Normal text is Lucina. Italicized is Severa. Center aligned text are their deepest thoughts, since repression of them is an element of the story.

Is this normal now?

The first thing you think of when you shoot up screaming is that you woke her up, but as you sit up in your bed that barely holds two, breathing labored, not only is she wide awake, but she's barely even startled.

Still, you apologize. "Nightmares," you explain.

She nods with little energy. A lamp light is flickering near her, as it always is. She's staring off to the side away from you, counting the rings that encircle the rainbow colored rug she said she hated as though they contain the spell to break insomnia. "Okay," she says, "just those again."

You breathe sharply, the same way you breathe when someone shoves a sword through your gut or beats your senses out through your ears, which makes sense as you treat every day like a battle. Just those again, you repeat in your mind, wondering when exactly your cheap party trick of lifelong trauma started to lose its replay value.

She spares a glance at you, and though she looks finished, truly done with it all, she looks at you to say with her eyes what she can't with her mouth without assuming the worst reaction, as though walking away is the most perfectly normal thing to do.

You're always there for when she walks back.

It's never surprising.

You smile at her, always ready to apologize for the flaws you do not deserve to have.

It's another day that you should appreciate more than you do.

It's a sunny day that radiates through the windows and takes over your house, the kind that causes you to remember Future Mother running with you through the fields even though this mother has shown you that she deserved to never have to run after you again. And you consider the same about this amazing blockhead of a woman seated in the chair across from you, as though she has to ask you to sit on the couch with her.

It's not like you have anything but time here.

It's not like you're unwilling.

The living room is barren aside from a few lazy decorations you insisted on getting. You ask her if there's anything on her mind. Gods, what a stupid thing to ask, of course there is. She is always, always thinking. She's always visibly thinking; she can't not . She steals a glance at you as though she is afraid to, and tells you that everything is fine. You sulk, because not only is that not what you asked, there is no such thing as fine in the world that you two share. It fluctuates between different levels of "not fine" and the sooner she accepts that the better.

You don't take Falchion with you on the walk. Your home is nowhere near a town (she always points this out when you plan to take a day going to one) and you have not met a thief, brigander, or even a villager with an ill-tempered scowl in your years living here.

The only ill-tempered scowl you see these days is hers.

Still, you're always scared that this one time will be the time where something happens. You just couldn't imagine how foolish you would look if you left with Falchion to go fight off against naught but your own demons.

The night is lovely. The fields around home are dry and their color has wilted, and there are more rocks and patches of dirt than the grass to begin with, but they are exactly what your heart needs. Eventually, you sit down and look up at the despondent night sky in the hopes that they reveal one star to you.

They don't.

You wish she had joined you. To stay by your side how you've always known her to. It would make you feel a lot safer.

But she doesn't need to know that.

You leave your hair down all next day because it's such a rare treat that it feels different, and you like how it touches you in places on the back of your neck under your shirt that it's not supposed to. And it's okay, because you trust it.

You notice that whenever you pass her that she blushes, just a tad, and occasionally she will wave at you, shyer than Olivia in the spare few moments while she slowly tries to pull herself together. Sometimes you smile back, the sort of sneaky, triumphant smile one gives when they catch prey. And sometimes you don't react, because you're sort of sick of her dancing around it like you're not in too deep to disapprove of her.

You trust her too.

You feel the eyes on the back of your neck on the fallen hair you drape down like a preening seagull who lives for the times where she doesn't turn away for a few minutes. Oh Gods, to be you and still be able to bring the Exalt-descended to her knees. You inch closer to feeling powerful when it happens.

It crumbles the barricades around your heart holding the belief that forever is not that hopeless a concept after all.

But just by a little.

She's a terrible cook, but by the Gods, she tries.

She tries, even though she hates it. Why she keeps trying, you don't know, but you're strangely heartened by her tenacity, even as every meal she makes always comes with a side of anger and a light drizzle of self-loathing.

Though thankfully not as many broken dishes as once before.

You can tell she's trying to temper her anger, but not doing the greatest job at it. She immediately throws her plate of food into the waste bucket, and you can't help but feel that was such a, well, waste .

Not that you plan to eat your portion.

"Gods," she crows, pacing around the room you eat in and all of its wooden, functional mediocrity. "Why do you even let me try to cook, Lucy? It's like you get a kick out of letting me embarrass myself!" You shake your head and let her steal her own words away, returning to a messy, grouchy lump as you found her.

You don't want to tell her that you let her try because you've learned from Gerome that wyverns need room to run before they can take off in full speed.

She'll get there.

You don't think of anything except your parents. You still can't face Mom without the last gasps of resentment and guilt for that resentment. They speak as reverently of her now as they did then. And your dad is a total weirdo, always making the worst puns and bloodiest analogies. You love them both, but by Naga do you need them in doses. You already suck when it comes to them, there's no need to set yourself up for anger and disappointment than you already do.

But you're fond of bad practices, so you want to see them again soon.

Your eyes are on that gaudy, gaudy rug that she pleaded with you to get during one of the trips to town, and then carried all the way home because of course she did.

Physically impressive, socially ignorant, and too self-driven for her own good is how you would describe her in the first place.

With the lamp, you see her sleep to your left, fast asleep. How the hell does she do it, you wonder, unable to shut your mind down or stop it from yelling at you. You're kind of disgusted at how she's able to manage. She's had so much happen to her, and her biggest fear seems to be that it isn't enough to truly qualify as enough .

Enough is far out of her sight and she should be thankful that she doesn't reach it.

It's not any fun.

She has her hair down for the second day in a row.

She's clearly hinting at something, judging by the way she looks at you combined with the fact that she has fluffed it into the waviness you find so powerful on her, like she is being consumed by her mane but instead finds it fit to stop it cold and wear it like the fur of a beast she has slayed- which apparently is doing something to you, considering you can't stop looking at it.

She's always most seductive at her most dominating.

But that's neither here nor there.

You figure you should acknowledge such. The next time she walks by the living room as you sit alone in your chair, you tell her "your hair looks amazing today" in perhaps too scripted a matter. You don't know what reaction to expect from her, but you didn't expect the one she gave- a tired, annoyed sigh that's let down by your paltry efforts, her eyes scouring you for inauthenticity.

She was never good at hiding her emotions.

You have to wonder why she doesn't believe you. To be clear, she often disbelieves you, possessing glory she thinks she falls short of. This is different though; she looks at you like you are a liar, when usually it's unsuccessfully hidden shame that you would call a spade a spade. A beautiful, powerful, soulful spade who, by all miracles in several heavens, finds true comfort in your eyes.

You mean that. You mean that with every action you take around her, and so little causes you to be alive, provokes you to care, matters quite like she does.

You can't imagine her not being there.

The two of you sit over the soup that she has mercifully cooked, and discuss plans around your parents. You finish going on for far too long (in arduous detail) about your plans when you visit them and yourself, as she looks at you far too intently for someone who seems to obligate herself with interest for you.

You wonder how far along your present self is to becoming a better person than you.

"And you?" you ask her. Then, as if to set yourself up for disappointment, you ask "I suppose you still are staying at home?"

She nods, used to the question. "I genuinely do not want to interfere," she says like someone who has tried to convince herself that she doesn't want to interfere, and fails. "It is the life of my childhood, not who I am now."

You're so damn tired for her when you meet her eyes, because her thorough exhaustion has a gravitational pull. Because there are bags under her eyes, like sleeping forever would never satisfy her the way love should , but yours does not successfully do.

She won't let it.

You scoff, and Lucina looks at you, challenged.

Okay, if she insists, you'll ask. "Are you, like, actually trying to deprive yourself of happiness?"

She's shocked at your honesty like it's the truth and she hates it. "Severa, If I gave off the impression that I was dissatisfied, I apologize. I never meant to leave behind lines for you to read."

"Hey, I'm smart enough to read them," you insist spitefully, because every negative conversation involves you breaking a domino chain before one fails to fall in pattern.

Perhaps your name perfectly describes what you do to difficult ties.

She looks at you like she wants to say something, but stops, as if to avoid the fight. For the Gods' sake, it's like she truly has learned to turn you out.

You leave the bowl in the kitchen table and stomp out of the room. Her eyes follow you, and she says your name, but if she wouldn't address you then, she damn sure shouldn't try to now.

In a time of lacking, you notice that your relationship has settled, where you give her room to fly and she wonders why you haven't flown yet. The way she looks at you varies, but it is all distressing, especially on nights you rest in bed unable to sleep.

You stare straight up, and she lies on her side towards the edge of the bed, waiting to fall. You both are sinking into a sea of nothingness, and she only looks at you with pleading eyes that say guess we're dead, begging not to die but knowing you aren't going to help her.

She looks at you. She is so tired, and with her eyes begs you for mercy, relief. You realize how strange you are to her, and feel how she needs you. She turns away, and you are remorseful, that she sees you as a complication and not a solution.

You see her as a solution but deign not to take it.

You kiss the back of her head, and her skin on the side of her neck erupts internally in flame that heats yours up. You reach your hands around her waist and hold hers, and kiss her again. She gasps, shocked more than teased, but you like the sound, because maybe she is happier now.

She lets you kiss her, and lets your left leg claim hers, but your lips never stray far from the back of her head, mechanical, a statement more than an impulsive rush. Like you should, more than you would anyways.

You feel the passion drain from her skin, and your lips cannot breathe the life she had back into her.

"Stop," she whispers hoarsely. "Let's not tonight."

You do, but look her in the eye when she turns to face you, eyes too close, and you can't tell whose space has been more violated. You're at once accepting, but confused, because you thought she would like this.

"Another time," she suggests, offer tumbling from her lip like falling rocks. You nod, and watch her turn away, soon pretending to sleep even as the lamp is near her face. Anyone could see it as false, but you let her try and convince you, because being asleep is what she seems to want.

You do too.

Just for one gods-damned night, you want to sleep without sinking.

You stand in the clearing adjacent to your home in the middle of the night as she sleeps as restlessly as ever. You don't do anything but feel, but that's enough. Feel the way the cold wind slaps your skin as it passes with electric chill, feel the way you're afraid to be alone, eyes trained on someone that never materializes.

No one in particular, just a warm body.

Warm body is how you would describe her. Warm body that does what she thinks is good for you but never seems to convey that she means it. When her touch was a new sensation, it was rushed, frantic, like every grasp was a sick joke she was about to be slapped away from. Like she had never touched a woman before but was reverent of you. You want that feeling, but lately her affection has been so loveless.

You were so powerful, you had such a hold on her.

You've been taken lovelessly by secondhand lovers whose names you forget, only recalling them as a method. No one who has touched you before has had any affection, from those who tried to read you to those who did not want to open the book. As you look up in the stars you don't see, you try to imagine returning to a world where you are someone she wants, and not someone she maintains.

You can't, so you kick the nearest pebbles and settle into whatever level of "not fine" you're in at the moment.

"Okay, how the hell do you make bread?"

She has the ingredients in front of her, though none are free from the bags they rest in. You lift up from the kitchen table to stand next to her. She pays you little mind as she looks at a rough recipe page with fading letters, one you use so not even you forget.

"It's easy," you promise.

Nothing is ever easy with her.

You find a large bowl behind the ingredients with a few she already put in here with hesitation and low expectations. You reach into the flour bag and grab a good handful. She utters something, some sound with no words to tie it to, but there is already salt in your fingers. You sprinkle the pinch atop the flour, satisfied.

You look at Severa, but "where is the wooden spoon" dies on your tongue when you see her. She's frustrated, but her eyes are muted, as if she hates herself for not seeing how this was the road she would walk on.

Self-appreciation seems to be a casualty of her anger.

"I asked for you to help me," she says. "Not for you to do it yourself."

Your eyes widen at her claim. "This is helping," you insist. "You needn't do more than watch and learn."

She stomps her foot like she just needed some nonhuman surface to hit. "Don't you understand?" she shouts. "I came in here to make some damn bread, not get some food."

"You said you wanted help," you argue back, already fed up as you are argue in the defense of nothing. "Had you said that you wanted to be in charge, I would have stood by."

"But you didn't, you assumed." Gods help you, it takes her little to fly into a lecture. "You had your idea of how to do things, but you didn't ask me what you wanted me to do." She rolls her eyes with utmost drama. "And your reads have been shit lately."

You place a hand on the counter, trying to hold yourself up on it but pushing it down. "Have they?" you inquire. "They aren't perfect. They very well may never be, but they are the best I have."

At this point you must both be aware that you are not arguing about bread.

"You!" she yells, like you walked past the point like the future was held within it. "That's exactly it! You think you need to do something. You never ask me anything! Do you think you're gonna win something if you guess right?"

It's driven more by what you fear will happen if you guess wrong.

"For Naga's sake," you plead, possibly to open a hole in the ground and swallow you up. "The last thing I want to make it about is pointing out where you feel you fail." You close your eyes, trying to at least imagine you are being swallowed. "You act like failure is how it is, but it isn't."

"Oh my gods," she groans. "Look, we can live with it or let it consume us. I think living with it is the better solution."

"And look how bored you are with me living with it," you snap.

She kicks a chair in so hard it splinters. "I am so done," she shouts, leaving the room. She's as tired of this conversation as she has acted tired of you.

"Done with what?" She could be done with a lot of things.

"Spoon is behind the bowl," she says with no humanity in her tone, like she is a different Severa. "Knock yourself out."

You see the spoon on the counter and have no desire to use it.

As if this was ever about the bread.

You lie in bed, where you always do during the day when you want it all to stop, just stop, where you imagine a world where there is no one outside, where you can sleep at night, where you can cook, where she instructs you, where she asks what you want, where she listens to you. Where you sink so deep into fantasy that you forget reality.

You hear the sound of sobbing, the sound where someone tries to hold it in and fails.

Not that she was ever able to hide her emotions well.

You don't cry unless you're angry. She doesn't cry at all. She sulks, a monster of exhaustion that chases you every time you see it. She doesn't have emotions. Normal people do. She's too much a single stain glass shard of the worshipful mosaic that she could still be. She sounds like steam dying out, breaking down completely and hating herself for it.

You walk out of the room. You try and walk slowly, to keep from alarming her- to show that you're alarmed- but you can't, because she is important. She is forged silver in a sleek sword, grace in every swipe that cuts a foe down. She carries so much on her heart that bleeds every day and still tries to fly like her lot in life is not a chain that tethers her to the ground. She operates like the world is watching, ready to judge her, and all you can think of is that such a remarkable person should be allowed to break without anyone saying a word.

She'll never be put back together otherwise.

You manage to approach her. She clears her throat and tries to hold her tears back for a rainy day, which is not what she should do. Before she can apologize (you know she will apologize) you hold your arms out. It's awkward, and you keep looking at her wondering if she caught that, but now is the time to exercise restraint.

Maybe normalize it if you can.

Thickheaded as she is, she still falls into your arms on request. You stroke her hair as she starts crying again. It is messy and unrefined, and by Gods she needed it. You don't say anything, simply looking to physically soothe her, let her know someone will hold her right, until she says "I just don't know why…" before she starts to cry even harder.

The way she says this is so guttural, so painful, and said in such a failing manner that you fully appreciate how not knowing the answers eats away at her. You can't help but think of who you know her as and how that's not it, but you realize what you see is a patch. It's just medicine.

It's all medicine.

Your temper, her stoicism, the way you break the domino chain and the way she would break her own heart before scaring you, it's all a single dose of your tonic of choice that can only heal things for so long.

You don't have answers. You can't promise her an easy fix, but no one can try and fail to insult you by calling you easy. That's just not you.

So you tell her what you are comfortable telling her, in tones that are only as sweet as they are because of whatever sugar she found within you.

"We'll figure it out. Promise."

The ingredients are still on the counter when you call her in. It's been long enough that you do not even feel hoarse from crying, no dull scratch in your throat or stale air from the heat of your tears. "Coming," she says, and she's trying to sound less inconvenienced but fails with aplomb.

You still appreciate her trying.

She reaches the kitchen, twintails resting at her sides like Taguel ears, dressed in outgoing clothes like she expects to do something.

You haven't left your nightclothes for possibly two days.

"What's happening here?"

You motion to the ingredients on the counter. "If you like, we could try again."

She looks at them, then at you, unresponsive. "For real?"

You feel foolish as you nod. "If you trust me to teach you, I'll trust you to make it."

She looks to her side at nothing, unless a kitchen chair has caught her fancy (one is still splintered). Then, at you, but not at you, as if she will save looking you in the eye for a better time.

She sighs, fond and wistful.

It's okay. It always is.

"Let's do it right," she says, ever the master of sneaking a lot of meaning into so little. She grabs a new bowl and places it in front of the ingredients and utensils.

"What's wrong with the old ingredients?" you ask.

"Duh," she says with a crooked grin. "You leave it out in the open long enough, it gets stale." Extra pointed, she adds "Time will do that to you."

You chuckle sadly. You suppose it does. You took it for granted until you almost ran out, and all you want is enough to be who you want to be- or as close as you may ever get.

"Do you have a measuring cup?"

She nods, smiling. It's not as rare as it used to be, but it's still as much a treasure as it was the days where she almost never did.

Nothing is ever easy with her.

But it's always worth it.

"Excellent," you continue. "Use it to get about six and a half cups of flour."

The bread is not as bad as it could have been, which by your standards of damn near everything, means it's a success. You look towards Lucina, who sits on a rock in the grass while eating a slice, wearing clothes that match yours as something meant for the outdoors. You watch as an approving smile crosses her face, and her eyes close. "Thiff if relly good," she tells you, mouth still full.

You chortle. "I believe you!" Noticing her faux pas, she swallows and clears her throat, pretending it never happened.

She will think about it too damn much later.

There's only so much you can do about that.

You're beaming, because you did something. You did something good that helped people without reservation. You did something good for her, something you tried and succeeded at. Sure, it's bread, but it's a tangible thing.

Not bad for a day in the life of Severa.

You scooch closer to her. Your head is at her shoulder due to the rock she's sitting on, but she's always been larger than life, even as a part of you. You both look at the sky, still smoky and starless. "Did someone light a freakin' forest fire?" you murmur with distant derision. "I swear to Naga." You feel her stiffen up, shoulder frozen and restless at once. By force, she calms down, looking down at the ground as the sky will not offend her.

It's okay.

You reach for her hand.

It's okay, babe, you say through every brush of your thumb against her knuckle.

She clears her throat. She takes too long to speak, but you know she's going to say something. You want to tell her to just spit it out, but such a demand would send the words from the tip of her tongue to back from whence they came. She doesn't work like that. Never has, and never will, and perhaps you should stop treating her like yourself when you admire her too much for that. So you just stroke her knuckle, to tell her nothing she says can be ridiculous.

Okay, that's not true.

But you'll take it seriously.

"I must be boring you," she says, not looking at you, like you will walk away at any moment.

"Boring me?" You could describe Lucina in a novel of positive and negative descriptors alike, but boring is nothing that would ever make the pages. You look at her, and she doesn't look back, head bowed like she said something wrong. And it's patently incorrect, you don't at all think that, but you question how wrong she is.

Maybe that's why you don't snap about how daft she is, or how ridiculous it is to think that. Maybe that was your first instinct, you won't lie, but you can tell by her body language that's exactly what she expects- no resolution, dismissal, and a return to how it was.

"I'm sorry that I gave you that impression," you mumble so quietly she almost doesn't hear it. She struggles, but you see her smile just afterwards. "It's not what I meant to do. I guess…" She leans her head up, and you press on her knee until she faces you. "I just…" Damn it. "Trying to make it, like… normal, from us both is how I keep it from…" You groan. This is hard.

She holds your hand, and you let her, tightening your fingers around hers because your words need to come with a death grip. "You know, we're never gonna be normal. It's been too long," you choke. "And I guess I'm trying to make myself okay with that."

You realize you're crying because your tears burn your eyes like acid, and because you're so unused to crying that your face is pale and vacant even as it feels like scrunching up. She doesn't say anything, letting you clear your throat as she holds one errant finger on the pulse on your wrist. She needs comfort, and you need reassurance, for both of you to feel like people. Your tears fade away, and you accept it. On the surface of your legs, you see the light of a single faded star transmit the energy you forget to have.

When you look up, you still can't see any stars in the sky.

You feel something different when you lie next to her as you have every night, (even when you've gone to bed angry). It's not the passion you two loved with at first, the reverential and mysterious you represented to each other, where both of you felt so unworthy all you could manage was a good first impression to leave a mark of beauty she would never wash away.

Okay, "sexual catastrophe" may be the better way to describe your early relationship.

The two of you are staring at the ceiling, neither under the blanket. Your nightclothes- and you- have been washed as you realized how dull you felt being in the same despondent place you worked to leave. You two steal glances at each other every now and again. You don't know if you see her in a new light as much as you feel like a new woman yourself.

The way she looks at you makes you feel novel and full of love.

You turn on your side, smile on your face. She's smiling at nothing, genuinely smiling in a second nature manner, the type you rarely see, the type even she seems not to know. Perhaps you are seeing her in a new light, as the Severa you always knew she could be, but someone you are more confident is your woman.

"Can I help you?" she asks, eyes closed.

"I'm just admiring your beauty."

She blushes because she can't deny your honesty, and you giggle, chuffed with yourself. "You're so corny sometimes, I swear to Naga."

Not that she would have you any other way.

She turns to look at you, eyes reading of risk and satisfaction, and blood heats her face as she stares fire into your eyes. You reach for her hand, suitably, politely soft as you take it. It's the reality you live in. You will never love her in the same way you used to. You do not hold her fiercely anymore, like she will disappear. You try to trust her not to leave.

It's hard, but you try.

You place your forehead to hers. "May I?" you ask.

She laughs, but her breath leaves with it. "I mean, duh," she responds.

"Do you trust me?"

The lamp flickers, and then the flame is gone. You see the outline of her mouth smile regardless.

"Absolutely."

You will never love her in the same way you used to.

But with this new love, maybe you will love her better.

You kiss her once on the bridge of her nose, then again. The third time, she pulls your face down to meet her lips. The two of you embrace, pulling each other closer, but not close enough, which is closer than you've been in awhile. Between a kiss, she giggles, and runs a hand through your hair. You do feel a little silly, but your heart is so warm you may never need a blanket again.

This is where you are now.

"Hey," she breathes, sneaking a smile in between a short kiss. "How about we make now 'another time'?"

You used to fear that your story together would end with the both of you sinking. Now it starts again with a jump off of a cliff.

So you smile, biting your lip.

"No time like the present."

Maybe this will be normal.