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It was dark, so dark that Alice couldn't see her hands inches from her face, and Hatcher's head was resting on her lap, pillowed on her thighs.
He'd been quiet for a while now after having had a fit that lasted so long that he had passed out from exhaustion. She had let him pace the alleyway, back and forth, taking up no more space than he would have back in his cell at the hospital until blood started to sprout from his nose and his nonsensical ramblings devolved into angry, half-heard mumblings.
When he had collapsed, grabbing his head and falling to his knees, Alice hadn't been worried. Well, she was always concerned for Hatcher when he had one of his episodes, but she was no longer a frantic little girl fluttering desperately at her man's bedside. Now, as he fell to his knees, she knotted her hands in his tunic and guided him towards her and he collapsed against her, pressing her against the brickwork and knocking the air from her lungs for a moment. He was at least three times the size of her, mainly in muscle, but she caught him as well as she was able.
She wasn't sure what had set him off. One moment, they had been discussing their next course of action and the next moment he had gone painfully still and his expression went blank, his eyes unseeing. She had reached for his hand but he had begun to pace before she could grasp him.
Now, his eyes were closed, and though she knew that there were countless other things to be doing, she was more than happy to give him this rare moment of peace. And that's what he was- with his eyes closed, his breathing even and without a single trace of anger dancing across the features that were as familiar to her as her own, he looked almost peaceful. Maybe she was a little selfish, letting him sleep for the sight, but he needed his rest, too.
The cells at the hospital had kept them apart for so long, and despite the many hardships that had faced them and the horrors in their way, now that they were free, she was going to spend every moment with him and memorise every inch of him.
He had let his anger get the better of him today. A man had laid a hand on her shoulder, an innocent gesture she was sure, and Hatcher had swung his axe in a wide arc and cleft the poor boy in half before he had the chance to utter a sound.
Maybe that had been what set off his fit. The thought of any man with a hand on her for intentions unknown. Like Hattie. Like Jenny. Like Alice herself and every woman before and after her.
She couldn't fault him for that. It was in his nature, she'd always known it. She just wished that, in suitable situations, he would let her use her words before he retaliated with his axe.
It was rather cold this late at night. Earlier in the day, he'd had a vision that it would rain throughout the night, so she had prepared accordingly, and had insisted they had taken refuge in a sheltered alley. A lot of good it did them now. She hadn't had a chance to put on her heavy cloak before Hatcher had collapsed on her, and she was suddenly aware of how heavy his head was on her lap. It was unfamiliar but not unwelcome.
His hair was dirty as she carded her fingers through the strands, and in the darkness, she couldn't decipher whether the dirt was dried blood or the common grime from their current street-dwelling lifestyle.
Despite Hatcher being near-comatose in her lap, somehow, Alice still felt safe. There was a part of her that suspected and knew deep in her heart that Hatcher would open his eyes and spring up, axe at the ready and fury in his wild eyes the moment danger approached.
Their lives, since leaving the relative safety at the hospital, had become so chaotic and unorganised and dangerous, their every waking moment filled with stress and suspicion, filled with glancing over their shoulders and tip-toeing around corners. In such a short span of time, their lives had completely changed. She had gone from four padded walls and daily powders and the little mousehole to this overwhelming and frightening new world with danger at every step.
Alice wouldn't change it for the world.
In her lap, Hatcher finally stirred and when he looked up at her, his brown eyes were clear. He reached a hand up and cupped her cheek, gently caressing her scar with his fingers. "Alice."
It wasn't a question. She was pleased with his level of awareness. "Hi," she greeted. "How are you feeling?"
He frowned. "Fine. Tired. What happened?"
She decided it was best to tell him the truth. "I'm not too sure," she said. "You had another episode. I'm not sure what set you off."
Hatcher hummed, unconcerned. He made no move to sit up and off of her lap, and Alice felt blessed to have a few more moments where she could familiarize herself with the planes of his face. "Any trouble?"
"None," Alice said. She looked up, at the dirty, isolated alleyway they had sought cover in, sheltered from the oncoming rain on the horizon and hidden from unwelcomed gazes. Nobody would find them unless they were deliberately looking, and they had gone through great lengths to appear unremarkable. "It's been quiet. It hasn't even rained yet."
"I guess the Sight isn't always correct," Hatcher said as he finally rose from his lap. He shuffled so he could put his back to the wall.
"The vision might have been of tomorrow night," Alice tried. Hatcher didn't really seem bothered so she didn't try and push.
With the two of them seated like this, side by side and pressed up against the brickwork at their backs, the size differential was extreme. He looked like a hulking mountain of a man, three times the size and a hundred times as strong as the slight, slip of a thing seated beside him looking too small and too innocent to exist in the dangerous outside world. She was tiny in comparison, so small that an outsider would never assume she and the giant beast of a man were friends much less lovers. Alice found that she preferred it that way- no man would look at her, with her choppy short hair and thin frame and brute by her side and assume there was a knife hidden beneath her clothes.
"What are you thinking about in that quick little mind of yours?" Hatcher asked. She turned to look up at him, and she was so lost in thought that she hadn't noticed him staring at her with an expression that strangers would be unnerved by but Alice knew as thinly-concealed desire.
"Just how lucky I am to have you by my side," Alice said, and she meant every word. She would never lie to Hatcher, not if she could help it. "I don't know how I would have done this without you. I don't think I could have. I don't think I ever would have left the hospital without you."
"It took the both of us," Hatcher said. Alice wasn't sure how much truth that held, but she appreciated it all the same.
Despite the circumstances, it was nice, to just sit there with the man that she loved without any immediate threat of harm or danger. In the New City, girls would daintily go out for meals with their suitors and other romantic activities like that. Maybe that would have been Alice, before the Rabbit and Dot and the blood and the asylum. Now, the only moments she got to spend with the man she loved was between moments of fear and paranoia, hiding from those who would wish them harm and running for their lives and just trying to live one day to the next. Not exactly a normal romance.
Nobody from her old life, safe behind the walls that protected the sanctity of the New City, would ever experience what she had experienced. None of them would know what it was like to be lured from her home, to be raped and scarred and punished for a man's lust, to be locked away in a padded cell for years and fed drugs against your will just because your parents thought that you were too much trouble to be kept around the house, like a naughty puppy who had pissed on the rug. None of them would ever know, and none of them would ever survive it, because none of them was like Alice, none would have accomplished what she had. And that, above all else, gave her strength.
"What do we do now?" She asked though she suspected that she already knew the answer.
"We keep moving," Hatcher said predictably. "We've still got a long way to go yet."
Alice didn't want to move. Her bones felt like led and her feet ached something bad, but still, she knew that he was right, and she willed herself to rise. "I suppose we'd better get going-"
But Hatcher's hand on her shoulder stopped him, and he gently lowered her back down until she was sitting back against the cold concrete. His eyes were soft, and his expression was fond. "Maybe not right now. You should rest. It's only fair."
"Fair?" Alice couldn't help but laugh. "I haven't heard that word in a while. What's only fair?"
"You let me rest, and I feel all the better for it," he said. "You should rest. You're not used to this lifestyle the way I am. You'll feel better if you do."
Not one to argue with Hatcher on a point that was so persuasive, Alice shuffled until she could lean down and rest her head in Hatcher's lap almost identically to the way he had done to her not too long ago, and she felt safe as she closed her eyes, safer than safe, enveloped in the circle of his arms and basking in the heat radiating off of him. She fell asleep to the gentle, lulling sound of his breathing, and the knowledge that no matter what, he would never let anything happen to her.
As Alice was consumed by her exhaustion, it finally started to rain.