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Morrigan only realized her discomfort when she became aware of the ceaseless rasp where she had been rubbing her thumbs together against her forefingers. She deliberately forced herself to stop for long, trembling seconds, only to start up again as soon as her attention drifted. She caught on faster this time, and leaped to her feet with a curse, away from the fire and the passing hours it represented. She stared out into the darkness until her hands once again began their circling, until her eyes adjusted, until Heloise Tabris placed her hands atop Morrigan’s own.
Morrigan went breathlessly still. She fancied that Heloise ought to have been able to tell that she’d stopped breathing, if only because she did not bitch at her, as she was sure Alistair would have said. “You can’t make tomorrow come any faster by wearing your own hands away,” she said gently. It was that very gentleness that made Morrigan’s heart quake inside of the grasp of her ribs.
She wrenched her hands away so hard she actually staggered back a step. Her arms crept close to her chest without her telling them to, and she thrust them back down her sides with a snarl. “And what would you know about it? How many times have you slain your own parent?” It came out sounding weak to her own ears, and Morrigan turned away so that Heloise wouldn’t be able to see her face. She wouldn’t have been able to bear it if the woman she most respected saw her like that. “Leave me be. However I ready myself for our deed tomorrow is my own business, not yours.”
“I chose to be here with you,” Heloise said with that same blasted lack of annoyance she always had in her voice, no matter how Morrigan might try to push her away. “You asked me, but my feet were pointed towards you from the start. You only have to ask me to leave, and I will. But,” she added more quietly, “I’m hoping you won’t.”
Morrigan went stiff at the approach of Heloise’s footsteps behind her, and relaxed only gradually when she was not touched again. She hated that she’d wanted her to, and hated that the thought of it made her tense up all over again for reasons that were too complicated and too raw to give a name to. “Why?” She asked into the darkness of the Kokari Wilds. “Why do you stay?” She wasn’t just asking about tonight, and thankfully she wasn’t asked to clarify.
“I stay,” came her answer, “because someone should. And because you stayed for me, in a hundred small ways.”
Morrigan didn’t understand, and she turned with a wild cry building up in her throat, only to freeze when she saw the same fear she felt on Heloise’s face. She hadn’t heard a lick of it in the other woman’s voice, and only recognized it because Heloise had looked at her that same way when Morrigan had lain bleeding in the dirt from a genlock arrow, or when they had last fought, or-
Oh.
She still held her hands poised in midair, thumbs curved to rub over chapped and scarred skin. This time, when Heloise touched them with hers, Morrigan leaned into her. Into the words that came next, though they made her heart ache more than she remembered any of Flemmeth’s words ever had. “You can face your mother again,” Heloise said. “You won’t be alone this time. And even if you were, you aren’t the same person you were when you left here. You have changed. Realized who you were all along, without her there to tear you back down every time you stood up.”
Morrigan’s face twisted between expressions, pulling down at the corners. This time she did not turn away, because she saw that same wild, desperate hope echoed back at her on Heloise’s face. And for a moment, she thought of kissing Heloise, of leaning into that yawning need in her gut and finding something there for once, for once. As close as she was, she saw something in Heloise’s eyes that made her think Heloise would kiss her, first.
And then Heloise stepped back. Let her hands fall and stepped out of the circle they had made, and Morrigan felt cold. “Together,” Heloise said hoarsely. If Morrigan had been looking, she would have seen something else in Heloise’s face, but she had already turned back to the fire.
“Perhaps,” was all Morrigan said.