Broken, Beautiful #2
Then her body moved before her mind could stop it. She rose from the bed, moving slowly, giving him time to pull away if he needed to, and crossed the small space between them until she stood before the chair. He looked up at her, his eye bright with fear. Or perhaps hope.
Lark reached out, her hand trembling slightly, but she didn’t hesitate. And found, to her surprise, that he didn't pull away.
Her fingers found the edge of his eyepatch, traced the leather strap across his temple, then moved lower. To the scarred skin below. To the puckered, damaged flesh that he could not bear to see.
He had gone rigid beneath her touch. His breath stopped.
“Do you really think I care about this?” she asked.
Her voice was steady, certain, carrying all the conviction she could muster.
“I broke into the Ashen Citadel for you. I killed two men to get you out. I carried you up a mountain and sat by your bed for days.” Her thumb traced the edge of a scar, gentle as a whisper.
“Do you really think this would change that?”
He couldn't answer. His eye was wet, a tear sliding down his cheek, his whole body trembling with the gravity of what she was offering him.
“I don’t see someone damaged,” she continued.
“I see someone who survived horrifying things. Someone who is still here, still fighting, still reaching for me even when it terrifies him.” She cradled his face in her hands, tilting it up toward hers.
“I see you, Rion. All of you. And I’m not going anywhere. ”
A sound between a sob and a laugh escaped him. It was broken, beautiful, and utterly without defense.
Lark leaned down and kissed him.
She had to bend to reach him where he sat, her hands still framing his face, her body curved toward his. The kiss was brief. Gentle. But she poured everything she could not say into it, all the wanting and the waiting and the tenacious hope that had carried her through the past weeks.
His hand came up to cover hers where it rested against his scarred cheek. His fingers curled around hers, holding on as if she were the only solid thing in a world that had gone liquid and strange.
When she pulled back, his eye was closed. But his mouth was arched into a small smile.
“Stay,” she said. “Tonight. Just stay.”
He opened his eye and looked at her. The walls were gone, she realized. All of them. The battlements he had been hiding behind for the past weeks had crumbled entirely, leaving only Rion. Damaged and scarred, but perhaps, hers.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’m sure.”
She helped him to his feet. He was unsteady, wrung out from the emotion of the past hours, and she let him lean on her as she guided him to the bed. They lay down together, clothed, her head finding the hollow of his shoulder, his arm wrapping around her and pulling her close.
He was so much larger than she was. She had known that abstractly, but lying against him made it real. Her head barely reached his collarbone. His arm curved entirely around her, his hand splayed across her back, holding her gently against him as if she were breakable.
“Thank you,” he murmured into her hair.
“For what?”
“For not giving up on me. For seeing …” He trailed off, unable to finish.
“Shhhh. Go to sleep,” she said. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
She felt him relax against her; the tension draining from his body degree by degree. His breathing slowed. His heartbeat steadied beneath her ear, a rhythm she had first heard in the archive and had not forgotten.
She did not know how long she lay there, listening to him breathe, feeling him surrounding her. The room was dark now; the lamp having burned low, and beyond the window the stars of Springhope glittered cold and distant.
Eventually, she slept.
She woke to thrashing.
Still tangled in her own dreams, at first she didn't understand what was happening. Then Rion cried out beside her, his body tense, his arm taut around her with bruising force, and she remembered.
Nightmares.
“Rion.” She kept her voice low, soothing, even as she struggled to free herself from his grip. “Rion, wake up. You’re safe. You’re here with me.”
He didn't hear her. Whatever he was seeing behind his closed eye, it was more real to him than her voice, more present than the bed beneath him or the woman in his arms. He twisted, crying out again, words she couldn't understand, pleas or protests in a language made of pure fear.
She managed to get one hand free and pressed it against his chest, over his heart, feeling the frantic pounding beneath her palm.
“Rion.” Louder now, more urgent. “Come back. Come back to me.”
His eye flew open. For one terrible moment, she knew he didn't see her, didn't recognize the room or the bed or anything beyond whatever horrors still clung to his vision. His breath came in ragged gasps, his whole body shaking, his hand clutching her arm hard enough to leave marks.
“It’s me,” she said. “It’s Lark. You’re in Springhope. You’re safe.”
Recognition flooded his face. The wildness in his eye faded, replaced by a lost, fractured look.
“Lark.” Her name on his lips was an invocation.
“I’m here.” She pulled him close, wrapping her arms around him and holding on. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
He buried his face in her hair and shook.
She felt the wetness of tears in her hair, heard the ragged sound of his breathing as he fought to control himself.
His arms came around her, crushing her against his chest, and she let him.
Let him hold her as tightly as he needed to.
Let him anchor himself to her while the tide of the nightmare receded.
“I’m sorry,” he managed eventually. “I’m so sorry, Lark. I …”
She cut him off before he could apologize for things that were not his fault. "Don’t apologize. Just breathe."
He breathed, and slowly, gradually, the shaking subsided. His grip loosened from desperate to a more gentle touch. His heartbeat steadied beneath her ear, though it was still faster than it should have been.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
“No.” The word came out hoarse, raw. “Not yet. Maybe never.”
“All right.”
She didn't push him, ask questions or offer platitudes. She simply held him, her body wrapped against his, her presence a reminder that he was not alone in the darkness.
After a while, his breathing changed again as it deepened and slowed. The hand that had been clutching her arm relaxed, his fingers loosening, coming to rest against her back in an almost tender touch.
“Stay,” he murmured, echoing her words from earlier. “Please stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. Not tonight, not ever, she thought.
She felt him smile against her hair. Felt the last of the tension drain from his body as sleep reclaimed him, gentler this time, the nightmare fading into memory.
Lark stayed awake for a while longer. The room was dark and quiet, the guesthouse silent around them, the world outside their window vast and immaterial.
She had spent years alone and had taught herself not to need anyone, not to want anyone, not to let anyone close enough to matter. But now here she was, tangled up with a broken man in a borrowed bed, her heart so full it ached.
It should have terrified her, and in some ways, it did.
But as she finally let herself drift back into sleep, her head on his chest and his arms around her, and the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear, she found, strangely, that she didn't mind the fear.
Morning light woke her.
Lark opened her eyes to find the room transformed by sunshine, pale honeyed light streaming through the window and pooling on the floor. At first she was disoriented, uncertain why her pillow was so warm, why there was a weight across her waist, why she felt so inexplicably safe.
Then she remembered.
Rion was still there, still holding her.
His arm was draped across her body, his hand resting against her hip, his chest rising and falling with the slow rhythm of sleep.
His face was relaxed in a way she had never seen while he was awake, the lines of tension and pain smoothed away, the scars somehow less stark in the soft morning light.
She didn’t move in case she woke him and broke whatever fragile spell had settled over them in the night. She just lay there, watching him breathe, and letting herself exist in this moment without questioning it.
Things had changed. Not just between them, but within her. The walls she had spent a lifetime building were still there, but they had doors now. Doors she had chosen to open. Doors she was learning not to be afraid of.
Eventually, Rion stirred. His arm tightened around her briefly, instinctively, before his eye opened and found her face.
He didn’t speak. Neither did she. They simply looked at each other, two people who had been broken in different ways, finding in each other a reason to be whole.
His hand came up to brush a strand of silver hair from her face. The gesture was tender, unhurried, the touch of a man who finally believed he could reach for what he wanted.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning.”
He smiled. A genuine smile, not the ghost of one, not the almost-smile she had been watching for weeks. A smile that reached his eye and softened his scarred face and made him look, briefly, like the man he had been before the Ashen Citadel had taken so much from him.
“You stayed,” he said.
“I told you I would. Besides, this is my bed.”
"So it is." He smiled again, his thumb tracing along her cheekbone, barely a whisper of contact.
She had no response to that. So she kissed him instead, soft and slow, a promise sealed in the morning light.
Whatever came next, whatever wars waited beyond the walls of Springhope, they would face it together. She was done running. Done hiding. Done pretending she didn’t need anyone.
She needed him. And miracle of miracles, it seemed he needed her too.