Work Text:
The penthouse was still. Rain tapped against the tall windows in hushed intervals. Diana had come over to drop off fabric swatches and ended up sprawled on the plush carpet, flicking through her tablet as he stood in the kitchen rinsing teacups.
It was supposed to be an easy afternoon.
But she caught it, just for a second.
The way he turned the tap back on after finishing the dishes, waited exactly six seconds, then turned it off with his eyes shut like it mattered.
And then again, with the drawer— open, close, open, close— just to retrieve a teaspoon.
Not just compulsion.
Not just habit.
This was ritualistic.
“Wolf.” Her voice was casual, like skipping a stone across still water. “Did the drawer offend you or something?”
He didn’t look up. “No.”
She watched him stir sugar into the tea: five slow circles clockwise, one counter.
Then his hand drifted to his side as if by instinct. Tugged at the seam of his shirt. She saw the skin flash beneath the fabric. Scar tissue. Raised, pale. She knew that one hadn’t been there when he ran away with her in his arms.
“…You know you don’t have to do that stuff anymore, right?” she said softly.
He paused, then made a small, hollow sound of amusement. “Do what?”
She stared at him. Her eyes were no longer joking.
“The counting. The order. The… punishments. You know what I mean.”
He still didn’t turn around. “You’re reading into things again.”
“No, I’m not.”
Silence.
She stood, crossing the room barefoot. Quietly. She wasn’t trying to confront him, not exactly. But she’d grown up enough to see it now; the shame that lived in the angles of his body, the silence after she spoke of faith like it was a joke. How his eyes sometimes glassed over during certain songs. How, no matter how far he ran, there was a tightness to his breath whenever candles flickered too long.
“Did they make you do that stuff?” she asked gently. “The order. The prayers. The cleansing routines.”
He was quiet.
“Or is it worse?” she added. “Is it that… you still believe some of it?”
Something dark flickered across his face. He almost said no. Almost denied her.
But Wolfgang didn’t lie to her.
He breathed out, low, bitter. “It’s not belief. It’s just… residue.”
He finally turned. There was no anger in his eyes. Just a quiet, drowning guilt. A kind of exhaustion you don’t get from lack of sleep but from carrying ghosts.
“I don’t believe what he taught,” he said. “But… I still feel like I have to live by it. I still feel like if I don’t suffer, I’ve done something wrong. And I know that’s broken. I know it’s not real faith. But it’s in me, Diana. I don’t know how to get it out.”
Diana swallowed. The air was too heavy to speak at first.
She didn't cry at first.
She just reached out, lifting the hem of his shirt— gently, gently— exposing the faded lattice of scar tissue along his hip. Her hand trembled slightly as her fingers hovered over one.
“...He didn’t do this, did he.”
Wolfgang didn’t answer.
Her voice cracked.
“You did.”
Still no answer, but he didn’t pull away.
Diana stared at the pale raised marks. Her throat tightened, and her chest started to ache in that sharp, breathless way where the body realizes what the heart isn’t ready to.
“You’ve been punishing yourself,” she whispered.
He shut his eyes. That was answer enough.
“You’ve been—” She couldn’t even finish the sentence. Her face twisted with a helpless, bewildered pain. “Wolf, you left. You got out. Why would you still— why would you still—”
“Because it doesn’t go away,” he said quietly. “Because somewhere deep down I still think I deserve it.”
Diana stumbled back a step, like his words had physically hit her. Her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes welled with tears she didn’t want him to see but they came anyway, traitorous and stinging.
“All this time,” she choked. “I thought you were just… closed off. Reserved. I thought you didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t know—”
She wiped at her eyes angrily. “I didn’t know you were still living in it.”
Wolfgang’s gaze dropped. “You weren’t supposed to.”
“But why?”
He hesitated. Then, in a voice small and hoarse:
“Because your ignorance was the only good thing I had left to protect.”
That broke something in her.
Diana let out a small, cracked sob and covered her face, as if ashamed of the tears.
“You were twelve, Wolf. You were a kid. You shouldn’t have had to carry any of this—”
“I was the older one,” he said. “I made the choice. I wanted to take it. All of it. If it meant you got to be okay.”
“You don’t get to decide that,” she said fiercely, her voice raw now. “You don’t get to bleed out in silence and call it kindness.”
“I know,” he whispered. “But I did anyway.”
She didn’t raise her voice. She just rested her forehead gently against his chest and said, “You saved me. But I would’ve come with you even if you hadn’t.”
He blinked.
“I would’ve followed you into the dark,” she said. “Even if it meant knowing. Even if it meant hurting.”
Her voice caught. “You never had to take all of it alone.”