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They see each other once a week, twice if Caitlyn is lucky.
Their entire world is a white bench beneath the shade of violets. It usually starts off sunny, blue birds cutting through the surrounding mist and landing in the water of the fountain before them.
Caitlyn would lean forward on the palms of her hands, watching the ripples.
“Sure is beautiful, sprout.”
Jayce would be smiling down at her, face pocked with scars and stress and unruly hair. Then he would stretch his left leg out as he took a seat beside her, moving without stiffness or pain.
“I saw mother yesterday,” Caitlyn tells him. She usually tells him that. She wonders the last time she meant it.
“How is she?” His voice is gruff yet gentle, hints of his former self trying to peek through.
Caitlyn chews on her bottom lip, crosses and uncrosses her legs. “Same as you.”
Jayce huffs out a laugh and gives her a slight knock with his shoulder. “Well, I’m doing good.”
Caitlyn wants to believe it. She looks up into the mist, watches as it parts and dark clouds come into view as if she wills them herself. “Are you really?”
“I’m sitting here with you, aren’t I?”
Caitlyn squeezes her eyes shut, both of them clear and uncovered and uninjured. “You aren’t.”
The Jayce beside her wraps an arm around her shoulders and tugs her in close. It feels real.
It always does.
It starts to rain.
It always does.
“I don’t know what to do without you,” Caitlyn tells him in a quiet voice. “I lose mother, then lose you, then you come back and—” She brings a hand up to her throat as she keeps in a sob. When Caitlyn speaks again, her voice is lighter, younger, not yet marred by the years to come. “I miss you. I thought I would always have you,” she tells him with crossness.
Jayce drops his chin onto the top of her head. “I messed things up good and proper, didn’t I?”
Caitlyn leans further into him and squeezes the handle of a red umbrella tighter. “Mother is upset with you. She says I can’t see you again.” There’s the ringing of an explosion in her ears.
Jayce pushes her back lightly by the palms of his hands, one shoulder grasped in each. Her face turns up towards his, where his face is clean shaven, unscarred save for the slight knick in his right eyebrow. “You can always find me. I’ll always be around.”
Caitlyn drops the umbrella, letting it spin lazily on its tip like a top. She lunges at Jayce, throwing her arms around his neck and finally letting herself cry into the white of his vest. Even after all of the years since seeing him, truly seeing him, she can smell the smoke and grease from his workshop.
“Do you miss it?” Caitlyn asks, voice muffling in the fabric.
Jayce hums as he thinks. “I don’t think I’m able to.”
Caitlyn pushes back from him, her arms strong with experience and age once again. She wipes at her eyes as she traces across Jayce’s face. His expression reads nothing but dull serenity. “Are you happy?”
The Jayce shrugs at her. The side of his mouth quirks open wider to one side as it always has. “I don’t know.”
Caitlyn woke up with a gasp. She sat up onto her elbows and focused on slowing her breathing as she looked around and took note of her surroundings.
Large breath in.
The tick-tick-ticking of the clock beside her bed caught her attention first.
A breath out.
It was too early.
Another in.
The logs in the fire glowed with the faintest of embers, their smell wafting towards the tall ceilings.
Vi shuffled beside her, then turned over from where she had been on her stomach. Vi’s eyes glowed in the darkness at her through narrow slits.
A breath out.
Caitlyn looked down at her and willed the ghost of a smile to go across her face. “Did I wake you?” she whispered through the darkness.
“Yeah,” Vi croaked out, “but it’s okay.” Concern pulled her eyebrows low as wakefulness fully met her. She reached across the space between them and rested a hand over Caitlyn’s heart.
Caitlyn watched as Vi counted the beats. She tried to match the rise and fall of Vi’s chest, keeping track of when Vi was holding in a breath for a handful of seconds longer. Everything was done cautiously, deliberately, to slow things down.
“Bad dream?” Vi tried.
Caitlyn took her weight off from her elbows and moved onto her side, facing Vi. “Of sorts.”
Vi’s hand moved up to cup her face. She let out a humorless huff of air. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know.” The voice of her therapist told her she should.
Vi leaned forward to press a gentle kiss to Caitlyn’s lips, both of their eyes fluttering shut for a moment. “Come here,” she whispered as she rolled onto her back and opened her arms.
Caitlyn inched closer. She slid an arm beneath the small of Vi’s neck, then placed her head against the divot of muscle above her breasts. Her hand ran a familiar course along the skin of Vi’s stomach, ribs, sides. “It was Jayce tonight.”
Vi leaned down to press a kiss to the top of her head. Her own hands were tight on Caitlyn’s body, her thumbs moving in time with one another.
“At first, it was him as we last saw him, then, the Jayce I knew as a child. I was a child again, crying in his arms and…” She sighed and twisted her eye shut tightly. Vi pulled her in, impossibly, tighter. “It was just a dream; not even a nightmare.” There was the unspoken frustration with herself, the self-blame at ruining a rare night of sleep for Vi.
“It was,” Vi agreed gently, “but it doesn’t mean you miss him any less.” Caitlyn thought Vi knew a thing or two about that.
They stayed in silence together for a few moments. They held each other until their breathing became regulated, the breaths spacing further and further out from one another as it became subconscious.
It would be sunrise in a handful of hours. Meetings with councilors and reports from Wardens awaited them, along with whatever the day decided to lob their way just when they thought respite was near.
But for now, their entire world was green sheets beneath the roof of their home. This happened every night; Vi would continue to hold her every night, if Caitlyn was lucky.