A/N: I started writing this one day while waiting for the bus and finished it later that evening. I gave it to Thestral Dea in hopes that it would cheer her up. I think it worked.
The scars never bothered his wife, a fact for which he was very grateful. He could lose many things in the world, but her love was not one of them. He wouldn't even mind losing friendships, as long as she still loved him. If she stopped loving him, then life loses all meaning. He'd have no reason for continuing to exist.
She still loved him, though, despite his scars, despite his emotional baggage. He wasn't foolish enough to think he was the only one with emotional baggage, though. He knew she had some, too. Heck, everyone has emotional baggage! Some just have more than others, like real baggage.
He keeps little from his wife, if anything at all. She doesn't keep anything from him, either. They've known each other for years, had practically grown up together. They'd been there for each other when each new piece of baggage was added on, so there was really no point to keeping anything from each other in the first place.
It was the scars that bothered him the most, though. His actual appearance didn't matter to him. What mattered was what the scars symbolized to him. Each one was representative of a failure: failure to dodge a spell, failure to keep his shield spell in place, failure to avoid injury.
His wife viewed them quite differently: "They are triumphs, cher coeur, not failures."
"Triumphs? What triumphs?"
"Over death," she explained patiently, her fingers tracing his scars. "Any number of these could have killed you, but none did. What does that tell you?"
"That I have a very good reason for living, beloved of my heart." He smiled as he cupped her cheek in his hand.
She smiled back as she covered his hand with hers. "Exactly. You could have succumbed to death any number of times, but you didn't. You fought back."
"For you, Poppy," he informed her, raising his free hand to cup her other cheek.
She covered his other hand as well. "And our children, of course?"
"Of course." The discussion was closed when he captured her lips in a kiss that was warm, intimate, and passionate. He was very glad she didn't mind his scars, or his missing leg, or his missing eye, or--his thoughts trailed off as she proved unequivocally that she didn't mind in the slightest.
Finis