Hi there! I finally couldn't resist anymore... This is my very first X Company piece. I did my best and I hope it does justice to those wonderful characters. Writing about a such a rare and wonderful condition as Synesthesia is always a challenge. I highly doubt it equals the truth of what Alfred must experience but I absolutely had to get this out of my very not-synesthetic brain ^^". I hope you'll still enjoy this.
And last but not least: I thank my faithful hobbit for the positive input, even though she hasn't seen the show yet :).
Berlin, November 1943,
"Please, Alfred, say my name."
Her voice is needy, it tastes vaguely like liquorice on that day when little Alfred desperately wanted to flee from home, and he can't process what she's asking of him when the palm of her hand is on his heart, soft and sunny and his own skin feels so warm he feels drowsy. They are crouching between crates of shoe polish in the basement of their hiding place while Avro Lancasters from the Royal Air Force are sowing death over Berlin. He has his earplugs in, but they are barely necessary now, as he is entirely focused on her.
"Say. My. Name." She orders.
The sergeant is back full force now. All boundaries between professional obligations and their personal relationship are crumbling down. Aurora needs him, Sergeant Luft orders. Her voice tastes different too: honeysuckle rose. Although he has never tried to eat honeysuckle roses – he vaguely remembers something about parts of the flower being poisonous – he knows it would taste like Aurora's voice now. It breaks his heart to see her so broken. She fears for Harry and Neil, whom they have had no news for hours now. He doesn't worry as much as she does – they are the two most resourceful men he has ever met, he knows they will be back eventually, safe and sound. But she's in charge, she gave the order to split in the evening, so as to look less suspicious, and she will never forgive herself if anything happens to them.
Her heart is pounding under his fingers. E flat. It makes him dizzy with a feeling he has trouble identifying. Or rather – a feeling he doesn't want to acknowledge under the current situation.
"Aurora." He sighs. And he swears he can feel the connections in his brain explode under the strength of the synesthetic sensations.
She doesn't blink. She stares at him intently, and her bosom rises and falls faster.
"Again." She asks, her voice a mere whisper, her fingers burning his skin right above his heart.
She wouldn't be able to stand a solemn declaration, yet she needs to hear her name fall from his lips as if it were the most sacred word of all. She cannot tell what it provokes in him, when it looks like he is making love to each and every letter of it, but the lines on his face, the mesmerized look that paralyzes him against her – they speak volumes. And she finds that she can't get enough of it.
"Aurora"
He looks both lost and found, touched by grace, and she silently thanks the universe for the three syllables that she had never thought would prove so magical.
"Aurora"
A shell lands in the distance, that Alfred barely seem to register – he's already overwhelmed by the waves of blue trying to drown him, the taste of the first snowflake he's seen as a child and the touch of her lips on his when they first kissed, the sound of her slightly inebriated laughter on the day they met and an overpowering absence of the smell of gunpowder when she should have shot him – and she thinks of Harry and Neil, lost somewhere in the streets of Berlin, turned into Hell by their own allies. How are they? There's no way of knowing, nothing she can do but stay hidden and protect Alfred. He is too precious an asset to the Allies to be left roaming the streets. Too precious an asset to her own being too, to be released from her grip.
"Again. Again, again, again." She breaks into tears, but she doesn't seem to care. Her eyes are riveted to Alfred's face. She looks like a maniac, an opiates addict, with her hair falling from her carefully styled French twist. And he surely feels like he has been injected with morphine. He would like nothing more than to kiss those red lips that look so enchanting, but all his muscles are numb and all he can do now is abandon himself to the sensations triggered by her name, knowing he is on the verge of... something. Liberation? Death?
"Aurora" His own tears are mingling with hers now, blurring his vision but not his hallucinations, but he thinks she is shaking, her shoulders sagging, her stress relenting.
"Aurora aurora aurora auro – "
He can't finish. His face looks lost between agony and ecstasy, and as much as she feels this is a very intimate sight, Aurora can't look away. She eagerly tries to burn his features in her memory to recall on bitter days, and she's almost certain it is about done when he exhales and his body falls forward and into hers. He can't feel anything anymore. His brain is a mess, it has shut off to counter the overdose of senses. Everything is just blue now. It tastes blue, sounds blue, smells like blue. Sargasso Sea blue. And if he could formulate a single coherent thought, he would be grateful for such a blissful sensation of peace and emptiness.
They are both panting and crying and she massages his scalp as he buries his head in the crook of her neck. She knows it was cruel of her to ask him to submit to such an intense invasion of sensations so many times, but they both needed to unwind and that, at least, is a success. She closes her eyes and leans back against a wooden crate that hides them from anyone who'd kick the door of the basement open, and she collects Alfred's limp body between her legs to press him against her heart.
They must have dozed off because the next thing they know is that someone is angrily banging on the door and Aurora's heart fills with relief when she hears Harry's voice.
"Are you okay in there? Aurora !" Neil shouts, and Alfred is stirring but she doesn't let him move.
"Stay here." she whispers to him before disengaging herself from under his warm body.
"Alfred?" Harry tries.
"Coming!" She answers, taking the key out of her breast pocket.
She shivers when the cold hits the spot that Alfred's warmth had covered like a blanket, and she's already missing his touch. But she's delighted to see Harry's and Neil's faces when she opens the door. They storm in, followed by a strong smell of ash and charred wood, and she closes the door behind them before throwing her arms around them both with a sigh.
"Don't ever dare be so late in coming back again. I was worried sick." She sobs.
The two men give her shoulders a brief but strong shake that conveys the depth of their affection for her, and when they break the embrace, Harry's eyes scan the room.
"Where's Alfred?" He asks.
Aurora turns to where she was lying mere seconds ago and they all see a hand waving to answer the boy's question.
"What happened to you pal?" Neil asks when they have countered the piled-up crates and it's clear Alfred has been crying and his hair are tousled and his clothes are in disarray.
The young man shakes his head and Aurora understands he can't talk quite yet.
"The shells. We could hear them fall and explode as clearly as if we'd been outside." She lies.
And she knows they don't believe her for a second. And Harry is young and his mind is pure but Neil has noticed how Aurora's state looks exactly like Alfred's and he wonders if they have... But that's none of his business and had it been him with Miri they would absolutely have. But Miri's dead while Alfred and Aurora are alive and he only hopes they know how lucky they are that they can hold on to each other.
Because in the end, when this is all over and they can go home, this will be the only thing that still makes sense.