Archive of Our Own

A thin finger of fresh dawn sunlight gently caresses Chaol’s cheek, coaxing him back into wakefulness. The bed beneath him is so soft he sometimes wonders if he’ll rise in the morning only to discover that he’s sunk straight through it to the floor. It cradles and supports his broken body and has helped ease some of the aches and pains in the parts of him that could still feel such things but...But he still misses his own bed in the castle. Foolish, ungrateful, selfish but...He drags his fingers through his hair and firmly pushes those thoughts away. They do him no good.

His eyes flutter as he blinks several times to try and clear the sleep from his eyes. As he has every morning for the last few weeks here at the Torre Cesme, Chaol tries to wiggle his toes. Nothing. He suppress his sigh.

Massaging his eyes with his thumb and forefinger he makes himself swallow the flare of fear and the twinge of dread that jolts in his stomach. He takes deep, slow breaths, the way they’d taught him to, until he has himself under control again. There had been nothing to indicate that today would be any different to all the others that have passed since his injury, since he woke in the castle with no feeling in his legs. But he can’t stop himself trying. Any more than he can stop the crushing disappointment that grips his heart when he fails. Again.

Rallying himself he turns his head to look down at Nesryn lying beside him. Being here suits her as well he thinks as he watches her sleep soundly beside him. He can’t ever seem to stop watching her sleep. It makes his heart flutter, the sight of her so comfortable beside him.

 More mornings than not he wakes to find her pressed against him, her arms around his broad chest, as though she wishes to pull him closer to her, hold him close, keep him safe in her arms. This morning her arms are tucked in to her chest and she’s curled like a cat against him, her body fitting snugly against his. The sight causes his lips to tug into a faint smile.

Antica is quiet and peaceful and good and he...He likes it here. He feels at home here. If it wasn’t for the war, for his country, for his king, his friends, the crushing weight of his responsibility he would want to stay. He would like to live out his life here in this calm, stable, gentle place. He would like to live it out here with her. Even if the heat drives him mad and the insects seem to think he is their favourite meal and delight in feasting on him it was...nice. He could breathe here. He could think here. And...And it made Nesryn happy.

But he still has all of those things pulling him back to Adarlan. No matter how pleasant it is here, no matter how he has fallen in love with this place he doesn’t belong here. His mind, body and soul do and always will belong to Dorian – his king, his friend, his brother.

He still worries about him, worries about all of them even in this distant corner of the world where he can do nothing to help them. Not to mention the war that rages beyond these quiet borders and what it might bring. The death of all of his loved ones looms; the destruction of all he holds dear is cradled in that black grip. It terrifies him.

In the quiet moments when he isn’t occupying his brain by talking to Nesryn or his healers or working through his treatments and exercises, his mind drifts back to this. The things that are always there, lurking in the dark recesses of his mind, slink out and pounce on him when he’s vulnerable.

Sometimes he wonders vaguely if there’s a Valg living within him somewhere, darkening his soul and hissing these things at him when he isn’t smothering it with activity, keeping it at bay with other, firmer thoughts. If not that then it’s simply his own head filled with different black demons of his own creation. He can never decide which is worse.

For the most part, Chaol simply tries to avoid the quiet moments that sneak in to claim him. He strives to keep himself busy. He talks quietly to Nesryn each night, learning more about her, getting to know her properly. He repeats the exercises and training he’s been given to the point of burning himself out, only stopping when Nesryn quietly insists that he’s done enough. He focuses on his healing.

It had taken them a while to convince him to do something – something he had never done before, focusing on himself. Everyone from the master healer who had attended him to Nesryn herself had insisted upon it. In the end only she had gotten through to him. With quiet calm she had reminded him that he couldn’t help Dorian or Aelin or Adarlan until he had healed.

Stubbornly, he had resisted them. He had divided down his time between his treatment and planning negotiations and politics and logistics, barely sleeping or eating in that time, running himself into the ground trying to do it all. But Nesryn had resisted him in turn. And stubborn as he was, Chaol soon learned that he’d met his match in Nesryn; that she was his equal in that regard.

One thing at a time or else he would get nothing done at all. Stay the course she had insisted softly, repeating her own advice back to him when he had been struggling with himself. Trying to do so many things at once was doing nothing but destroying him, it was achieving nothing and he had to stop.

In the end she had won. He wonders sometimes if she knows what a feat that is – coaxing him into being selfish, taking time for himself when time was so precious now. Guilt still riddles him about it from time to time but he has gotten better at coping with that as well thanks to her.

He doesn’t think anyone except Dorian –and even then perhaps only if it had been a direct order – could have convinced him into doing what she had with a few quiet, well chosen words. That sheer, unyielding will of hers was a force to be reckoned with, a force of nature, and was too easily underestimated. He would have found it easier to get his own way with a wildfire or a hurricane than with Nesryn Faliq.

A fond smile tugs at Chaol’s lips in response to that thought. His gaze drifts back down to her and the war raging inside him quiets at the sight. She sleeps so gently and peacefully and it soothes something in him.

There’s a rightness to this – her sleeping comfortably beside him. It feels natural and good. A part of him longs to draw her gently into his arms and hold her there, just hold her. Even asleep, dead to the world, she has the gift of steadying him. His anchor, his rock, his pillar – the only thing that has kept him from crumbling, kept him from succumbing to the whispering black abyss that waits for him still, ready to claim him.

He wishes he could give her everything she deserves; that he could be everything she deserves but...He had never done that. He had never deserved her, even when he’d been whole and now... Now having her here with him is enough, more than enough. Being around her is enough for now and he would never ask for more, never expect more, never try and bind her to him, not like this.

 In spite of himself however, before he can stop it, his hand reaches out and tangles itself in her hair. The thick black tresses flow between his fingers like liquid night. This is crossing some line, some invisible boundary that’s been between them and he knows it. But he can’t help himself. He only wants to let her linger in this peace, this quiet, calm moment, before war comes to steal it away from her, to plunge her back into death and danger and pain.

He wants to savour this woman, this miracle before him, while he can. She might not have magic or immortal blood blazing with power running through her veins but she had still saved him. She had brought him back when he’d thought that that was impossible.

Chaol has no idea what he would have done without her since the castle shattered. Given up most likely. There have been so many setbacks, so many failures and bigger and bigger mountains to overcome since his injury. Still he can’t understand how even that iron resolve of hers has kept not only her going but him too.

Every failure, every triumph, every disappointment she’s been right here beside him through it all. When the initial healing of his fractured spine had done nothing she had barely reacted while he’d felt dread and terror pool in his stomach. When the treatments following that had yielded nothing and he’d raged and bitterly suggested returning home she had quietly told him that they would stay and try again. And again. And again until either he was better or there was nothing left to do.

When the phantom pains had begun and he had screamed and begged for it to end she had only held his hand and sponged the cold sweats from his skin and whispered soft stories of her childhood to him to ease him through the endless nights. Never faltering, never wavering, never running from him, even then.

That had been the darkest point, the point that had pushed him past his limit and broken him at last. And every dark, hollow, hopeless though he’d kept locked up inside him had spilled from him in hoarse, desperate pleas. But she hadn’t balked, not once, she had never looked at him with anything but fierce determination in those beautiful midnight eyes even then.

She had never given up hope. She had never given up on him. And he knew now that she never would.

There was such a quiet, enduring strength in her. Beneath the skin she wore like armour, which her heart would never grace, there was an unyielding will that could flatten cities. She was stronger than he was; so much stronger. Of that Chaol had no doubt at all. And without that, without her, he did not think he would still be here.

Aelin and Rowan might have saved his life when the castle shattered. But in the months since Nesryn had saved him, his heart, his soul. She had taught him to be grateful for the life they had saved. She had given him something to do with it – a place, a purpose. She had given him hope. Hope he thinks now that he had not truly had for a long, long time. She had helped him to begin living.

As the sun continues to climb higher into the azure sky beyond the window he feels Nesryn stirs beside him. Realising that she’s starting to waken up he quickly withdraws his hand from her.

 They still share a bedroom, and a bed, as they had on the ship to the Southern Continent. It’s for both convenience – making the help he still needs from her easier to provide- and for comfort. He sleeps better with her beside him; as does she, they both have fewer nightmares.

 So many of the dark visions that stalk his dreams revolve around torture and the snapping of his spine and the end of everything he had suffered at the king’s hands. Jerking away to find her large, cool dark eyes fixed with soothing calm on him, her small hand in his is the only thing that soothes him. As for her, she suspects from the way that she clings to him and burrows in closer that she dreams of that castle shattering around her and all it might have taken from her.

In all the time they’ve been sharing this space together though, he hasn’t touched her. Not since that night on the ship when he had stopped anything from happening between them. Sometimes he regrets it, regrets not kissing her, not allowing her to have them while they still had the chance. But then he looks at her. He catalogues the smooth curves of her body, fluid as water; the rich warmth of her dark eyes, like freshly turned earth, full of possibility and life; the shape of her lips and he swallows that regret and curses himself as selfish. She deserves more.

She hasn’t tried to initiate anything with him either. They’ve both allowed things to settle between them. Uneasily, there’s still a volatile undercurrent of tension between them but he knows it will pass. Eventually. Or so he prays.

After the pain in his body had nearly torn him – torn them both – to shreds, Chaol had only wanted to enjoy whatever time he was given with her. He didn’t need to kiss her and touch her and make love to her as he once had. Merely being with her, hearing the sound of her velvet and whiskey voice caressing him, feeling the low rasp of her laughter huff through him, seeing that amused light in her eyes dance there, now tempered by the warmth of affection was all he wanted for now. It was enough. It was more than enough.

He still doesn’t want to waste the calm moments with her. Not while they’re still being allowed them.

Nesryn stretches like a cat as she wakes and nods a silent good morning to him which he returns. Then she slides out of bed and quickly dresses herself before turning to help him.

The sun is still yet to fully break over the lip of the horizon and the morning is still mercifully cool. The pale blue sky above them is stained different shades, deep pinks and rich purples, burning reds, fiery oranges and bright yellows. It looks like a painting, Chaol thinks, as he does every morning. The impression the beauty of the scene makes upon him is still as strong as it was when he’d first seen it.

Nesryn pauses in the gardens to let him admire it for a little moment, not needing him to ask. The trees on either side of their path hang heavy with cherry blossoms, their sweet scent filling the air with fragrance. They whisper softly to him as the breeze lifts them, the only sound disturbing the gentle morning.

“Sometimes,” Chaol murmurs quietly, throat bobbing as he swallows. He feels Nesryn shift to look at him but he keeps his eyes ahead as he continues, “I wonder if we’re doing the right thing, dragging these people; this place, into our war.”

He has never been anywhere like this before. Everywhere he’s lived, everywhere he’s home has been in the shadow of war and conquest and tyranny. He had never known peace, not truly, not until he had come here. He did not want to be the thing that brought that shadow, that heavy burden, upon them.

Nesryn places a small hand on his shoulder and squeezes gently. “It will come to them whatever we do,” she says simply. “If we left now they would be worse for it in the end. We only have a chance to stop this if we fight it now. Together.”

Steady. Calm. Honest. What he needs. What Erilea may need. He nods, breathing deeply.

“I only wish...”he trails off hopelessly, shaking his head, not knowing how to find the words to express the way he feels.

But she murmurs quietly, “I know,” and he feels a rush of gratitude at her understanding flood through him.

After a long moment he nods to her and she pushes him on towards their destination. The lake sprawls out before them for miles. Sheltered by a thick expanse of willow trees it remains undisturbed by the breeze in the garden and its waters are still and cool, dyed a rich, inviting sapphire blue.

They come here every morning before returning to the large marble white, tower-like building that houses the Torre Cesme. He attends his ongoing treatment sessions, Nesryn by his side, receiving instruction from the healers who had seen the potential in her quick wits and steady , sure hands and nature.

First though they bathe and spend an hour or two here in peace together. Nesryn helps him to the spot by the bank, the sunken, flat smooth rock where he can sit comfortable in the water. He can’t fully enter the lake, not without several more people to help him, but this way it takes some of the strain from him and offers support for his body, something his healers had encouraged. Mostly though, they come here for Nesryn.

The first time he’d seen her in the water he’d known that she had been made for it the graceful, supple movements of her body a perfect compliment for the interminable, immovable currents beneath her. Chaol watches as she slips into it, sleek and fluid as the lake around her, flowing as easily as a river down a mountainside. Had she been born with magic in her veins he feels sure it would have sung to this.

A soft smile spreads across his face as he watches her, the sheer joy that swallows her as she lies on her back, arms outstretched, floating serenely, letting the cool liquid cradle her. Unable to help himself, he dips his hand in then flicks it, splashing her and making her jump. Her focus snaps straight to him and though she glowers at him her dark eyes glitter with that vein of amusement. Chaol smiles again.

Taking a deep breath Nesryn dives beneath the surface, her body moving swiftly and sleekly, like an otter. His heart pangs with longing as he watches her. As a boy in Anielle he had loved to swim in the silver lake their city had been known for. And now he wishes he could indulge that part of himself again. More than that though, he wishes he could join her, chase her through the water, catch her, draw her in to his arms laughing and kiss her all over until she was breathless but...

This is all he can do. And the sight of her here, like this, lightens him and brings a smile to his lips every morning in spite of his own limitations. She was made for this, he thinks as he watches her. She looks so free, so happy. This is one of the few times she truly lets herself go, lets down her guard and her walls and opens up. He loves the sight, loves that she allows him to see it. This place with its warmth and its peace and acceptance is good for her too. He thinks she might like to stay as well, sometimes.

They’ve grown so much closer in the time they’ve spent here together. Almost every moment they’ve been there with each other, sharing it with their quiet intimacy. In all that time she’s never once shied away from him, his condition, the burden of looking after him. She has only ever been herself. Solid, dependable, steady, good.

The tender affection he has found lately in her eyes when she looks at him has been the only thing that’s stopped him breaking down completely on more occasions than he can count. Those looks, the gentle care in them softens and warms him and makes him wonder if perhaps there are still some things in this world worth the risk of falling in love with.

This woman, this wonderful, beautiful, selfless woman has no idea the power she wields, the strength she has. Back in that cabin aboard that ship weeks ago she had told him that one day he would remember that the world needed more men like him. He thinks that if the world was full of people like here it would be a better place. He thinks that they might not be in this mess at all.

It’s easy with her, so impossibly easy. There’s a peaceful comfort with her, a steady, quiet companionship he knows he could never tire of. Her presence is always welcome, always wanted. The first day they had spent apart had felt...Strangely wrong. As though some part of him, almost essential as his numb legs, had been missing.

When they had reunited at the end of that day it had stirred something in him that he had never felt before with anyone else. The sight of her padding back into their room, inky hair bound back in a loose braid, midnight eyes shining in that way they did had made him smile. It had lightened him and soothed him. It had chased away the shadows that had swept in after yet another hopeless, fruitless day. It had felt right. It had felt like the world wanted it to be like this – him and her, her and him. It had felt like the way the world should be – the two of them together. It had felt...It had felt like coming home.

He loves it, that feeling. He loves this, this quiet connection between them. He-

Chaol jumps at the sudden cold shivering over his chest and blinks himself out of his reverie. Nesryn floats in the water right in front of him, the source of the cold water that had splashed him. He had been so lost in his own thoughts he hadn’t noticed her. Feeling his face heat he hastily turns away, unaccountably flustered by her sudden presence on top of those churning thoughts.

*****

Nesryn smiles faintly as she studies Chaol. He looks better. Better now than he had been all those months ago when they had run into each other at one of those rebel meetings. One look had been enough to tell her that he was different from the man who had spent the summer sharing her bed. That person had been heartbroken, a little ruined, a little reckless. The one who had found her again this spring had been beyond that – shattered and desolate.

Looking up into those rich bronze eyes she sees that some of those shadows have gone. He had needed this, had had far deeper and graver wounds than his fractured spine. She is glad that they are slowly beginning to heal.

“You seem distracted,” she says coolly.

“I was just...thinking,” he mutters vaguely.

A heavy sigh builds in her chest but she fights it down. None of this has been easy for him she reminds herself. His broken body has stripped him of the ability to hide his grief and fractured soul behind doing things.

He had spent all his time after leaving the castle ignoring his own pain and needs in order to help others. His prince, his city, anyone who wasn’t himself came first. He no longer has that crutch, that distraction. His injuries have left him no alternative but to face the mess he had become, to think and plan and brood.

She can’t – won’t – judge him too harshly for that. Even if sometimes she sees the darkness of those thoughts flickering across his handsome face. Even if he can’t always hide the things he hasn’t told her; hasn’t told anyone about the horror filled nightmares that come to him in the impenetrable blackness of the night while she sleeps soundly beside him. The wish that he had been one of those who never made it out of that castle when the world had fallen apart is what lingers behind his molten brown eyes.

So this time, she chooses to ignore the insistent instinct in her gut urging her to push him further. She won’t push him until he’s ready to talk about it. And a part of her whispers that she’s not ready for that conversation either. It tells her she doesn’t know what she’d do if he confessed that to her. She has no idea how she’d react, how she’d feel, what she might say, what she might confess to, what she might  do...It’s best if they leave things they way they are for now.

Bracing her palms flat on the grassy bank in front of her, Nesryn pulls herself smoothly out of the water to sit beside Chaol. She does not fail to note the way his eyes follow her, transfixed by the water droplets that hug her curves as they slide from her tan skin. His throat bobs as he swallows tightly, forcing himself to look away again, forcing himself to keep his distance, to remain firmly behind the line he’s drawn between them.

Some days she wants to grab the hand he clenches into a fist to keep from touching her and place it on her body the way she knows he wants to. Today she wants to take his face between her hands and kiss him. Kiss him until they’re both breathless. Kiss him until the sun is high above them and then more until it sets at their backs. Kiss him until every shadow that lingers in his bronze eyes has been banished. Kiss him until he understands that she wants him, wants this, wants all of it. Kiss him until he sees and accepts the choice she made weeks ago.

But she doesn’t. She holds herself back again, keeps herself behind that line too. Because she knows that he’s not ready for this either – for this thing between them she knows that he feels as strongly as she does. It scares him because he has no idea how to handle it, how to react to it, especially not when he considers it alongside his ongoing condition.

And she refuses to push him on that either.  No matter what she wants for herself, no matter the decision she’s made; he has the right to make it for himself too. He’s had so many choices stripped from him lately – the few he ever had to begin with. And she can’t bring herself to take this on away from him too. Even if it costs her him. Even if he never chooses her at all.

Splaying her hands behind her to brace herself Nesryn leans back, face tilted up towards the sky. Her legs still dangle into the cool water and she breathes deeply, enjoying the peace and quiet. When she opens her eyes again she finds Chaol watching her silently, an odd expression on his face.

He turns away again before she can place it. The rigid set of his muscles tells her enough about the direction his thoughts have taken. He gives little away, growing up in and later serving in a brutal conqueror’s royal court has taught him to hide his emotions and reactions well.

In the time they’ve spent together she’s learned to read him, though. This tension in him now masks fear. He still can’t walk, can’t feel anything. Not yet. But she hasn’t given up on hope – or on him. Time. Time is all he needs – to allow the treatments to begin work. They’ll find something. They’ll help him. He will walk again, will walk back through the gates of the castle as he’d promised her.

Looking at him as he rolls his shoulders and tries to rally himself she thinks some of her hope might be starting to rub off on him. Slowly, so slowly but...he is trying. For her.

Without any conscious thought on her part, Nesryn leans over and takes his large, rough hand in her smaller one. Their mirrored calluses form bumps and ridges that fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. There’s a comfort in the feel of his warm skin against hers, it’s familiar and calming. Absently, her thumb begins to stroke the back of his hand, fingers curling gently around his palm and squeezing.

Even though she’s managed to find that faint kernel of hope still burning in him, a flickering ember in a once dark coal, she knows how scared he is. Even if he tries to hide it from her she knows. They’ve been here for almost two months now and she knows that he’s frustrated with himself and his lack of process. The more time he takes for it, for himself, the guiltier and angrier he becomes, feeling he’s letting those who wait for him at home down.

“You expect too much from yourself,” she finds herself saying softly. She hadn’t intended to say anything, hadn’t intended to push him at all but she can’t help herself.

When he glances down at her, eyes flickering briefly to their joined hands before he meets her gaze again she steadily holds it as she goes on. “You are doing well.”

All of his healers had told him so but it made no difference. It wasn’t enough for him. He still wanted to push himself harder and harder. Her throat tightens and she turns away from his intense, consuming gaze, looking out over the peaceful water again, composing herself.

“It was a wonder you survived at all Chaol,” she breathes.

She had thought he had died. She had thought he had lost him. He should have died that day. When the king tortured him and snapped his spine he should have died. When the castle had erupted with him still inside it nothing should have stopped the gods claiming him for themselves. He should have died. That had hit her as she’d watched the castle shatter and realised in that moment as her heart clenched painfully that he had never meant to keep the promise he’d made to her in the Sea God’s temple. Not truly.

She is not sure, even now, what she would have done, what she would now be doing, if he had died that day.

Chaol withdrawing his hand from hers makes her jolt in surprise at the sudden loss of contact. Her eyes flash back to him then. “You need to be patient,” she coaxes gently. “You did not come here for a miracle, thinking you would walk again the next day and be on a ship back home. You knew it would not be that easy. You came here to heal. That takes time.”

He shakes his head, a muscle feathering in his jaw as he clenches it. “There’s a war going on,” he grits out tightly. “We don’t have time for patience. We don’t have time for this.” A little of that frustration begins to slip its leash before her. “We don’t have time for the nothing that’s happened so far. We don’t have time for it to not get any better. We-“

“It will get better,” she says, reaching out to him again, placing a hand on his thigh, needing to touch some part of him, to connect them physically again. She squeezes gently, eyes never leaving his as she whispers, “You will get better.” A promise. Even if he never walks again. He will get better. She will make sure of it. She will heal the wounds that are truly killing him. She’s not giving him a choice in surviving this war with her; whether he likes it or not.

Her eyes remain locked with his, trying to let him see the hope and determination she does not know how to properly put into words for him. Shock bursts through him swift as an arrow shot from her bow along with...something else she can’t place. She doesn’t waste time trying to. Something is wrong and she braces her hands beneath her, intending to push herself up and go for help but-

-Chaol’s hand darts out, fingers closing tightly around her wrist, halting her, holding her place, keeping her here with him. Her eyes seek out his face again and she stills though her heart pounds in her chest like a hammer against an anvil.

“Chaol-“ she croaks. She wants to ask him what’s wrong but she can’t get the words out past the panic tightening her chest like a vice.

His voice is a hoarse rasp when he whispers, “Do that again.”

Frozen with uncertainty, Nesryn doesn’t resist him as he guides her hand carefully, slowly back to his leg. Gently, acting on some deep rooted instinct, she gives him another soft squeeze. His eyes fill with tears.

“Chaol-“ she whispers again, terror twisting up her stomach. If his phantom pains have returned. He can’t survive that again, whatever she does, she can’t drag him through that hell for a second time, not so soon after the first.

His eyes meet hers once more and he breathes softly, “I can feel that.”

There’s such joyous disbelief in his voice, in his face, and the slack, dazed expression on it causes the solid lump to form in her throat. IHs hand trembles uncontrollably, covering hers, pressing it down a little more firmly.

 The tears lining his eyes fall silently as he gasps out, “I can feel you.”

Tears slide down her own cheeks and she smiles even as she cries. His bronze eyes burn as though they’re on fire, full of so much light and life that it seems to steal the air from her lungs. She squeezes gently again and his reaction coaxes a fresh flood of tears from both of them.

Then he leans in and kisses her. It’s soft and slow, giving her time to pull away but she doesn’t. Instead she parts her lips for him and he groans faintly at the invitation even as she whimpers into his mouth at the acceptance. She can taste the salt of their tears on his lips but they’re good tears; ones they’ve earned, ones they deserve after everything they’ve been through together.

His hand reaches up and slides deeply into her hair, urging her closer and adding tension to the kiss. He gently cups his cheek, drawing him in a little closer, shaping his movements. She’s missed kissing him, missed tasting him, missed the fire that now burns between them.

They were both reserved and closed off to the world in general but like this...She felt safe being vulnerable around him, safe letting herself go, letting her guard down with him. She could open herself up, could let him in when they were alone together in these tender, intimate moments. She had missed that too.

Breaking the kiss, panting, their breaths mingling, they both pause to collect themselves, to process what’s just happened between them. Before, whenever her lips have met his she’s always stopped thinking. It had always been so easy to give herself to him, surrender herself entirely. They had lost themselves in one another entirely.

Their meetings together had been rough and intense and utterly consuming. It was different with him than anyone else. He understands that frenzy, the appeal of that loss of control and reason. She can see the hesitancy in his eyes now as he looks at her, the questioning doubt, the fear that he’s crossed a line, that he’s done the wrong thing.

In answer to that she brushes her lips against his again with gentle reassurance. Then she touches her brow to his, connecting them again. She knew, she knew it would get better, knew they would help him, give him back his hope. She knew she had been right to keep faith in him.

She softly strokes back his hair even as his body shakes and tears continue to roll silently down his cheeks. It is a small thing, she knows too. He’s not miraculously back to the way he was – he may never be. But it is something he desperately needed – it is progress. It is something more. It’s enough. For now it is enough. It is hope.

Carefully, Nesryn eases herself into his lap, straddling him. He tenses beneath her but doesn’t pull away or try and discourage her so she settles on top of him. He kisses her again the moment she settles and she smiles into it, feeling his hands rest gently at her hips, pulling her a little closer.

It’s been so long since she’s seen him this way – so light and happy and free. He runs her fingers softly through her hair, gathering a fistful at the nape of her neck, the tips of his fingers lightly grazing the skin.

“See,” she murmurs pointedly. “I told you I was right, that it would get better.”

The smile that blooms on his lips is one of the most beautiful things she thinks she’s ever seen. Then he tips back his head and laughs, full and deep as it vibrates through his chest and through her. She loves the sound. And as it fills her up she truly thinks it might be possible to live on it alone.

By the time he finishes Nesryn doesn’t know if she’s laughing or crying. But then he’s kissing her again and it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but the warmth of his lips and the shape of his mouth and the taste of his tongue. When she draws away and looks down at him again his bronze eyes are still shining.

She sees the light kindled in them again, light and life and hope. And she thinks as her mouth descends to claim his once more that he might be ready, for the first time in his life, to start learning how to truly live.

****