She lies awake and watches the familiar contours of the room strewn across her vision. A sliver of red-orange from the window paints everything in blood, in firelight.
She feels another heartbeat and turns her head slightly and he is there, existing in the curve of his arm draped around her and the soft weight of him by her side. She figures their superiors haven't called him down yet. Or maybe he doesn't care. She smiles in drowsy contemplation because he is a constant and she wonders if he will not drift away upon the breeze, into mere memory. But he will not leave her. She has wondered many times if he knows of her countless crimes. Wonders, always, why he has chosen her, and why she has allowed him to. She does not ask him.
She thinks, now and then, of how they've dug him from the Titan and he is sometimes a different person altogether. She considers the times she's woken to find him upright and silent and shaken, when they pull him out and he apologises over and over and over to someone named Father. She pretends to be asleep, pretends not to notice because she is a coward. She does not ask about what may or may not have happened to his father for the same reasons she does not tell him of her own secrets. Perhaps it is the same for him. It might be, must be so.
And yet they understand each other, and many times it is more innate, more intimate than she wishes. He is a shadow of her own desires, a living opportunity that has given itself up to her, and she supposes she has accepted him. And yet. They are only children. Children do not drive wars, children do not start uprisings and destroy armies and conquer countries and bring kingdoms to their knees. But she has done it all, and perhaps Grisha has taught his son similarly.
Perhaps.
She doesn't mean to wake him. She shifts about with her back facing him and he stirs and an emotion like fear seizes her little heart in phantom jaws. His hand brushes her shoulder and she is trained to flinch. She does not strike out. She dares not roll over and face him. She is still a coward.
He mumbles her name, voice warm, hoarse with drowsiness. She's trembling but she's not cold. He fears her, she knows. It is fear and hope that drives him to love her, a silent challenge. She has allowed him this small desire, but things are different, now. She wants to love him, too. And she does, she does. She turns over and kisses him softly and their morning breath in combination tastes twice as terrible. He's a little taken aback by her boldness, kind enough to return the gesture with his hands encircling her waist and there is a rightness to this act. She rolls onto her back and he's watching her on his side. His hair is disheveled and it barely sweeps into his eyes.
Morning, she tells him. She can feel him smile, and his hands pull her to him and his breath comes warm and light across her shoulder as he echoes her.
It should be enough.
Should be.
And yet she's trembling, cannot understand why. Her voice constricts, smothered in her throat and she ducks her head down. Hurts to breathe. And he pauses, noticing how she's gone all rigid, and when he says her name she wants to seize his shoulders and demand the answers that he can never give her. Ask him, why did you choose me? What am I to you, if not a killer?
She does not do any of this.
Instead she breaks, and it is ungraceful, it is strange and alien and wrong. She is a soldier and he's terrified by her outburst. He pulls her up and asks her what's wrong and his voice is strained but she can't get the words out because she's sobbing into the linen, into her hands and then his chest.
This is surrender. He's holding her, shaken and painted crimson in the light of morning. He lets her have this little moment of weakness because she will not, and no one ever has. No one ever will.
His hands are light where he touches her and his nose grazes the crown of her head and it feels so strange to be held. Almost wrong, but she does not push him away. She settles down, gradually. He asks her, then, what's bothering her. And she wants to laugh because of course he cannot understand: he loves her. And she cannot bear to tell him because she loves him, too. But she should come clean, before she loses her nerve again. She wonders if he'll think she's going mad and a congested snigger bubbles in her throat. For this, she apologises. He reassures her that there's no need and she wishes he would not do this.
She wants to tell him all these things, she wants to confess, really does, because things are different now. There's nothing stopping her but sheer discipline and her own, childish fear.
But she steadies her breath and commands control of herself. This is only another test. She is a soldier. He is gracious enough to allow her this moment of respite.
She agonises for another minute or two, but he does not press her. And she opens her eyes and turns her gaze up to the bare ceiling. She opens her mouth, talks to him and cannot stop.
He is quiet as she speaks. And he is quiet when she finishes.
He frowns as he tells her, quietly, that she doesn't have to hide this stuff. Doesn't she understand?
And she does, silently, but she forces herself to look at him and it's dizzying, paralysing, and admits that she does understand.