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Oksana was born in the early spring. Threshold between cold and warm. Her mother birthed her on the bedroom floor. Hospitals were few and far between. Her father’s car had a flat tire. Already on that very first day, her mother would claim Oksana was cruel. She chose a bad time to come. She tried to kill her mother.
Oksana cries constantly during her first month alive. Colic baby. Refusing to breastfeed. Biting whenever she did eat. Making everyone’s life difficult. No one lifts her from her cot when she wails. There is no song. No rocking. No gentle voice. No embrace. Her father tries. He soon disappears.
It’s said that babies will eventually stop crying when help never arrives. Maybe that’s why Oksana stopped. What use is crying when no one ever comes?
“Villanelle,” Eve’s voice floats through the room from the living room archway. Tired, concerned, a little disappointed.
She pretends not to hear, just for a second. Focuses on threading the needle, squinting in the low light.
“Villanelle,” Eve repeats and comes closer this time. “Please.”
“These have a hole in them,” she says, voice light and accent thick the way it is in the evening. Villanelle holds up the left leg of her favourite jeans. “See?”
“Yes, I know, and I said we would patch it in the morning,” said Eve, laying a hand on Villanelle’s shoulder. “Sweetie. Come to bed. It’s late.”
Eve spoke with the levelled, calm authority of a parent. With the slight exasperation of one, too. She sighs, kissing the crown of Villanelle’s head. The blonde shook her head, shrinking into herself, away. If Eve feels like a tired parent, she feels like the insolent child in the equation.
“You need to sleep, you know.”
“I do sleep,” Villanelle stubbornly insisted.
She knows without looking up that Eve’s lips are a thin line. “Not enough,” she says. “I’m going back to bed. I have work in the morning.”
Villanelle nods, silent. Eve steps away, hand lingering on Villanelle’s shoulder. Something she struggles to identify washes through the younger woman, and she lays her hand on top of Eve’s before she leaves.
“Goodnight,” she murmurs. “I love you.”
Eve comes closer again, her warm scent in the air, and she leans over Villanelle’s shoulder and kisses her cheek. “I love you too,” she whispers.
Eve disappears. Villanelle’s chest aches, the lingering pain in her shoulder throbs. She spends the better part of an hour stitching together the small tear in her jeans. In the end, she’s not even sure she did it right. It makes her angry enough that she gets up from the uncomfortable dining chair. She leaves it; in the end, Eve will be the one to look up a tutorial and do it properly anyway, as they had originally agreed on.
She pads to the bedroom, quiet and shameful, a dog brought in from the streets. Maybe a feral cat. When she crawls into bed, Eve is already fast asleep on her back. One hand on her chest, one hand on her stomach, blanket tucked tight under her arms. Hair spread out on the pillow like a dark, swirly halo. Villanelle lies close to Eve. She puts her forehead to Eve’s shoulder, lays her hand on Eve’s arm. Closes her eyes, tries to pretend that sleep comes easy.
In her sleep, Eve finds Villanelle. She lays her hand on Villanelle’s hand.
***
Villanelle bites down on her knuckles to keep herself from crying. Hot tears prick at her eyes and roll down her cheeks. She sits on top of the toilet, in only her light jumper and her panties. She stares down at her knees, at Eve’s hand holding the tweezers, plucking pebbles out of the deep abrasions. The tears were both from pain and intense shame.
She felt so different. Her grace and strength was gone. Now, Villanelle would fall on the gravel. She cried easily. It hurt to brush her hair. She fussed over the food she liked and didn’t like. Her shoulder would never fully heal. Most days, she needed help dressing herself in some capacity. The doctors were certain she didn’t suffer any damage to her head, but she couldn’t be quite sure. She felt different, small and weepy, and she could do nothing to change it. Then at the same time, she didn’t feel so different. She had felt like this before, only that it was twenty years ago.
“Almost done, Vil,” said Eve calmly, dropping another pebble into the small ceramic bowl on the floor. “And then we’ll give them a good rinse one more time, okay?”
Villanelle nodded shakily. “Da,” she said. Eve glanced up at her, surprised by the Russian. Villanelle flushed red and nodded again. “Yes.”
“You’re doing very good,” said Eve. “This was a little silly, wasn’t it?”
Eve’s tone was honey-smooth and soft, trying to lighten the mood, trying to not have Villanelle feel so embarrassed without giving a speech about it.
Villanelle gave a smile so slight that it was hardly visible at all. It was to Eve, though. “Mhm,” she agreed. “A little.”
“It happens to the best of us,” Eve chuckled. Villanelle winced again as Eve returned to the scrape with the tweezers. “I’ve fallen plenty in my adult years.”
“Really?” Villanelle inquired, voice faint and curious.
“Well, maybe not plenty. But more than twice, probably,” said Eve. “I tripped over a tree root on a forest walk once. Fell straight down and got a crack in my rib, I have no idea how I managed to do that. I’ve fallen off a horse, too. That’s … well, that’s a little more logical, isn’t it? My friend, she had this old gentle mare that she insisted on putting me up on,” Eve continued, laughing softly at the memory. “She was gentle, until a big horsefly bit her in the behind and I went soaring.”
Villanelle laughed, and even her laugh was different now. It was bright and sweet and childlike. It brought a glimpse of something else, underneath it all.
“There we are, all done,” Eve said, laying the tweezers in the ceramic bowl. “Now you can rinse them off. I need to get started on dinner.”
Eve stood from her seat on the round wooden stool and picked up the ceramic bowl from the floor, to get rid of the evidence of Villanelle’s fall. Villanelle, however, remained sitting.
“Villanelle?”
The blonde glanced up at Eve, hand curled at her mouth, a searching look on her face. “Can … can’t you do it?”
You are not a child.
But Eve does not say that. “I mean … yes, yes I could,” she said. “Are you hurting, hm?”
I want to feel like one.
Villanelle does not say that either. She nods. Lying. “Mhm. I, um, I don’t know if I can reach.”
Deep down, Eve knows that Villanelle probably can. She can also tell that there’s something Villanelle wants, only thinly concealed by the lie. Maybe it’s care, some tenderness. Eve feels the innate desire to give that to her, anyway. So, she smiles softly and urges Villanelle up on her feet.
“Okay, honey, you just stand in the tub. Do you think you can do that?” Eve said gently, the word honey rolling off her tongue without a second thought.
Villanelle, red-cheeked and silent, stepped into the bathtub. Eve grabbed the detachable shower-head and rinsed the ugly abrasions on Villanelle’s knees with lukewarm water. Some blood, so little that it tinged the water only pink, flowed down the drain. It was strange. She’d washed blood down the drain so many times, both her own and blood of strangers. It felt different when it was Eve with the water, her with childish scrapes on her knees. Villanelle rubbed her eyes with her fists and sniffled softly. There was a haze over the world. It decorated Eve with a warm, loving sheen and Villanelle’s own voice with a wisp and a heavy Russian lilt.
Eve holds Villanelle’s hand when she steps out of the tub. She dries her legs with a clean towel. Dinner will be late. And that’s just fine.
***
Eve twirled a ballpoint pen in her hand. She sat at the kitchen table with her laptop, that had about fifteen tabs open. Villanelle slept on the sofa, curled unusually small with the woven blanket up to her chin. Her thumb sat in her mouth, and she would give it an occasional suck, which was the very thing that had prompted Eve to get her laptop.
Her curiosity surrounding Villanelle stretched far beyond her original mission. That wasn’t news to anyone. Even now, in a quiet domestic life, Villanelle was ever evolving and Eve was ever prying.
What all of her meticulous research kept circling back to was age regression. When an individual mentally and emotionally returns to a younger age. By choice or involuntarily. To a drastically younger age or just by a few. To cope with anxiety and fear. It could be a symptom of PTSD; it could be a means of recovering from trauma, to cope with illness and distress. The person may act in juvenile ways; sucking their thumb, whining, refusing to partake in adult conversation. One can regress as young as to infancy.
Eve chewed the inside of her cheek. She glanced at Villanelle. Her Villanelle, the enigma asleep on their sofa, the Matryoshka doll that wandered their home.
There was no way around it, but it was also nothing Eve couldn’t handle. It would be stupid to let something as innocent as this be the straw to break the camel’s back. Eve knew bits and pieces of Villanelle’s life; she knew about her mother deserting her at the orphanage, she knew about juvenile detention, she knew vaguely about Anna, she knew about the prison. She obviously knew about The Twelve and everything that came after. She also knew about the fateful trip to Russia, in which she killed her mother and burned the house down. Even the vignettes that Eve knew were enough to paint a traumatic picture. She didn’t even know the details of the abuse Villanelle had suffered at the hands of her mother, or anyone else for that matter.
The Thames had taken much. But maybe it had given something, too. A chance for Villanelle to open up. To let Eve in, even into the murkier waters. It didn’t have to be a big deal. It could just happen. Eve could just be there. Open arms and tender words.
Villanelle twitched in her sleep, sounding worried, hunted. Eve closed her laptop. Moments from now, Villanelle would wake up wailing. She shouldn’t be alone when she does.
***
“It’s okay,” Eve whispered. She held Villanelle’s cheeks, kissed her wet face over and over. “Sweetheart. It’s okay.”
Eve sat on the edge of the bed. Villanelle laid on her back. Her chest shook and vibrated with sobs. Everything felt raw and new and confusing. The words Eve said; regression and trauma and something about her mother. Mama. The hole in her chest, the shadow looming overhead. Villanelle wept childishly, because that was the only way she could ever weep. It used to drive Konstantin mad, the open-mouthed wailing, fists curled around the sheets or angrily around his coat, snot running from her nose. Tantrums, he called them. As if she was two and as if her feelings were to be shrugged off as nothing more than a senseless explosion.
You’re not a little girl, he’d say. You can’t be doing this, Villanelle. It will kill you.
But it wasn’t driving Eve crazy. She leaned over Villanelle, the air between them scented with perfume and warm skin, lips catching salty tears.
“Darling. Oh, it’s just too much, isn’t it? I’m sorry,” Eve said softly. She wiped Villanelle’s tears.
“Th—th—ings are good,” Villanelle choked on the words on their way out. “I don’t—I don’t understand, Eve, I--”
Eve shook her head. “But things are hard when you’re little,” Eve comforted. “Things are just so very hard, even when they’re good. And you’ve had no one there to make things any easier.”
Villanelle trembled through her attempt at a deep inhale so badly that Eve worried she wouldn’t get any air at all. She smoothed the stress from Villanelle’s forehead with the palm of her hand. She kissed the space between her eyebrows.
“Let me try tonight,” Eve whispered. “You need to sleep. I want to be there when you fall asleep, I want to know that you’re okay.”
Villanelle hiccuped. She had dreamt about it many times. Eve humming lullabies, calling her baby in the most literal sense of the word, tracing shapes into her back as she fell asleep. She wasn’t sure where those dreams stemmed from, nor could she control them.
“Please,” she hiccuped again.
She stretched her arms out, let her hands clasp awkwardly around Eve’s neck. Eve cooed, arms snaking their way in under Villanelle. She was lifted up to sit and Eve drew her in for a hug, tucking Villanelle’s red face into her neck and rubbing slow circles into her back. Soothing her. Babying her.
***
At nine o’clock sharp, Eve stepped into the living room. Villanelle sat in Eve’s armchair, knees pulled to her chest and arms tight around them. Eve took the remote and turned the TV off, eliciting a disappointed whine from Villanelle.
Eve had come to a realisation; there was no routine. There had never been a routine. There must hardly have been a bedtime in her youngest years, no mealtime with family, no normalcy. One can go rogue later on in life, but children need stability. Eve figured it could never be too late.
“I drew you a bath,” said Eve, laying her hand on Villanelle’s arm. “Come here.”
Villanelle gnawed at her thumb. She stood slowly from the armchair, feeling a little ridiculous for being so nervous about a bath. It wasn’t like Eve hadn’t bathed her before, or seen her naked for that matter. There was plenty of that. Eve had helped her bathe and shower for months after they were discharged from the hospital. Villanelle had fought tooth and nail against it. Every bath was a struggle, Eve would quite literally have to wrestle her down most of the time; which wasn’t difficult given how weak Villanelle had been.
“It’s okay,” Eve encouraged. “I made it very nice for you.”
Villanelle slotted her hand into Eve’s and padded along.
Eve led her into the bathroom. It was warm, steam clinging to the air, not illuminated by the bright ceiling light. Instead only by the lamp over the mirror and a few candles. It was easy on Villanelle’s, admittedly, tired eyes. She sniffled softly, shifting her weight foot to foot. Eve closed the door so that there was only a slight crack, in an effort to trap most of the warmth.
“Okay, honey, let’s get your clothes off,” said Eve in that low, warm voice. “Lift your arms.”
Villanelle’s arms shot into the air without any further prompting. Eve tugged her sweater over her head, unclasped her bra, and laid both aside. Villanelle felt vulnerable in an entirely new way as she supported herself on Eve’s shoulders whilst Eve slid her trousers down her legs.
“There we go. Into the bath,” said Eve, a hand at the small of her back. “Careful.”
Villanelle climbed into the bath, sinking into the warm, sudsy water. Eve drew the round wooden stool close to the tub and sat down. She laid her hand on Villanelle’s back, the landscape of scars, and rubbed it gently with her thumb.
“The feeling we talked about before,” said Eve. “When things get fuzzy and you feel small. That’s okay. It’s an okay feeling. Don’t push it away, even if it feels scary,” she continued. “Come to me. I’ll take care of you.”
“How?” Villanelle asked quietly.
Eve smiled. “Like this. Baths, a proper bedtime. Anything you want, however juvenile,” said Eve. She tested the waters. “Because you’re very little, aren’t you? I can see it in your eyes, that you’re small. You can’t do everything by yourself, not always.”
Villanelle covered her face and her eyes with her hands. She felt it, that feeling. Of falling helplessly into herself, into something young and helpless. Then there was Eve, all around her. She embraced Villanelle, held her head to her breast, kissed Villanelle’s crown. Almost motherly, which was not a thing she’d normally say that Eve was capable of being. But it felt nice, and it felt warm. It didn’t feel like a trick, as it did when Hélène hugged her this way, or when her mother donned her sheep’s clothing and kissed Oksana’s forehead. When Eve let her go, she stroked Villanelle’s cheek.
“You’re going to have your bath, and then we’re going to read a story in bed, and then you’re going to sleep,” Eve told her. “Does that sound okay?”
Villanelle nodded very timidly. “Mhm.”
“Good,” Eve murmured and kissed Villanelle’s forehead.
Her mother tried to silence her with water. Oksana would taunt her, even sitting naked in the bath, she would yell at her mother and bite her with her wobbly milk teeth, she would splash her with water. It was only natural for her mother to lose her patience one evening.
Oksana remembers seeing the stars through the window just before mama pushed her under the surface by the shoulders, with her strong, sharp hands. Oksana could see her through the distorted surface of the water, she could see the rotten ceiling and she heard the terrible silence in the room. That was what mama wanted; her silence. Only when she began to loose her vision did mama pull her up again. She slapped her already bruised back to get her coughing. Then, once she made sure Oksana was breathing, she reached for the shampoo and they continued in silence.
Mama wasn’t trying to kill her. Not yet, anyway. She just gave her what she deserved. It would be many years before Oksana learned that mothers do not usually try to drown their children in the bath.
A while later, Villanelle stood next to the tub and Eve was patting her dry. She shivered a little as the water evaporated from her skin, and Eve did her best to keep her covered. She felt clean from head to toe, having been washed with the utmost attention. Her damp hair reached down to her mid-back, Eve had marvelled at how long it had gotten as she washed it.
Villanelle felt like she was floating. She felt light yet heavy at the same time, eyelids drooping from exhaustion.
“Don’t fall asleep just yet,” Eve breathed out a small laugh. “We have a few more steps, baby.”
Baby. The word tickled Villanelle inside and out. She smiled bashfully, chin tucked to her chest. Nothing ever went unnoticed by Eve, who drew the towel around Villanelle and took the opportunity to kiss the blonde’s forehead.
“Baby, hm?” she murmured. “Are you my baby, Eve’s baby?”
It felt like something heavy lifted from her chest when she nodded. Like she was letting go of some illusion of power. Letting Eve take some of the weight.
“I think so,” Eve said quietly. “You look tired, sweetheart. How about getting you dressed, hm? And we’ll go read you that story.”
Almost twenty minutes later, they entered the bedroom. Eve had dressed Villanelle for bed and had very carefully, slowly, brushed her hair. Villanelle hated to have her hair brushed when she was like this. It hurt, and so she would cry and pull away, flinching when the brush came near. So far, it was the same no matter how Eve tried to approach it. It made Eve uneasy. Her gut told her it had everything to do with Villanelle’s mother.
“You just lay down here,” said Eve, pulling back the blanket. “And I’ll sit right next to you and read.”
Eve propped herself up comfortably with pillows against the headboard. She had a book in her hands, and her reading glasses perched on her nose. Villanelle laid on her side, peeking curiously at the book. It was rather big, and the cover was so worn that it was peeling all around the spine and the corners. The illustration on the front was faded and stained in some places. Villanelle found that she struggled to read in her state of mind.
“What’s this?” she asked quietly, brushing her fingers over the book. It looked very old.
“This,” said Eve and laughed softly. “This was my favourite book when I was very young. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. You can see that it’s very well loved, can’t you?”
Villanelle nodded. “S’falling apart,” she lisped.
Eve melted at the slight lisp. It was happening; Villanelle was letting go.
“Yes, it’s very fragile,” said Eve. “That’s why I’ll do all the turning, okay?”
Villanelle nodded again. She scooted closer, cheek on Eve’s arm. Eve opened the book. On the very first page, there was neat handwriting.
Dear Eve, happy 6 th birthday.
Eve reads the entire book. Villanelle lies silent, listening with rapt attention. She sucks her thumb, and towards the end of the book she struggles to keep her eyes open. Eve closes the book carefully, laying it aside. Villanelle blinks drowsily up at her, wrapping a strong hand around Eve’s arm.
“Shh, shh,” Eve soothes. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep. Don’t worry, baby. Don’t worry.”
Villanelle released Eve’s arm. Eve could tell that she was forcing her eyes open, but each blink became longer. She stroked Villanelle’s hair, dusted her fingers across her eyebrow and the freckles on her cheek. When the younger woman was almost asleep, Eve pressed her lips to her temple.
“Goodnight, Villanelle.”
The blonde opened her eyes just barely again. “No,” she mumbled sleepily. “Oksana.”
Villanelle’s given name meant praise be to God. She always found it incredibly ironic, as soon as she learned its meaning. Mama claimed she was the devil. In fits of rage she would shout that Oksana was evil, that she was twisted and satanic, that she would one day kill her family. Mama wasn’t entirely wrong about that. She just ended up waiting longer than she thought for the devil to come home.
The name was a knife to the heart. No one was supposed to know it. It dismantled everything that Villanelle was. Konstantin would use it when he was disappointed, when he was trying to trick her. Anna had said it in that soft, tender voice and then shot herself in the head in front of her. Eve herself had called her Oksana to make her put down the gun in the café and then it was Eve who stuck a knife in her belly in the end, anyway.
But it was different now. There was enough water under the bridge to form a second river Thames. Eve wasn’t only Eve, she had become something else because Villanelle wasn’t only Villanelle. Perhaps it was only appropriate for her to be Oksana again.
Rain drummed against the windows harshly. It came straight down, heavy and unforgiving. The already darkening autumn sky was now black as tar. Villanelle sat in Eve’s armchair, as she often did when Eve wasn’t around. She sucked the tip of her pinky finger as she watched the downpour. She couldn’t seem to keep her fingers out of her mouth these days. It was getting hard to tell when she felt small and when she didn’t. Maybe she was always just slightly younger than she was meant to be. There wasn’t a time of the day where it wasn’t soothing to be held and kissed by Eve, nor was there a time where sucking her thumb wasn’t comforting. Her head always felt a little fuzzy now, as if it was covered by a thin blanket that would only occasionally be lifted away.
She twitched at the sound of a key in the front door. The door opened and brought with it a powerful gust of cold, wet wind. Villanelle hopped out of the armchair and padded to the entryway. Eve was dripping with water, the hood of her raincoat drawn over her head. She set the bags down on the floor with a sigh and pulled the hood back. She spotted Villanelle around the corner. Or perhaps it was Oksana. She stood with her face halfway visible, hand clutching the wall trim, peering at Eve with sparkling eyes.
“Hey, you,” Eve smiled softly. “This weather, huh?”
Oksana, because Eve decided that it must be her, nodded slightly. She sucked a little on her pinky finger.
“Can I help?” she asked, looking down at the bags.
“Oh, yes,” said Eve, shrugging out of her coat. “You can take those first two, honey, I’ll take the others.”
The first two were the lighter ones. Eve was still wary of Villanelle’s shoulder. Even if her own tended to ache with the weather, too. Hers was, at least, completely healed.
In the kitchen, Oksana saw that Eve had hung a third, much smaller, bag on her arm.
“What is that?” she asked, pointing at the colourful paper bag.
Eve gave her a playful smile. “You’ll see,” was all she said about it. “Help me unpack first, Oksana, and I’ll show you.”
“Okay,” Oksana said quietly, watching attentively as Eve put the bag on the side table. “Is it for me?”
“Yes,” said Eve. She rubbed Oksana’s back. “Come on. Give me a hand first.”
They unpacked the grocery bags together. Oksana seemed mostly aware of where everything went, only suffering the occasional lapse in memory. When she was all done, she tugged at Eve’s sleeve. Eve laughed softly; Oksana was very impatient. So far she was nice about it, though. She’d seen the worst of Villanelle’s impatience already. She could be awfully petulant, so much so that Eve understood why Konstantin despite his age had gone fully grey and nearly bald. It was no coincidence that Eve’s first thick cluster of grey hairs had appeared during the initial months of being home from the hospital with Villanelle.
Anyway. Eve should show Oksana the contents of the bag regardless.
“Sit,” said Eve, pulling out a chair at the table. Oksana sat. “I can’t guarantee that any of this will be to your liking, but, um …”
Eve trailed off, sitting down as well, suddenly feeling trepidatious. She pulled the two items out of the bag. It was a book and something soft. A rolled up blanket with a small plush animal attached. The blanket was a rusty red, the animal was a fox. Oksana’s jaw was a little slack. Her eyes were wide and now wet. She seemed to struggle to understand what she was looking at. She touched the fox. Rubbed its soft, small ear between her fingers. Then she glanced up at Eve.
Eve cleared her throat nervously. “It’s, um, it’s a blankie, see,” she said, and gave the satin ribbon tied around it a light tug. Oksana clumsily unfurled it. “There. It’s big enough for you to hold.”
Oksana kept staring at it. Eve saw how her lip quivered.
“Baby, do you not—”
Oksana shook her head.
Eve frowned. “You don’t like it?” she asked.
Oksana looked at Eve again, eyes wider than Eve thought possible. “I love it,” she insisted.
Eve’s frown morphed into a small smile. “You do?” she said softly. “I … well, I felt a little unsure about buying it, you haven’t asked for anything like that. I wasn’t sure you wanted something so … babyish. But I think that maybe you do, don’t you?”
Oksana shrunk in her seat. Her cheeks bloomed red when she nodded. She liked it more than she could say. Those ‘babyish’ things, as Eve called them. She liked to look at bottles and soothers and soft toys at the store and in windows in the town. She hadn’t thought to ask for any of it yet. It seemed Eve was a step ahead.
“And the book …” said Oksana.
Eve’s smile grew. “Yes, um … The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” she said, running her finger under the words as she read the title. She left out the connection Konstantin had made between the two, in what felt like a different lifetime. “It’s a silly one, the pictures are fun.”
“Read it tonight,” she whispered. “Please?”
“Yes, of course.”
The routine Eve that invented on a whim had stuck. It went as such: something light to eat, having her teeth brushed, a warm bath, a short book, and a snuggle as she went to sleep. Most often, Eve would put Oksana to bed at half past nine and go about the rest of the night on her own. Sometimes, if she was especially tired herself or if Oksana was especially upset, she’d go to bed too. Oksana would go to sleep even easier when she could lay with her head snug against Eve’s breasts, with Eve’s hand combing through her hair. She found that she indulged her more and more often. Oksana fell asleep most nights now. Soundly, thumb in mouth, curled small on her own or burrowed into Eve’s chest. She would still wake almost every night, sometimes wailing, sometimes gasping, sometimes quiet. Eve considered the main issue with Oksana’s sleep to be gone — it was easy enough to lull her back to sleep in the night. Eve hadn’t quite figured out what to do for Villanelle yet. Perhaps it wasn’t truly her responsibility to do so. She could help Oksana in a very hands-on sort of way. Baths and stories and snuggles weren’t quite as applicable on the adult counterpart.
Eve glanced at the time. “Oh, I was gone longer than I thought,” she noted. She looked at Oksana. “It’s time for bed. I think it’s getting pretty late, at least for such a young girl.”
Oksana shrunk even more into her seat. She gnawed at her fingers. “No,” she protested with a twinkle in her eye. “Not so little.”
“No?” Eve chuckled. “So you don’t want your bath and your story?”
Oksana’s eyes widened when she realised what not being little meant. She shook her head rapidly. “No, I want,” she now strongly insisted. “Eve!”
Eve stood from her chair. She approached Oksana and kissed the top of her head. “You’re silly, you know that?” she murmured against her head. “Now come on, hm? Let’s go see about your bath.”
***
Eve wakes to a loud clatter in the middle of the night. Glass shattering against the tile in the kitchen. Eve extends an intuitive hand to the other side of the bed — it was, predictably, empty. Eve flicked on the bedside lamp, being temporarily blinded by the bright light, and then she was out of bed too. She slid across the floor in a hurry, to the kitchen where the light above the sink was on.
There stood Oksana, in only her sleep shirt, shattered glass all around her. A carton of milk stood on the kitchen counter. Eve was a little surprised to see it; she’s never seen Villanelle drink milk, not that she can recall anyway. When Oksana saw Eve in the kitchen entry, the colour seemed to drain from her already pale face. Her legs began to shake.
“Baby …” was all Eve could say. “What happened here, honey?”
Eve approached her, keeping an eye out for runaway shards of glass. Oksana looked scared, and she looked distant; like she wasn’t entirely registering what was happening. Could she be sure that it was Eve? Could she be sure that it wasn’t her mother? Oksana took a wary step back.
“No, no, no,” Eve said quickly. “Oksana. Stay right there, don’t move. There’s glass all over the floor, okay? You could really hurt yourself if you step on it.”
“I’m sorry,” Oksana’s voice cracked. She stood obediently in place. “Eve, I’m so—so—sorry.”
“Baby. It’s okay. I just don’t want to pick glass out of your feet all night,” Eve assured her calmly. “Just … stand right there and let me clean up.”
Oksana stood glued in place, thumb in her mouth and tears down her cheeks, as Eve swept the glass into the dustpan. It wasn’t a special glass, it came from an IKEA set, so Eve certainly wouldn’t mourn it. As soon as the harm was out of the way, Eve returned to Oksana.
“There, it’s all gone,” Eve said softly. She took Oksana’s hand, the one that wasn’t hovering around her mouth, and held it between both of hers. “Were you thirsty?”
Oksana nodded. Her head hung with shame.
“Why didn’t you wake me up and say you were thirsty, sweetheart?”
Oksana shrugged. “Bother.”
“You were scared to be a bother?”
“Yes,” Oksana whispered.
Eve sighed. “Oksana, you don’t bother me. Isn’t that our deal? When you’re small, I look after you,” said Eve. “You’re allowed to wake me up.”
Oksana hiccuped. “I didn’t mean to be naughty. Konstantin says I’m na—naughty on purpose, and mama said, mama said I meant to be bad, all the time.”
Eve cupped Oksana’s cheek. Just the way she did in her old kitchen, years ago. Except that this time, Oksana leaned fully into the touch, and her warm tears wet Eve’s hand.
“You didn’t mean to be bad, you weren’t being bad,” Eve smiled softly. “You were thirsty. But, honey, I’ve never seen you drink milk.”
Oksana’s cheek turned warm under Eve’s palm. She shrugged. “I wanted milk,” she mumbled.
“Then you should have some,” Eve insisted.
Eve took a new glass from the cupboard and filled it with milk. She’d noticed that Oksana’s hand was cold when she held it. Therefore, she led the girl into the dark living room. She flicked on the floor lamp, the one with the sheer fabric shade, the one that didn’t shine so intensely. She set the glass on the table and sat on the sofa, beckoning for Oksana to come over.
“Come sit,” she urged softly. “Come sit here, baby.”
Oksana settled on Eve’s lap, being shifted around so that Eve was cradling her. Still more sitting than lying, but supported by Eve’s arms and tucked close to her body. Eve drew the woven wool blanket over Oksana’s legs, who were cold as well. It was autumn now, but they were yet to keep the fire going much during the day. Their cottage went chilly at night. She reached for the glass and gave it to Oksana, who seemed tense and wary. She took the glass, held it with both hands, to make up for her weak shoulder and also because this is how children hold glasses. Just as she holds her fork funny, or the way she can’t properly wrap her fingers around her pencils, or how she’ll hold just the one finger on Eve’s hand instead of all of it.
“Relax, honey,” Eve spoke softly and smoothly. “You’re okay. Just have your milk.”
Oksana brought the glass to her lips and finally drank. Eve was quiet, like she was only there to keep her safe and warm. Her free hand caressed Oksana’s legs over the blanket. Oksana had been having a strange urge lately. She wasn’t sure what it was born out of. She thought of it now, too. Something within her wished that the milk would be warm. At least slightly so. She looked at Eve, the slight plunge in the neckline of her pyjama top. Oksana wondered what it would be like to lay there instead, with Eve’s breast instead of a glass. If it would feel warm and snug and secure, if Eve would run her fingers through her hair just like now, if she’d murmur or sing a little.
The thought quickly filled her with shame. Surely, that is where Eve would draw the line.
“What are you thinking about, hm?” Eve asked, tracing the wrinkle that appeared between Oksana’s eyebrows when she was deep in thought.
Oksana shook her head. “Nothing.”
Eve tickled her warm cheek. “No?” she teased. “I can see when you’re thinking. Will you tell me sometime?”
Oksana nodded timidly. One day, she’d feel brave enough to voice it.
Strangely, Eve’s thoughts went along a similar path. It felt nice to sit with Oksana like this. Her long lashes flickered a little as her eyelids began to droop, she smelled nice and clean after her bath, and she looked so vulnerable and human, covered by the blanket and holding her glass of milk with both hands. A feeling whirled through Eve’s chest, an urge to keep Oksana warm and fed, just like this. She couldn’t quite figure out what was missing.
Eve sighed. What a strange, beautiful, confusing thing their relationship was. She glanced at the time. It was nearly three in the morning. She lightened up, gave Oksana’s belly a light tickle.
“It’s like having a real baby,” she joked affectionately. “You keep me up at the oddest hours.”
Oksana giggled lightly, amused and glad to hear the words real and baby in a sentence regarding herself. She had finished her milk, so Eve took the glass from her hands to prevent another accident. She hugged Oksana close, kissed her sweet face.
“Let’s go back to bed, Oksana,” she said. “There’s so many hours left of sleep for us.”
***
Villanelle sits on the edge of the bed in only her underwear. The curtains are drawn to the side, the blinds rolled up, the lamp in the window glowing warm yellow. It’s dark outside, still, the sun yet to climb fully above the horizon. The world was blue, the trees black shadows against the sky. There was nothing but birdsong and fog in the air. It was too early to be awake, often Eve would be soothing her back to sleep if she woke at this hour, but today Eve had been the one to set the alarm at quarter to six.
The floor was cold, the winter chill seeping into her feet and up her legs. Villanelle sniffled, resisting the urge to cry, though it sat in her chest like a heavy rock. Eve returned into view, a pile of folded clothes in her hands which she laid on the bed next to Villanelle. Eve was already dressed in her typical dark green turtle-neck. Villanelle looked tired, all slouching shoulders and downcast face. Eve felt bad about dragging her out of bed so early, but there was no way around the eight-in-the-morning appointment at the hospital. It was a nearly forty minute drive, hence the early wake-up.
“Here are your clothes,” said Eve. She clicked her tongue sympathetically, stroking Villanelle’s cheek. “It’s just too early, isn’t it?”
Villanelle nodded, hiccuping instead of sobbing, and rubbed her eyes with her fists. Eve crouched down and slipped brown wool socks onto Villanelle’s cold, stiff feet. She squeezed Villanelle’s knee gently, before grabbing the jumper. It was a light grey, nearly off-white, cabled one. Very similar to the one she wore that night in the bothy before the world crumbled around them, if a little smaller. They bought it from a lady in town who sells her work, because Villanelle has a lot of money and not enough things to spend it on.
“Arms up,” Eve instructed gently. Villanelle lifted her arms; the left one much higher than the weakened right. “You’re so stiff in the morning, honey, does it hurt?”
It ached a little to see Villanelle nod so sadly. She tugged the jumper over her head quickly, doing her best not to worsen the bad shoulder. Still, when the collar was over her head and Eve moved her long hair out of her face, her eyes were teary and her lip was quivering. Villanelle hiccuped.
“I don’t want to go,” she complained quietly, covering her face with her hands. “It’s—it’s early, and it hurts, and I feel, I don’t even feel big enough,” Villanelle continued, her shoulders shaking. The tears came so easily these days. “I feel all upside down. Inside out.”
“You can be little,” Eve said. “Be little, sweetheart, if that helps at all. I’ll take care of things. And Dr. Greene is a nice lady. She calls you love and lets you pick a gift already, doesn’t she? It won’t be much different, except you might feel a bit better.”
“Okay,” Villanelle whispered. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’m sure,” Eve said simply. “Now stand up so we can get your pants on.”
Oksana stood up, and she steadied herself on Eve’s shoulders as she was helped into her jeans. The simple act of getting help with her clothes might’ve been what pushed her to finally let that fuzzy feeling overtake her. She sucked at the very tip of her thumb, eyelids still drooping sleepily. Eve heated porridge on the stove for them both. Oksana ate quietly, with some coaxing from Eve. She gets help brushing her teeth, because her shoulder is too stiff and her mind is too distracted by whatever is happening outside the window for her to do it properly. At ten past seven, they’re at the door.
“It’s almost freezing out there,” said Eve as she grabbed Oksana’s hat and scarf from the top shelf by the door. The thermometer had sat steadily at 0.5°C since last night. “We should make sure to stay warm, shouldn’t we?”
Oksana nodded timidly, thumb in her mouth as always. I ought to get her an actual pacifier, thought Eve to herself, and she wasn’t entirely joking. Almost not at all, in fact. She tugged the red beanie over Oksana’s head and wrapped the scarf around her neck. Oksana grumbled unhappily as Eve zipped her coat up to her chin.
“You’ll thank me once we’re outside.”
“I like cold,” Oksana asserted.
“Yes, I know you do, I do too,” said Eve. “That won’t save these itty bitty hands from frostbite,” she adds as she slips Oksana’s hands into warm, woolly mittens.
“My hands are bigger,” she said, holding her hand next to Eve’s. “Look.”
“Not to me, they’re not,” insisted Eve, smiling softly. “They’re as little as the rest of you.”
Eve sat on the chair in the corner of the small exam room, with Oksana’s sweater folded in her lap. Dr. Greene had been their doctor since the month they moved to their house in the lake district. She knew the ins and outs of Villanelle’s injury to a molecular level by this point. Dr. Greene was one of the very few people that Villanelle had let in. She would behave childishly around her, too. Ask for toys after appointments and laugh at Dr. Greene’s jokes. The doctor, who was a little older than Eve and very keen, had picked up on these behaviours easily and treated her thereafter. Never once talking over her head, but making sure to meet Villanelle where she was. Sometimes, that meant talking more with Eve than the patient.
“Now, if you’d turn around a little bit that way so I can get a closer look …” Dr. Greene said, a guiding hand on Oksana’s side. “Thank you, love, that’s perfect. We’ll do the same thing we did last time. Do you remember?”
Dr. Greene and Oksana talked quietly between themselves. Eve’s eyes fell on Oksana’s right shoulder. The scar was large. Eve didn’t even refer to them as multiple scars, though there had been several bullets; the wounds had all morphed together. At a glance you would not even consider that Villanelle might’ve been shot. The scar stretched from her shoulder down the right side of her back, snaking its way around just to the side of her breast. It was deep and rugged. Flame carved into skin. On her front, the entry holes were marked only by small white circles. Her back took the brunt of it. The surgeons opened her two, three, four times. Eve remembers the sight of it, the angry red veins that stretched from the centres of the wounds, downwards and outwards, headed to her heart and her brain. The intricate spider’s web of infection that the surgeons fought to cut out. How the incisions were deeper and wider each time, until the small round holes had become an open, burning field. She remembers the sweat on Villanelle’s cold skin, her white lips, the crackling sound of each breath.
There was nerve damage. For months, Villanelle was convinced that her shoulder was wet, or cold, or boiling. While her nerves no longer fired such misleading signals, they were still not intact and never would be. Sometimes the arm tingles and goes numb. There isn’t much sensation in the skin, but it often hurts to touch it anyway. The scar tissue had fused things together in places. Made things stiff and unmoving. Eve was used to seeing the scar. She tended to it while it was still terrible wounds. She saw it nearly every night in the bath, and nearly every morning too. But sometimes, just as Villanelle’s damaged nerves send a jolt through her system, the sight of it sends a jolt through Eve’s too.
Villanelle could still remember the very first time she was locked away. There had been many such occasions since; the small storage room in the orphanage, the hole in the prison, the empty room at Dasha’s training centre, the many ways of confinement The Twelve had up their sleeve. But as with most things, you always remember the first.
She can’t recall what it was that she did. It must’ve been wicked enough for a slap across the face or the punishment of no dinner to not be enough. Perhaps she had cut one of mama’s old dresses for one of her costumes. Maybe she had broken something. It never mattered if it was on purpose or by accident. Maybe she had looked at mama wrong; given her the look that mama would claim was not a girl’s look, but the devil’s gaze. Whatever mama had to say to justify locking her five-year-old daughter in the rotten storage shed in the middle of the night. Out of sight, out of mind.
There were insects. On the floor and on the walls and soon they were all around Oksana’s feet too. It was dark and damp and it took only minutes for Oksana to lose any sense of time and direction. She cried, she wailed, she banged on the door. Her mother didn’t come until the early morning.
Eve stirs awake to the sound of crying.
It’s four in the morning. She doesn’t need to look at the clock. This crying, this particular mournful crack in Oksana’s voice; it is always four in the morning.
It sounded just the same as it did the night before, and last week, and last month. Abandoned and forgotten. Neglected. Eve sleepily reached for Oksana; she’d put her hand on the flat centre of Oksana’s chest, feel the vibration of her cries, and she’d sit up to wake her. Except that her hand did not find Oksana’s chest. Only the cold mattress and her fox blanket, Lisa, which she had left behind. Now wide awake, Eve could also tell that the crying was distant.
This was new. Had Oksana wandered off in her sleep?
Eve sat up, flicked the light on, and rubbed at her tired face. Just as she had thought, the clock read 04:07. Oksana was nothing but punctual. Creature of habit. At two in the morning, there is a night terror. At three in the morning, she needs the bathroom. At four in the morning, she sobs in her sleep — and now, apparently, wanders off as well.
It isn’t every night; she sleeps through some of them. But it is most nights. Eve thinks it’s no wonder Villanelle is so reluctant to come to bed.
Eve sighed and put her feet to the cold floor. She took Lisa. Just in case. Oksana had come to like her fox blanket. She slept with it every night. She suckled on its ear and rubbed its paw against her cheek to soothe herself whilst Eve read to her. Eve had to assume that whatever state Oksana was in, it wasn’t very good. She followed the weak sobs, and they lead her to the living room. Eve flicked on the light, and it took a moment before her eyes found Oksana. There she sat, in the corner, nestled between the sofa and the wall. She looked so small, wearing only her big t-shirt, knees pulled tight to her chest. Oksana sobbed quietly, eyes open but not looking at anything. At least not anything that was actually present in the room. It made Eve’s stomach turn, the thought of what Oksana must be seeing, or hearing, or feeling. Oksana rubs her earlobe between her fingers, an act of self-soothing that Eve had seen from her more frequently now.
It would probably be best to wake her. Eve doubts she could lead her back to bed in this state. She crouches down to Oksana’s level.
“Oksana,” she said softly. “Oksana, wake up. Hey.”
She laid her hand on Oksana’s knee and saw how she twitched. Eve gave it a gentle squeeze. “Baby. Can you hear me? Wake up, sweetheart,” she continued to coax. “Hey …”
Oksana opened her already open eyes. She drew a sharp breath, as if coming up to the surface, and she blinked over and over again as she tried to focus on Eve. She sniffled softly, the shivers setting in now that she was awake to feel how cold the living room was. She looked at Eve with both despair and relief, her bottom lip quivering as it did when she was about to cry.
“Mommy?” she whispered faintly, staring at Eve with her wide, teary eyes.
Eve frowned a little. She had heard Oksana call her mother mama. Never mommy.
“Mama isn’t here, honey,” she assured her, hoping that was what she had meant. “It’s okay. Mama’s not around. You were sleepwalking.”
Oksana shook her head. “No,” she said, voice tinged with frustration. She wrapped her cold hand around Eve’s wrist. “Mommy,” she emphasised, a crack in her voice.
It took a second for Eve’s not entirely awake brain to understand what Oksana was trying to say.
Oh.
She shouldn’t be surprised. It’s exactly how she treats Oksana. It’s the exact point of treating Oksana like that at all. Perhaps Eve should feel uncomfortable, maybe she should feel that it’s wrong, that it’s crossing some sort of line. But she couldn’t find that feeling within herself. Just like with everything else, it was different with Villanelle. There were no rules. No standard. No outside expectation of what their relationship was meant to be. There was just them. Eve had begun to let go of the norms many years ago, the moment she was roped into Villanelle’s life and Villanelle was roped into hers.
Did it really matter if Oksana needed to call her mommy when she was little this way? If she needed Eve to baby her, to put plasters on her scraped knees or read her goodnight stories or bathe her each night? Would it hurt anyone? It certainly didn’t hurt either of them.
Eve smiled softly. “Do you mean me?”
Oksana hiccuped and nodded timidly. “Da,” she said, her voice sounding little and broken. Her eyes examined the room. “I’m not in bed.”
Eve exhaled a soft, small laugh. “No, baby, you’re not. You, um, you wandered off. You were sleepwalking,” Eve explained, rubbing Oksana’s calf. “I’ve never seen you do that before. Is that something you do, hm?”
Oksana shrugged. “Maybe,” she mumbled. There was a memory, somewhere. She chose not to think about it. She wiggled her toes. “I’m cold, mommy.”
Mommy. It would take some getting used to — never did Eve imagine that she’d go under that sort of title. But coming out of Oksana’s mouth it sounded sweet and right, her thick accent wrapping funnily around the syllables. Eve felt the top of Oksana’s foot with the back of her hand.
She sucked air through her teeth. Tsss. “You’re very cold, baby,” said Eve. “Do you, um, do you feel ready to come back to bed with … with mommy? So mommy can tuck you in and get you warm again?”
Oksana mouthed at her knuckles. She looked at Eve, those sad eyes drooping with sleep. “Lisa?” she lisped.
“Mhm. Here.”
Eve handed the blankie to Oksana, who bunched it up and brought it to her nose. She inhaled the spot between Lisa’s ears. It smelled of clean laundry, Eve’s perfume, their bed. This particular four in the morning dream was no ordinary dream. The smell of the shed lingered in her nose. She could hear the mice skittering, feel the straw and the bugs nipping at her legs. Filled with sudden despair and longing for the warmth of their bed, she reached her arms out to Eve.
***
“Eve?”
Villanelle stood in the living room archway, leaning against the opening, hand picking at a chip in the wallpaper. Eve sat on the sofa with her work, piles and piles of paper stacked on the coffee table, her laptop supported on a book in her lap. She peeked up at Villanelle over her glasses.
“Yeah?”
Villanelle shifted her weight between her feet. When she remained silent, Eve looked up from her work again. There was clearly a question in the air. Eve lifted her work papers to the other side of herself, clearing some space for Villanelle.
“Come here,” she said, patting the spot next to her. “You’ve got that look on your face.”
“What look?” said Villanelle as she padded over to the sofa.
“The one you get where you want to ask me or tell me something but you can’t figure out how,” said Eve as she welcomed Villanelle into her space.
“No,” Villanelle grumbled into Eve’s shoulder. “I do not.”
“I happen to know you very, very well,” said Eve. “It’s your face, angel, it doesn’t hide a thing around me.”
“I’ve been told my poker face is good,” Villanelle claimed.
“It is,” Eve nodded. “Just not around me.”
“Mmfh,” Villanelle made a grumbling, defeated noise.
She sat close to Eve, very close, because that’s how she always sits with Eve. Close enough that there’s hardly any space at all to separate them. She wrapped her arms around Eve’s arm, which was trying to type. She picked at the elegant watch on Eve’s wrist, the one she had bought for her. She huffed with frustration, stretching out and wrapping more of herself around Eve’s arm, toeing at the stack of papers for attention, gnawing at Eve’s shoulder with her canines.
“My god, you’re like a cat,” Eve sighed, hands hovering above the keyboard to avoid accidentally sending the email she was attempting to draft. “Villanelle. Darling. I’m trying to work.”
“But I needed to talk to you!” said Villanelle, a whine in her voice. “Eve. Darling. I’m trying to talk to you.”
“Hey, what did we say about the mocking?” Eve chuckled, letting Villanelle take her hand and tug at her fingers. “And I thought you said you didn’t want to tell me something. You were very firm.”
“Well, I was lying,” Villanelle said.
“I know.”
Eve gave in; she would always give in. She saved the email for later, closed the lid on her laptop, and cleared her lap. She took off her reading glasses, folding them up and laying them aside. Eve rubbed Villanelle’s thigh.
“What is it, Vil?” she asked, soft now. Always soft when it mattered. “Hm?”
Villanelle sat up on her knees. “It’s something weird.”
“Well, you’re a weird girl.”
Villanelle crawled into Eve’s lap, unable to resist the temptation now that it was empty, and she tucked herself to Eve’s shoulder. Eve hummed and caressed her gently from hip to knee.
“Are you a little one, too?”
“No,” Villanelle shook her head, and she meant it. “But, um, it’s about …”
“It’s about when you’re little?”
“Yeah,” said Villanelle, and it was more like a breath. Eve could feel Villanelle’s face heat up. “Eve. It’s weird. Never mind.”
“No, no, no. No, angel,” said Eve, putting her arms around Villanelle in case she’d change her mind and leave. “Nothing is weird to me. Not when it’s you. Haven’t I said that before?”
“Yes. But—” Villanelle cut herself off, not only nuzzling close but hiding in the crook of Eve’s neck.
Eve had barely seen Villanelle struggle with her words like this before. Villanelle is blunt, straightforward. She’ll say the oddest, frankest things loud and clear. So it was strange to hear her like this, which led Eve to believe that whatever she had on her mind was something she’d really been thinking about.
“You’ll laugh,” Villanelle insisted. “You’ll laugh and think I’m weird.”
You always laugh at things that aren’t funny. The sentence slipped into her mind like a slow, trickling poison. You’re not a child. I want to feel like one. Gasoline, fire, a scream. Villanelle squeezes her eyes shut, breathing in the smell of Eve. She let her hand come up to rest on the swell of Eve’s breast, where it was warm and soft, and let it curl into a small fist.
“No, I won’t,” said Eve. “I don’t laugh at you. I never laugh at you. Not like that. You can tell me anything.”
“Okay,” Villanelle mumbled.
Eve stroked Villanelle’s back, waiting patiently.
“I think …” Villanelle began quietly. “I think I …”
And the rest was mumbled into Eve’s neck.
“What?” said Eve softly, running her fingers through Villanelle’s hair. “I didn’t really hear that, sweetie.”
Villanelle’s cheeks were burning red. She untucked herself just slightly, so that she was still hidden but her voice wouldn’t be so muffled. She clenched the fist that rested on Eve’s chest.
“I think I want to nurse from you.”
It took a moment for the rapidly uttered words to make sense to Eve. Her hand stilled for a moment, but quickly resumed its movement in Villanelle’s hair.
“Do you mean,” said Eve, clearing her throat a little to make her voice smooth. The last thing she wanted to do was frighten this very honest Villanelle she had on her lap. “Do you mean … nurse from my breast? Is that what you mean, sweetheart?”
Villanelle covered her face with both hands, nodding so very timidly. Eve had never thought of it, not like that. She hadn’t considered that it would be a comfort to Oksana — but oh, it made sense. It made sense in a way that squeezed at Eve’s heart a little. Oksana did seek comfort at Eve’s chest. She would lay her head there and sleep, she would rest her hand on top of Eve’s breast when she was upset. Lately she’d been looking at them as she was close to sleep, something dreamy and sad in her sleepy eyes.
“We can try that,” she said softly, without any hesitation. Like it was a completely normal request. “Did you mean now?”
Villanelle shook her head. “Maybe tonight. If I’m little.”
“Okay. Tonight,” Eve nodded. She wondered how long this had been on Villanelle’s mind. “Can I ask why, hm?”
“I like them,” Villanelle murmured, and she curled up smaller. “I just think it would feel, I don’t know, safe. Warm and nice.”
Eve smiled. “I think it would,” she agreed. “And when you say nurse, do you mean …” Eve trails off.
Villanelle shakes her head, blushing again. “There doesn’t have to be any milk, I just—” Villanelle sits back on Eve’s lap, looking at the older woman now. “I just think I need it, Eve. I need to feel like that.”
The tenderness on Eve’s face was almost too much. She smiled, and it was so earnest and warm, not a trace of judgment. Eve laid her hand on Villanelle’s cheek, smoothed over it with the pad of her thumb, humming.
“I love you,” said Eve, because it felt appropriate to say it.
Villanelle seemed to regain her composure just slightly. She smiled bashfully, looking at Eve with those big twinkling eyes. Like Eve was everything and then more. “I love you too.”
“I know,” Eve said and kissed Villanelle. “Can I get back to work, angel?”
Villanelle’s smile grew, lip between her teeth, and she nodded.
“Mhm,” she said and crawled out of Eve’s lap.
She settled against Eve’s side, cheek on her shoulder. The first snowflakes whirled slowly to the ground outside. Eve rested her cheek against the top of Villanelle’s head.
***
“You get so cold at night,” Eve said sympathetically, crouched on the floor as she tried to rub some warmth into Villanelle’s feet and lower legs. “Your toes are all white.”
Oksana, who sat on the edge of the bed, looked down at them. They were, indeed, white. She wasn’t like this before; so easily cold. At the orphanage the girls would call her a space heater. On some winter nights, the cold was scarier than the girl who wasn’t allowed around matches or sharp objects or small animals. They would huddle up to her in the evening, fighting over who got to sit the closest and get the most heat. Her injuries had messed with her circulation, the doctors supposed. In some way her body was still in survival mode; her organs selfishly kept the blood in her torso and abandoned her extremities without hesitation.
“Do you want your warm socks on?”
Oksana shook her head. She would end up kicking them off anyway.
“Okay,” said Eve. “Let’s lie down, hm?”
They both crawled into bed. Eve laid on her side. Oksana laid face to face with her. She was visibly tired, and it was no wonder why. Though the worst of it had healed, the pain was still there. A subtle ache in the back of her mind all throughout the day. Nightmares throughout the night. A mind that fluctuated between young and grown, in a way that wasn’t all too clear each time. Anyone would be exhausted. Eve stroked her cheek. Her pale, freckled skin.
“The thing you told me about earlier,” said Eve softly. “Do you still … do you still want to try that, sweetheart?”
Oksana curled into herself a little, but she nodded.
A smile lifted the corners of Eve’s mouth slightly. “Yeah?” she whispered, brushing her fingers over Oksana’s forehead. “Um, let’s see … I’m not really sure what the best way to do this is …”
Eve sat up, getting rid of her shirt and shaking her hair out with a sigh. The room was cold; the goosebumps appeared on her skin instantly, a chill rolling through her like a wave. Eve laid down again, still on her side, and she placed her hand on Oksana’s shoulder.
“Come here,” she murmured, guiding Oksana closer and down towards her chest. “Let’s try it this way.”
Oksana crept closer, nuzzling against Eve’s chest but not doing much more. Eve realised that Oksana was waiting for her; Eve had an obvious role here. Eve cupped her hand at the nape of Oksana’s neck, feeling the warm, downy baby curls there. She shifted just slightly, and then her breast was there. There was something instinctive and intuitive about how Oksana’s mouth simply opened, seeking Eve out. Eve awkwardly tried to help. She whispered quiet apologies until Oksana finally let out a relieved sigh, eyes falling shut in an instant. Eve looked down at her and something big and strange rushed through her. There was nothing to do but to let it have her.
When she touched Oksana’s cheek, it seemed to trigger the most primal instinct besides breathing. Oksana began to suckle, slow and uncertain at first. Eve twitched. This was so different from anything she had felt up until now.
“There it is …” she whispered. “Are you comfy? Is it nice, hm?”
Oksana opened her eyes, letting her gaze flick up to Eve as she nodded slightly. There was a sheen over her eyes, a milky mist. Her hand slid up, resting on Eve’s warm breast as if to say mine. Right now it was hers, all hers. Eve wouldn’t even consider taking it away. Oksana closed her eyes again, falling into a steady rhythm with her suckling.
“Baby,” Eve murmured, brushing the wispy hairs by Oksana’s ear with her fingertips. “My baby. You’re so safe here, with mommy.”
The constant noise that existed within Oksana had come to a complete stop. There was nothing, she could barely recognise her own body, there was only the steady suckling, the taste and scent of Eve’s skin. It was enough, it was all she needed for now. A tear slipped from her eye and rolled slowly down her cheek. Even in the dark, Eve seemed to know it was there. She wiped it away with the pad of her thumb. When they continued to fall, she rested her hand on Oksana’s cheek and let it catch all of her warm tears.
“I should have thought of this way sooner,” said Eve. “Of course you need this,” she continued quietly, voice smooth and deep, a balm on Oksana’s restless soul. “You’re my baby.”
Oksana hummed, nuzzling even closer somehow, cold toes poking at Eve’s calves, hand curling small by her mouth. A calm unlike any other settled in the room. Maybe it was the oxytocin, maybe it was the squeaky sound of Oksana’s suckling, maybe it was the almost hypnotic tugging sensation at her breast. Eve was asleep within minutes.
When Eve awakes, she feels heavy and rested. Not sharp and alert. There is no crying, no restless stirring beside her, no empty space either. It almost confuses Eve. She opens her eyes and is greeted by a room that is nearly light, the winter sun having begun its slow climb over the snowy horizon. Eve had expected a dark room, two or three or four o’clock. She lifted her head carefully and saw that the time was quarter to eight.
Eve frowned. That can’t be right. Eve herself had hardly slept through the night since Villanelle was sedated in the hospital, nor had she slept past seven since way before then.
When the tired fog over her head began to clear, she could hear soft, even breaths. Feel their warmth against her bare skin. She looked down and saw the top of Oksana’s head. The dark roots at her scalp. She laid in just the same spot as she did when they both fell asleep, though the nipple had slipped out of her mouth and she had curled in on herself. Tenderly like a flower in the night.