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No one returns from the war untouched, Christian least of all. The shrapnel that scarred his face leaves him all but paralyzed. In the infirmary he cries sometimes in the night, from pain or grief, Cyrano isn't sure which. His own wounds strip him of the patience for either.
"She can't love me like this," Christian sobs one night. He is barely intelligible through his frozen lips.
"Of course she can." Cyrano turns his back on the young man, too exhausted to call upon eloquence.
"She can't. Look at me. I'm... I'm..."
"You're tired," Cyrano tells him. "Never trust your thoughts after ten at night."
"I'm just as ugly by daylight as I am tonight."
Cyrano scoffs softly. "Have you seen the way her face ignites when she sees you? You could never be ugly to her."
"Everything she fell in love with is gone."
"Nonsense."
"It's true! All I ever had to offer was a face that was easy to look upon. The words, the soul, that was always yours."
In the dark of the night that's difficult to believe. His mind can barely untangle the threads of what's happening. All he wants is the oblivion of sleep.
"I can't bear it any longer. I must come clean with her."
Cyrano's already aching body stiffens against his will. "You will not."
"I will!"
"Then you are a fool. All you will do is hurt her, as surely as if you struck her."
"She'll know, then... She'll know that the words were yours, that it was you she fell in love with..."
"You think she will fall in love with a face like this?" he snaps.
Christian is silent for a moment. "Then how do you believe she could love a face like mine?"
The threads draw into a tangled knot, catching on the fabric of his mind.
"Cyrano?"
She would love him. She was Roxane, his sweet Roxane, and she could never reject Christian simply for his looks.
"Cyrano."
But if she could love Christian despite his looks, what, then, could she feel for the man who had been her childhood companion?
A hand is laid upon his injured shoulder, and he violently winces away.
"She told me once that were I ugly she could only love me more."
But were that true, it would mean years wasted, thinking he was no better than the dirt beneath her feet. Therefore it can't be true.
"It was always the words she loved."
But if it were untrue, then his words to Christian were a lie, and Roxane would never love him again.
"Always you."
And Roxane, beauty that she was, could never reject him for his looks, he knew that much. He knew because she was the only woman he knew who could look upon his face kindly.
"And you... you always loved her." Christian speaks as if a light was dawning inside his mind, clearing away the shadows of lies and omissions. "How could you write such words, not loving her?"
"She is like a sister to me."
"And more."
"No. No, I am all that I am. I have nothing to offer her. Nothing but pretty words..."
"Which she adores." Christian falls back into his own cot. "How could I have been so blind?"
His body aches. Were he not bedridden he would leave now and never turn back.
"How you must have hated me..."
"No. Never." That much he knows to be true. "Roxane deserves her happiness. That happiness was you."
"But it should have been you." Christian sighs a long, heavy sigh. "She will be so pleased to know it was you all this time..."
"Happy that we deceived her?" Cyrano scoffs. "Perhaps you are a bigger fool than I."
"We'll tell her. If not together, then I will tell her myself."
"You idiot. If she can love me, why can't she love you? There is no explanation, no possible reason why you should confess."
"Perhaps it is more than just my face that has changed. Perhaps I grow tired of the lies."
"Christian..."
"Cyrano."
"She is your wife."
"A secret wife. An easy annulment..."
"Damn it, man."
Christian chokes on a laugh. "Or perhaps an affair, endorsed by the cuckolded husband."
Cyrano goes limp against his cot. There is nothing left to say.
"Or perhaps... if she could love you... she could love me, too?"
His voice is so soft that Cyrano raises his head to look back.
"Would it really be so bad, for a woman to have two loves? And if they are friends, so much the better."
"Friends?"
"It all depends on her, but we could... the three of us... be something more than the sum of our parts..."
"Go to sleep, Christian."
"Am I wrong? Would you be so very opposed to the idea?"
"...I wouldn't, were it possible. But it is not."
"But if it was!"
"If it was, then yes. And we could summer on the moon."
If he recognizes the sarcasm Christian gives no sign. "I will ask her as soon as we are home."
Home is a nice thought. Cyrano fixes on that, turning the idea over in his mind. He's still thinking long after Christian is asleep.