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They don’t get a moment of down time until the following night in the tower. Everyone had spent the day reeling from the fight, and it’s silly, Yasha thinks, that she expects the faint bit of healing that she’s capable of to take away the mark on Beau’s hand. It remains, and so does Yasha’s apprehension. But Beau is alive, albeit bruised and blood-stained, and sometimes, all the time, that is enough.
It’s late, and she’s taken to pressing flowers in her book because she has no shortage of them to choose from in her room, even if they always disappear the next morning along with the tower. She has a page of forget-me-nots started, and she reaches to pluck more when there is a knock at her door.
She is half surprised and half anxious to see Beau standing on the other side with two mugs of hot cocoa.
“Oh,” she says, and Beau holds out a mug for Yasha to take. “For me?”
“Yeah, if you stop throwing swords at me,” Beau says with a grin, and Yasha dips her head in embarrassment. “It’s kind of giving me mixed signals.”
“Right, sorry,” she says, shakes her head, and she opens the door wider, gestures with her free hand. “Do you want…?”
“Sure, okay,” Beau says. “But this doesn’t count as a date. We’re just hanging out.”
“Did you have something else in mind?” Yasha ribs. “Because if we’re talking about mixed signals…”
“I have some ideas.”
“And none of them involve hot cocoa?”
“Alright, fine,” Beau says. “Do you want this to be a date?”
Yasha’s heart swells at the prospect, and this isn’t how she’d imagined it, but when is anything ever how anyone imagines. She thinks the good thing about their relationship is that they can be faced with obstacle after obstacle and they will always come out on the other side. It’s what they do. Adapt. Recalibrate. And why should this be any different.
“It can be a date,” she says with a nod. “Maybe not the date. But I don’t mind doing things out of order.”
“So, we’re saving our first date for something less…frozen wasteland,” Beau wonders, and Yasha feels a grin tug at her lips. “Got it.”
“As long as you don’t break your promise,” Yasha says, can still see Beau’s bloodied face in the back of her mind, can still see Lucien’s grip around her neck.
“Yeah,” Beau says sheepishly, rubbing at the back of her neck. “Thanks for saving me.”
“I wanted to kill him,” she says, and there is none of the previous hesitation, none of the misplaced optimism of retrieving her friend from the depths of Lucien’s psyche. Because Beau had almost died, and hope has no place here anymore. There is no room.
“Well, get in line,” Beau says with a sigh, picking at the wrap on her hand, and something twinges in Yasha’s chest, settling like a stone in her stomach.
She remembers the feeling well, being trapped inside a world not of her own making. She remembers unraveling like the thread on a sweater, coming apart at the seams to make room for someone else. Stitching and weaving together another mind within her own.
It’s something she wouldn’t wish upon anyone, especially not Beau.
“Can I see it?” she asks, and Beau is hesitant at first, but she eventually nods, unwrapping her hand and holding it out for Yasha to see.
Yasha sets her mug down and takes Beau’s hand in her own, studies the mark in the shape of an eye, knows exactly what it feels like to be branded. To be owned.
When she brushes her fingers across it, Beau flinches, and Yasha murmurs an apology.
“You’re going to be okay,” she tells Beau. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”
“It already happened,” Beau says with a weak smile.
“Then we will save you. Just like you saved me.”
Yasha still has hold of Beau’s hand, and it’s a light grasp, one that Beau could pull from if she wanted to, but also one that speaks of Yasha’s presence. To convey that Beau is not alone, that she will never be alone.
She carefully turns Beau’s hand over, brings it to her lips and presses a kiss to Beau’s palm, then her wrist. Beau watches her, eyes shining in the dimly lit room as she instinctively moves closer.
“This isn’t exactly a super light date conversation,” Beau says softly, an attempt to break up the sentimentality. To put something in between them that isn’t vulnerable, and Yasha appreciates it, doesn’t want to make Beau feel anything other than wanted, needed.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” she tells Beau.
“It’s the dreams,” Beau says. “They’re…I can’t sleep.”
And now that Beau has mentioned it, Yasha can see the visible toll this has taken, can see the dark rings beneath Beau’s eyes.
“Maybe I can help,” Yasha says, and Beau frowns, so she elaborates. “You can have my bed. I’ll sleep on the floor. Maybe having company will help you.”
“Oh,” Beau says with a shrug, “it’s not a big deal. Seriously, don’t…don’t worry about it.”
“But I am worried about it,” she says. “I’m worried about you. I care about you.”
Beau watches her for a moment like she’s processing the words, like no one has ever said them to her before and they sound foreign to her ears. But Yasha means them, and she will keep saying them until Beau believes it.
“Okay,” Beau finally says with a nod. “But you don’t have to sleep on the floor. I mean, this is your room. You can have the bed.”
“I don’t mind the floor,” Yasha insists, and Beau sighs.
“Thank you,” Beau says, and Yasha offers her a small smile, starts pulling the covers back so Beau can get settled in.
She finds a comfortable position on the floor and listens as Beau shuffles and shifts around in the sheets. She can’t see her from the floor, but maybe just being here is enough. Maybe not being alone will keep some of the dreams at bay.
She remembers what it’s like, to not be in control, and if she can help it, she won’t let that happen to Beau. She won’t let anything happen to Beau.
Several moments yield to the silence until Beau speaks up, quietly.
“This is why I didn’t want it to be a date,” Beau says, and Yasha can hear the smile in her voice.
“Because it didn’t end with both of us in the bed?” she wonders, and Beau exhales a laugh.
“Well, most of them do.”
“I thought you wanted to do this the right way.”
And if it were up to Yasha, they would have skipped everything, would have gotten right to the part where they are skin to skin. But she’s obeying Beau’s wishes, and it’s something she’s content to follow through with, as long as Beau still wants it that way.
“I do,” Beau says softly. “But there aren’t any rules that say we can’t sleep in the same bed.”
Beau is lonely, she thinks, must be afraid and craving some sort of connection, and Yasha can give that to her. Yasha can try.
She rises to her feet as Beau scoots over in the bed, opening up a space for her, and Yasha takes it, lies down next to her and rolls onto her side so she can see Beau, who is still just staring up at the ceiling. Yasha reaches over and gently takes Beau’s branded hand.
“We will save you,” she promises again, and Beau turns her head to look at her.
It happens suddenly but slowly, Beau moving closer into Yasha’s space so they are breathing the same air, and Yasha’s heart stalls when Beau kisses her, nothing more than a soft press of lips, but enough to awaken a thunderstorm within her.
She pulls away just as quickly, and Yasha’s stomach floods with warmth as Beau’s lips brush hers when she speaks.
“You make me forget,” Beau tells her, squeezes her hand once, and Yasha thinks she couldn’t ask for much else. Not with the situation they’re in. Forgetting is a luxury that Yasha has afforded Beau, and the sentiment makes her heart feel like rubber in her chest, loose and pliable.
“Get some sleep, Beau,” Yasha says, and Beau’s eyes are still closed as she smiles and moves back into her own space.
Yasha doesn’t let go of her hand.