I wrote this in less than six hours (culmatively, not straight through, as I have serious problems with focus), and I honestly have no idea what was going through my head when I wrote this besides a compulsion to do something in a hurt/comfort vibe with fluff in it, and perhaps a touch of inspiration from the Wolverine and Rogue scene in the first X-Men movie. (This fic being different from that specific scene, as it's romance instead of a parental relationship.) I originally intended to ignore all bases of plot to focus on the fluffy Finnceline goodness, but plot worked it's way in. Transformers related plot, but not significantly enough to merit ranking this story as a crossover.
Also, I'm probably going to get flamed by people because of character death being referenced. Still, I like to think Dying Moment of Awesome applies there, or I hope so anyway. By the way, those of you who have read some of my other works (specifically Kingdom Crossovers or All Stars In The Sky) may recognize a few themes here and there, but be assured that this isn't in continuity with either story.
Disclaimer: I do not own Adventure Time or any other copyrighted materials henceforth used here.
...
For yet another world, the end has come and gone. It had endured such many times. Meteorite impacts and floods and outside forces have conspired again and again to erase all life, and mass extinctions have played merry hell with it's native lifeforms, but it has endured. It's first sapient species nearly finished the job, but the planet - and some of those very sapients - survived all the same.
Now, though, this broken and dead planet, called Earth in the distant past and named Ooo for a time before it's destruction, is now a shattered collection of debris, barren cinders gradually floating out of it's original orbit, and save for two inhabitants already rescued before the destroyers of the planet finished their work, all that previously dwelled on it have already been slain. There is still the glow of residual heat left behind from where the planet's core was leached away as all it's mineral resources were mercilessly torn away, pulsing in jagged cracks and narrow ridges that had once been parts of the planet's various geological layers, and sadly even that last flickering remnant is being gradually leeched away by the vacuum of space.
The mighty starship, an island-sized behemoth of such sanity-shattering size that those rescued from certain doom by it's sailors cannot comprehend it even in the times to come when their souls have been dragged back from the spirit-eating disease that despair inflicts, floats there for a moment. It is truly an ark - The Ark, as a matter of face, for that is it's name - sent to gather the last remnants of all species of the world's that the enemies of it's makers go to war on. In this latest mission, it has failed; dozens of different species, many of them rational beings blessed with sentience, have fallen to the genocidal impulses of those very enemies, and of the billions of beings that once inhabited this planet, only two have survived, plucked from certain death before the final stages of their enemy's plan to harvest this particular planet was finished.
The captain of this ship - like much of his crew, a massive mechanical lifeform of the sort that see fit to call themselves Autobots and set themselves against their eternal enemies the Decepticons - is also the leader of all his people, and he remembers this world. He remembers when it was a verdant planet abundant with life and beauty, thousands of years ago and his ancient heart breaks a little at the thought of beloved humanity nearly destroying itself and somehow hanging on in a world changed beyond recognition slain at last by the same threat that had been pushed back thousands of years ago. The Decepticons have done their filthy work, and humanity is, save for a SINGLE survivor, little more than a memory, poignant for all the promise that young species had to offer cut short before even in it's prime.
The captain, the mighty Optimus Prime himself, does not question why this was done. He knows it may have been for no other reason than abject cruelty, or a grudge against humans who have long since became dust, but more likely than not, this world was targeting and obliterated simply because it was there. A convienient target for those who loved the massacres of war and the blunt exercise of raw power above all else. The abundant resources were probably just a lucky bonus.
Would that he and his Autobots had returned to Earth - Ooo, he reminds himself, it is easy to forget that with humanity's descent into obscurity in the planet's recent past it's old name for it's homeworld no longer applied, and the history texts would need to update the name for the sake of it's own memory, if they can't bury it's people they can at least give it's literary grave the right epitaph - before the Decepticons had fallen upon it and slaughtered it's people in less than a few weeks. But Optimus Prime is old enough to know when wishful fantasies are a mere distraction from the living who need his help, and regretfully turns his attention from the world he had loved so much and could not save, to a screen that displays the sole surivors whom his efforts ensured did survive.
A male and a female. Both human - or, at least, the male is, and the female's biology suggests a modicum of humanity that make her close enough for it to work - and reasonably close in physical if not chronological age. He considers this for a moment, cross-references with his knowledge of the human's lost religious texts and finds the synchronity appealing: this ship that has rescued the doomed has found a male and female that were already quite close even before these horrifying circumstances.
He watches them for a time, as they make their way into the feeding room the various refugees his crew has gathered together from the Decepticon's ravages, and thinks to himself that he has failed humanity twice now: first he could not save them from themselves, and he could not save them from the destruction of the world.
At the very least, then, he can protect and shepherd these two remnants of humanity.
He watches them, mourns for all that they have lost and all that could have been if not for this unspeakable tragedy, and his thoughts take a vengeful turn as he thinks of the torments the Decepticon's have surely earned. But such thoughts are not honorable and so he banishes them, while still vowing that one day there would be a reckoning for this evil.
He glances back at the room, does a double-take at the room before admitting it's quite pretty but still reminds himself to send a reprimand to whoever thought that it would have been a good idea to let Wheeljack in charge of the table setting.
...
The feeding center, as she heard it was called by the kindly humongous alien robots that were so very different from the evil humongous alien robots that had killed Ooo, was tables over tables, a huge room filled to the brim with tables arranged in a perfectly geometric fractal, set at angles just nicely complementive to each other, forming a grand pattern that could make one weep to behold it's intricity.
Marceline, floating high above the slowly milling crowd of refugees, was more or less in the perfect position to see it. It was pretty dang cool to look at, even with the persistent numbness that made it hard to apprciate anything-
Gone gone gone, everyone and everything is GONE-
-and more to the point, up here she was also in a position to see that everyone walking around the tables after their turn at the dispensing counter for their bowl of nutrious but tasteless slurry (formulated by sentient robots who hadn't really caught onto the fact that squishy people had a thing called taste buds) was having a hell of a time navigating around the cramped ends and sides of the table fractal. The tables were so tightly pushed together that it turned the room into a maze, and she thought that when you have to navigate just to find a place to sit down and eat your charity gruel, you had truly entered a new phase of suckitude.
She held herself tight and tried not to think of anything. It wasn't hard. Thought and memory slipped away from her and left a constant grayness that was worse than constantly thinking about the little fact that her entire planet and almost everyone else she knew was dead. It left her feeling numb, and it felt like a betrayal of the dead and the loved, and right now there wasn't much of a difference between the two-
She wondered blankly how long it would be before she might go mad with the enormity of it. She had already caught herself wondering why she had survived when so many had died, and was trying to force herself to see that she was lucky to have lived.
The other one who had survived with her was probably the only thing keeping her sane, and her gratitude for his presence was something she didn't think she'd ever be able to put into words.
Might make a decent song, though, thought she, glancing down and catching sight of that very person. Marceline slowly drifted down from the ceiling she had been watching (or searching) from, her steel-toed boots gently touching down. Hardly anyone paid attention to her, and even though it irked her pride to be 'just' one of a seemingly countless number of refugees, bleak logic made it clear that she wasn't the queen of anything except a memory, and it wasn't worth bothering herself over it. Truth be told, she had taken some pains for her tattered black overcoat, ragged purple t-shirt with too many tears to be intentionally fashionable and shabby cargo pants (one missing a leg) were of sufficiently bad quality to make her one of the crowd. No one here had good clothes, not after what they had been through, and it was a matter of some bemused hilarity that their saviors didn't know how food was supposed to be like but they understood the concept of clothes. Bad clothes, yes, but the sentiment was nice, espicially after what she had been through.
Moonlight shining on metal claws as midnight fell, the night going totally black with the things running across the land and flying and screaming across from where they had landed right in the middle of the Candy Kingdom before burning it to the ground and killing everyone in it...
Marceline thought of Princess Bubblegum - Bonnibel - and smiled dispite herself. She had thought herself numb to the pain of watching her friends die, but Bonnibel's death wasn't quite so horrible as she thought it must be. Her kingdom had only truly died after the alien monstrosities had killed her and she went down magnificently, adorned in her own metal shell of weapons and armor, and she had finally fallen with a smile on her face and a lucky blast from a one-eyed horror with a voice like a chainsaw, she had fallen on a pile of her enemy's bodies. She was a good ruler to the end - even if she never had the gumption to call herself a queen and be done with it - and she'd died for her kingdom and her friends, good and faithful to the ened, and so many of the decievers had died at her hands. Marceline dispised death, hated to think that her friends ever should die, but all the same it was good for friends to die ferocious.
Out of the crowd, a familiar figure - short for his sixteen or so years, tufts of blonde hair under his tattered but intact hat and dressed in scruffy red clothes not dissimilar to Marceline's - followed from where he had been waiting for her, silent and shaking and so close to falling apart as he had been ever since their rescue. He'd been eating, though, which she was grateful for. She couldn't let him die too, wouldn't let him die, had already set herself against all the powers of the universe that might take this last precious person from her.
Marceline, on the other hand, hadn't eaten much since, finding that her appetite was shifting itself towards more ephmereal cravings-
(blonde hair under her hand, pulse rising so fast and hard it's like putting her skin to fire and not being burned, her hand shifts down his neck and over his shoulder and sides and finally stopping at his hips, holding fast and hard enough to show him her bone-pulverizing strength but soft enough so he wasn't hurt, and she lifts him up to her eye level, turquiose eyes fixed on his blue like a predator on willing prey and he smiles back, so vulnerable and soft and good and she latches her mouth over his and kisses; he's like sunlight that doesn't burn, the smell and feel of everything good in the world and oh Glob, she needs him-)
Marceline tried not to cry at the memory and glanced back at the boy following after her, and her troubled feelings receded at the sight of him after her, an ever-present reminder that bad as things were she still had the very most important person of all. She had lost everything else: her friends, her kingdom, her subjects, her axe-bass, her zombie-dog, her treasured collection of holy art. And she still had Finn, the last human of all (save herself, in a way, given her heritage on her mother's side), and that, for the moment, was all she thought she would ever need.
The two of them, side by side, stalked off through the crowd of their fellow refugees, her enormous mane of void-dark hair stuffed down her coat and making her look slightly larger than she was. Given that she had presently altered her usual height and frame to make herself around seven feet tall for intimidation reasons, that was fairly impressive, and while Marceline generally favored looking smaller and cuter (and to put others at ease, she would never mention it), but circumstances dictated otherwise, and part of her was unwilling to reduce herself to a less protective shape. It made it a bit easier to grow larger when things got serious anyway.
Finn, though, was still small for his age, the size difference between him and Marceline making the gulf in their natures all the more apparent in her present shape, and surprisingly chubby for all of his considerable strength, dressed in clothes that he seemed to have picked specifically because they were like Marceline's, only all various shades of red. His hat had survived, unlike everything else, and that was one thing to be grateful for, one tangible remnant of the past, and clumps of his girlishly long and astonishingly soft blonde hair was poking through the tears. He was, Marceline noticed about the fifth time she glanced back to make sure he was really still there and not a hallucination engendered by a dying misfire in her brain, moving much more awkwardly than before, like his muscles had turned into crude pulleys and gears and it was an effort just to move on his own. The boundless energy that had always defined him had not been extinguished (and she was so very pleased at that), but it had been muted, and that was another small sadness atop the tragedy that would break so many others.
Eventually the two of them passed into a part of the crowd thinner than most of it, surronding them in a small bubble of space. Marceline stopped, her brain going blank while she tried to figure out what to do, and Finn stopped beside her, peering up at her with a resigned sort of stubborness. Where before there might have been a determination to make the monsters who did this to them pay, right now there was only room for exhaustion, letting their minds catch up with the present, and more than anything else, the grief that their friends were owed.
Marceline felt a flush of emotion and heat in her cheeks, and a hitch in her throat, and she tried not to let the cry loose. If she did, it would become a howl, and that howl would become a roar of such terrible loss and incadescent rage that she would be compelled to let it loose on anything that moved, and she didn't know if she would stop or if they would have to put her down. She had to tamp it down and stay sane, no matter how much it hurt.
She couldn't repress the beginings of a quavering sob, a quick and whispering blurt of noise from the back of her throat, or a few obnoxiously itchy trickles of wetness from the corners of her eyes. Her hair spread itself over her face, covering her shame, but she saw a few people glancing her way and looking back just as quickly, and the thought of strangers being witness to her weakness shamed her.
Her hand moved quickly, casting around, and finally seized Finn's hand, presently buried deep in his pocket, dragging out out and squeezing it tight (tighter than she meant, almost hard enough to bruise if he wasn't so strong), holding on like it was a life line, and Finn squeezed back, tighter than she would have ever thought him capable of. She felt him shaking under his clothes, and felt those shakes gradually subside as he held her hand, and as she a peculiar warmth ripple in her face like a heatwave, and absently wiped the tears from her face, the thoughts of the dead a distant thought in favor of Finn, who was right there and alive and by her side.
The two of them just stood like that for a moment, holding each other's hand and letting the grief that would certainly destroy them both if they had been alone flow away until a time when they were ready to deal with it.
It was strange, Marceline thought, that this vastly younger and inexperienced boy could make her feel safe. She thought that perhaps she had much the same effect on him, if not much more, and felt a little better. Not enough to make her forget about everything that had been taken from her, but it was a good thing even so, and her attention had drifted enough so that she didn't notice the way his facial muscles were twitching, one barrier or another coming close to shattering completely apart (like a crumbling puppet held together with duct tape and threads and strands of rotting meat) and with Marceline right there, a dark and soothing presence that remainded there with him, for him, it finally broke. Before even her finely tuned predator's reflexes had noticed, he was moving and flung himself into her like the desperate wreck he was so close to becoming, arms wrapped tight around her waist and face crushed against the fabric over her navel (as that was as high as he could reach), his amazingly strong but so fragile body pressed against her, holding tight to her like he was afraid that if he let go she would vanish into the ether and never come back.
For both of them, the weak barriers they had both shored up in them to protect their minds from the enormity of their loss broke, just enough.
Emotion, fresh and hot and untainted by selfish grief, compelled her to allow him to hug her instead of following her gut instinct to push people. A few whimpering noises that echoed his own pain issues from her lips as she sank down, totally ignoring all the strangers around them, as she slowly gathered him into her arms and held him as ferociously as she had once hugged Hambo, another remainder of being loved that she still mourned for, and clung to him as Finn made inelegant noises of strangled relief and misery falling into one, hugging her more and more desperately, whispering her name over and over again - "Marceline, Marcie Marcie Marcie..." - like it was the most holy writing meant to call down the shining kindness of forces High Above, and Marceline herself didn't realize that she had gone from just hugging him to picking him up into the air and crushing the side of his head into the warm softness of her chest, one hand clamped tight over the back of his head and pinning him against her just as madly as he was hugging her. She was whispering too, nameless little noises perhaps more suitable for a beast that had found it's mate wounded but alive and felt impossibly happy over such a thing even with it's own injuries.
Together, Marceline and Finn poured out a measure of their grief, so much of their emotional output measured in a simple fact: they had lost everything but each other, and right then that was enough for both of them. They forgot the doom that had narrowly missed them, their minds loosened it's grip on the planet that was now lost to them, and a good portion of the shattered bonds to their friends and kin was poured into a inelegant and totally unashamed gesture of perfect solidarity. They just hugged and whispered and a dozen little small things that thanked the universe for bringing back this one small, frail and beautiful thing to them.
It was enough. At the very least, they still had one thing they both loved so much.
...
About twenty minutes later they had seated themselves a table, their outpouring of emotion spent and leaving them feel a bit numb but in a more pleasant way then they had been accustomed to. Neither of them had said anything about their unexpected break from the stoicism they had independantly agreed would be appropiate for this sort of thing, but then neither of them needed to.
In a relationship like the one they shared, much had always gone unspoken, because it didn't need to be said.
Marceline sat quite close to Finn, the both of them deciding to stay very close together after further unspoken agreements, and for the purposes of fitting into the adjoining chair she had chosen, she had deigned to compress herself a bit, though not to the size she had generally adopted most of the time in Finn's company. Part of it was that their rescuers and enemies had been much bigger than Marceline had been outside of the monstrous forms she enjoyed transforming into, and she was feeling incredibly wary about staying at a small and squishable size, but disliked the idea of staying monstrous all the time if only because it would be dropping her old appearance entirely and losing yet another connection to Ooo. Her current stature, therefore, was a happy medium.
It was probably her unpleasantly maudlin thoughts, but the hunger stirred in her. Her features shifting for a moment before she reversed them, Marceline caught side of the red coat Finn had found somewhere and grabbed his arm before she leaned over, intently studying the red color, close enough to blood to satisfy her hunger. She wasn't aware of her mouth watering or her fangs growing to push her mouth open, but she was aware that she had grabbed his wrist unreasonably hard. She grimaced at herself and loosened her grip enough for Finn to pull his arm loose.
His expression unreadable, Finn rolled his eyes in a long-suffering expression that said to the universe 'you see what I have to deal with?' and extended his arm as high as he could, adjusting his sleeves so that the fabric fluttering invitingly with his arm actually inside it. With Marceline leaning over like she was, it was just enough to be within her teeth's reach and knowing an open invitation to feed when she saw one, Marceline cheerfully bit into the fabric and slurped. The red color was sucked away in an instant, leaving Finn wearing an off-white longcoat that just made him look a bit sickly, but at least it matched what was left of his hat.
With a spark of amusement, Marceline watched Finn rearrange his coat so he was wearing it properly, and thought he looked a bit like a lost waif, or an orphan. With the usual second-hand streak of self-recrimination that tended to emerge in circumstances like this, Marceline remembered the occasional remarks Finn had made about his long-dead adoptive parents Joshua and Margaret, and more recently (less than a week recent, of course) she remembered Jake.
She didn't actually see him die, or else she would have rescued him like she did for Finn. As it was, to hear Finn tell the story, Jake went down like an absolute beast. For all of his cowardice, he had always been a hero and adventurer down to his core, and when the horror that called itself Rampage had been turning their countryside into a mass of cinders, Jake had halted his advance in his path before Rampage could have pulped Finn's head between it's claws like it had intended to, and when the mechanical nightmare had gotten a fatal hold on Jake, he'd taken his dying moment to wrap himself around it's weak neck and pull it's head right off in his dying moments. If Jake was here now, Marceline thought with only a trace of bitterness, he would have been telling the story non-stop to anyone that would listen and embellish it beyond the point of all sanity.
Marceline regarded Finn, thinking that his family was gone, and a sinking thought hit her that, she realized, really ought to have been obvious. Shit, Marceline thought. He is an orphan.
She also realized, I'm the only one he has left. The thought gave her a curious sense of purpose; she felt needed, that her continued existence was invaluable, and it inexplicably cheered her up.
"I'm sorry," Finn said, interrupting her thoughts.
Marceline glanced at him, frowning. "For what?"
Finn's mouth worked wordlessly for a moment, and he managed to say, "I'm sorry I failed." He bowed his head, contrite and ashamed.
Marceline thought that it seemed her fate to be perpetually involved with ditzy weenies who thought that it was there responsibility to hold the world up: there had been Bonnibel, now Finn. She rolled her eyes, putting an arm around his shoulder and giving him an impatient tap on the noggin. "Dumbass."
"Hey!" He rubbed his head, trying to pull away but Marceline hooked her grip on him tighter. Finn's struggles paused, whatever issue he had wilting away while he was in Marceline's clutches, and he gave it up and he leaned into her strong arm like she provided a lovely cushion, unintentionally providing a lovely shiver for Marceline. "What was that for?"
"Whole world was already dying 'afore we figured out what was going on." Marceline tapped a claw against the table, thinking of the driller worm-things that had gone all the way down to the planet's core and siphoning it all away, begining a process that ultimately tore the entire planet apart. She couldn't figure out why the invaders had spent so much time and effort trying to kill everyone if they had already been doomed, but since they were plainly jerks, the answer seemed evident: they liked hurting things. It was a stupid purpose, and hopefully something she could use against them. "Nothing we could have done."
Finn considered that, thinking so hard she thought his mind might overload itself, and for a moment he managed only silence. Finally, he started talking. "I'm the-" He stopped, choking for a moment. "I was the Great Hero of Ooo. I shoulda saved everyone." He bowed his head. "I...I messed up real bad, Marcie. I failed Jake, Peebles, Lady Rainicorn..." he trailed off, still mumbling names.
Beemo. Lumpy Space Princess. Billy. Susan Strong. And on and on, even listing the Ice King. There were far more than that, and it became a long list of names, most of them unfamiliar to Marceline, but she got the idea: they were all people Finn knew, people that Finn had befriended. Friends of Finn, and friends Finn couldn't save. Marceline had her own list of the much-missed dead, but it wasn't nearly as comprehensive as Finn's. She wasn't sure whether it was amazing that he considered himself responsible for all those people (and apparently had a very good memory for names) or depressing that he...well, considered himself responsible for all those people.
The thought of all those dead people, and the doom that they couldn't have forestalled, compelled her to wordlessly tighten her hold on him even as he fully accepted it, grateful for the comfort. She felt surprisingly territorial, as though declaring to the universe mine, mine, you can't have him, he's MINE. Finn leaned more fully into her arm, still a bit stiffly, and when turned to look up at her face she felt the tickling moisture that had dropped from his eyes onto her arm.
She glanced at him uncomfortably. She was bad at this kind of thing. She thought for a moment, holding back tears of her own - when the Great Hero is crying because he couldn't save anyone and the Vampire Queen is turning into a big crybaby, what hope does anyone else have? - and she struggled for words of wisdom that she ought to have acquired at some point over the last thousand years and came up with nothing but the most basic truth that should have been obvious anyway. "You still got me."
Finn looked at her and she stared down at him, his usually open face inscrutable for a moment. Then he smiled, honest and wide as only he did, and she found herself smiling back. "Yeah," He said, softly snuggling into her hold. "And you got me." Her heart started to beat for a moment, and with a wicked grin like a mass of broken glass on a bear trap, she couldn't resist from tilting her arm inward and cushioning his face into the side of her chest, into the softness girded by t-shirt and coat. Awkward though it was for her to do and still keep a decent grip on him, it was worth it just to see the look on his face.
He didn't try to move away but hugged her tightly with a strength that she thought should have been beyond a human. "I won't fail again," he told her, voice hushed and quavering and so rock-solid sincere you could have moored boats on it, and also slightly muffled. "I won't-" He stopped, choking on the thought of the things that had taken everything but her away from him, and with a visible exertion of the same supreme will that had set him against the Lich himself all those years ago, he said, "I won't let anything happen to you."
She grinned. "Instating yourself as my henchman again, huh?"
"...Yeah." He wriggled around so he could look in the face properly, and for the first time in a long time, she saw him smiling just like he used to, wide and honest and a little crazy.
"Sounds fun," She said, and adjusted his position so he was sitting a more comfortable position for the both of them, her free hand brushing her coat open as she pushed him into the side of her hip, her coat falling back over hims like a blanket. His arms slid around her waist, one hand lightly gracing the fabric of her t-shirt over her navel and the other resting just above the place where her back met her legs.
He let her do it, in all willingness and consent, and a thrill shot up Marceline's spine. Mine, she thought again, quieter and kindly. "C'mon, kid," She whispered. "You and me against whatever looks like it'd be fun to beat up. Those Decepticon thugs. Other alien freaks that need a good stomping. Everyone else that needs a good stomping. My dad." At that, Finn looked up at her as best he could in his posture, astonished. Marceline grinned fiercely. "Whatever happens, we'll do it together." She smirked, and Finn looked both surprised and graftified at what she clearly meant by 'together'. She started to say more, tried to make the words sound better, and added, "Like couple's night, but stomping things instead of lame movies."
He looked up at her, still astonished and wanting so badly to surrender, to go with her, to let go of those aches and hurts and just believe that she was right about this, that it could be that easy. Just the two of them, Marceline and Finn.
"Come on," She said again, hugging him tightly and feeling it more honestly than anything she had ever felt in her entire life. Rage and betrayal had her father had not been as real as this, her infautation with Ash had been far more transient than this, and all the time and effort put into her image as an unstoppable juggernaut felt like a waste compared to time she could have spent knowing Finn even though he hadn't been born yet at the time. "We'll take care of each other." I'll take care of you, was the unspoken but implicit point, and so was the reverse.
Both of them needed it, and they both knew it, Marceline moreso than Finn, but even to him it was clear.
He looked up at her, eyes still wet but alight with hope. "You promise?" He whispered.
"...Yeah," She said, without duplicity or restraint. "Vampire promise, totally." With her free hand, she pinched his neck. He rubbed his neck and smiled, more honestly and open than anything she ever had seen before, and she found herself feeling unexpectedly mushy feelings and permitted herself a kiss to his forehead, her lips brushing through the astonishinly luxuriant grown long enough to reach past his eyebrows and pressing against his skin, and a shock of warmth blushed through her cheeks and seemingly into her brain and she felt dizzy with the sweetness of it.
With her other arm, she brought him into a more intimate hug, and his own arms wrapped around her in return, the side of her chin resting atop the crown of his scalp while his face was pressed into the fabric of her coat covering the ridge of muscle running between her neck and shoulder. She could feel his breath, little wonderful plumes brushing against her neck, and for a moment all thoughts of loss and failure fell away.
(In time those thoughts would return, but weakened and distant; next to the precious one they were both holding, the seeds of that terrible despair that she had already known all too well didn't have much room to take flower. With each other at hand, the two of them offered poor soil for such things.)
"Yeah," She whispered again, speaking a truth such that she had never said before. "I promise."