Title: The Click of the Light & the Start of the Dream
Author: mindy35
Rating: this part, K.
Pairing(s): Yves/Sofia, Yves/Other, Sofia/Other
Summary: Follows the events of "For Lovers Only".
Please see first chapter for disclaimer etc.
iii.
David finished her study while she was away. It's the nicest thing he's ever done for her, the only thing he's given her that she cares about. It's attached to the house but isolated in a corner of it that he never ventures to. It has a door she can lock and windows that invite in plenty of sun. Sofia fills the space with a second-hand oriental rug and her father's heavy oak desk. All the books she's collected and all the notepads she's written in over the years finally have a home. David used to hate the piles by the bed, under the bed and the way her books would overflow from the hallway bookshelf.
In the past, she might've worried about him opening one of her notebooks and reading words she never intended for anyone but herself. Herself and Yves. She wrote to him, about him and all around him for years without ever realizing that was what she was doing. Sofia no longer worries about David discovering her poetic fumblings though. She no longer worries about him understanding the confession hidden in plain sight between haltingly scrawled lines. Because he doesn't know that woman. He has no interest in knowing that woman. The one who lives in those words, the one who lives in Yves' photographs. The woman who lived more during a week in France with her lover than she had in the entire time she'd known the man she was married to.
Unpacking boxes that have been in the attic for years, she finds photos she forgot she owned. Mementos from their younger love that she forced herself to disown but could never bring herself to discard. There are photos Yves took of her when they first knew each other, both professional and private ones. There's a snapshot of her wearing his mittens, hands pressed to her cheeks and snowflakes in her hair. Her younger self makes a fish-mouth at a younger Yves, behind the camera. The photo used to be his favorite. She still remembers every detail of the day he took it. As she remembers in minute, devastating detail the moment he told her he didn't want to hang onto it any longer. Mixed in are a few images he allowed her to take of him, generally when he was either too drunk or too sleepy to protest. They show his reluctant face before gaining the wrinkles round his eyes she recently fell in love with. There's one where his jaw is unshaven and his hair long and shaggy that makes her laugh aloud. There are a few of the two of them, taken with an outstretched arm, their faces pressed together or their lips to the other's cheek. And there are some random prints of his she liked purely for their artistry, their originality.
Sofia spends painstaking hours finding the perfect frame for her favorites and hanging them in perfect positions around the room. She doesn't display any with his face but she still feels surrounded by him. She could fill the room with images of Yves though and David wouldn't suspect anything. He simply accepts her artistic side now as something odd he'll never understand. And once the study is complete, he doesn't enter it again. It falls out of his awareness. As she does when she's locked in it. Which is exactly how she wants it. Because when she is in there, nestled deep in her chair, encircled by well-loved prints and books, Sofia is almost, almost happy.
She starts spending more and more time in there. Despite his role in creating it, it becomes the only Davidless place in the house. Instead, Yves lives there. Her love for him, his for her, their past, their stolen future, it's all there. It's on the walls, in the pages. On days she is not out on assignment, she will go into her study and not emerge until nightfall, if then. Sometimes she will sleep on the tiny sofa in there, under a rug they bought whilst on a photo-shoot in Cairo. David doesn't complain. He often falls asleep splayed out on the couch, pants unbuttoned as some sports channel blares in the background. His oppositeness to Yves used to be a comfort to her. It was meant to not remind her. It never worked and doesn't now. Not with Yves so fresh in her memory. With him feeling so much more real to her than anything in her current life, the contrast seems more starkly cruel than ever.
On the hardest days, Sofia will read the letter he wrote to her. She keeps it in the top drawer of her desk in her study, pressed between the pages of a blank leather-bound notebook. It is her most prized possession. She knows the words off by heart. She doesn't need to read them. But she does. She saves them for when she needs them most, when she feels her weakest, her loneliest, her most confused. She hears his voice in her ear as her eyes trace the lines his hand charted. She feels his heart beat for her, somewhere out there. She feels his hands reach through the paper for her, claiming her, comforting her.
Afterwards, she will wipe away her tears. She will pick up the cork from the bottle of Cabernet they shared in Paris. She'll smell its fading bouquet before placing it back in the drawer. Then she will take out her phone, the phone she replaced as soon as she arrived home. She couldn't run the risk of misplacing it or accidentally deleting those three little words he left behind. It has only one use now. She'll listen to his voice tell her he loves her. Over and over. Until her heart swells too unbearably. Then she will lock the drawer with all three treasures safely stowed inside. She will place the key behind one of his prints. And try not to cry as she falls asleep on the sofa with the cat.
TBC…