Aurora misses her friends from the Café de L'Azur with an ache that haunts her for days. It's an old pain, dulled by time and by the weight of other losses she has suffered in the interim, but rekindled now by her longing for someone to talk to.
Alfred is hurting, and he's withdrawing from her, and she doesn't know how to help him. He recoils even further every time she tries. And she wishes for a friend who has lived through even a part of what she has, who might at least understand her concerns.
The office where she works now is filled with other women, which Aurora finds a refreshing change. But she hasn't yet learned how to trust them. Mostly she just feels decades older than the lot of them put together.
They're all smart and serious and dedicated while they're working, and during those hours Aurora feels almost a part of the team. But she takes meals with them in the canteen sometimes, when her schedule and Alfred's don't line up, and the girls are full of chatter about men and dancing, about cinema and books. Aurora feels like she's staring at them from the shores of a whole different world.
How does she even begin to tell them that she's woken from nightmares of dead bodies and screaming friends for the last three nights, because Alfred won't curl up around her in bed anymore? How does she explain that she didn't hear the war news because she didn't want to switch the noise of the radio on in the flat?
Who will she ever be able to talk to? About how to be a wife when she can't seem to put down the fight. About how a woman who has killed men in cold blood can even dare to think of becoming a mother.
Better just to maintain her distance. So she smiles and listens and nods along. But she misses Giselle and Pauline with all her heart.
The weeks wear on, and eventually, there's another evening raid that catches Alfred at work, and again he's paralysed by it. Humiliated.
"So we'll leave London," Aurora says.
She's perched on the bed, but Alfred can't sit still, rattles around the flat trying to find something to distract himself.
"Not like this," he says. It feels too much like admitting defeat.
"I'm sure they could use you at that code-breaking-"
He shakes his head, cutting her off. "If it happens again, you should go down to the shelter."
"Alfred..."
He stops his pacing and turns to face her, surprised at the sallow purple taste in her voice, but he can't quite read the expression on her face.
"I can get under the table by myself." His tone is sharp, and he knows he's being defensive, but he hates the feeling of being a burden, hates that he's putting her in danger.
"I'm not leaving you up there alone."
Hates how much she has to worry about him. "I'm not a child. Just, please don't make this harder than it is."
"I said no." Aurora is shaking when she stands up. "You don't get to die without me."
The fight goes out of him on a rush of breath, and he just faces her across the width of the room for a long moment of silence. Finally, he holds his hand out to her – easier when it's offering comfort rather than seeking it – and after a moment more, she crosses the room to take it.
"I'm sorry," he says.
"I can't survive that again. Please don't ask me-"
He kisses her, because it's all he can do, all he wants to do, and he doesn't have the strength left to fight it tonight. Her hands come up to hold him in place, tangle in his hair as though she's afraid he'll pull away. But he couldn't let go now if his life depended on it. If hers did. He can only pull her closer.
She draws him back with her towards the bed, fierce and relentless, deepening the kiss, and oh god, he has missed her, missed this. The sound of her touch, the colour of her breath, crescendo in his head, and he flees headlong into the sensation of her. He can't see through the tumult, so he lets Aurora fumble with buckles and fastenings, while he focuses on her, drowns in her. His hands seek out the skin under her blouse, under her camisole, to feel the smooth muscles across her belly shiver at his touch, to draw the small sounds out of her that make the colours writhe.
And by the time they tumble together onto the bed, he has won the battle with his fear for the first time in weeks.
Aurora sleeps soundly and dreamlessly, and wakes just before dawn, warm and comfortable under the blankets with Alfred pressed up against her back. His arm is slung across her waist, heavy with sleep. She traces fingers down his forearm to find his hand, then laces their fingers together and draws them up to her chest. Alfred doesn't so much as twitch at the movement. She's not sure she can remember the last time either of them slept that deeply.
She happily foregoes her morning exercise in favour of remaining cocooned in bed with him. Thinks she'll even allow them both to be late for work just to let him sleep. But when the sun finally shows itself he begins to stir beside her. For one sleepy moment, he burrows his face deeper into her neck and Aurora entertains a flash of hope that whatever it is that's been broken has somehow magically been fixed in the night.
But as he comes awake, as the heaviness lifts out of his limbs, he draws back into himself, untangles his fingers and rolls out of bed to get dressed. Aurora holds still, feigning sleepiness herself, and wants to howl at the empty, aching cold at her back.
She rolls over to smile up at him, to reach out for him the way he did for her last night. His lips twist in a fair approximation of a smile in return, but there's something new in his eyes that frightens her.
He's fragile. Brittle. In a way she hasn't seen since she first met him. Maybe not even then. He looks like if she so much as touches him, he'll shatter under her hands.
Aurora has to drop her eyes, fight down a surge of nausea that is pure fear. She puts on a face of calm and peace, for him, and gives him as much space as the small room allows. Only when he has slipped out, to walk to work before the streets fill with noise, does she allow herself the luxury of a few gasping, panicked sobs.
Focus on me, Aurora had said on their very first mission together. And Alfred then hadn't taken his eyes off her for two straight months. It was disconcerting at first, the intensity of his attention, but she grew accustomed to it as the days wore on. Found it comforting, eventually.
And now the situation has reversed. She watches Alfred. Out of the corner of her eye, or reflected in surfaces, trying to give him the space he apparently needs. But she can't shake the conviction that if she relaxes her vigil he'll vanish altogether.
Aurora offers to join Alfred on his early walks to the office. She tries bringing a meal up to him from the canteen, so he doesn't need to face the smell of cooking and cabbage and crowded bodies. He politely refuses all overtures.
The only thing she is able to give him is a quiet space, so she keeps the radio off, moves around the flat on silent, stockinged feet. As the winter sets in, she hides the chilblains on her toes so he doesn't worry. She keeps her voice low and gentle, and spends all of her energy holding onto her serene expression.
Because it seems to be working.
He has found a routine, and he can get to and from work on his own. He manages the nighttime raids with earplugs and sheer determination. He brings work home to have something to focus on in the evenings.
Aurora misses with an aching heart the days when he focused on her. She misses him, even though they still live in the same flat. He's stopped kissing her, stopped touching her. They sleep apart in the same bed, his back to her, resisting any comfort. Both of them are plagued by nightmares.
Aurora starts waiting until he falls asleep and then tucking herself against him. It's the only way either of them can sleep through the night.
But every morning he withdraws a little further.
"I have something for you."
Aurora hands him a plain, white handkerchief. He stares down at it for a moment, clearly confused, so she gently pushes the hand holding the cloth up closer to his face.
"Your perfume," he says, understanding.
Not only that. She had spent the day with it tucked against her skin, under the strap of her camisole so that it might hold some essence of her beyond just the perfume.
"In case..." She can't finish. She doesn't know what to say, how to explain her offering without trampling all over the independence he is clearly struggling to maintain. She knows he takes comfort from her presence, from her touch, but whatever internal battle he's fighting, it won't let him accept it from her now. This was the best she could come up with.
He stares at her, and the look on his face makes her want to cry. She thinks for a moment he's going to force the gift back on her, but finally he manages a nod. "Thank you."
She nods back. "Of course."
And every morning, while he's washing his face at the sink, unlikely to notice, she swaps the handkerchief in his jacket pocket for a freshly scented one.
Alfred starts to look thinner, drawn. Older.
Aurora researches the names of doctors in London familiar with synesthesia. She composes a letter to Sinclair, explaining that Alfred needs to be removed from London for his health. But she holds both of those options in reserve. Still. She knows either will be taken as a betrayal so profound he will never forgive her.
She'll do it, sacrifice them to save him, but she keeps hoping there's another way to reach him.
They stare at each other across the width of their silent apartment, and Aurora wants to weep.
"I'm right here," she says.
He nods, but his gaze skitters away. They undress for bed in continuing silence.