too familiar. So he pulls his arm out from beneath his head and instead reaches for the hand of the arm she's laying on. This requires contact and closeness, or maybe he just wants those things for himself.
Maybe it doesn't matter which of those is true. ]
I try not to. I tell myself that there are few things that work that way. But it's there, a persistent idea, like the knowledge that I've ruined most everything I've ever cared for, so why would anything else be different?
[ The very fact that it prompts an oath, that it makes Loki shift to reach for her, tells her the new little thought was right: this is a broken thing.
It calms her to think she might be wrong.
Alexandrie inches herself closer until the space between their faces is just enough to allow for their new handhold between them. ]
His lips quirk up in one of his half-smiles. He likes it when they're close like this, even if the topic could be less fraught. ]
We're quite the matched pair.
[ When hasn't he ruined something out of fear? When hasn't he allowed his secret terrors to undermine just about any and everything good he's ever touched? ]
I would fight for you, [ he reminds her. ] Even against your fears. Even against my own.
[ She is soft again, now, having been gently disentangled from the beast of her terror by the simple truths she did not want to hear lending weight to those she does; by his hands on her, his reach for her, the new idea that perhaps I'm still here actually does mean something. ]
So shall I, for you.
[ Alexandrie lifts the hand that presses his to her cheek so she can reach for the side of his face to stroke it with light fingers. ]
I do not keep you for a placeholder, or love you only for the form and voice you share. Should my lord come back to me, he shall find himself obliged to make room.
[ A lean to touch their noses, then farther, fingertips tracing the line of his jaw as she presses her lips to his for a slow and lingering kiss. Murmured there after: ]
But I have greeted you poorly.
Shall I arrange you a bath? [ Her hand wanders from jaw down neck to spread fingers on Loki's chest. ] Or welcome you home properly?
[ The passing of the tumultuous wave in the ocean of her leaves room for her to remember in the lull that a week had been too long a time of having hands that were not on him, and she is not too sleepy to want. ]
[ He looks at her with some sort of startled awe when she tells him that he's not a placeholder, that her feelings are based in something, about something more than just his familiarity and the fact that he's a variant on a theme she already loves, a thought/fear/concern he's been careful not to express.
Because he was fine with it. It was enough. It was love, and he'd accept it, whatever it's terms.
Alexandrie kisses him, and he blinks before letting his eyes shut; Loki does kiss her back but he's clearly still processing what she's said and what it means to him for her to have said it, even after the kiss has ended and she's asking him a question. ]
Both, [ he answers, and then shakes his head a little. ] You haven't greeted me poorly.
[ Alexandrie is smiling, just beginning to pull away to slide out from between the sheets and into a dressing gown so she can see to heating water when she reaches a position where the light falls on him and she can see the whole of his expression, the way it looks like he does not seem to know how to hold that she loves him and she no longer wants to leave. Not even for the moment it would take to ring for Byron.
Without looking away she slowly settles down again, enough distance between them that she can watch his face, the hand that had half moved from his returning to the hold while her body keens with want of holding more.
[ Their fingers lace together as Loki opens his mouth to say something, draws breath, stops. He is tripping, falling over his own feelings for her, about her, and he has no idea where the bottom is.
But she does this, to him.
Maybe he should be used to it by now. ] No. [ As much a reply to that thought as it is a reply to her question.
He needs to pull himself together, here, and give her some kind of a proper answer. ] I thought... hm. [ He swallows, but doesn't break eye contact. ] That the familiarity helped, certainly, and that it didn't matter if that's what it was. All it was. Familiarity.
[ She has told him she's wished to know him, separate and individually from her husband and all their myriad similarities, and yet he's realizing he never fully internalized that concept until now. The idea that it could mean her husband returned and he was more than just a person Alexandrie shared history with?
He'd convinced himself that even if he did nothing wrong, that there was a possibility that was how it was going to shake out in the end. She'd get her husband back and he'd be extraneous, then. ]
Every time you offer me more than I expect and I... You say you've greeted me poorly and all I can think is that you've never done anything in the slightest poorly by my measure.
[ It's close but not an exact mark of what he's thinking and feeling in the moment. Mostly his brain is furiously trying to find the crack in what she's said, the place where he can resettle into his understanding of how he ends up alone anyway.
The misery of this thought process combined with the fact that they're close enough for him to still smell her perfume in the space between them go at war with one another in the line of his shoulders unhappily curling inward. ]
[ Pleasant words, for such a movement— that she has done nothing poorly— but in them, and in the ones that came before...
The only reason Alexandrie can think of that would make it not matter if she only loved the echo of her missing lord in him, that any else she offers is more than he expects, is that what Loki has learned to expect is famine. That he has lived by picking the pockets of love and slipping moments of warmth into his sleeves as he passes it and rather than railing at the ache of its loneliness he has come instead to believe this is his due.
Never.
Never, never, never again— she will never let this thing be truth again. The force of the feeling is in her body, the swift sure way she moves higher on the pillows so she can hug his head and shoulders to her chest and curl around them to press her nose and lips into the salt spray smell of his hair.
Surely there are words for this; she doesn't know them yet beyond an urgent whisper of ] That is not all it is.
[ There's no hesitance as he's pulled towards her, settling his head against her chest and letting out a noisy, shaky breath. The hand not in hers settles somewhere in her lap, fingers splayed out against the fabric of her nightgown. He feels so unsettled, so upset by this that it all feels foolish. He feels foolish, annoying beyond that, and tired of it all besides, but taking breaths and reminding himself that they are both here in the now helps, a little.
Her tone helps to an even greater degree.
He wants to say I don't know what's wrong with me, but that is not entirely true. He knows himself to be a broken and complicated sort of thing. There's a feeling of regret that instead of being happy like any normal person here he is... doing whatever this is. Feeling sorry for himself, perhaps, or being afraid of the very thing he wanted. ]
I believe you, [ seems like an important distinction to make right now. ] But part of me doesn't understand why.
[ Not why he believes her, but why it would be true to begin with. ]
[ Asked softly, still, although without the urgency of her first words. Her free hand is in his hair, patiently working through wind-tangles as she strokes her fingers through the strands.
The shake in his breath had made her heart squeeze unhappily in her chest, had burned away everything but the desire to cover him as a blanket might: keeping what warmth there was safe from the cold that snatched at it, whatever that cold might be. She doesn't know the whole of it, but she knows some; knows his birth father had left him to die, knows the long shadow his adoptive brother had cast, the lengths he had gone to in order to emerge from it...
And she knows the sharp and incredulous way her lord had laughed at the idea of her loving him, his uneasy ungainly softness when she had persisted.
Even in the middle of her own terrified fluttering it had broken her heart then, too. ]
I could tell you, [ she speaks against his hair. ] I could tell you down to the way you still when you are thinking, the way your fingers spread as if you could hold what you speak of when it excites you; but it will only be so much breath if you cannot understand for yourself why what I love in you should be worth loving, and you must understand in order to be loved.
That part of him would like to be indulged, surely, but. What would be the end result? Disbelief, probably, or an assurance that he has no control over whether or not she finds these parts of him worthy of love.
He could just trust her, instead. Terrifying, truly, but that emotion has rarely stopped him before. ]
Must I? [ Loki asks instead. ] Can't I just accept it? [ A strange miracle but a miracle nonetheless, surely. For a god who never practiced them. For a man who feels undeserving. He shuts his eyes and leans into her touch, the rhythmic pattern of her fingers in his hair. ] I don't want to ruin this, [ he whispers. It means so much more than he can hope to craft pretty words about. ]
[ There is a long silence while Alexandrie weighs the truth of what her mind had leapt to wanting to say. To make sure she does not borrow overmuch from the years of love she had known from another. To make sure it is his; for above all else she cannot lie to him in this. Above all else she cannot offer such a shelter and have it be made of anything that she knows might fall.
In the meantime her hand continues its movement. Her other holds his. She breathes slowly, tries to catch the scent of him beneath the sea.
And when she thinks it true, she whispers back ]
You cannot ruin this. Not if you love me.
[ She shakes her head only enough that her nose stirs his hair a bit before she settles again. ]
There will be storms, and waves— some like to crack the bow— but love me as constant as I will love you and we will find our way back always.
[ As she waits to answer Loki tries to quiet his mind's unruly gathering of thoughts. That she will tell him how he might ruin things and in that list, he will find something he knows will come to pass, knows himself capable of. Or she'll promise that he hasn't, yet, and perhaps that means
Alexandrie doesn't give him a list; instead, she tells him something his mind states is frankly impossible. But if he's believed her thus far doesn't that mean he has to believe her now?
Loki thinks to raise his head, to look her in the eye and see if... if what? She's lying? Instead, he sighs, closing his eyes and feeling her fingers with his. Her breath on his hair. Holds it, fragile as it is, this idea that he can't fuck it up as long as he loves her.
(People fall out of love sometimes. He knows this; he's not thinking about it. He doesn't think that he would, anyway. Doesn't think he's made that way.)
She has only told him the truth, this far, unless she's a better liesmith than he is. And if she is? He deserves it.
If she's not?
A small sigh, and then: ]
I do love you.
[ Still frightening, but. If so. He can't ruin it.
[ Hearing him say so makes her soft, makes her close her eyes and curl a little closer around him, her hand stilling in his hair so she can simply hold.
This is where she leaves things, so often; with the assumption that the way her body responds is enough truth told about her heart, a relic of the time when words and promises meant nothing.
But her body had meant nothing too. It had been as schooled, as crafted— a doll she moved to tell stories with down to the flush in her cheeks, the pound of her heart. Artifice, all. If her body can be salvaged her words can too, and she thinks perhaps he is as starved for them as she so often is.
So, quietly: ]
You cannot know, I think, what it means to me to hear so. How high I hold the value of your heart. How well I know how fearful it is to hold it out for someone else to touch after a life of learning nothing comes of that but breaking.
It is everything to me, [ she says, quieter still, a catch in her voice that she does nothing to remedy. ] You are everything.
My heart feels like a strange thing for anyone to hold value in.
[ Because he's done nothing but betray those that would have existed within its walls, and even as he's struggling daily to do something else, anything else, he is tired, and he is afraid that it will all be for naught in the end.
Still. He swallows, and shakes his head, shifting so he can sit up to actually look at her now. ]
I trust you with it more than I trust myself, however, and I would kill to keep any value in your eyes. [ He lifts their hands together and lets go just to press his lips to her palm, letting his eyes close again. ] I have never tried to love anyone before, it has always just... occurred; I am certain I will make mistakes.
[ For a moment she can smell the night blooming flowers of Minrathous, so strong is the memory that comes.
I will do poorly at this, you realize? the man she will marry is saying— his accent slightly different, the look in his eyes almost the same— You do not mind?
She cannot help but say it softly to them both, cannot stop the swift well and fall of a few tears even as she smiles. ]
[ He opens his eyes as she speaks again, and he doesn't know why she's crying, but he can imagine any number of scenarios and sometimes... often knowing 'why' doesn't change the nature of a thing, and so he doesn't ask.
He does, however, move his hand so that he can catch one of her tears with his thumb. ]
You're so patient with me, [ comes out quietly. He's always surprised by that about her, especially after a lifetime of never being good enough. ]
[ The tears have stopped, but Alexandrie knows well enough how many of them she contains. ]
You do so much for me and I fear you count it little— or not at all— because it is not born out of great effort or sacrifice; it simply grows from who you are as my patience with you— which seems a thing of wonder to you— grows from me.
[ Loki blinks in surprise at this evaluation of his behaviors and understandings because it's true, with a sort of frightening accuracy; he doesn't see it as difficult or even worthy of much consideration because it comes so easily to him to care about her, and to be patient with her.
She loves her husband and doesn't know if she's a widow or simply a wife during wartime. She loves him, for reasons expressed and unfathomable. How could he not be patient? How could he not care? ]
Sometimes we speak and it's not dissimilar from what I imagine listening to my own thoughts come spilling out in your voice would be. [ It's like a mirror of himself in a very... different way from Sylvie. Sylvie is like him but changed by experiences into something different. Someone different, someone stronger, someone with less smooth edges and no veneer at all to herself. Alexandrie is like him and shaped by those experiences to become something that looks and sounds and thinks as he does. ]
[ Her hand moves in his hair again, a gentle stroke that pulls a little at the end. ]
It was so, [ she muses softly, ] with him. We were different then; heartless with the fear of having hearts, capable of so much cruelty to get our hands on power that we thought would make us safe from the wounds that pained us even as we would not admit we bled.
[ A smile, as soft as her voice. ]
Scared, when we loved.
We grew together, in step as the finest set of carriage horses.
[ A long inhale through her nose, the quiet sigh of its release through parted lips. ]
And then he was gone, and I changed alone. A great deal.
And now you are here, and somehow we have found ourselves in step.
[ She looks down at Loki and smiles again, a thing of curious wonder this time. ]
I do not know how or why, but I do not need to any more than I need to know how stars are made to think them beautiful.
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no subject
But you would love her still, unerringly. And with enough time she would trust it just enough to let you love her, and if she would have you you would go.
[ It's tight, unhappy. ]
And because she would be fearful and suspicious, so recently trusting, she would need the whole of your attention, and you would give it.
[ It is a picture of herself in part, although she can't connect it. He is new to her, she is afraid of trusting because no-one ever stays. It doesn't matter that this woman isn't here, because the thing that makes her truth is saying
See, already lost. ]
I would not blame you.
[ Looks like yours, but see? Remember? Not yours. ]
no subject
And you're probably right. With time, she could come to believe me. [ He reaches his arm up to trace along the side of her face, from her temple down to her cheekbone. ] Though, Gods, I doubt she'd ever want the whole of my attention for very long, I drive her mad enough as is. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I don't know her as well as I imagine I do.
Maybe she would ask that of me. [ Loki's fingers spread across her cheek. ]
But I don't think I could give it. Not at the cost of casting you aside.
[ This isn't a matter of... hierarchies or rankings, in his mind. A love is a love is a love; he can't measure them that way, not so soon into having this feeling. He's not sure he'd like to develop that skill at all. ]
It is not a game where there is one or there is nothing.
Perhaps you wouldn't blame me. [ He moves forward, kisses her forehead, before whispering against her skin: ] You'd blame yourself, or decide that you weren't enough and turn away from me, and I wouldn't want either.
no subject
You are right, I would. I am.
[ Alexandrie leans into his lips, hand coming up to curl around his where it rests on her cheek. ]
There are a hundred ways I fear to lose you, and I cannot stop myself from living out them all.
[ She shakes her head a little, whispers— ]
What do you do, with your nightmares.
no subject
One merely has to outlast it. ]
I'm still here. [ Just. So she can focus on that, maybe. ]
I... remember what you smell like. I look at the portrait you drew. I look around at all the unfamiliar things and flex my fingers. I conjure an image of you and I remind myself that I would fight for you.
no subject
It births a new thought: perhaps that isn't the case for everyone. Perhaps for some 'here now' does mean here in the next moment.
She sets it aside for a moment in favor of being reassured because he worries...
And then wonders why it is she feels the fear of loss is better proof of love than presence.
She turns her face into his hand to kiss his palm. Then, curious twice over now, ]
Do you think love is something that is as likely to disappear in the next moment as it is to persist?
no subject
[ He doesn't know what's caused her to ask that question but the sense of it, the shape of that query, of that fear, is too familiar. So he pulls his arm out from beneath his head and instead reaches for the hand of the arm she's laying on. This requires contact and closeness, or maybe he just wants those things for himself.
Maybe it doesn't matter which of those is true. ]
I try not to. I tell myself that there are few things that work that way. But it's there, a persistent idea, like the knowledge that I've ruined most everything I've ever cared for, so why would anything else be different?
no subject
It calms her to think she might be wrong.
Alexandrie inches herself closer until the space between their faces is just enough to allow for their new handhold between them. ]
I ruin things too, when I am afraid.
[ A tiny smile, a kiss for his hand in hers. ]
I promise I shall speak to you instead.
no subject
That doesn't, for the record, mean that it isn't.
His lips quirk up in one of his half-smiles. He likes it when they're close like this, even if the topic could be less fraught. ]
We're quite the matched pair.
[ When hasn't he ruined something out of fear? When hasn't he allowed his secret terrors to undermine just about any and everything good he's ever touched? ]
I would fight for you, [ he reminds her. ] Even against your fears. Even against my own.
no subject
So shall I, for you.
[ Alexandrie lifts the hand that presses his to her cheek so she can reach for the side of his face to stroke it with light fingers. ]
I do not keep you for a placeholder, or love you only for the form and voice you share. Should my lord come back to me, he shall find himself obliged to make room.
[ A lean to touch their noses, then farther, fingertips tracing the line of his jaw as she presses her lips to his for a slow and lingering kiss. Murmured there after: ]
But I have greeted you poorly.
Shall I arrange you a bath? [ Her hand wanders from jaw down neck to spread fingers on Loki's chest. ] Or welcome you home properly?
[ The passing of the tumultuous wave in the ocean of her leaves room for her to remember in the lull that a week had been too long a time of having hands that were not on him, and she is not too sleepy to want. ]
Both?
no subject
Because he was fine with it. It was enough. It was love, and he'd accept it, whatever it's terms.
Alexandrie kisses him, and he blinks before letting his eyes shut; Loki does kiss her back but he's clearly still processing what she's said and what it means to him for her to have said it, even after the kiss has ended and she's asking him a question. ]
Both, [ he answers, and then shakes his head a little. ] You haven't greeted me poorly.
no subject
Without looking away she slowly settles down again, enough distance between them that she can watch his face, the hand that had half moved from his returning to the hold while her body keens with want of holding more.
She doesn’t yet. She wants to see. ]
No?
no subject
But she does this, to him.
Maybe he should be used to it by now. ] No. [ As much a reply to that thought as it is a reply to her question.
He needs to pull himself together, here, and give her some kind of a proper answer. ] I thought... hm. [ He swallows, but doesn't break eye contact. ] That the familiarity helped, certainly, and that it didn't matter if that's what it was. All it was. Familiarity.
[ She has told him she's wished to know him, separate and individually from her husband and all their myriad similarities, and yet he's realizing he never fully internalized that concept until now. The idea that it could mean her husband returned and he was more than just a person Alexandrie shared history with?
He'd convinced himself that even if he did nothing wrong, that there was a possibility that was how it was going to shake out in the end. She'd get her husband back and he'd be extraneous, then. ]
Every time you offer me more than I expect and I... You say you've greeted me poorly and all I can think is that you've never done anything in the slightest poorly by my measure.
[ It's close but not an exact mark of what he's thinking and feeling in the moment. Mostly his brain is furiously trying to find the crack in what she's said, the place where he can resettle into his understanding of how he ends up alone anyway.
The misery of this thought process combined with the fact that they're close enough for him to still smell her perfume in the space between them go at war with one another in the line of his shoulders unhappily curling inward. ]
no subject
The only reason Alexandrie can think of that would make it not matter if she only loved the echo of her missing lord in him, that any else she offers is more than he expects, is that what Loki has learned to expect is famine. That he has lived by picking the pockets of love and slipping moments of warmth into his sleeves as he passes it and rather than railing at the ache of its loneliness he has come instead to believe this is his due.
Never.
Never, never, never again— she will never let this thing be truth again. The force of the feeling is in her body, the swift sure way she moves higher on the pillows so she can hug his head and shoulders to her chest and curl around them to press her nose and lips into the salt spray smell of his hair.
Surely there are words for this; she doesn't know them yet beyond an urgent whisper of ] That is not all it is.
no subject
Her tone helps to an even greater degree.
He wants to say I don't know what's wrong with me, but that is not entirely true. He knows himself to be a broken and complicated sort of thing. There's a feeling of regret that instead of being happy like any normal person here he is... doing whatever this is. Feeling sorry for himself, perhaps, or being afraid of the very thing he wanted. ]
I believe you, [ seems like an important distinction to make right now. ] But part of me doesn't understand why.
[ Not why he believes her, but why it would be true to begin with. ]
no subject
[ Asked softly, still, although without the urgency of her first words. Her free hand is in his hair, patiently working through wind-tangles as she strokes her fingers through the strands.
The shake in his breath had made her heart squeeze unhappily in her chest, had burned away everything but the desire to cover him as a blanket might: keeping what warmth there was safe from the cold that snatched at it, whatever that cold might be. She doesn't know the whole of it, but she knows some; knows his birth father had left him to die, knows the long shadow his adoptive brother had cast, the lengths he had gone to in order to emerge from it...
And she knows the sharp and incredulous way her lord had laughed at the idea of her loving him, his uneasy ungainly softness when she had persisted.
Even in the middle of her own terrified fluttering it had broken her heart then, too. ]
I could tell you, [ she speaks against his hair. ] I could tell you down to the way you still when you are thinking, the way your fingers spread as if you could hold what you speak of when it excites you; but it will only be so much breath if you cannot understand for yourself why what I love in you should be worth loving, and you must understand in order to be loved.
no subject
[ Does it?
That part of him would like to be indulged, surely, but. What would be the end result? Disbelief, probably, or an assurance that he has no control over whether or not she finds these parts of him worthy of love.
He could just trust her, instead. Terrifying, truly, but that emotion has rarely stopped him before. ]
Must I? [ Loki asks instead. ] Can't I just accept it? [ A strange miracle but a miracle nonetheless, surely. For a god who never practiced them. For a man who feels undeserving. He shuts his eyes and leans into her touch, the rhythmic pattern of her fingers in his hair. ] I don't want to ruin this, [ he whispers. It means so much more than he can hope to craft pretty words about. ]
no subject
In the meantime her hand continues its movement. Her other holds his. She breathes slowly, tries to catch the scent of him beneath the sea.
And when she thinks it true, she whispers back ]
You cannot ruin this. Not if you love me.
[ She shakes her head only enough that her nose stirs his hair a bit before she settles again. ]
There will be storms, and waves— some like to crack the bow— but love me as constant as I will love you and we will find our way back always.
no subject
Alexandrie doesn't give him a list; instead, she tells him something his mind states is frankly impossible. But if he's believed her thus far doesn't that mean he has to believe her now?
Loki thinks to raise his head, to look her in the eye and see if... if what? She's lying? Instead, he sighs, closing his eyes and feeling her fingers with his. Her breath on his hair. Holds it, fragile as it is, this idea that he can't fuck it up as long as he loves her.
(People fall out of love sometimes. He knows this; he's not thinking about it. He doesn't think that he would, anyway. Doesn't think he's made that way.)
She has only told him the truth, this far, unless she's a better liesmith than he is. And if she is? He deserves it.
If she's not?
A small sigh, and then: ]
I do love you.
[ Still frightening, but. If so. He can't ruin it.
What a strange reality to encounter. ]
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This is where she leaves things, so often; with the assumption that the way her body responds is enough truth told about her heart, a relic of the time when words and promises meant nothing.
But her body had meant nothing too. It had been as schooled, as crafted— a doll she moved to tell stories with down to the flush in her cheeks, the pound of her heart. Artifice, all. If her body can be salvaged her words can too, and she thinks perhaps he is as starved for them as she so often is.
So, quietly: ]
You cannot know, I think, what it means to me to hear so. How high I hold the value of your heart. How well I know how fearful it is to hold it out for someone else to touch after a life of learning nothing comes of that but breaking.
It is everything to me, [ she says, quieter still, a catch in her voice that she does nothing to remedy. ] You are everything.
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[ Because he's done nothing but betray those that would have existed within its walls, and even as he's struggling daily to do something else, anything else, he is tired, and he is afraid that it will all be for naught in the end.
Still. He swallows, and shakes his head, shifting so he can sit up to actually look at her now. ]
I trust you with it more than I trust myself, however, and I would kill to keep any value in your eyes. [ He lifts their hands together and lets go just to press his lips to her palm, letting his eyes close again. ] I have never tried to love anyone before, it has always just... occurred; I am certain I will make mistakes.
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I will do poorly at this, you realize? the man she will marry is saying— his accent slightly different, the look in his eyes almost the same— You do not mind?
She cannot help but say it softly to them both, cannot stop the swift well and fall of a few tears even as she smiles. ]
I do not mind.
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He does, however, move his hand so that he can catch one of her tears with his thumb. ]
You're so patient with me, [ comes out quietly. He's always surprised by that about her, especially after a lifetime of never being good enough. ]
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[ She leans into his touch as best she can. ]
You are patient with me too.
[ The tears have stopped, but Alexandrie knows well enough how many of them she contains. ]
You do so much for me and I fear you count it little— or not at all— because it is not born out of great effort or sacrifice; it simply grows from who you are as my patience with you— which seems a thing of wonder to you— grows from me.
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She loves her husband and doesn't know if she's a widow or simply a wife during wartime. She loves him, for reasons expressed and unfathomable. How could he not be patient? How could he not care? ]
Sometimes we speak and it's not dissimilar from what I imagine listening to my own thoughts come spilling out in your voice would be. [ It's like a mirror of himself in a very... different way from Sylvie. Sylvie is like him but changed by experiences into something different. Someone different, someone stronger, someone with less smooth edges and no veneer at all to herself. Alexandrie is like him and shaped by those experiences to become something that looks and sounds and thinks as he does. ]
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[ Her hand moves in his hair again, a gentle stroke that pulls a little at the end. ]
It was so, [ she muses softly, ] with him. We were different then; heartless with the fear of having hearts, capable of so much cruelty to get our hands on power that we thought would make us safe from the wounds that pained us even as we would not admit we bled.
[ A smile, as soft as her voice. ]
Scared, when we loved.
We grew together, in step as the finest set of carriage horses.
[ A long inhale through her nose, the quiet sigh of its release through parted lips. ]
And then he was gone, and I changed alone. A great deal.
And now you are here, and somehow we have found ourselves in step.
[ She looks down at Loki and smiles again, a thing of curious wonder this time. ]
I do not know how or why, but I do not need to any more than I need to know how stars are made to think them beautiful.
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