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“Give an old man a warning next time, hm?”
He takes her by surprise with a gravely rough tone that makes her shiver despite the exasperated exhaustion dragging her down to the mattress beside him. She runs a hand over his forearm in apology and links their fingers together bringing their hands to rest against his chest. She can’t not listen for his heartbeat. Consoling a guilt ravaged mind with the steady bass of it beneath her hand.
“I don’t think I can do it,” it’s very, very quiet and if he didn’t allow himself to hear everything of her he doesn’t think he would have registered her defeated admission.
“You have to.”
She presses her face against his bare shoulder and hides. From the fear, from the responsibility, from the world. He knows that fear, intimately. He also knows how to circumvent it.
“Farah, listen to me,” he whispers urgently into the darkness of the room, eyes fixed on the window but speaking for her ears and only those. “You are the only who can do this, make an end. Put it to bed. I trust you, completely. Ben trusts you. And you know the kids do too.”
Her body tenses and he exhales heavily.
“I cannot lead them into a war that isn’t theirs. We started this. I will not have them die at her hand.”
“I know, love. I know.” He steels himself against her, but he has to say it, “we are a team, but now, you follow my lead.”
She blinks, lashes brushing against his skin and her fingers squeeze his, just a touch confused. Then she realises, he’s giving her an out. She a solider by circumstance. He, a solider by vocation. Woven into the fabric of his being, draped through his skin like the magic that sets her aflame and lifts her from the ground.
“What if-“
“Don’t.” He cuts her off roughly and brings his other hand around her body to cup the back of her head, weaving fingers into her mess of gold waves, she settles. “Don’t think about that. Trust me. Just, trust me. I know you, and I know you know her. Better than the rest of us. You are the only one who she considers a worthy opponent. You can end this Farah and you must. For our school, for the realm, for those kids futures’ you’re so bloody intent on delivering them to.”
She shudders against his hold and grips his fingers so so hard, “for us.” Her voice lilts up in question and his heart breaks minutely.
“Yes.” He’s so definite and she has always admired his convictions. An ability to trust himself intimately, know himself so completely.
“What if it’s too much? For us. I have been the reason you were burned and chained and sliced open again and again Saul. The reason you nearly tore Ben’s arm off when he checked your pulse. If I… how would you look at me…” And her voice is raw with the weight of the questions she has long wanted answered. They are different creatures and she wonders how those craters of difference can be reconciled between them when the scars decorating both of their minds are so deep and twisted.
“It won’t be.”
There’s a small noise of frustration from her, terse and wanting to scream he knows. She can’t, because the house is quiet and sleepy in anticipation of what tomorrow will bring. She stays close beside him but pushes herself up with force, he catches her wrists with the momentum and forces her to look at him.
“It won’t be. I won’t allow it.” He tells her. She huffs and rolls her eyes, tries to pull out of his grasp but he’s having none of that. “Stop thinking. A foreign concept to the great Farah Dowling I know but you need to be a solider again. I will lead us, all of us, to safety I promise you that. You need to fall in line and follow my orders.”
She softens and blinks slowly, eyes hardening when she meets his gaze again.
“Please,” he requests of her gently, his grip still firm but yielding fractionally as she nods.
“All I think about is ending this, ending her. Putting this nightmare to bed finally. Getting our school back and not having these kids living in fear and looking over their shoulders like we were.”
A vicious cycle was born 16 years ago and that is what Farah dreads. She won’t let her students get wound up in this old feud between a zealot and her now clear sighted disciples.
“Then I think about the beach. Just waves and sun, and you. Just being. No responsibilities, no meetings, no emails. Nothing. Just baking under the sun until I can count all of your freckles.”
She laughs despite herself and bites her bottom lip, closing her eyes her response is quiet, “we could get bored after 36 hours and you know it.”
“Count all of your freckles with my mouth.”
Farah blushes and shoves at his chest. They are planning a war, a reverse coup. He just told her that her orders were to go and hunt and kill a woman with such certainty that the earth, moon, stars and sun would know of her vanquishing. And still, he demonstrates an infuriating capacity to make her laugh, distract her, ground her. She loves him all the more for it.
“16 years, Farah.” His reminder is enough for her to draw her arms around his neck and she nods silently before she kisses him gently, lets her forehead rest against his while his fingers trace wide circles against her back.
“Tomorrow,” she whispers against him as they lie with knees bent and tucked over one another. His hand is a warm pressure at the base of her skull, thumb rubbing slowly over the skin behind her ear. They are so very delicate in all of their ferocity. Their strength, well-built and battle worn, conceals the yearning they each have to just be soft and tender in the quiet.
“And then forever,” it’s a promise. And he has been known to keep them.
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