Three.

She freshens up the room a little bit. She knows not to touch his things, lest he not be able to find them again. She sets him up on the couch and nurses his raging fever. She sings to him when the dreams are too much. She helps him change from the stiff evening wear into a softer shirt.

She is tired, though… she has been fretting and worrying all day.

She doesn't think about it when she curls up on his side by the couch, wrapping her arms around his torso. She watched the rise and fall of his chest, the fire crackling and glowing in front of them.

"I… I love you," he whispers suddenly, voice hoarse.

She starts and sits up slowly, looking into his yellow eyes. "I love you too," she whispers back, kissing his forehead.

He holds her gaze for a moment before his eyes fall closed. She watches him for a moment before drifting off herself.

When his fever get worse later that night, he murmurs to her—

"I love you."

Her heart splinters but she murmurs back, "I love you too."

The next morning, she wakes, everything sore, but heart somehow happy. Bruised, but beating. She tries to get up without waking him, but she fails. He pulls her back on top of him and breathes the words softly against her mouth—

"I love you…"

She kisses him back, trying to be gentle when everything in her is on fire. "I love you too…"


He frets now. He breaks things. He is angry.

His wife has been missing — she never came home for dinner.

He finds a glass vase, a family heirloom, sending it flying at the painting of his mother. It shatters and rips shreds into the priceless painting.

People think it is the same anger that was in his father, but they are wrong.

It is deep, cutting hurt.

Deep, cutting, fear that his Christine has been taken from him once again.


That evening, when she is under him, he sighs the words into her mouth, her breasts, her neck—

"I love you."

She sighs them back. On his skin, his mouth, his neck. "I love you too."

They are a tangle of hope.