XI.
"Woah, there!" Cagalli wheezed, reining the beast beneath her to a stop just inside the courtyard. Snow clung to her eyelashes, blush bright on her cheeks, and she held a hand against the vivid afternoon sun.
Athrun and his small hunting party had just arrived she sees; both squires carrying a large carcass inside, Athrun himself rounding his horse to see as she entered. "You went riding unaccompanied?"
Huffing, she rolled her eyes exasperatedly. "I can handle myself just fine. What did you fell for dinner?"
He chastises some more though held her waist as she unmounts.
Later—later, when it was only them and he had just shed his cloak off, a single winter bloom comes away from it. And with that increasingly, infuriatingly, familiar fluttering inside her, she accepted it with red cheeks and a curt nod.
"I saw it and remembered you."
…oOo…
Arms crossed on his chest, Athrun looked to the side to see his wife correct the stance on one of his younger wards. She straightened the boy's back, positions his wrist just so, stilling his trembling fingers on the bow. When he let loose the string, he hits just inside the black mark. The young boy shouts, boasting to the wind, to the earls and barons his age, having just landed his very first arrow. Cagalli pat his head, urging him to continue.
Some of her hair sticks out of its braid at the crown of her head, her neck is too lovely a curve and Athrun cleared his throat, looking away to watch as yet another of the older boys charged at the quintain. She seemed radiant in this light— a grin on her lips, small children at her flanks.
His spine tingled.
…oOo…
"Why are you doing this?"
Cagalli glares warily, for Athrun has continued to give her trinkets and flowers and it so rankles her. For though she was used to being given all these, she never had the taste for them. But her husband indulging her with these useless feminine fancy, it tilts her balance. Secretly, she stashed these jewelries in a simple wooden box.
Because it brought this certain kind of light in his eyes whenever she puts one of these on and it's a pleasant look on him.
With a half-smile on his lips, Athrun teased, "Why do you think?"
…oOo…
He glances at her fingers often, couldn't but feel disappointed at finding nothing.
…oOo…
Flames dancing in front of them, good cheer between them, and wine warm in their belly, there really should be no reason to be cold.
But Cagalli braved the distance between them still, remembering Lady Lenore's voice, soothing, earnest, pleading, 'Take care of my son, my dear. Give him a chance. Give both of yourselves a chance. You'll soon find it's not too bad a gamble.'
His quiet laughter was honest and it is becoming something to be cherished for how rare it was. Cagalli welcomed it now, not reluctantly, not anymore and makes a promise to herself. To make the best of what they have, to choose not to fight it, to choose to be happy instead.
And so when Athrun bid her goodnight with a sloppy kiss to her palm, she stopped him from going out of her chambers with it against his cheek.
"Stay"
"Are you inviting me to your bed my lady?" he asked this half-jokingly.
"Of course I am." Breezy, calm, and easy, she responded. "It's cold and you are warm enough. You'll have to do my lord."
"You never call me that."
"I do in my head when you're being especially insufferable."
"I wonder how often that is." He laughed again and stripped to his nightclothes and they sleep on her bed, closer than they dared. And this right here, this is where they begin.
…oOo…
Athrun closed his eyes and prayed for frozen time, for the sun brought with her light and his wife lays languid beside him on the featherbed, lips parted, hair in disarray — a graceless mess. A familiar warmth curls in the core of him.
He reached over, took her hand — scarred, rough, warrior hand – and pressed it to his chest as her eyelashes flutter, and eyes so amber and so warm, they open, and a quiet, husky good morning darling and oh…
This would be the rest of his life.
…oOo…
Weeks after the snow melted and the greens reborn anew, a messenger comes before dawn. Wild with the rush of a grueling ride, garbed in telltale black. He brought with him a foreboding storm, a certain kind of sadness clinging to him like a thick winter cloak.
Crimson eyes could only stare ever down as he rambles, sorry and uncomfortable in the face of a dead woman's son. "Well, ah. I was the fastest rider they could find. A raven has been sent to your Lord father… It's your mother m'lord. I'm sorry to tell you… I'm afraid she's gone."
Shinn looked away as Athrun Zala's world fracture around him.
…oOo…
Notes: I am beyond redemption with my tenses. And I use commas more than I should. Hope you don't mind it too much. Sorry to keep you on your toes the last couple months, but I had just graduated university and having no other half-assed excuse, I had no choice but to pretend that being an adult doesn't suck. Tell me your thoughts!
