a/n; I'm pretty sure this book series reminded me why I love stories so much. And writing. And my attempts at writing. This is my take on when Thorne first gets his sight back and sees Cress for the second time, in his perspective. All dialogue is taken straight from Winter. Any critiques are extremely appreciated! Happy reading, and Happy Valentine's Day!
Sight Unseen
When Thorne pulls down his blindfold for the fiftieth time that day and blinks, truly blinks that miraculous blink that evolves his sight from brightening shadows and blurry shapes into sharpened edges and, bless the stars, vibrant, clear colors, he knows the first thing he must do.
He pulls himself up from sitting in the middle of his cabin, standing tall and puffing out his chest. He takes a deep breath and heads out into the hallway, eyes lingering on the dark grey, light grey, and medium greys that make up the metal of the ship. His ship. His baby. How he's missed her dark, sure lines.
He begins to hear the noises of rummaging as he closes in on the cargo bay, and his feet stutter to a stop. He reaches up and scratches his chin thoughtfully, feeling the bristles of facial hair. He makes an immediate about face and heads back towards his cabin and the washroom. What on earth was he thinking? The first thing he needs is a shave. And to make sure he looks particularly flawless, moreso than usual. When he does get to the washroom, it takes him nearly twenty minutes before he leaves. He gives himself a close, meticulous shave. He combs his hair five times, styles it, defaults it back to its normal, slightly unkempt look. Then he fixes it in his favorite way, with some of his bangs pushed up and off his forehead while the rest fall down. Once he gets it to his liking, he grins at his reflection. Perfect.
Now he was ready.
He prides himself on making his way two steps in front of the doorway to the cargo bay before the knot of anxiety physically halts his movements. He swallows, sighs, then internally groans all while rubbing a hand over his face.
He's wanted to see Cress for weeks. Really see her. His memory of her is vague at best, with hardly any concrete idea of the shape of her face or her eyes or her nose… The two things he knows for sure is that she's short and so is her blonde hair. Other than that?
His imagination concocted many versions of her over the weeks of his blindness. All different face shapes and eyes. Her eyes would be large and searching, he felt. Her face perhaps heart-shaped or rounded. Does she have freckles? Does she bite her cheek when she's uncertain? Do her eyes crinkle when he says something obnoxious? All the details he doesn't know, which is nothing to fret about as he'll have all the time in the world to acquaint himself with her in a visual capacity. The thought makes that knot of anxiety tighten, all while making him strangely excited and strangely…hopeful.
Though he's not quite sure why he'd be hopeful, and the knot of anxiety is just an annoyance. He made sure he looked his best, and it would more likely than not pull out one of those adorable squeaks out of her.
He smiles at the thought, silently slipping into the bay area. He sees Cinder in the middle of the crates, organizing guns in different piles. He sees Wolf looking forlorn at a gun, Kai patting the large man on the shoulder and giving him comforting words about Scarlet. He swivels his eyes, not really paying attention, and he sees Cress—or the back of Cress. He frowns a little, but he takes in her slender little body, anyway, encased in one of several of her small, cotton dresses. She turns her head to watch Wolf, and he can see the slight frown on her mouth, too.
He's looking at her until he hears his name. He jerks and glances at Kai, who's holding one of his Venezuelan dream dolls.
"Ah. Of course," Kai says to someone—probably Cinder, Thorne guesses. Then Kai puts the doll back into the crate he found it in. "He'd better plan on giving all this stuff back."
Thorne's face twitches at the remark, and he's nearly indignant at the emperor for presuming such a blasphemous idea. His eyes dart back to Cress as he opens his mouth and says, "Sure I'll give it back, Your Majesticness. For a proper finder's fee."
Cress's head snaps up at his voice, and he can finally see her. And she is—well—she is…
Her hair is short, and he knew that. It isn't as choppy as he originally thought it might be, cut evenly as if she had gotten a proper haircut. Which she probably had by someone on the ship. Her eyes are a dark blue—kind of like a deep space blue, and they sparkle under the lights of the Rampion. He can poetically announce that she has stars living in them. Space eyes. His stare lingers on them a while.
They are wide, too, like he imagined them to be, only he isn't sure if they're wide because she's realized he's unabashedly staring at her or not. Nah, he thinks after a moment of contemplation. Wide, questing eyes suit her.
He can't tell if she has freckles from the distance, but her face is heart-shaped, just sun-kissed enough to tell, though perhaps that's his imagination. That escapade was a few weeks ago and would more than likely have faded. Maybe he wants her to still have that, like a memory he can share with her. Her lips are rosy, just a touch of light pink along the outside. They're slightly opened, and her cheeks begin to flush. It defines her cheekbones and gives them an even more flattering appeal.
She becomes very real, suddenly, as if he'd been listening to a disembodied voice of something indistinctive the whole time he was blind. He could never quite place her into a vessel, no matter how hard he tried, because he could never get her picture right. She had only been a blob of a girl with blonde hair and a pretty voice and big dreams.
Pretty, he thinks. She's…pretty. He feels a deep exhale pulled out of him. Aces, that's not right.
She's beautiful.
He half-smiles—just a lift of his mouth, if he's honest. He can't make himself do much else. "The short hair," he says, voicing his first thought. "It works."
A hand reaches up automatically at his words, as if she had forgotten what her hair looked like.
"Oh! Captain! You can see!"
He barely registers the girl flying at him before he's ransacked. He stumbles into the wall and laughs.
"Iko?" He holds her out at arms' length to get a good look at her. He isn't surprised in the least that she's nearly as flawless as he is. She twirls for him, and he clicks his tongue. "Aces. I really know how to pick them, don't I?"
"Sight unseen," Iko says, flipping her braids off her shoulder for good measure.
Thorne turns and smiles at Cress, but she's already turning into the crate again, squirming around along the top edge of it. His smile drops.
"Excellent," Cinder says, brushing her hands off and standing from her seated position. "I was beginning to worry we wouldn't have a pilot for when it's time to take Kai back to Earth. Now I just have to worry about not having a competent one."
He sees and takes the opportunity to move in closer toward Cress while Cinder speaks her loving, biting words, leaning against the side of her crate.
"Oh, Cinder," he says. "I've missed seeing your face when you make sarcastic comments in an attempt to hide your true feelings about me."
He's not sure if he sees it, or feels it, but he could swear Cress stills for a seconds after that.
"Please," Cinder says, rolling her eyes and putting up more guns on the wall.
"See that eye roll? It translates to 'How am I possibly keeping my hands off you, Captain?'"
"Yeah, keeping them from strangling you."
"How come no one told me I had such steep competition?" Kai chimes in, grinning.
Cinder glares, "Don't encourage him."
As if Thorne's a child. Pft.
And then Cress comes to life again, coming up from the crate with several stacks of cans. She turns so fast that one can comes flying off the top, but Thorne is able to catch it before it crashes into the ground. He smiles at her, happy to look on her face at a much closer distance.
"Lightning-fast reflexes. Still got 'em," he teases as he takes a few cans off the top of the stacks in her arms. They just about engulf her. "Want help?"
Her eyes shift to the cans in his arms, then her arms, and it seems as if they're much nicer for her to look at than his face. "No-thank-you-I've-got-it," she mumbles, rushing all the words quickly into one breath. Her cheeks are like cherries. He'd think it was endearing if he didn't also think that she seemed a bit terrified of him.
"All right," he says, a bit reluctantly. He puts the cans back into her arms carefully. "If you insist."
She doesn't say anything back, just stares at the cans and dodges around him like he's a very large obstacle, taking up five more feet than he does. The wide berth she gives him surfaces disappointed and uncertain feelings in the pit of his stomach. He wants her to look at him more, match his happiness at actually getting to see him see her.
Though, he thinks that might be a little unfair, especially after that pesky feelings talk—but in his defense, that talk was a few weeks ago. And they were friends. Good friends, if he was so bold to describe them. They did survive a satellite crash to Earth and the Sahara and her evil captor, in any case.
Yet she didn't even smile at him. Not once.
That's what bothered him the most.