As requested by lithiumxflower back in November '05. . . nine or ten months ago (!) Sorry. . . She wanted something to show Mu and Murrue's alone time together catching up on things he'd missed (and other things) after those months away. I think I only wrote half of what she wanted. . . . For that, I apologize, again.
I could never find time to put this in the story, though I always wanted to. So, now, here it is.—a 'little' late, a 'little' ragged about the edges, a 'little' bit hard to write.
PS: Sorry Mu's so off. . . . oh, and Murrue, too. They're always 'off', but this time is more than usual.
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XII. Photograph
In the dark, she nuzzled up to him, holding him gently, arms soft but gripping as if never to let go. But at the moment, her peaceful breaths against his skin, her reassuring hold, her close warmth . . . it was doing nothing to him—except keeping him awake.
Mu gazed up at the ceiling, eyes drifting across the darkness as images shifted their way through the shadows. Murrue pushed herself closer to him, a soft murmur slipping from her dreams. The soft smile on her face told him what she was dreaming of. Usually that'd bring a smile to his own face, but that night he just shifted away, putting some small distance between them again.
Mu sat in the darkness wondering. Why did his body inch away when he wanted so much to just hold her back? It was what he'd been dreaming of since that day he left her, eleven months before. Just the thought of her was enough to keep him going.
Murrue found her way closer again.
Mu had to get up. His throat was dry.
Ever so carefully, Mu peeled back the covers, shifting away from Murrue just slow enough not to wake her. Carefully he picked himself out of the sheets, even more so when it came to untangling himself from Murrue's arms. When free, he stood himself up, teetering a bit with the sure stiffness of his leg. Trying to quiet the soft curses in his mind, Mu turned back around, eyes lazily drifting over the bed with its mess of pale sheets all wrapped about the woman nestled sweetly in their embrace.
Mu felt his chest clench and lungs close in as he looked at her. Something kept bubbling up deep inside that made him want to hold his breath and yet take it all in at the same time. He didn't understand it with her, not at all . . . how she made him feel, but he let it all out, in a low, slow sigh.
With a rough jerk of fingers through his thick hair, Mu steadied himself onto his feet and began the long stride to the bathroom. Tap water could do for how dry his mouth was—Mu didn't feel like going into the kitchen, he didn't feel like leaving the dark room.
But even with how restless he was, Mu still felt how heavily plain sleep weighed him down. He was practically dragging himself.
Mu paused and stretched, pulling his arms above his head until his body begged for a groan of release. He had to stifle it, what with Murrue being asleep beside him.
His cobalt eyes flickered through the darkness, easily seeing everything before him. The windowsill was dark, for there was no moon, but one could see patches of stars twinkling darkly. The clock on the bedside table read 4:03.
Another sigh. This time a regular one.
He couldn't sleep. Since he'd come home the week before, he could never sleep. He guessed that, simply, he was afraid—Afraid that if he closed his eyes, even for a moment . . . that it would all go away. And he couldn't have that. Not again. And him knowing all that wasn't helping with his sleep.
As he stood right outside the bathroom door, staring at it, Mu numbly changed his decision, deciding on simple coffee instead. It gave him something to do, and it would keep him awake.
Mu moved to walk out, back turned towards the bed, but even in his best efforts, he stumbled, falling fast towards the floor. He caught himself early by grabbing onto the dresser. With a stifled moan, Mu pushed himself back to safety, silent chuckle to his face. His leg was so . . .
Something caught his eye, something on the floor that wasn't there before. It was small and square—something like a paper, more like a picture. Even with his sharp eyes, Mu couldn't make out the subject. Reaching down, using the sturdy dresser as a steady, he bent to pick it up.
Seeing exactly what it was, a smile reached his face, even with how his heart began to plummet.
It was a photograph. A family portrait of sorts. There Murrue stood, on the front step. The nice summer dress she wore he could see ripple in a stationary breeze, one arm up to push away her thick hair from her eyes, and in the other arm, fairly newborn Matthew was cradled, softly sleeping. Little Evi stood beside, grinning from ear to ear, sweet and cute, tips of her dirty blond hair flipping the winds.
It was a family portrait.
And he wasn't in it.
Mu wasn't there. 'Daddy' wasn't there.
Part of him just wanted to crush the photograph—It would have been easy. It was just lying in his open hand after all. All he needed to do was make a fist. Part of him wanted to do it, but the other half stopped him.
A photo was a piece of time, frozen in its place. Photos may fade, but memories fade faster—and that particular print was a memory he didn't have. Who was to say what it meant to Evi or Matt? Or even Murrue?
Whatever memory it was, he knew it was one without him in it. And they looked so happy in that photograph. . . .
Mu forced himself to stifle a cough, the thin picture falling from his hand and wafting slowly to the floor once more. He took a deep breath, shaking his head at how much better he felt—just because he wasn't looking at it.
Was he really that simple?
He reminded himself of the coffee he wanted and quickly started on his way once more, shifting through the shadows. He was just at the door, he had it open a crack. He was just about to open it and be free.
Free to wallow in his sleeplessness over a cooling mug of coffee.
Something stopped him, though. Mu couldn't get the thought out of his head. Twisting around a bit, his darkened eyes saw the photo resting on the ground again.
With a sigh and a silent chuckle, Mu shook his head, grinning as he pushed the door closed and plodded back over to the bed.
"Curiosity may have killed the cat, but not before the cat killed curiosity."
He leaned down to grab the discarded photograph, but was unable to keep in the painful groan that escaped him. Mu froze, staring across the bed. Murrue's body shifted slightly, but she stayed twisted deep within the sheets.
Mu turned back to the picture in his hand, eyes flicking over it just as before. Nothing had changed. But then his eyes drifted.
The dresser Mu had clung onto to keep from falling was different. The pictures and their picture frames were all pushed to one side, piled on top of one another, all to make room for the big box—and the big book—resting beside them. His eyes studied the new mass carefully and cautiously, until, suddenly, recognition came. Mu swiftly dove into the box, his thick hand easily finding its prey.
It was another picture—this time of some pant leg and another skirt hem. Mu remembered that one. Murrue's birthday—they had trusted teeny-tiny Evi with the picture of husband and wife. Of course, every shot from that day was either blurry or completely off the mark. Eyes widening at his find, Mu grabbed deep into the box again, grinning in the dark when he pulled out another shoes picture.
It was a box of photographs.
The clock read 4:17.
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Her closed eyes fluttered, stirring as she slowly made the long transition out of slumber. She shifted, only to bring herself deeper into the confines of the bed as her hand lightly traveled the sheet beside her, trying to find what it knew to be there.
But it wasn't there.
Murrue's eyes shot open, immediately taking in the darkness of their bedroom in the night and the emptiness of the pale sheets beside her. Holding down the scream she could already feel welling up inside her, Murrue pushed herself up to see from a different angle.—No, their bed was still empty.
She felt on the verge of panicking, looking all around, when finally, her eyes caught it. Across the rest of the empty bed and behind the tiny mountains where the sheets rolled, Murrue finally caught glance of a patch of sleep-tousled, completely unruly, golden waves. Expecting to feel relieved, Murrue wasn't, and instead caught her breath as she suddenly scrambled closer.
"Mu! Are you o—Oh . . ." Her wide eyes took in the scene.
"Hm?" His head turned. "Oh, sorry. Did I wake you?" His wide eyes puppied back, innocent. Just him sitting there, head cocked, face inquisitively blank like nothing was ever wrong . . .
Already in the twenty seconds she had been awake, Mu had scared her enough so that every muscle in her body had gone stiff—that she had been so tense . . . it tired her. She collapsed onto her stomach on the bed, her chin hanging off just enough to rest on his shoulder. He'd sat himself straight up again just so she could. Murrue let out a sigh.
"Mu, what are you doing?"
"Oh, I, ah, found these, and . . . I was looking at them." He smiled his 'I-didn't-do-it' kiddie smile and, with hands stuffed, motioned to the complete mess of scattered photographs laying about his legs in a huge, scattered pool. The up-ended box lay thrown empty to the side, forgotten.
Seeing her neatly handwritten, labeled box, Murrue smiled, though sleep still laced her features.
"Oh, those pictures. . . . I remember them. . . . I had started a scrapbook of sorts—more like a photo album, I guess, back when we were just married. You don't kow 'cause I never told you. I kept it pretty up to date actually. Then you left. And I stopped." Mu's eyes flickered, hearing the dimness of her voice. But then she smiled. It was a real smile, but an empty one. "But since you've come back, I've been wanting to finish it—so I could start another one."
"Oh, really?" Mu raised his eyebrows, flashing an inquisitive smirk in his wife's direction.
"Yes. Really. You need to take care of them," she shot back. Murrue opened her mouth to say something else grinning, but her breath caught tightly in her chest, it all coming out in a soft gasp. Mu quickly turned his face to study hers.
"Murrue?"
In the darkness, Mu could easily make out the focused stare of his wife's ambered eyes. Those eyes twisted. Murrue slowly reached out beyond the bed, long, pale arm closing the distance between his hand and hers. Her voice came out in an awed mutter.
"I mean . . . they're memories, right . . . ?" Her thin hand closed over the photograph that once rested within Mu's tight grip. Her awed mutter turned to a whisper. "I remember this. . . . This day . . ."
The dark blue of Mu's intense eyes never left Murrue's face. He could see the reminiscent creases of her face, the embers of her eyes. He had the urge to say something then, to slip in a joke and laugh, but his mind kept him from it. It was that photograph. The portrait . . . The one without him.
"I remember this day," Murrue mumbled, smiling—wryly. "Evi was crying. . . . No—First she was so happy, you wouldn't believe. It was her birthday. We always took a family picture on birthdays, so I wanted to keep that tradition—keep something the same. I had called up the 'camera man' from down the street. He was going to come and take our picture, so I told Evi to get into her best dress. That way she'd look nice for the picture, right? . . . But, the tradition was a family picture. She thought you'd come home."
Mu's teeth clenched, air catching in his mouth. He didn't need to hear any more. He could already figure it out.
But Murrue wouldn't give him the luxury of stopping. Her eyes were still focused on the picture.
"I remember . . . Evi searched all over the house, ecstatic with the thought that you were just hiding.—that you were going to surprise her, coming back as a gift. . . . She looked . . . for an hour, I think? When she finally figured out you weren't home—that you weren't going to be—she refused to be in any picture. 'Not without Daddy,' she kept saying. You helped raise a stubborn one, Mu, you know that, right? She might be even more stubborn than you!" Murrue placed an accusing finger on his nose and pushed. Mu grinned.
Smiles. Shared. Understood.
"But . . ." Murrue continued, "eventually, after a lot of pushing and shoving, I got her to stand still enough for this one picture. And I even got her to smile, but . . . Evi is Evi you know. . . ."
"Did . . . did she really do all of that . . . ?"
Murrue's dark eyes widened at the tone of her husband's voice. It was soft and surprised—as if he couldn't see it. She simply ran her hand across his face in the darkness. "Mu. You are her father, you know.—Of course she did. When she was crying that day . . . you broke my heart. And hers. . . ."
"I'm sorry."
Murrue quickly huffed, suddenly pulling her hand away.
"You've apologized more times tonight than you have in the past four years, Mu," she snapped. "You've already healed it ten times over. Coming back was enough."
Mu ran his hand over hers, pressing soft kisses into her palm, muttering sweet nothings that meant everything.
Murrue smiled at his tickling advance. "That may work on me, Mu, but not her," she giggled, unable to pull away. "You've still got some major making up to do.—Both her and Matthew."
"And what do you suggest I do?" Mu mumbled, taking time away from Murrue's palm, instead carefully pressing at it with his fingers.
"I have an idea . . ." Murrue grinned, eyes sharply flickering. "But you're gonna have to suffer for it.—No, you're not going to like it at all. It's pure torture, Mu."
He swallowed beneath her stare.
". . . W-What?"
Murrue pushed herself closer, pulling herself a bit more off the bed so she could get her face right up in Mu's for ultimate effect. Her eyes flashed, he tensed up.
"The man's coming back tomorrow. . . ." Murrue's hand drifted, tracing his face, his jaw. ". . . Stand in the picture with us?"
"And that's torture?" He squeaked, incredulous—unable to get the tightness from his throat for that resonating deep chuckle he wanted. Murrue smiled, hiding the snicker of hers as she leaned in for a kiss.
"The worst kind," she whispered.