No one really understood his aversions to certain things. They hadn't seen the things he had seen; they hadn't experienced the things that he had experienced before; they hadn't born the same pains as he had; hadn't shared the same fears. They hadn't looked death in the eye time and time again like he had. They never understood.
Emmett chalked it up to being insane. Rosalie just thought he was a 'paranoid freak' who happened to have a gruesome past. Edward somewhat knew; he had seen a few of his memories. Still, he had never experienced any of it full blast. Esme probably understood the best; every time she saw a baby she'd mourn her dead son. It was as close as it got with what he went through. Carlisle let the medical side of him take over, believing that it was the vampiric equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder.
But none of them knew what happened with him. So those small instances, when he'd unconsciously flinch away or tense, didn't make sense to any of them.
And he didn't want to explain it.
She leaned contentedly against his chest, deeply inhaling his scent.
The scent of perfection.
Her perfect lips lifted slightly, her palm enclosed in his hand. Their fingers entwined, fitting perfectly against each other in a simple puzzle.
It was the best feeling in the world, being next to him.
His arm draped over her petite frame, holding her firmly to his side, not willing to have her any further apart than they had to be; whether that meant a mile or a molecule, it hardly mattered to him.
He could still feel the difference.
Closing her eyes, she pressed her face against his shirt, not caring how much she felt like a shy child, clinging to their parent in that moment.
It didn't matter.
It felt good.
He clung to her sleeve as the wind changed, the smells blowing against his skin like sparks of a forest fire coming at them, the very taste of blood temptingly trailing down his throat as he fought to stay in control.
She clung back.
She kept him sane. She kept him safe. And in doing so she kept him happy.
But sometimes, the happiness disappeared.
It was a spur of the moment action. She never saw it coming a second before it happened.
Even then it went by quickly.
The college student ran by where they were seated on the cemetery bench, running later by the second in the mad rush to get to class, his backpack hanging loosely over his shoulder, his hair a mess. He hadn't had time to comb it that morning after he had woken up to find the leftover pizza slice substituting as a pillow, the rubber cheese sticking to his cheek, his alarm flashing at 12:00 in front of his dreary face.
It had broke sometime during the night.
He tripped in the hurry.
His books splattered against the pavement in front of the two of them, the rain puddles from last night immediately beginning to soak through the covers.
Alongside them lay the sprawled out, deep red scarf that he had stuffed into the bag in a hurry.
And that's when he lost it.
Nobody fully understood his aversion. Why his fists automatically clenched and his eyes betrayed the fear whenever he saw one. No one even realized the cause. Only the reaction. Maybe it was just intuition, something that had become natural to him after suffering under her power for so long.
Either way, whenever he saw one like it, he cringed away from the memories of the cloth Maria tied around her neck before each battle.
She had claimed it was for luck.
All it reminded him of was hell.
21. He never forgot her scarlet scarf.
Each one brought back the pain of war.