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As a girl, her hands had never been pretty. They were often dry from overuse and the nails were untidy, a sharp contrast to the rest of her fastidiously maintained appearance.
"You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Your nails," Baatar said, wincing when Kuvira shot him a withering look. "You're biting them," he added, his voice at once gentle and reproachful.
"Am I?" Kuvira glanced down. Sure enough, her nails were once again nibbled down to the quick. "Oh, I thought I had stopped. Sorry."
"Don't apologize to me," Baatar said, his cheeks flushing. "I was just reminding you. You told me to point it out to you if you kept doing it."
"Right." She finished unwrapping her hands, tucking the linen strips into a pocket of her bag. "I'm going to go train with Su, I'll see you later."
"Why don't you leave the bandages on?" he timidly suggested. "You chew your nails less, that way."
"I'm going to be late," Kuvira said, her quick stride making short work of the trek to the gym. As she walked, she glanced down at her fingers, curled around the strap of her bag. The half-moons were nearly raw, and her fingertips protruded from under the jagged bits of nail. Her hands, she dispassionately reflected, were not the hands of a fifteen-year-old girl. Instead, they were the callused hands of a soldier...or the byproduct of childhood neuroses that no amount of reminders could fix.
Later, Kuvira's fingers are long, elegant, and tapered. Her nails are manicured and filed.
"You're doing it again," Baatar said gently, taking her hand in his. She had long since stopped flinching at the sudden contact, and had long since confided in Baatar that her nervous tic had been with her for as long as she could remember.
"My parents never liked it," she had told him once, after a night of distributing amenities to children in a refugee camp in the western provinces. "They ordered me to stop, and then I'd just chew them more."
"Let me at least file them," he had said, running his thumb over the jagged edges. "Better than leaving them like this."
"You just want this for your own comfort. I know they can scratch unpleasantly--"
"No," he had told her, the smile in his eyes colored by an inexplicable sadness. "No, I just want to do this for you." That night, he had smoothed the edges with hands skilled as a surgeon's, polishing the nail surfaces and buffing away the ridges. Uneven sharp corners were gently sculpted into oval rounds, or nails that "befitted an empress," as Baatar had teased.
But the upkeep had been difficult, and her habit proved more difficult to break. Nightly touch-ups were impractical, and there was little point to weekly manicuring sessions when repeated scrimmages or training sessions undid all the work. Baatar was preoccupied with his prototypes and restructuring the technology sector of the empire, and after some time he forgot about their little evenings spent with dimmed lights and hot tea and a nail file. Kuvira missed it, in an odd sort of way. It was an impractical use of their time, but the feel of his fingers going to work on hers was undeniably soothing. One evening, her crescents stained black by ink and the beds a dull earthy red, she nudged him awake. "Do you remember when you used to file my nails for me?"
"I do," he said blearily, rubbing his eyes and stretching in his desk chair. "What time is it?"
"Late," she said, yawning. "You can still make it to your room undetected if you're quiet."
"Oh, you asked about your nails," he said, suddenly alert. "Thanks for the reminder. When we were in Juroo, I picked something up for you--"
"Is that why you're handling the expense reports for the month? I told you, leave budgeting to me. This fledgling economy can't handle exhorbitant government spending--"
"Stop," Baatar said tiredly, fishing out a small parcel from his pocket. "Just once, let me do something nice for you without a barrage of questioning and reminders about my responsibility to the empire."
Kuvira snorted. "Hyperbole. Blatant hyperbole."
"Anyway, here," he said, letting the paper wrapping fall away and revealing a pair of slim, grey gloves with little buckles at the wrists. "Since I can't keep up with you, these will let my handiwork get a little more mileage. They'll keep you from biting them, too."
"You... What?" She felt her words thicken in her mouth as she ran a finger over the suede, her ragged nail snagging on the soft material. The palm side was painted leather, while the backs were soft and pliant. "You still remember that? I thought you didn't notice anymore."
"Of course I remember," he said easily, sliding them onto her hands. "I always noticed that about you," he added, voice hesitant, eyes worried that he had crossed some invisible line. "They fit-- do you like them?"
"I'll wear them daily," she said, bringing his fingers to her lips and surprising them both. "It's a good look, especially with the uniform upgrades. Thank you, Baatar."
"A look befitting an empress?" he said softly, interlacing her newly gloved fingers with his and tugging her closer, the tiredness in his eyes having vanished.
"I was going to say 'unparalleled commander,'" she returned, smiling at last. "But that works too."
Much later, Kuvira's hands are dry and chapped. Her nails are bitten down to the quick, and asking for a file is out of the question.
"You're doing it again." There is no gentle reminder in his voice now. There is no affectionate reproachfulness in his gaze.
Kuvira looks down at her hands, tightly clasped in her lap. The fingers tremble, and she wills them to stop. "I couldn't keep the gloves," she says, her voice forced into a calm, reserved cadence. "The buckles--"
"I remember."
They don't look at each other much, but on his next visit he brings Su and suddenly, it's as though he can't look away.
"Come on, sweetie," Su says after several minutes of protracted silence. She wrinkles her nose in disgust as her eyes follow Baatar's, flitting over Kuvira's newly bleeding fingertips. A combination of prison labor and anxiety has rekindled the old habit, and Kuvira feels her cheeks flush and her hands tighten under the continued scrutiny. "We don't need to stay here any longer."
"Here," Baatar says at last, and he's offering her a small parcel, a curious expression in his eyes as he watches her suddenly clumsy fingers tear the paper away.
Su looks angry, and then confused. But Kuvira has already forgotten Suyin and everything around her, from the wooden cell to the dim lighting to the suspended flecks of dust to the dull ache in her overworked hands. And Baatar is kneeling before her seat, as skilled and gentle as ever as he guides a new pair of gloves over her hands.
"They fit," he says, and she realizes his voice is as choked as her own. "Kuvira, do you like them?"
She nods, and as he straightens up the pain in her throat becomes more insistent as the pain in her fingers fades away. When she speaks, it is with the voice of an unparalleled military commander, more for him than for herself. "I'll wear them daily. Thank you, Baatar."