Leaves washed from puddle to puddle, dripped down the stone, stuck to separate steps and overflooded the ground below. She stood before the veil pouring from the roof of the mansion. Protected by any drops, the air remained tangible. It smelled of wet earth, wet trees, and wet streets that reached Virgilia just enough. Touching the edges of her black dress, entirely dry, was a mere attempt at hiding the outburst of a smile.

There were more spots than underneath the roof that remained untouched by the rain. The ground by the trees. The stone by the fountain. The crows seeking refuge by the mansion's facade.

The man underneath the umbrella.

His hand had closely wrapped around the black shaft and his broad shoulders found a shelter underneath.

It was hard pushing down the tug of her lips, involuntarily moving upward whenever she glanced into his direction. Growing steadily more difficult the closer the man with his freckles and blonde hair moved along his path, up the stairs and—

"Hello," he said and sounded like the deep rumble of the thunder that was still to come.

"Hi," she answered and sounded like the faint rain around them.

Plutarch lifted the umbrella and moved it to his side, pulled at the runner and wrapped its tie around the closed fabric. Despite the umbrella, there were raindrops everywhere. None she had noticed from further away when he had been but a speckle of colour, but here, up close, the drops had attached themselves to the black jacket and had spread all across from his shoulders to his chest to his sleeves.

Her hand lingered, hesitated, as if his shoulder were a hot stove, but she touched the coarse woollen texture, dipped her fingers into the drops, and let her hand sink to its side.

"Seems—seems like the umbrella didn't help… entirely."

His gaze moved away from her. It lingered along his body, on his arms, his chest. All while his orange brows had come into view, the freckles on his forehead and the hairline that spouted light and dark blondes.

"You are right," he answered without a change of the calmly paced words, and looked up again with a faint smile.

On other days, avoces or guards escorted him the way through the foyer and up the stairs. The path had burned itself in the back of her eyelids that Virgilia knew she could walk up the forty three steps with closed eyes, knew the count of the chess patterns down- and upstairs, and had counted the patterns in the railing. The fire she felt in her back was new, as he followed her close behind up the stairs, and walked with her to the entrance of her rooms.

It must have been the tension, the very same that always lay crisp in the air when her husband had been here recently. Just as long as it had lingered, as much as it had settled on their skins, just as quickly it fell away with the door closing behind them and her hand reaching for his jacket.

"There's a heater—one that's on, I can dry the jacket, if you would like." She offered.

The jacket slipped off of his shoulders, revealed the dress shirt underneath and prompted a smile on his lips. "That would be great."

A 'thank you' followed her as she found her way to the bedroom and slipped the jacket over the heater. Raindrops knocked against the window, moving in their own beat as if they expected to be allowed inside or, with enough pressure, could find their way into the mansion without permission.

It was warm enough. Her fingers slipped between the cosy fabric and his jacket, stretched the sleeves and paused. Further away, just around the corner, Plutarch was fixing his second sleeved up his elbows and folding it into the crook of his arm. Virgilia's hands lost touch with the scented collar and its memory of a different time. High heels beat in their own rhythm back to him. Back to the wood, metal, and paper.

"I promised you another book," he said nonchalantly.

There it was, plain on the table. Her gaze moved from him to the book and back. The book, its lettering, its secrets: a vortex to a new source of knowledge, new stories of the old world all hers. A borrowed book, but no borrowed tales. The words would stick with her, that much she knew, even when the book was returned.

Virgilia touched the calm red, moved her fingers across the plain cover. There was a golden border with elaborate swings in its four corners. The lettering was centred, and read something she had faintly heard about from her brother, but not like that. Never like that.

"Political theory?" Virgilia frowned, her lips pushed together in silence. Politics anything hadn't been for her, least for her to read about, and if it was as dry as some dinners with her husband and his son—

"Yes," he said and looked at her. It was only now, with the excitement faded, that she noticed how close they stood together. Her arm that had moved against his, not unlike the time she had visited him, not unlike the time they had danced together.

"I don't—this isn't quite my topic…" She tried, but found herself at a loss for words. It was more than not her topic, brushing along the lettering, feeling his muscles move against her arms, sensing the pit in her stomach.

Yet, he looked at her with an odd gaze and a light grin that infuriated her. "Give it a try."

Virgilia sat down, opened the cover and flipped along the first few empty pages. There was a chapter list, one containing names that could have been from here, produced within the Capitol, and others so foreign she wondered whether it was yet another gift from the old world.

When her finger hovered along a complicated name—Montesquieu—her view rose from the pages across the deep wood and laid-out tools to his hands and face.

Is this allowed?, she wanted to ask, but it stuck too tight in her throat as if speaking this here would be equally as incriminating. So she swallowed the words and thoughts, and asked something close enough: "Was it difficult to get the book? It … doesn't look like anything—nothing, no, I've never heard of this."

"It's rare," Plutarch said with his brows pulled together and his lips pushed into a fine line as he shrugged.

His gestures were all she needed to know, her heart rattling inside her chest, pushing against the bars that had contained it, pushing against the bars of her own home, of her own mind, of all that had seemed right and proper. She wiped her hands at the dress, nodded, and knew to hide it later.

"Thank you." Virgilia said in earnest.

She moved to his side. Plutarch mentioned that he had been past the avenues again at the same antiques store that sold old goods that belonged to an entirely different lifetime. Virgilia had never been, no, having stuck to the main streets and its parades of wealth, but Plutarch described it in the same deep voice that history, too, stretched, with its little corners of newfound knowledge and recognisable paths through a scattered place. He made it sound almost desirable, an envious experience, while, surely, there were too many spiders and too much dust awaiting her.

The first pieces of the watch had already been laid to the side when he handed her the tools. A few words were exchanged, but Plutarch lacked the explanation today. He stayed silent as she felt his deep blue following her motions.

What accompanied them was the steady rain drumming against the windows. In the silence of watch parts undone, it had grown into its own music.

It wasn't unlike the last time they had seen each other. The sun had settled, not hidden behind the clouds, and the music had led them. His hands had been kind, never pressing too much into her back, hovering right there as if too polite or too shy to do much more. There had been something stuck in his gaze, some deep curiosity that she had only seen in him when focused on the joys in his life: the sketches, the books, the watches, the paintings.

"Careful." Plutarch's hand hurried from her right side and wrapped around her wrist. "You almost scratched the dial."

His fingers were hot like the burning fire scorching through wood. It slipped along, catching all the little touches of his skin against hers on fire. The back of her hand gave way, muscles eased underneath and the tweezer dropped from her fingers.

Metal fell onto metal, then wood, and it rang hollow in her ears. "No—I.. I am sorry."

His hand slipped away, the absence from fire to ice, the rain and cold returned and his touch a mere ghost hunting her skin. Plutarch remained calm, as he always seemed to be, while she was lost, out in the ocean between the drums of rain and the heat of a fire gone.

"I can take over if you would like," he said as his fingers continued the work she had abandoned.

They were quick, knew well what to do, and aided the explanation that he provided. It were the very same hands that had wrapped the coat around her, the very same that had touched hers when they stood so closely, and the very same that had held her when they danced.

The swirl of emotions tingled everywhere inside her body. She felt it stretch downward, felt the prickling itch inside her chest and behind her cheeks. The ways he had touched her burned. Her hands, her back, her shoulders. He had left a mark everywhere, like the sun that warmed the flowers after the rain.

Virgilia remembered home, where the grass was still wet from the rain and the sun had crept out from the clouds. The way the sun dried the grass between her feet and placed a rainbow within the sky. Those had been the best days, she remembered them, before the marriage, before life had grasped hold of her. She had still yearned back then.

"Whoever made this, they put a lot of effort into those gears," he said, as if at a distance, as if she hadn't bored holes into his hands.

"Huh?"

"I was talking about the craftsmanship. It's astonishing how they did this." He looked at her with sharp eyes. "Are you alright? You don't look so well."

"I—" And somehow, her hand moved around his wrist, touched the freckles and the hairs and felt the warmth return. Yet, her gaze couldn't focus, not on him nor on his hands or the watch or the table or the book. It had disappeared, like a fog before her, as memories replayed and as words became stuck. Her hollow eyes, grey like the clouds outside, wandered. She tried to focus on him, saw the way the light tinted him in a grim grey, saw the times he had been painted in yellow or blue, and wondered where the worry in the crease of his brows had come from.

Her lips played at the words, tasted them before they could leave, moved them over and about and settled for the easiest beginning. "Can we … sit? Not here, no—no, couch… please?"

"Sure." He looked concerned.

Plutarch's presence was everywhere, and it only got worse. She felt his hands and arms close to her back, and bumped into his side when they sat. He remained close when they settled and stared at her with a half open mouth.

Virgilia rubbed her hands on her dress. She had hoped the brief distance could have brought clarity, but her mind had disordered her thoughts as if wind had blown through.

For once, she did not enjoy his silence allowing her to speak. It granted many freedoms, all which seemed far too dangerous, and it settled like dust on any living thing, slowly but certainly burying her.

Worse, he looked worried. It seemed an odd emotion, but it read between his narrowed brows and his empty gaze.

"You—you are so brilliant," she said, beginning with the easiest observation, the one that plenty others must have made already. "But… you are also kind—and lovely, and you… listen. Even now you let me speak, even if I'm not making any sense now, I—"

Virgilia looked at him, truly looked at him. At the cool light on one side of his face. At the long shadow cast from nose and brows and cheeks across the other. His breath lifted chest and shoulders, his eyes didn't stay steady and blinked often, but he wasn't interrupting her. Plutarch made it worse, almost.

"I look forward to … to your visits more than I should. It's not because of—" Her voice lowers. There is admiration and then there is betrayal. "I like you. You make me happy, and you let me do all this. All the watches you trusted me with … all the books you gave me. When we danced together… I still think about it, and I want that—for the first time since I came here, I want—and it's wrong and foolish and we shouldn't do this, but I want to dance with you again, I want to … feel your hands, but mostly I want to … kiss you."

A weak noise left her throat. It tightened her chest and ached her heart. She had read about true love kisses, yet it had never turned out as magical as it was. All romance Virgilia had experienced held thorns inside, and who was to say this was any different? There were creases on his face, there was the quietness that could have been used to turn against her. For all she knew, her husband could learn about her confession—

"I think you should do that," he said.

"What?" She blinked at him. Blinked at the dark shirt that rose and fell, blinked at the warm face that so naturally drew all attention toward it. Between the ghosts of rain dancing between his freckles, there was a different shadow, cast from his high cheeks to the valley of his lips.

"Do what you want." He tilted his head, and his lips widened, briefly. His freckles stretched with his smile. Those that had reached his lips just enough, framing them right around, and those on his cheeks that bolstered whenever they raised.

Nothing about her words had been prepared, and she swallowed when thinking about her wants, both what she wanted and what she had said to want.

And then it was there, his faint words intermingled with her own. As if they were rain, drumming against the windows in the back of her mind. Dancing to their own music, sneaking through ahd lasting in her head.

Time can wear itself thin. It happened when goosebumps tingled her arms and her heartbeat rumbled in her ears. When time had seemed to move slower than usual, when the raindrops faded into the background as if they, too, had stopped moving.

At first, her fingertips grazed his kneecap. One by one her body moved along, upper body leaning forward, fingers tracing from knee to chest, never touching, no, hovering above, uncertain if he would crumble underneath and it all had been a mere imagination.

Virgilia only noticed his gaze that had traced along when she looked at him. His blue eyes, warm like the sky on a summer's day, didn't settle for one part of her face, no, his gaze never stayed still.

"I want—want to kiss you," she said. Her words lingered in a breath, faint yet hanging by the thread of time not moving quite right. It had become a declaration, one so rarely on her side, but he let her, staring on with lips pulled apart. It was the same manner he had looked at watches and flowers and art and they all seemed to have contained a beauty to him. When had he started to look at her that way?

Virgilia kissed him with a newfound eagerness. It started as a bump into him, uneven, too fast and too slow at the same time. As if a rescue line, her hand held the back of his neck and his short hair tickled her fingers.

She was a flower, grown by the wild fields of her home, and finally the clouds pushed aside as she bathed inside the sunlight. It was his lips, spreading light and warmth. A new source of the fuzzy feelings that came from reading about love, came from the rush of her heartbeat upon doing something not-quite-right. His lips were hot against hers, and despite all, despite all she had known, they were patient. They didn't push, and the all-too-surprising presence of his hands settling on her waist, lifting, settling again, didn't pull her toward him.

Her head was swarmed with memory and imagination. With the cologne on the collar of his jacket. With the fingers on his writing. The books, the watches, the art. His eyes, his freckles, his smiles. The hands that touched, once when they were all alone and once when they were in company. The nights she imagined him, the words that had lingered beyond his departure. The touches that had lingered beyond his departure.

Memories intermingle with imagination intermingle with what if's. It was not the first time she had thought of running, but it was there, with his lips moving in their rhythm with hers, that it turned from far-fetched to a chance. A jump, into the cold and cooling water of a hot summer's day, of the sun safely by her side. It was a what if among many, questions of had it been him all those decades ago's, questions of would he ever move against the Snow's, questions of could she have ever escaped the mansion's—could she now?

It was an act of rebellion. A trespassing into the forbidden. Her thoughts and wishes and hopes had been mere passive spectators as the gust of winds passed by and blew ideas along. She had sprung up into the air, carried along, and doing what-was-not-right. It was thrilling, and like the wind in the air it spurred her heartbeat along, when it blew past houses and fences and into the trees and too fast and too quick.

And it was dizzying, all this intermingling, all those memories and imaginations and what if's.

She broke from the kiss with an airy laugh, one born from the birds chasing the sun, flying ever higher and diving back down, from the joy that it must bring to be free.

Her head moved underneath his chin. Her ear held against his chest—and there it was. The rapid heartbeat of a quick bird, fluttering inside his chest as if it were hers. Virgilia breathed and his chest raised with hers. A bird in a cage. A bird like hers.

"You got me—got me all … dizzy." She pushed out, words detached, mingling separately between memories and imaginations and what if's.

There were his hands, the ones that hesitated at first, and they moved upward. Along the sewn lines of her dress, wrapped around her back and held her entirely. He was warm and safe, and despite him being there so entirely, it was not a trap. It was comfort, as his chest created a hum from a corner somewhere deep and warm inside him.

"Is that bad?" Plutarch asked in the same way his hands had hesitated.

"No." Her eyes closed, remembering the way his lips moved and the way his fingers brushed along her back. It had to be remembered and picked apart, reminiscent, in moments where the rays of sun could no longer reach her.

"Let me, uhh—" he said, flustered in a way that none of the people in the books were. "Hold you until you feel better."

Virgilia touched his shirt, felt the fabric imprint on her fingertips, traced along the closest button she could make out and watched his broad shoulders rise and fall with her. When she had discerned a pattern from the movement on her back, she looked up.

Her touch had become a ghost. It had lingered in his hair, never having left, as blonde strands stood up and away in disarray. She brushed through—abstaining from touching his scalp—and bringing back in order what had been her undoing.

"The kiss—" Virgilia stuttered, feeling the red in her cheeks as if returned from her airy flight, back onto the ground and witness of her own rebellion. "It was… great, good, quite… quite good—"

He grinned. His lips pulled up, the curl between his cheeks and mouth appeared. Her hand moved close to it but stopped, right before, as if it could disappear when touched.

"I am glad," Plutarch replied. His brows raised, and silence grew steady. She looked his way as his cheeks became painted in red and his hands tapped on her back. He huffed, eyes flickering between her eyes and lips. "It takes two for, uhm, a good kiss."

Beneath the buttons and the fabric and the ghostly memory of her cheek right there, his chest heaved. One hand moved along her arm, brushing from dress to skin and slipping between her hands. His fingers were heavier than hers, pale and yet warm, ticklish and yet content.

Plutarch's eyes settled to face her. The red lingered.

And the red burned in her cheeks, like the sun on a warm day in summer, when she sat beneath the grass and felt its rays extend to every part of her body.

Maybe it did affect every part of her body.

Their bodies moved and adjusted for the other. Leaned back, found new comfort. It became an interplay of nature in the same manner flowers looked up to the sun or birds danced with each other. She didn't count the time until they rested on their sides, when she stared into his eyes the colour of the sky, touched his hair the colour of the sun, or brushed his cheeks that grew red like poppies dashing from the earth.

Virgilia didn't dare to kiss him again, but there were far more intimate things—whispers between them, carried through the little space from one pair of lips to the other.

"Part of me must have known," she said, the words brushing past her lips. He had painted so much with his hands, and she wished to do the same, one day. For now, her words had to be enough. "When we first met. I must have known … something about you."

"Did you?" Plutarch asked, looking part concerned and part curious.

"Yes—" Virgilia nodded. "I used to read those books."

She still read them, from time to time, but their charm was gone. It had been a hope, then an escape, then a lie.

"What were those books about?" He laughed, but it didn't come from his chest. The laugh rang hollow, and he moved his hand, but didn't stick to any part of her—as if it could never settle.

"Romance books, lots of them…"

Her eyes closed, remembering the time in the gardens. They bordered right on the wilderness, just a few steps past the well-maintained grass.

"I always read underneath my family's tree. In—in their garden. It wasn't as grand or beautiful as my husband's, but… it was peaceful. They were books about… love. About—" she sighed.

Plutarch had settled for her cheeks. It was a faint touch, as if he were a mere part of her imagination.

"I know it wasn't right. They told lies. All of them. My marriage—" Virgilia opened her eyes "it's not like those books. It never was, not on any—any day since the wedding."

He hummed and her hand moved to his chest. The vibrations were right underneath her touch. A comfort.

"But it cannot be all that bad. Romance exists—it must." She looked at Plutarch and her tone grew faint. "I won't let him take that from me."

His fingers settled on her jawline, skin touching skin, and he grew real. "That's brave. Some might say rebellious."

Virgilia smiled. "Then I am a rebel."

His laughter was unexpected. This time it shook his whole body. But there was no maliciousness within. His hands moved to the back of her neck, fingers slipped to the bottom of her hair, and he kissed her, briefly.

She felt his lips, and felt its effect all throughout her body. Then it was over, his kiss leaving a yearning behind.

"What about you?" Virgilia asked.

"If I'm a rebel?"

"No—about love. You never married."

He raised an eyebrow: "Never?"

"I—I have my sources."

"Clever woman," his lips tugged up, and his cheeks raised with them.

There was silence between them. He was in thought—his eyebrows had pushed closer together, lips in a thin line, and eyes drifted along her voice.

"I had my moments."

Virgilia laughed. "What moments?"

"Some time ago. None lasted and nothing mattered as much as—" he cleared his throat. "My aspirations."

"Your career and hobbies." She remembered.

"Mostly, yes."

"So why … me?"

"People change."

Virgilia shook her head, no.

"Haven't you? You said you changed since your wedding," he said and his head tilted.

Her lips pushed together. He was right, that was the worst part about it. "What did I do to make you change, then?"

"You showed me different perspectives."

"On what?" She nudged closer.

"Morals, society, romance—" He shrugged with a smile.

Virgilia decided to refuse to believe him. Society? Her?

"You would have… would have made a better spouse." Her words travelled in a whisper. This was forbidden, perhaps more than the kiss. It was a secret, one as rebellious as he had described her.

He didn't respond. It was the scent of the air before the thunder erupted. A dangerous moment. The crisp moment before the bolt hit a tree and burned it to the ground.

Plutarch pulled his arms around her. Odd.

Panic settled in her heart. Panic of betrayal and loyalty, of a vow that she had promised and broken.

"Please don't tell him." Her voice resounded somewhere from the comfort of his chest and arms close around her.

"I'm good at keeping secrets," he said and sounded like the deep rumble of rain outside. The one that slowly washed away at the paint of the mansion.

"Everyone is loyal to him." One way or another. Most ways, it ended with their own undoing. One misstep—and she had done more than one today.

His lips pressed against her forehead. A soft kiss, a noise and motion so barely existing. "I have my own loyalties."

He was comfort. Entirely different to her husband. His hands had been shy to touch her at first. He didn't ache against her body and did not feel suffocating. There was no presence aiming to take over, no, it was them both, right next to the other, as if a mere coincidence and yet not a coincidence at all.

No—Virgilia never found comfort in the arms of a stranger. It had been out of the ordinary, and yet seemed bound to happen since the first time they had repaired a watch together.

There was patience as he moved to look at her and asked about her braided hair. His hands moved along each strand, retracing the motions her hand had taken and learning from her. She undid some parts of the hair tied together and touched the back of his hand as he followed her words.

And she kept tracing along his fingers, each one of them, as he told her about holding onto books he had stolen and hidden underneath his blanket with a light that barely illuminated the pages. He had been young, but Virgilia understood the curiosity in his eyes. It was the same as his nowadays, and the same she caught in herself sometimes.

It was when the sky parted and the sun was gone that they knew. Their time was limited. Hushed whispers, aching hearts, and parting hands that lingered by her closed door.

Virgilia's hands held onto his arm. Plutarch's gaze stayed fixed on her.

"Sometimes—" Her voice strained, quiet, a whisper, a mere passing moment as if it could undo the weight of her words, as if it could be less serious. She had been a criminal today, a traitor. What difference would her words now make? "Sometimes I think about … leaving."

He looked at her the way he had looked at art and watches and books and flowers.

"I thought about leaving when… when we kissed," Virgilia confessed.

Plutarch's voice was faint, another whisper, as their melody aligned. "Allow me."

A nod was all he needed.

And there he was, again, his cologne that lingered close by. The head that tilted, not down to reach her, but on the same level, same height, same space they occupied. He was red in the face as if he had never kissed before.

In a moment's time, he would be gone. In a moment's time, the heat of his lips were replaced with cold. In a moment's time, he would be gone and she would still be here, within the halls of a mansion too large and too cold.

Once he was gone, the snow would return. It was a fight against the death of nature, and it was a fight she had endured and endured and endured. One day, she, too, could leave.

She had to.

Her lips touched the corner of his own, wiped at the red and wished him a safe journey.

Plutarch's eyes lingered until they didn't, until his broad frame dressed in black was replaced with the white door. He had slipped through, like the secret between them, quiet and with a lasting yearning.

At first, she worried—about him, about secrets, and about keeping secrets.

Yet, her hands were a bother. They refused to keep still. It was a moment of action, not one of lingering, and she found the book between fabrics and wood. It no longer held his scent between the pages that had been filled with ink.

Disastrous drawings.

Memorised moments.

Flipping through the pages, she stopped at the latest one, scratched this day into life and wrote to spill her actions into something more tangible than her own mind. It was not calm, not collected, not complete, but how little did it matter when she put into words what he might be able to draw. His lips. Their taste. Their touch. They were remembered—they were real.