How could someone look at her and not see how beautiful she is? Fiyero wondered thoughtfully, watching her as she slid under the blankets. She caught him looking at her and she smiled. 'Are you coming to bed?'
'I'll just be a second,' he replied, returning the smile. She nodded, tried to stifle a small yawn and then lay down to rest, facing the wall. Soon he heard her breathing grow slower and more regular and he knew she was asleep already. He couldn't blame her; it had been a long day.
He kept watching her, still lost in thought. It's amazing, really, he observed, how much one can learn about someone by watching them sleep. She, particularly, he had noticed, showed so much more of herself when she was asleep than she ever would while awake. Sleep always seemed to soften her features, which made her look younger than she was – younger and more vulnerable. He never told her that, of course. He was sure she would never accept him – or anyone, really – calling her vulnerable. She wasn't vulnerable, either – she just looked that way when she was sleeping, but he wasn't sure she'd see the difference.
He got up to close the curtains and poked a bit at the still glowing embers in the fireplace. He sat down again at the edge of the bed to look at her once more. She was sleeping in what he now, after the nights they'd spent together, recognised as her usual sleeping position: curled up in foetal position, on her right side, with her back towards him. He didn't know why she always slept like that, but she did. She never moved in her sleep, either, which he thought was quite strange; every morning he woke up, he would find her sleeping in the exact same position she had been in when she had fallen asleep the night before.
What was most striking about the way she slept, however, was the fact that she, unconsciously, still seemed to be protecting herself. She never seemed to fully relax, not even when she was asleep; her body always had a certain tension about it, comparable to the self-protective, suspicious attitude she displayed when she was awake. He wished he could take away the tension, but he knew he couldn't do that without her trusting him fully – which, knowing her, could take a very, very long time. It had been a long time, too, since she had trusted anyone. And look where that trust got her, he thought, just a bit sarcastically. How he wished he could make everything right again for her, but that was another thing he could never do. It broke his heart to see her like this: curled up in a ball, hugging herself, as if protecting herself from the outside world. Who was she protecting herself from? Her father and sister, who had never loved her? The Wizard and Madame Morrible, who were responsible for practically every disaster she had had to face in the past few years? The people of Oz, who had always mocked and ridiculed her and now hated her for what they believed she was, instead of using their eyes to see who she really was? She deserved to be loved by all of Oz, not hated, for who she was as well as for what she had done. She shouldn't have to be fighting alone against the world. It wasn't fair – but then again, it never was.
She murmured something unintelligible in her sleep, followed by his name, barely a whisper. 'Fiyero…' She said something else after that, something equally incomprehensible to what she had muttered before; then she went silent again.
He looked at her, looked at the woman he loved more than anything in the entire world, and then and there he vowed to never let her fight alone again, to never leave her, to protect her from being hurt ever again, for the rest of his life. He would be the one person in her life who would love her unconditionally and whom she could trust to never hurt her in any way. Because she needed such a person. Because she deserved such a person.
Eventually, he went to bed himself, carefully moving closer to her and sliding his arm around her waist. She stirred and half-opened her eyes. 'Yero?' she murmured, still half asleep, and he gently stroked her silky black hair. 'It's me, Fae, don't worry. Just go back to sleep.'
He expected her to pull away, as she sometimes did, or to just ignore his presence and go back to sleep, as she usually did. Much to his surprise, she now did something she had never done before: she rolled over to face him and murmured: 'I love you.'
Those three words, so simple and yet so meaningful, almost caused him to cry, but he blinked his tears away, kissed her hair and whispered back: 'I love you, too.'
She sighed, satisfied, almost happily; then she snuggled closer to him, resting her head on his chest and draping her arm across his stomach, before she fell asleep again. And this time, for the first time since he knew her, he felt her body completely relax against his.
He tightly wrapped his arms around her, closed his eyes and vowed once again, in silence, to never – ever - let her go.