Work Text:
Evy wakes up with a gasp, sitting up in the bed, frantically trying to remember where they are and what they're supposed to be doing. It takes her a surprisingly long time to realise she's in a real bed – her own, too – and that Rick is sleeping peacefully by her side.
She's in a nightgown, not stealing cat naps in her clothes, and Rick isn't sleeping with a hand on a gun. She knows there'll be a revolver somewhere next to their bed but that doesn't trouble her. (Her bedside table hides a knife. Or two.)
Still, she gets up and tiptoes out of the room, making her way down the corridor to her son's room. Her heart doesn't let up its frantic rhythm until she opens the door and can see him in deep slumber in his own bed.
Not even a cut on his perfect, angelic face, no physical reminders of his ordeal.
Her baby, her little scholar. They came so close to losing him. But he's here, he's fine, they're all safe. She repeats the mantra until her pulse calms down but cannot make herself leave.
It was so close, too close. For the first time in a while she has to consider whether their lifestyle is really compatible with having him always travel with them. True, they were attacked in their own home, but that was because they brought the work home with them.
Most people probably wouldn't consider archaeology a dangerous profession as such beyond the primitive conditions they often lived and worked in, but she knows better, they know better, do they have the right to expose their son to it?
The mere thought of sending him away from his family hurts. But so does the idea of never again using all of her knowledge on a dig, feeling the flutter of excitement when another ancient mystery is exposed to their gaze, of abandoning her life's work. What else would she do? Teaching, writing, sitting in an archive, while worthy pursuits on their own, have never interested her the least.
Could she give up being what she is to protect her child? Or could she give up her child – not permanently, no, but even to a boarding school, when he could learn so much more travelling with them?
Alex snuffles in his sleep, so like the baby he was such a short time ago, but instead of calming her with the reminder he is still alive, it only makes her heart ache.
* * *
Rick still wakes like a soldier, instantly alert, ready to act. It takes him a moment to dial down the readiness, to remember he is sleeping in his own bed in England. England, not Egypt, like he'd been in the dream, and... Dream. Evy. His wife died but she came back, right? That bit wasn't a dream? Then why is the bed empty and cold next to him?
The revolver under his pillow is in his hand in an instant, and he's making his way carefully towards the door before opening it, just a crack, to peer out into the corridor... There, a flash of white. Evy. Evy, standing like a statue (a ghost?) by the door to their son's room.
Their is no alarm on her face when he gets closer so he abandons the gun on a convenient nook before saying her name, quietly, as to not alarm her. She starts anyway, but reaches out with both arms almost right away so he obliges instantly with a hug, not even trying to pretend it's all for her benefit.
He almost lost this, the rightness of feeling her warm body against his, as if their years together have worn down a groove in his body, one that fits her, and just her, as if his arms were made to hold her. He pulls her closer, knowing he's probably holding too hard, but he can't let go of the fear he woke up with.
“I'm here,” she whispers, reading him all too well. “I'm still here.”
“I love you,” he says, because no other words will come even close to the gratitude he feels.
“I love you too,” she says, holding him just as hard.
“Alex okay?” he asks, turning them so that he doesn't need to let go of her to peer into the room. Everything looks peaceful.
“Yes, of course. Just had to... make sure.” She sounds almost apologetic.
“I know the feeling,” Rick says, wondering if he should remind her of their way back from Ahm Shere, when Alex had slept in his arms like he hadn't done in years, because Rick couldn't let go of him in case he disappeared again.
“I know, sorry,” Evy pulls back to look up into his face. “We were lucky.”
“So very lucky.”
“This time.” Her words sound like a resolution. Like a promise of something he fears to name.
“Evy...”
“Never again. We will – I will – never put him in such danger again.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don't know yet,” she admits. “But we'll figure it out.”
Rick feels apprehensive for a moment, like she is taking the weight of the world on her own shoulders again, but then she smiles, just a little. And that is also a promise. “Together.”
“Together,” he repeats, and returns the smile.