Aurora has almost forgotten that she was once a journalist. It's so long ago, part of another woman's life. Her resistance, and René's, at the beginning had been through words. When the Germans muzzled the French press under the Occupation, the two of them had founded their own underground newspaper, to spread truth and hope and fight as far as they could reach. After the roundup of their fellow writers at the Café de l'Azur, after Aurora and René were forced to flee Paris, their resistance had turned from words to actions, and she hasn't ever gone back. She hasn't written anything beyond terse instructions or coded messages in years.
Those mental muscles are so atrophied it hurts her, almost, just to hold the pen, even to begin to order her feelings into words. She gets up and walks away from the table the first three times she tries. The fourth time she breaks down in tears. She stays at the table though, grateful that Alfred is not yet home from work, and cries it out. But the words come more easily after that. She wipes her eyes and is able to pick up the pen and write a letter to Harry that doesn't sound like an official report.
She walks a careful line, trying to tell Harry about Neil's condition without infecting him with her own fear. Encouraging Harry to write a letter to boost Neil's spirits. She's exhausted when she reaches the end, feels like she has just turned herself inside out, and she isn't sure whether that thought should make her laugh or cry.
She seals the letter into an envelope and flees the table before she can do either.
A letter from Sinclair addressed to Neil arrives a day or two later, and Aurora is grateful he's spared her the need to write and ask him, too.
It takes her two more days to work up the courage to sit down and write a letter to Mags. She doesn't know where to begin, trying to explain to a ten-year-old who has already lost her parents and her home that her uncle, too, has been injured. She doesn't feel like she has the right to dance around the subject with a child who has already suffered so much. And somehow, phrasing it in plain and simple language helps to take the fear out of the situation for Aurora herself. Neil was injured, but he's recovering, and he needs some help from his family to cheer him up. It brings the problem to a manageable size.
She asks Alfred to read the letter before she sends it, to make sure she doesn't seem hard or uncaring.
"It's a good idea," he says when he gets to the end.
"I won't scare her?"
"You're giving her the truth, and you're being gentle about it. If it were me, I'd rather know than not."
Aurora nods, although she's not entirely convinced.
"Have you thought about where this is likely to lead?"
She's been trying not to, because the idea terrifies her, but she nods again. "Do you mind?"
"No, of course not." He smiles. "You should tell her a bit more about yourself."
"Let her get used to the idea of Neil first. See if she writes back."
Alfred takes Sinclair's letter with him on Sunday, but as with Alfred's papers, Neil sets it aside without reading it.
A return letter from Harry arrives late the following week. It's addressed to Alfred and Aurora, so they open it together and read it before passing it along to Neil.
The letter is long and rambling, stuffed with news and questions and exuberance. There are places where the good cheer feels a little forced, but Aurora finds that almost as comforting as the parts that reflect genuine excitement with his new job, with his nieces and nephews. They're all struggling, and they're all making progress. And it feels good to have this connection with him. For once he doesn't feel so far away.
She sits down to write her reply with much less hesitation than she had felt with the first letter, then turns the pages over to Alfred so he can add his own words.
On Sunday, Alfred reports that Neil hesitated over Harry's letter, but still put it away without reading it.
Alfred hands Mags' letter to Neil two weeks later.
Neil sighs with exaggerated impatience as he takes the envelope from Alfred's hands. "Is she going to get my school teachers to write me next?"
And then he sees the handwriting, the return address. "No."
"Neil..."
"How dare she? How dare she drag a child into this? Mags hasn't been through enough, she needs to hear about this, too?"
"She's just trying to-"
"I know bloody well what she's trying to do! This is none of her business. Or yours. And I think it's time for you to go."
"No, I-"
"I said, get out."
"Neil."
Alfred is almost relieved to hear Aurora's voice. He should have asked her to bring Mags' letter in herself. It's been long enough, and the distance he imposed is starting to turn septic. He turns with Neil and finds Aurora standing in the doorway to the sitting room.
"So you've come out of hiding, have you?"
Alfred can see the flash of anger blaze through her at the words, but she lets it flare and die with a rapidity that astounds him.
"I'm here," Aurora says, her voice even. "You have something you want to say?"
"I want you to stop, is what I want. Stop with the letters, stop with the meetings. Just stop."
"No." Aurora shrugs, although she looks in no way apologetic. "I'm sorry, but I can't do that."
"You had no right to drag Mags into this."
"She's your family, Neil. She loves you, and she needs to know where you are."
"You read the letter, then, did you?"
"I didn't need to." Aurora crosses the room to join them by the windows, and Alfred is surprised to find she's shaking, has to stop himself from reaching out to comfort her. "I know exactly how she feels."
The bluntness of Aurora's admission, the pain she's allowing him to see, derail Neil's anger, and the storm of emotion beneath it begins to show through the cracks. "Aurora." Neil's breath hitches, though he's clearly fighting to keep his voice steady. "I can't."
Aurora crouches down so she's not towering over him, so she can face him eye to eye, one hand on the arm of his chair. "Can't what?"
"I can't fight anymore. I can't. I can't lose anyone else."
Aurora's composure fractures along with Neil's, her voice thick with the tears she won't shed. "You don't have to, Neil. I'll fight for you. You just have to live. That's all. You and Harry and Alfred, you're all I have."
Neil is silent a long moment, struggling. Alfred steps closer, lending his support. He lets his fingertips rest on Aurora's shoulder, and she shifts instinctively to lean against his thigh.
"I didn't know who I was," Neil says, finally. "I didn't know what name you'd given, what story you'd told them. I didn't know where you were, whether you were even alive. The Americans tried to question me from the time I woke up, and I didn't know what story they had already heard. So I stopped talking. And it just got harder and harder to start again."
"I'm so sorry, Neil. There was no other way. I'm so sorry we weren't there when you woke up."
Neil closes his eyes, wrestling with his control.
"Read the letters," Aurora says. "You still have family who loves you."
Neil takes a ragged breath, and when he opens his eyes some of the anger is back. "You shouldn't have written to Mags. She'll get her hopes up."
"What's wrong with that? I'm sure she needs a bright spot in her life."
"I promised her I'd come back for her. I promised." He gestures at his leg, at the chair. "But how can I take care of her like this?"
Aurora grips Neil's hand, but flicks her gaze up to Alfred, and the question is plain on her face. Alfred raises an eyebrow, turning the question back on her. She has greater reservations about the idea than he does. But she nods, certain, and Alfred squeezes her shoulder.
Neil sighs. "It's gotten worse, I see."
Aurora and Alfred both look back to him in surprise. "What has?"
"The two of you. Talking with your eyeballs. Come on, then, let's have it in English."
"When they discharge you," Alfred says, "you're going to come to stay with us. We'll help you with Mags until you're well enough to manage on your own."
"You can't-"
Aurora rides right over his protest. "We'd offer to take her in now, but London is still under attack. She's safer where she is."
"It's not your-"
Aurora pins Neil under a disapproving gaze, and he sighs again.
"You can't take care of both of us indefinitely," he insists.
"Are you planning to remain an invalid?"
"Not if I can help it."
Aurora shrugs. "I didn't think so. And Mags is hardly an infant." She squeezes Neil's hand. "And we want to," she finishes quietly.
"It might be good for all of us," Alfred says. "To have some stability, to depend on each other even when no one's shooting at us."
"Aren't you both working?"
Alfred nods. "And living in a flat the size of a postage stamp. We'll work something out."
"Neither you nor Mags is moving anywhere immediately. Take some time. Think about it. Read your letters. But always know you have an option. Know that we want you to come."
"And you don't take no for an answer."
Aurora shrugs again. "Why would I want to do that?" She rises smoothly to her feet. "I'll ask Force 136 to back off. Until you're ready."
"No," Neil says. "No, I'll talk to them. We might be able to work something out. Just. Let me move at my own pace."
"I promise."
They linger in the sitting room longer than they should, no one quite ready to handle goodbyes, until Neil begins to fade and a nurse turns up clucking her disapproval to chase them out the door.
Aurora walks out of the hospital on legs she's not convinced will hold her up all the way to the train station. She feels sick with the aftermath of her adrenaline, raw and bruised from the battle to hold her feelings in check, exhausted by the anger that has, for the moment at least, finally bled dry.
She feels as though she owes Alfred an apology, too. For pulling away, for not being willing to admit that she was angry and she was hurt. But she has no words left right now, so she concentrates on just putting one foot in front of the other and hopes she'll find strength for the rest eventually.
Aurora is quiet on the walk to the train station, and Alfred recognizes the flavour of nerves chafed raw and bleeding in the set of her jaw. On the platform, while they're waiting for their train, he dares to slide a hand across her back in gentle comfort, and she turns immediately into his embrace. He pulls her closer, almost sighing with relief, and she buries her face in his shoulder, the way he often does with her, blocking out the world, and just... breathes. Her ribs rise and fall against his chest as she steadies herself, and he lets his one hand circle a slow caress against the small of her back.
"I'm sorry," he says.
She manages a watery laugh, still buried in the fabric of his coat. "That was supposed to be my line."
"I'm willing to share if you are."
She hums an affirmative against his collar bone, but doesn't say anything more. He waits for her to lift her head, to draw away and push all the bruised bits of herself back down inside. But for this once, she doesn't. She threads her arms inside his coat, around his waist, palms flat against his back, and just rests against him. He lays his cheek against her hair, resisting the urge to rock her like a child, and soaks in the quiet hum of her presence inside him. Muted colours. Quiet chords.
Not until the train pulls to a stop in front of them does she make any move to let go, and the cold that rushes in when she finally steps back prickles unpleasantly against his skin. He keeps hold of her hand as they climb the steps into the carriage, and she tucks herself back against his side when they find seats in an empty compartment.
She's still quiet, but the rawness and the hurt have eased from the line of her jaw, and when she catches him watching her, she smiles. It's small and fragile and tired, but golden too, a real smile, with no reserve in it. The first of its kind he's seen from her in weeks. He rests his fingertips on her chin, tips her face up to his. And despite the semi-public, he meets her in lingering kisses, cocooned in the lowering grey twilight that seeps in through the window.
It's long, quiet moments before they ease apart. She closes her eyes, rests her head on his shoulder. He has to resist the need to pull her closer, into his lap, right into himself. This quiet, golden Aurora, like the calm after a storm.
Aurora is grateful that the usual bustle of London is absent in the dusk of a Sunday evening. They are able to preserve their small bubble of peace all the way back to the flat.
She lays a hand over Alfred's to stop him when he reaches out to flip on the lights. The darkness is soothing. Friendly. For once, even her mind is still. If they turn the lights on, she'll have to start thinking and planning. A move. And a child. And... Surely that can wait until tomorrow.
Alfred pushes the door shut behind them, abandoning the lights without protest. The dimness is broken only by the streetlights filtering through the window. He steps up close behind her, and his hands on her shoulders ease her out of her coat. She catches his fingers before he can step away to hang it up, and he turns immediately to toss his coat and hers over the back of a nearby chair instead without ever moving out of reach. And Aurora is deeply, wholly, overwhelmingly grateful that with him there is no need for words. That she can apologize without having to turn herself inside out yet again.
He kisses her, and the hum that has been vibrating between them since the train changes pitch, from soothing to fevered, from loving to hungry, from intimate to can't-get-close-enough. They stumble together to the bed, speaking only in hands and skin and heat, in fire and harmony and blue, until Aurora isn't sure where Alfred ends and she begins.
When she wakes in the morning, the knot of anger and guilt that has been the gravitational centre of her world for so many weeks is absent. Unravelled. She feels almost unbalanced without it. The hurt, she knows, will take longer to heal, and there are parts of her heart that continue their dull ache, but she has her team back. Her family. And with that, everything else is manageable.
