Chapter Text
Khalid’s hands skimmed her upper arms, inch by inch lifting the fabric of her top so that his hands could brush against bare skin. In return, she ran her hand inside the neckline of his shirt pressing against the contours of his chest. Hovering briefly over the steady beat of his heart, pushing away the memory of a volley of arrows piercing his skin. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him deeper, more desperately knowing how different things could have been. Terrified that she could never again leverage that power. It made everything seem more fragile.
‘Hey,’ he pulled back, just enough to let her know he wanted to speak, but close enough to know he didn’t intend a long hiatus. ‘Are you okay?’
She nodded. She didn’t want to get into everything now. Not when they finally had a minute to themselves. Several unplanned hours stretched ahead of them behind locked doors, with strict instructions not to be interrupted unless someone declared war on them. He let her draw him back into the kiss, this time she kept her hands occupied elsewhere to prevent the images clawing their way into her mind. It was bad enough they tormented her at night.
Khalid placed his hands over hers, drawing them down to his chest. To the spot above his heart where she’d hesitated. She paused and drew back.
‘You avoid touching me here,’ he said, as if he knew if for a fact. ‘And when you do, you become more frantic.’ He wrapped an arm around her and shifted their weight so he could sit up. He tugged the fabric free at his waist and pulled his tunic over his head. Now bare chested he took her hands again and rested them over his heart. Her breath caught in her throat. ‘As much as I’d like that to be a reaction to my toned physique, I know it isn’t.’
She didn’t laugh. She was preoccupied by his pristine skin beneath her hands. He wasn’t completely unmarked; how could he be after years of avoiding assassination attempts followed by six years of war? He had a scar on his right shoulder from an arrow and a slash on his left side from a blade, but no evidence of the wounds that had killed him.
He placed his hands over hers and murmured her name. She dragged her eyes from his chest and met his gaze. How was it that simply catching his eye could bring a blush to her cheeks and steal the breath from her lungs. Now that she was allowed to love him, it was almost impossible to concentrate.
‘I’m okay,’ he assured her. ‘Is that what you’re worried about?’
‘Not quite,’ she shook her head. ‘Sometimes I see what might have been, and it’s so vivid that I can’t believe this is real.’
‘You mean, if you hadn’t gone back and changed it?’
She nods and touches her forehead to his. ‘I don’t understand why I can’t get it out of my mind even when I know you’re right in front of me. It’s like I’m grieving for something that didn’t happen.’
‘Except it did happen.’
‘But I changed it.’
‘You still experienced it.’ He pushed her hair back over her shoulder. ‘Is it Derdriu?’
‘Sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘But that wasn’t the worst.’
‘Tell me.’
She ran her hands over his chest, her fingers paused just beneath his heart. ‘It was at Gronder. I was too far away to help, but I saw the lance strike you. But you didn’t fall straight away.’ She leant forward. All she had to do to relive it was close her eyes. ‘You laughed, and then they hit you with arrows. In my mind it seems like hundreds.’
He closed his arms around her and drew them both down into the pillows. ‘I remember that battle. You sent a messenger saying you wouldn’t attack my forces if we kept our distance,’ she kept quiet, waiting for him to work through the memory. ‘You led the attack with Dimitri... You were keeping us apart?’
‘It was the only thing that worked. You were so convinced you could get him to work with you, but Dimitri wouldn’t listen.’ She closed her eyes and tried to remember each decision she had made. ‘The first time I was too far away to stop him. I stopped him the second time, but the rest of his battalion attacked.’ She shook her head. ‘Everything becomes blurred after that, I went back so many times I can’t remember what I tried, but eventually I got you both to the end of the battle. Then Rodrigue was killed and I had to do it all again, but trying to keep him alive too.’ She shuddered. ‘I couldn’t do it. It was you, Dimitri or Rodrigue.’
‘That must have been an impossible decision.’
‘Rodrigue told me to save Dimitri at any cost,’ she said. ‘And I couldn’t let you go. I don’t think I consciously made the decision at all. I took the only option I could live with.’
‘That’s why you came to ask if I were alive...’
She nodded. ‘See, I’m a fraud. My excellence was a parlour trick. I had no right to pick who lived and died. What if I’d had more control? Maybe I could have spared Felix that pain.’
He ran his finger under her chin, a slight pressure to encourage her to raise her head so he could look in her eyes. ‘Have you always felt like this about your… abilities?’
‘Not always,’ she said slowly. ‘But I don’t know how to look at it any other way, especially after Sothis left.’
‘Does anything help keep the images away?’
‘It’s not so bad. They’re just flashes, and they fade quickly.’
‘I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable about anything. We can take it slower if it helps.’
At that she pressed herself into him and peppered kisses along his neck. ‘I like this,’ she insisted. ‘I feel safe.’
He wrapped his arms around her filled with an overwhelming desire to protect her. ‘There are times when you don’t feel safe?’
‘Could that be a conversation for another time?’
‘Of course.’ They laid in silence for a while. His arms wrapped so tightly around her that they began to ache. ‘Do you think it could be because you feel safe that it’s happening more?’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘Hear me out. When all that was happening, you were experiencing things so fast and so relentlessly that you didn’t have time to process it. To the point that it doesn’t even feel real. Except it was real, and you didn’t just experience those losses once. You experienced them multiple times, in different ways, each time adding pressure to you to try again and do better. And, you were new to handling emotions so it makes sense if you didn’t process them at the time. What if you still need to process those events? Your mind stored them away while it didn’t have the luxury to cope with them, but now you’re safe your mind is trying to help you heal?’
‘Help me heal?’ She frowned. ‘Like reconciling what might have been with reality.’
‘I’m no expert, but I can tell you that I always feel better after a good cry.’ He felt her smile against his chest. ‘You’ve seen me cry too often to deny that’s true.’
‘It makes sense,’ she decided. ‘And, it’s comforting to think that allowing myself to experience those feelings will help me heal. It gives me hope that things will keep getting better.’
‘Our lives are our own now,’ he sighed into her ear. ‘We can make sure things keep getting better.’
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the sound of his heartbeat. If she could memorise its rhythm she thought she might be able to carry it with her so that even when they were apart she would know he was safe.