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It wasn’t unusual for Warci to be a little stiff after an expedition, especially with his two partially-crippled limbs. He was active enough to work out most ginks on his own, so the worst Odette tended to do was grill him about remembering to stretch his bad arm and leg if they were clearly what was giving him problems. She didn’t have much time to worry and fuss over him as much as she wanted to sometimes, what with how she had a new flower shop to run and a daughter to look after.
She didn’t have the time to fuss over all his old scars, and by the gods there was no shortage to fuss over. There wasn’t a single piece of unmarred skin on him anymore. Burns, breaks, impacts, all healed to the best of their own ability but leaving behind little ghosts of marks all the same. She got used to the sight of them after a while, managed to convince herself to stop wondering after Warci had clearly told her all he wanted her to hear (and what she’d heard was bad enough–she’d needed a moment to hold him after he’d told her about his burn scars, had to take a moment to recover from the horrifying realization that she’d almost lost him and wouldn’t have been any the wiser). He wasn’t the type to keep secrets, but when he did, he tended to keep them from himself too. Odette would normally grab him by the shoulders and force him to confront whatever he was trying to avoid, but this was different. This time, she chose to leave him to it. If he talked to her, great. If he didn’t, that was fine too. This wasn’t a problem she could really help him fix because there was no fixing it in the first place.
Warci returned from an expedition one day with a bit of noticeable tension somewhere in his back, except this time he didn’t handle it. He was still moving strangely by the time they were both getting ready for bed. Odette sat up in bed, halfway under the blankets as she watched Warci open a drawer to fetch his nightshirt. It was just the two of them on this moonless night, Edith having decided to stay over at Piquiri’s for the night (she’d become prone to doing that, and Odette was fine with it so long as Edith let her know where she’d be). Just the two of them, the wind rustling the leaves outside the window, and all those ghosts that wriggled in the tears in Warci’s seams.
“You look awfully stiff, Warci,” she finally brought up. “What hurts?”
Warci paused, straightening up to look at his wife with a sheepish smile, pressed a palm against the back of his neck. “Oh, just my back. One of those big ol’ Cove crabs got a lucky hit on me and knocked my spine outta place. It’s just taking a bit longer to crack itself back into place.”
Odette heaved a small sigh, beckoning him over with her hand. “Come here. Lemme give it a hand if it’s so stuck.”
She was no stranger to this–neither of them were. Whenever an ache or pain refused to abate, Odette would knead it until it worked its way out (or at least until it stopped bothering Warci for a time). Her delicate hands had traced and brushed over harsh scar tissue enough times that she’d developed an intimate familiarity with his marks. It helped her not to ask questions where they weren’t welcome. She was no expert on scars, but the patterns said enough.
Warci was always protective of the scars on his back, though. That didn’t stop now.
A hitch in his movements, in his posture, an anxiety-coated chuckle to try to mask how he’d flinched. “Now, now, you wait just a minute. I know worrying about me is an around-the-clock job, but I think you deserve a break. An achy old man back isn’t gonna kill me.”
“If I needed breaks from your nonsense, I wouldn’t have married you.” Odette patted the edge of the bed in front of her. “I don’t care if this isn’t gonna kill you, either. I, for one, think you’ve dealt with enough pain.” She met his gaze, found it more hesitating than she was anticipating. “I want to help, Warci.”
Warci knew this, there wasn’t any chance he didn’t, but stating it outright had left him grasping at straws. He shifted where he stood, shoulders hunched and hands fussy, brown eyes flickering around the room before finding Odette’s again. Against her expectations, his denial crumbled. She would’ve been happier with that had a haunting shadow not cast itself over his eyes.
Warci approached the bed, sitting down where Odette had indicated, leaning back and peering over his shoulder to face her as best he could. “Guess you’ve still got me wrapped around your finger, don’t you, sweetheart?”
Odette gave Warci a soft smile in return. “Seems that way. Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle with you.”
A grim, forced smile crossed Warci’s face, warped by whatever monsters had left these marks. “Please.”
He turned from her before she could respond, head tilted down, posture tense, trying to suppress any fidgeting or trembling. Odette’s brow furrowed in concern at the tone he’d used–desperate, pleading, a hesitancy that only came with vulnerability, an anxiety he didn’t even try to hide from her. She pulled her legs out from under the blankets and moved a little closer to Warci, resettling herself directly behind him with her legs criss-crossed. She reached out, gingerly resting her palm against his shoulder blade. The contact earned another flinch from him, a quiet but sharp intake of breath. Even if he was trying not to shake, she could feel him trembling ever so slightly under her hand.
It wasn’t like this was the first time she’d touched his back since they’d been reunited. However, this was the first time there was direct skin-to-skin contact involved. This was the first time she got to directly touch the scars that’d always been hidden before.
They were hideous things, perhaps not as objectively ugly as some but brutal beyond mistake. Warci’s back was patterned with an array of scraggly, discolored lines, carved into him from his shoulders to his hips. They were wild and irregular, some longer than others, some more pronounced than others (a few even slightly raised). They all pointed in different directions so they meshed together in a clumped web, leaving no substantial patches of unbrutalized flesh to be seen. Odette had seen these scars before–had seen them only a minute or two prior when Warci had his back to her–but they never failed to unnerve her. Not because of how they looked, but because of what they represented.
Because of what Warci must’ve gone through in order to get them.
Because of how they told enough of a story by sight alone without Odette needing to feel them for herself.
She refused to let herself speculate. Warci hadn’t told her the story, and so long as that was the case, it wasn’t hers to know or wonder about. She instead busied herself with what she’d offered to do. Trying to ignore the slight roughness of the scars, she pressed her fingers against Warci’s back, beginning her work.
A few seconds in, Warci spoke up, his voice as taut as his muscles. “A bit lower down.”
Odette hummed in response, letting her hands slide down his back (he shivered and she shifted a little closer).
Another request of adjustment came, this time with a voice so strained that it threatened to break at points. “Bit to the right yet.”
Odette frowned, but followed his guidance. When her fingers dug in this time, she earned a wince and a muffled, pained grunt from her husband.
“That’s the spot alright,” he confirmed just before she could pull her hands away. “You got it.”
Only a moment’s hesitation passed before Odette was back to work easing the knot. She wasn’t exactly a professional masseuse, but she’d usually stumble across the right motions to soothe the ache eventually. Besides, she suspected that half of the reason Warci let her do this whenever he was stiff was because he liked being putty in her hands. Wrapped around her finger indeed.
She worked at the spot until Warci relaxed, until she felt his back untense with the sigh of relief he gave.
“Gods, that’s so much better,” Warci said, almost breathless. “Thanks a million, dear.”
“Always happy to help, but…” Odette let her hands still, brought her attention up to the back of Warci’s head. “Are you okay?”
He could’ve brushed her off so easily. He could’ve said something like “yeah, I’m better now that my spine’s back in place,” maybe with a little flirt thrown in, and that would’ve been that. She expected him to dodge the true intent of her question as he’d done multiple times before.
Instead, she got silence. Uncharacteristic silence.
She took her hands from his back, her worries only growing. “Warci?”
Warci barely suppressed a jolt at the removal of the contact. He didn’t wait to respond this time. “Wait. Wait, can you…can you keep rubbing my back? Just for a little longer? I-I think it helps them…it helps.”
Odette’s heart clenched at his tone, how it was scattered and hopped up on a dark kind of anxiety. Her hands returned to his back, and she immediately got to work easing the newly-arrived tension out of his shoulders.
Another few moments of that eerie silence until Warci broke it with another sigh, this one far less relieved. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s up with me today. Something’s just…it…something feels a bit…”
“...Off?” Odette finished.
Warci nodded. “Off.”
“It’s just a bad day, my dearest camellia. You’ll be okay.”
“Yeah, I know.” Warci leaned back slightly into Odette’s touch, cast her a smile over his shoulder that was slightly more genuine than the last. “I’ve got you back, after all.”
Odette managed to sneak him a quick peck to the cheek before he could turn back around. “And I’ve got you back too.”
Warci’s smile melted into the one she always remembered whenever they were together in private, that warm and slightly-timid expression that never failed to give her butterflies. But it was gone too soon, and the next second he was facing away from her again, studying the floor.
“...These scars still hurt sometimes,” he admitted, his normally quick speaking pattern slowing to a crawl as he dragged the words from his throat. “Well, not actually, but…I can still feel them on bad days. Like today.”
Odette’s eyes drifted down to the scars for a moment, to the painful impressions of hardships that her hands rested on. She didn’t stop massaging his back, looked toward his head again, kept quiet and let him talk.
And talk he did, no matter how he struggled with the words. “I hate these scars. I really hate them. I’m fine with most of my scars and am proud of a few of them, you know that, but these…I can’t…” he paused, took a breath. “The memory’s been eating at me today for some reason and I can’t get away from it. I’ve done everything I can think of but it won’t leave me alone.”
Odette kept her hands steady on his shoulder blades, rubbing a firm, slow pattern into his skin. A quiet reassurance that he wasn’t alone, that he was safe and free from the horrid people who’d been hell bent on ruining him.
A pause, but only for a few seconds so Warci could collect himself before jumping right back into it. “You’re not gonna like this one, but there was this…this incident back at the nobleman’s place. I was just performing, y’know, like I do, but the joke ended up being on me instead.” A chuckle so shaky that it fell apart as soon as it came. “Business as usual at first, but then someone–” Warci’s voice sharpened, and Odette practically felt the surge of horror roll over him. “--someone brought out a whip and–...”
Warci cut himself off, slapping a hand over his mouth, his breathing harsh. He didn’t bother with trying to hide the tremors anymore.
Odette’s blood turned to ice at his words, freezing the rest of her with it. She forced herself to shake it off, to keep moving her hands against his back. He said it helped, and he needed all the help she could provide.
“...I swore that I was going to die that day,” Warci choked out once he’d gotten his breathing somewhat under control. “It just kept going until I couldn’t feel or hear it anymore. I-I don’t remember a lot of it–small mercies–but I…I do remember having to drag myself across the floor, because damn me straight to Hell if I died there, but…I was so cold, Odette. My back was burning but all I felt was cold. I had to fix myself up as much as I could, but I fell asleep that night not knowing if I’d ever wake back up because all the skin on my back was just gone . I already felt dead and I wouldn’t have gotten to say goodbye–”
Again, he stopped himself, his own panic suffocating him too much to continue. He shook his head. “I-I can’t, I can’t, I’m sorry…”
Odette was familiar with how Warci would sometimes have vague fits of panic–usually after a nightmare–but this was different. This left her at a loss, confronting her with a truth so distressing that she was certain that it stopped her heart for a few scarce moments. Warci hadn’t told her much of anything about what he’d endured in the time between him leaving home and him coming to the estate. The most detail he’d given was that the nobles were real pieces of work (something she now considered to be the understatement of the century). From that alone she’d begun to have a few awful suspicions, but this one truth blew whatever she’d thought before right out of the water.
She stared with a renewed horror at those evil lines branding the love of her life. Against her will, she imagined what those scars would’ve looked like when they were fresh injuries, how fiercely they must’ve bled to make Warci think that all the skin had been torn away-
She closed her eyes and banished the image from her mind, banished the thought of Warci, of her Warci, bleeding to death as he fought to stitch himself back together. Because he was here. He was here and he was alive. She could still feel him under her hands, could feel his back hitching as he tried to swallow down the rush of panic he was feeling. She opened her eyes again, and all she saw were lines. No blood, no exposed muscle, just old injuries that told her that he’d somehow survived the ordeal. He’d survived, and his own memories were punishing him for it.
She wouldn’t be able to stop it forever, but she could try to help him through it, could try to ward this parasitic memory away from him. She’d meant what she’d said earlier–he’d dealt with enough pain. Far too much, even.
Cautiously, monitoring his reaction the whole time, she started to move her hands against his back again. This time, her motions followed those old wounds, caressed and traced the marks that could’ve stolen him away from her but didn’t. He went completely still at the feeling, at the realization of what she was doing, and waited. Waited for the other shoe to drop, whatever it was and wherever it would land.
“But you didn’t have to say goodbye,” Odette spoke softly, so soft it was barely above a whisper. “You did wake up again. You lived, and those wounds closed and healed. I’ve been feeling them all this time we’ve been sitting here together, and there’s no blood.” She pressed herself against his back, resting her cheek against the base of his neck. “You’re not bleeding. You’re not dying. You’re not alone. You’re okay.”
Warci let out a shaky breath, leaning back against her. “I’m not bleeding, I’m not dying, I’m not alone…I-I’m okay…I’m okay…”
Odette kept herself resting against his back, pressed as close to him as she could get. Her hands traveled up to his shoulders, and again she started to work at the tension that’d built up there, trying to ground him further. She kept track of how he felt against her, how she could feel him breathe, feel his shaking, and his heart was beating hard enough that she could even feel that. She guided him through it, both with her presence and murmured reassurances, keeping him from straying too far back in time. Keeping him with her, where they both belonged.
Warci was able to get a hold of himself relatively quickly, but he didn’t bounce back like he used to when things were different. Instead, he lingered in the calm after the storm, listless in a way he never used to be. This wasn’t something he could bounce back from. He couldn’t pretend that everything was fine when the reminders of his near-death experience wove themselves permanently into his flesh, forced their way in when he’d tried to heal from it.
A lot of bad experiences had done that to him, it seemed.
“That…that wasn’t the only instance of this kinda thing,” Warci admitted. “It’s just the worst one. I’ve only told you a smidge of my scar stories. All the ones I haven’t talked about are from back there.”
Odette raised her head a little. “They beat you? Often?”
Her stomach dropped when she saw him nod. “Turns out, I’m only any good in a group, or that’s what they thought. Treating me like one of the guild training dummies was a far better way to get their kicks.” One of his hands–shaky as it was–lightly clasped one of hers. “I’m always gonna regret leaving home, but I won’t regret that I didn’t take you with me. Better me get all these ugly scrapes instead of you.”
The unsaid continuation hung heavy over their heads. Let alone what could’ve happened to Edith.
When Odette had found him again, she’d asked him what’d happened to him, what some vague person or group of people had done to him (because how else could he gain so many scars?). All he’d told her was “everything.” Now, she was finally faced with what “everything” stood for. It was an overwhelming answer for an overwhelming, prolonged agony, all for some nobles’ twisted senses of humor.
Odette found herself with thousands of things she wanted to say, but the ability to say none of them. Her throat had closed up before she had the chance. So, she set her sights elsewhere. She peeled herself off of his back (ignoring how she felt him tense up all over again at her absence), let her hands drift down to where the bulk of the scars were. She brushed her thumb over one point where multiple crossed over each other. She leaned back in, this time to press her lips to that spot.
She felt Warci shudder, heard him say her name with a deep confusion. It was all she needed to coax out her words.
“I don’t think your scars are ugly,” Odette offered, tracing the lines to another spot where multiple converged. “They’re a reminder of ugly things, but they aren’t ugly. You know why?” She planted another kiss there. “Because they’re part of you. My beloved arbutus, you’re still beautiful even if your petals and leaves are clipped and torn.” Another spot, another kiss. “I love you all the more for them, because they show me that you lived. Despite everything, you lived long enough for me to come find you.” And again. “You’re alive , and as long as that’s true, I’ll love you with my whole heart like I always have. ‘Til death do we part, just like we said all those years ago.”
She couldn’t kiss every single scar on his back, but she did the best she could. Each kiss was a silent reinforcement of her words, a renewed promise to support and protect him (a promise she continuously renewed without question or second thought). She couldn’t untangle the scars and the memories they represented from the rest of him, but she could be there to catch him when it became too much. It’s what she’d been doing since they’d been reunited, and it’s what she’d happily continue to do. She’d swear it to him as many times as she needed to, for it was a badge of honor to her.
When Odette was done, she quickly realized that Warci’s shaking had worsened again, that his breathing had destabilized. For a panicked second, she worried that interacting with those old scars again had sent him right back to the place she’d just pulled him out of, but she immediately calmed when he spoke.
“Odette, stop, you’re gonna make me start crying,” Warci warned, his voice seconds from falling apart despite how she could hear the gratitude, how she just knew he was smiling.
Odette couldn’t help but giggle, wrapping her arms around Warci and resting her head against his. “You always were the sensitive one, weren’t you?”
“Y-yeah, way to rub it in.” Warci sniffled, wiped at his eyes (but now Odette could see that she’d been right–he was smiling). “I’ve said it a million times and I’ll keep saying it: I really don’t deserve you.”
Odette shushed him. “And I’ve said it a million times more: you do.” She squeezed him gently, nuzzled her head against his. “Now pull yourself together. It’s been a long day, and whether or not you deserve me, you definitely deserve some sleep.”
Warci managed an awkward, janky little laugh, like he was starting to remember how to be happy (which made Odette all the more reluctant to let him go even for a moment). “I’ll admit, I am pretty tired. But first–” he turned his whole body to face her as best he could, tapping his lips with a finger. “Goodnight kiss?”
The gesture was probably intended to be flirty but Warci was such a mess that it was just plain endearing instead. There wouldn’t be any world in which she didn’t grant him his request. Besides, she’d already gotten to express some strong emotions by way of kisses, so it was only fair that she gave him the chance to do the same. It was a chance he took to with all he had, and she got the message loud and clear.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you for everything.