Hymne l'amour

by: dnrl


epilogue: hymne d'espoir


The sun was bright and happily shining in his face, but he couldn't find it in himself to do more than scoot back until it wasn't, and then he was content. Almost. He threw out his arm to his right, feeling for the touch of warm flesh against his fingers and was disappointed to find nothing but cool sheets brushing against the skin. He sighed and rolled onto his back, turning his head and opening his eyes to look at the empty space on the white sheets were, rightfully, his lover should be. But she wasn't. Finally, the outside atmosphere began to penetrate the thick morning fog that roiled around in his head like countryside mists. First came the sounds – soft music filtered through the overhead speakers, something involving acoustic guitar and an Italian woman singing, nothing he really knew, but comforting. Bacon is sizzling in a pan, he could hear it through the slightly open door, and then came the smells – bacon, obviously, followed by the mixed, tumbled scent of his cologne and her perfume mingling on the sheets. Her pillow, slightly indented as it lay next to him, smelled of peaches – her shampoo.

After simply basking in the sensations of the lazy Sunday morning for a few more moments, he came to the realization that he was going to have to get up if he wanted to see her. Life is so hard, he groused, pushing aside the rumpled sheets and sliding on a pair of pajama pants. Running a hand through his hair, he trotted into the kitchen, stilling his steps as he saw that she was not yet aware he was awake. She was standing at the stove making breakfast, which was utterly fantastic in and of itself, but it was how she looked, even from the back, that gave him pause. She was wearing an old t-shirt of his, far too large on her petite frame; it fell to the tops of her knees, ragged and frayed a bit about the sleeves, and he was quite sure he'd never seen anything so beautiful. Her hair was loose and hanging about her shoulders, and as he watched a little hand darted up and pushed a few strands behind her ear. Her skin was glowing in the morning light, and she was humming softly along to the tune of the music falling from the speakers.

He snuck up behind her and wound his arms around her middle, stooping to rest his chin on her shoulder. To her credit, she didn't jump much, and she didn't hit him, and he loved her a little more for that. He loved her a little more for the way she smiled, with the little dimple just around the corner of her mouth, and even more when her eyelashes brushed his cheek when she kissed him just like that, a smile pressing into his own. He loved her more when she blinked or breathed or existed. He thought, vaguely, that depending on someone this much, adoring them this much, was severely unhealthy. He decided that he didn't care if it killed him, it was marvelous.

"The bacon will burn," she murmured into his neck as he kissed up her jawline.

"Damn," he replied absently. "It'll have charred for a good cause."

She snorted and brushed him off. "Your coffee cup is by the pot," she told him, reaching up into the cabinet for two plates. "Would you press the toaster button, while you're over there?"

He complied, pouring himself a dose of rich coffee and reveling in the smell. He leans back against the counter and watches her work, quick and fluttering like a butterfly or like sunlight on ocean waves, fleeting and bright and like quicksilver. Alive. Here. His. He leaned over and kissed her again, just because he could, just because it felt right. She reached up and tugged on a lock of messy blonde hair, and he let her go back to breakfast. She arched an eyebrow at him with a smirk and positively sashayed away. He gave a long-suffering sigh and took a long sip of his coffee.

He managed to tear himself away from her long enough to fully wake himself up. It was later than he thought – nearly ten o'clock, not that it mattered. Beautiful Paris sunlight – and it was different from London sunlight, it really, really was – was beaming down through the windows in their living room, lighting up the couches and armchair and bookshelves. Their living room. It was still enough to set his heart pounding, and he spared a moment to wonder when he had become so…domestic. It didn't really matter how, though, because now he was, and it was marvelous. He had never really had a good home; not a bad one, but not anything spectacular. But this – this smelled like a home, like Thalia-and-Luke, connected and merged and just…one. He saw his desk covered in papers that bore her handwriting, saw her bookshelf filled with his books, two laptops humming away on the coffeetable, and he couldn't actually remember which was his and which was hers, because by now they were sort of interchangeable. He was also fairly sure he had used her toothbrush last night.

He thought these things to himself, smelling French coffee and sweet perfume and even the sunlight, basking in the hum of his lover and the twang of guitar strings, as he leaned against the counter in a tiny cottage on the Seine, filled with joy and contentment, and he'd never been so happy. Still…there was something. Something that needed to be done, needed to be changed, fixed, made better.

He turned back to Thalia as she danced around the kitchen, pulling and pushing and pouring and mixing as she sang. She paused when she felt his gaze, and when she smiled at him, the beginnings of laugh lines sprouting from the corners of her eyes, he suddenly saw her with white hair and age lines and eyes still as bright and happy as the noontime sky, and he knew.

He knew that she was that woman people always spoke of – "the one I'll spend the rest of my life with." Only he meant it, heart and soul, because if he wasn't spending his life with her he wasn't living, and it was that, more than anything else, that made his heart pound for a moment.

There was a French phrase trilling around in his head, sweet and loving and somewhat mystifying, and he knew that it was about that feeling that was rising in tempo with his love, with his passion, with his devotion. It rose as a phoenix from ashes, as a song from silence, as a smile from a lover.

C'est une hymne d'espoir, it sang, and it meant –

Well.

Words failed, his English abandoned him, and it was all he could do to cling to the feeling and hold Thalia tight, too overwhelmed to even think of answering her startled questions. When he had some measure of control, some level of composure, it was all he could do to murmur the words against her lips, again and again, until she understood. Laughing, she pressed her fingers against his cheekbones and cupped his face in her hands.

"It is hope, Luke," she smiled, all soft words and gentle touches. "Hope."

He let out a laugh that was almost a cry and pressed his lips into her hair again. "Hope," he echoed, and the word was like a teardrop in the ocean, utterly unable to convey the sheer mass of the entirety.


Their anthems were dual – hymne l'amour all could see, an anthem of love; but there was a hidden beat, a different melody, a second anthem that thrummed throughout melancholy, depression, loneliness, defeat, and rejoining.

Their hymne d'espoir, their anthem of hope, burned bright for all to see.


A/N

-groan- Ohmygooood. Sorry for the late posting, but I'm sick. Urgh. Been sleeping and practically OD'ing on meds all day; stayed awake long enough to answer a couple of messages, then almost passed out again. I hate this, really I do.

Lamer chapter is lamer, dammit, and it makes me sad. D:

Also, I know the pressure points on your hands that are good for relieving headaches; anybody else know any of them? (Pain relief points, I mean, I know most of the pain-causing ones.) Because my head, she hurts. ARGH.

Ahem.

...-drowns in cheese-

I'm just gonna go die in a corner now. -crawls away-