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Sometime between the Spring of their deathrebirth and the Fall which now gathered around their makeshift home, what was once the suggestion of a line between Mal’s eyebrows had deepened into a permanent crease.
Alina blinked awake to find her husband still asleep for once, the morning sun illuminating his peaceful face. And then she noticed—that ghost of a line between his brows, all too often furrowed in remembrance. And just as sleep cleared from her vision, it was lost to her again. Silently, she wept.
Because he was still so young, and so much had aged him; so much of the wear he would forever be burdened with, on his heart and his body, was her fault.
But mostly?
She wept because he was alive long enough to have a wrinkle.
"Alina? Alina!" He woke suddenly and fully, always a soldier, his hands worrying over her face, eyes searching. “Alina, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
That beautiful golden skin creased in a half-dozen places as his face contorted with fear and she was laughing, unable to stop, wishing she could communicate to this man she so loved that now, here, nothing at all could be wrong. But Mal could read her, and as tears tracked towards her now-laughing mouth, his face became that deep, calm lake of affection. She burrowed deeper into his body--hardly possible, the way they slept--and quivered within his solid embrace.
A moment to catch her breath, to blink, to adjust her eyes again to the amber Autumn light. "You have a wrinkle, Mal."
He looked impishly offended, as if they were still those orphan kids; baffled, as if there had been personal appearance standards between them, of all people, after everything, that he had missed; but near-instantly he understood.
"Supposing I do, Alina Oretsev, what's it to you?" His tone was almost a whisper, but it was always just the two of them, so why not.
"I'm so glad, Mal. I'm so, so glad." That we made it this far. That the next lines to our faces will be from gravity, from time, not from violence. He understood, of course, eyes suspiciously glimmering, took her face back between his calloused hands, and placed a soft kiss to her brow.
"You're next," a whisper between their smiling lips. A promise. A blessing.