You wake. For a moment you are filled with dread as your world consists only of bright bronze. You great it like an old friend. Then you open your eyes and the feeling slowly lifts. It was only the sunlight through your closed lids. You're in a bed in a quaint b&b, not in a small chamber. The pressure on your skin is only the tangled covers. What sets you mind at ease is the body pressed against you front, sleeping peacefully in your arms. Her body fits so perfectly to yours that it makes you think you were made for each other. And maybe you were, a hundred and fifty years apart.
Maybe you were meant to cross time and ocean to be with her. To be the back to her front. The villain to her hero. The big spoon to her small. You want that to be true, for there to be some purpose to it all. You're not sure though, that there is even such things as purpose, as destiny, faith. But still you are content in this moment, you don't need a bigger picture when you have a small one. To bodies wrapped together in the morning sun. A perfect painting.
You nuzzle your nose into her neck and breath in slowly. Let the very smell of her, a mix of flowers and sweat and old books, fill you up, become you. Help you transform into what you should be. You imagine the feeling of your bones shifting, your skin changing as you turn into what she makes you.
"I wasn't excepting this" It's a thought, wasn't meant to be said out loud. You curse yourself as you feel her stir, didn't want to wake her, not yet. She turns in your embrace, eyes closed but very much awake, settles her head against your chest.
"Wasn't expecting what?" she asks your collarbone and the warmth of her breath on your skin sends a pleasant shiver down your spine.
"You." And though that would probably have been enough of an answer, you add "This. Us. It kind of got in the way of things".
You can feel her smile against your skin.
"Oh" she laughs,"I'm sorry about that".

I'm sorry.
You don't say in anymore, at least not in relation to what matters. She wont let you, and when you try she laughs it of. Don't worry, she'll say, it's not like you're the first person who's ever tried to destroy the world, I know I have. Then it's done with.
You have apologized and you have been deemed forgiven. You hardly talk about it at all, but when you do, when you get her to, she tells you she knows. Knows that she was never in any danger in your hands, that the world wasn't, that you would never have done it; and she forgives you. Forgives you for what you did and forgives you for what you didn't do. And that should be enough.
You want it to be enough.
You want everything to be okay; to wake up in a sun filled room with your lover by your side and everything to be okay. But it never will be. Because as you kiss her, as you hold her, as you meet her gaze, you remember. How close it was, even as she put the gun in your hands, even as you held it to her head.
How close you came to destroying the world. To saving it.
How you wanted to pull that trigger and ram that trident down into the ground one final time. It was her that stopped you in the end of course, as it was meant to be, the thought of loosing her. But for a while even that wasn't enough.
Sometimes you wake from dreams filled with death and destruction. You remember the feeling of the earth ripping apart beneath your feet as if it was real. Her trembling hands. You remember the peace you felt as the world shook and crumbled. Her voice. The contractions as a new world was born out of a dying one. Her eyes. You remember it, though it never happened. And you miss it.
I'm sorry. You want to say the words. You don't want to be forgiven. You want her to scream and shout. You want her to leave, to call you a monster. You want her to know.
But you never tell her, it's the fear of loosing her that stops you.

Things will never be okay, but moment like this it's as close as it ever will be.
She lies in your arms and laughs against your skin, teases that she's sorry.
"It's okay" you say as you kiss her forehead, hugs her tighter, plays your part. Then you give her the three small words you'll never give yourself.

"I forgive you"