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She looks very small in Serena’s night shirt.
Bernie is almost swallowed whole by the silk, her shoulders curled towards her chest and her fingers fidgeting with the pale yellow sleeves. She is surrounded by long tangled greenery, sitting on the dewy grass between rows of grapevines which stretch up the hills behind Serena’s house.
The sunrise bounces off the silver strands of hair that have almost subsumed the blonde. As she curls her arms around her legs, the material of the pyjamas shifts against the early morning breeze, and Serena can see the edges of a bandage that she knows wraps around Bernie’s thigh. Serena knows there are bruises too, fading on her wrists and feet, and new scars forming around the old ones she’d taken account of years ago.
Bernie’s laundry list of injuries had been explained to her by a room full of uniforms in the sweltering gaze of the mid-summer African sun a few weeks ago. It had been a hard won battle to get that far, to get anything past military skepticism and bureaucratic silence from Bernie’s treating team, and she’d understood why. She wasn’t Bernie’s family, anymore, wasn’t her wife. She was an ex, really, technically, and that hadn’t warranted more than the strictest visiting hours and run-of-the-mill placations she’d given a thousand times herself, for days on end.
It had been enough, at the start, had given Serena a chance to process her new reality. It had given her hours just to watch the rise and fall of Bernie’s chest, to listen to the steady beep of the monitor, to break the circuits in her head that had connected Bernie Wolfe and death a year ago. She hadn’t found it as difficult as she thought she might, as if some part of her had never quite accepted it. But she struggled a little with knowing her again, with knowing that this woman - broken bones and greying hair - was the same woman she had known all those years.
Serena knew it wasn’t fair to hold Bernie to the versions of her that loss had manufactured. She knew that grief plays tricks, cobbles together smoothed over memories into some endless hall of mirrors and allows you quick glimpses of a person that is not quite your person, but is close enough to soothe a mind grappling for something to hold onto.
What she knew is a crop of blonde hair, tied into a small ponytail when Bernie first kissed her, and the way erstwhile strands fell onto Serena’s hand as her fingers gripped the nape of Bernie’s neck. She knew the way it had felt, later, Bernie’s fringe tickling the soft skin of her stomach as her nails made crescent moons in her thighs and Bernie’s mouth - her mouth . She remembered her mouth.
It would be romantic to say she remembered every kiss, but she supposes its romantic still to say that there were too many kisses to count and that she’s lucky that they had each other that long. She does remember the last time Bernie kissed her, remembers the way she leaned in as they swayed on the crowded bar floor. She remembers Bernie’s hands at her waist and the soft material of her scarf against her collarbone, and the way she kissed her - soft, chaste, conclusive. She forgets the way Bernie trembled. She forgets the way their tears mingled as they kissed, and the way Bernie scrubbed quickly at her eyes as she’d pulled away. She’d forgotten that Bernie could be anything other than bright and beautiful, and brave.
She was a collection of broken skin and bones, but she was there, and Serena had been content for a while to watch her watch tv, to steal her jelly cups from the staff fridges, to read her charts and think about holding her hand.
Bernie had chafed.
Two weeks after Serena had arrived, Bernie had stopped the poor young lieutenant on his rounds, had fixed him with a stare that had him quaking in his standard issue boots and told him she’d be going home with Serena.
“Is that okay?” she’d asked later, so quietly that Serena had to lean in to hear her.
Bernie’s hand had rested near hers on the blanket, dirt under her nails and small cuts along her knuckles. Serena had fixated on them, the last few days, had sunk her sorrow into their sight. It had been a cruel game to play with herself, guessing at what had caused the grazes, but she knew it was more bearable than any narrative she could follow for the deep gash on Bernie’s leg, the concussion, the bruises or the broken ribs, the old gunshot wound, or the semi-permanent bewildered look in her eyes. She’d wanted to un-know all the knowledge that sits deep in the trenches of her brain, that pokes at her painfully with every horrible cause for every possible trauma.
Bernie had cleared her throat. Serena had been staring. Bernie had asked her a question, timid, huge. Could she come home with her?
“Oh, yeah, of course,” she’d said, watched as Bernie turned her hand over so her palm faced Serena, her fingers outstretched.
It was the first time they’d touched. Bernie had felt like she always had, as Serena had pressed their palms together, their fingers lingering against the pulse points at each other's wrists.
She’d felt soft, in spite of calluses, and cool against Serena’s warm. She’d felt restless, flighty, as if she’d float away on some capricious wind if Serena wasn’t holding onto her. Ephemeral is the word that creeps up on her, but it rang too ghostly for the very alive woman staring at her from beneath erstwhile strands of hair as she lay in a Mogadishu hospital bed, and Serena pushed the description from her mind. It’s just that she was never able to hold onto Bernie for very long, had always pushed her away or let her go. Bernie might have felt that way about her sometimes. They were never very good at staying in one place. Maybe ephemeral was right.
Bernie couldn’t keep her hand still. She’d traced the veins at Serena’s wrist, the freckle on the side of her thumb, before she’d balled her hand into a fist and cradled it in Serena’s palm.
“Where do you live?” she’d asked.
“Oh, Spain,” Serena had replied, fixated still on the familiar skin against hers, but the offhand answer surprised a laugh out of Bernie that startled Serena. It wasn’t her old staccato guffaw, only a small breath pushed out from her bruised lungs, but the sound seemed to frighten Bernie all the same, like she was a stranger to it. S till, her face looked a little brighter, and she held tighter to Serena’s hand, and it made her heart soar.
She can’t touch her now.
She wants to, longs to - longs to reach out and hold Bernie’s hand, longs to gather her up in her arms and hold her until her heart stops racing, until their breathing matches, until the sun rises.
Bernie used to say that she didn’t much like being touched, but she liked when Serena touched her. She used to say it with a smile that would light up her eyes, in the soft, naked moments of a morning; or late night walks through the hospital car park. But Serena won’t touch her now.
Instead she sits slowly, leaning against the vines parallel to Bernie, tries to remember what she was told to do.
“Do it just like me,” Serena says, trying to slow her own breathing.
She still feels a little sleep-addled, jerked awake minutes ago by Bernie’s panicked face at her bedroom window, and her quick retreat. She tries to remember what she’s been told, what Bernie’s been told, week in and out, by an endless stream of psychologists. They knew this would probably happen, knew the first few weeks would be the hardest, and Serena thought she’d been well equipped to deal with it, thought Bernie seemed steady enough all that time in the hospital.
But it’s Bernie’s first morning here, and she can’t catch her breath.
“Do it just like me,” Serena repeats, her voice calm and steady. It catches Bernie’s attention long enough for her to meet Serena’s gaze through her fringe, give a small shake of her head. Her hands grip the roots beneath her, crushing fallen grapes, trying to ground herself. Her knees are scraped, her feet dirty, her big toe covered in blood - she must have tripped.
“I can’t.”
“You are ,” Serena digs her fingers into the soil, plants her feet in front of her. “Bernie.”
They hold each other’s gaze while Serena breathes, long exhale, long inhale, fifty times, a hundred, until Bernie starts to match her.
Serena watches, relieved, as Bernie's shoulders begin to drop and her jaw unwinds, as she starts to fill her lungs and empty them, deeper, slower; until she slumps forward, hair curtaining over her knees.
Serena had never seen her dye it, a mystery of their relationship well kept by Bernie. There was a darker colour at her roots, sometimes, which had matched her daughter’s natural strawberry blonde, always tucked back into a neat bun whenever Serena saw her (Charlotte had none of her mother’s messiness about her, and all of her kindness). She’d spied a few greys, once or twice, when Bernie’s head had been bent over a pile of paperwork, or pillowed against Serena’s chest; but they were always gone before she could find them again.
She used to love finding them, used to take it as a sign that they were going to grow old together, that Bernie had let her all the way in and was going to let her stay there a while. Now it feels too intimate, seeing her down to her roots, and she looks away just as Bernie looks up.
They’re quiet for a moment before Bernie loosens her grip on her knees, wincing in pain as she does at the pressure she had put on her stitched up thigh.
“I was,” she clears the crackle from her dry throat, “I was thinking about France.”
Serena knows what she means. Serena has been thinking about it too, thought about it as she followed Bernie at a run through the endless rows of the vineyard.
They had done something similar, one early morning in the south of France, while they were both trying their hands at being happy again. Bernie had been happy. She had woken Serena up just before dawn the first day she had stayed and they’d walked up and down every row of the Bordeaux vineyard they had rented for the season. Serena’s muscles had ached from the hills, and she had been cold in her nightshirt, but she doesn’t remember that now. She remembers the way her body hummed from the night before and that Bernie had held her hand. She remembers the way Bernie looked, soft and young and alive and sleepy, as the sun rose on the horizon.
She wants to tell Bernie it’ll be like that again, but she doesn’t know that and she won’t lie to her. Instead she shuffles closer, gesturing towards Bernie’s foot.
“You’re bleeding,” Serena says, pulling her pyjama sleeve over the heel of her palm, waiting for Bernie to notice before pressing her hand to the small stream of blood on her toe. Bernie’s hands are freshly grazed too, her palms scratched from gripping the coarse wood propping up the vines. “Were you watching me sleep?”
“No - I mean, not really. You sleep with your window open.” Bernie fumbles, tucking her hair behind her ears in an old shy habit that makes her feel like less of a stranger. Oh, it’s you , Serena thinks, and squeezes Bernie’s ankle lightly with her free hand.
“It’s warm out,” she says, eyeing Bernie’s expression. “It’s safe.”
Serena’s room is on the bottom floor of the small villa and has a window that looks downhill onto the vineyard. The window shutters are old and never close anyway, so she props them open on summer nights and lets the air in. She’d offered it to Bernie, thought the view itself was somehow restorative, but Bernie had stood on ceremony as always, and watched helplessly as Serena had dragged a bed into the small living room at the other end of the house. The ceilings in there are tall, at least, and there’s a lot of light in the morning and a lock on the door if she wants it. Serena didn’t want Bernie to feel closed in, but she had wanted her to feel safe.
Bernie had been thinking about France, she explained, had been thinking of asking Serena to go for a walk with her. Bernie had only watched her sleep for, like, a second before a loud crash had woken her anyway; and a collection of male voices, shouting at each other across the din, had startled Bernie from her window.
“You never used to snore,” Bernie finishes quietly, and Serena bristles under the accusation, mourns the beds they used to share, delights in the teasing that shoots through her voice.
Before she can tease her back there’s another loud crash, more shouting, and she feels Bernie stiffen under her. She scrambles to hold her hand.
“They’re just messing around with the barrels,” Serena says, urges Bernie to keep her gaze. She keeps her voice calm and steady, but she simmers with guilt. She should have thought, she should have realised. “I’ll get them to come another day.”
Bernie doesn’t let go of her hand.
*
She’s ached to touch her again for weeks now, a deep nostalgic ache that makes her think of cold nights in warm bars, before Bernie had ever kissed her. They used to walk right up to the edge of something, bolstered by wine and proximity and the exhausted, exhilarating haze of a long, good day; and then they’d step back and call it friendship. Serena used to wonder what Bernie felt like, what she kissed like, vaguely, as if they were philosophical conundrums she never even thought of learning the answer to.
Now that she knows, and now that it’s been weeks, been years since she last touched her properly, this almost feels like too much. Bernie’s hair is tangled in her hands, and Bernie’s shoulder bumps against her hip, and the wrinkles in her brow are smoothed out under the low, warm spray of the tap as Serena washes the bleach from her hair. She’s not seen Bernie like this in weeks.
She doesn’t think she’s ever seen her like this, really, like she’s unravelled herself for Serena and let her see right down to the core. B ernie had asked for her help, had said she didn’t really want anyone to touch her, but she liked it when Serena did.
She had wanted something back of herself, she had said, and now her eyes are closed and her hair is blonde, and she lets out a small sound somewhere between a sigh and a sob, leaning into Serena’s hand.