(prompt request: dozens of kisses pressed all over, cheeks, eyelids, temples, brow, nose, lips, alternating between hard and gentle, playful, reassuring, affectionate)

worry tokens

23 ATC. A month, give or take, after Zildrog's fall. Theron POV.

He's asleep when he hears it the first time.

Nine's curled on her side when he startles awake, eyes open and distant and staring straight through him, her pupils huge in the near-dark of their bedroom. (He knows that look too well, though he'd almost forgotten it after Valkorion's fall in those almost-peaceful months where they'd held fast and ferocious to their joy in each other, when they'd thought the worst was over and only better things to come-

-and part of him knows that this time its return is because of him. Of the things he's done in this past year, that might be the very worst one of all.)

She blinks; he hears the noise again, not from her mouth- her lips are still, her breath moving in and out in that odd near-silent way she has that he could never quite manage to learn. It takes him a moment to trace it to its source, her right hand clinging tight to one corner of the pillowcase, worrying at it rhythmically as the cotton fabric rustles between her fingertips in a way that reminds him, just a little, of the sound of a knife being drawn.

(You're paranoid, Shan, he tells himself. But he'd spent so long spent forcing himself not to flinch at every shadow, every sound, every sidelong glance in his direction when any of that pack of madmen mentioned her name because he had no other choice: one fuckup, one single moment of regret visible on his face and it'd have been over for both of them. So he'd buried it deep, all of his rage and fear and grief and hardest and deepest of all how much he loved her, letting it all gnaw at him from the inside out- figuratively and literally; by the end he was downing handfuls of antacid tablets with his caf. No more blades in the dark. That's over now. It's over and she's safe.

If he says it often enough he can make himself believe it's true.)

"Nine?"

She doesn't answer, though her eyes snap back into focus for a moment, and then shivers.

"Nine." Shifting, Theron reaches down toward the foot of the bed to where she's kicked the blankets away, pulls them up and over her until she's covered. "Sweetheart, talk to me."

Still nothing beyond another flicker of a glance toward him. He sighs and slips his fingers into the gap between hers, forcing a pause in the pattern of their movement that finally breaks her focus. Eyes closing, Nine exhales for what seems like forever. "I'm fine," she whispers, hand wrapping around his and gripping tight. "Go back to sleep."

"No, you aren't." Last year he would have teased her- for a Cipher you're a terrible liar, punctuated with a kiss- but she's still too brittle for that. Instead he kisses her eyelids, one and then the other; her lashes flutter against his lower lip. "What's on your mind?"

"It's nothing. It's stupid."

One arm threading beneath her, he pulls her in toward him until her head settles on his pillow. Her skin is warm despite her shivering, her pulse steady against his chest, and when he rests his other hand on the small of her back she curls into him out of pure reflex and makes a little soft sad noise that pierces sliver-sharp into his heart. "Tell me."

She shakes her head.

"Please," he says, the word a brush of his mouth against her forehead. "I know that look. Stupid or not, whatever it is is eating you up. Talk to me."

Her eyes open; her mouth twists. "Promise me you won't be angry."

"You know I won't." He won't. He doesn't have any right to be, not now.

Nine curls in tighter against him, silent for another long moment, before she starts to speak again and the words all come out in a rush. "When you trapped me in the train on Umbara, you said- you said I was corrupt. Rotten. A symbol of oppression. Did they tell you to say those things, Theron, or did you think of them yourself?"

(They promised not to lie. Not to each other.) "I had to say what they wanted to hear. It wasn't a script, no, but I had to-" he swallows hard- "it had to be convincing. They needed to believe that I believed that."

"But the words were yours."

"I-"

"Do you know," she says quietly, face turned toward the ceiling, "I wished you'd shot me instead? I wished you'd just shot me and I wouldn't have had to hear those words. I wouldn't still hear them in my head in the middle of the night and wonder what you saw in me that made you think of them. I wouldn't wonder if there was a part of you that believed what you said- a part of me that believed what you said, that maybe you were right all along-"

He needs her to look at him. He needs her to look at him but he doesn't want to let go of her so he nudges her cheek with his, insistent enough to make her turn her head so he can catch her mouth with his and kiss the words away into silence. He never meant- Force, he should have known better than to think she could endure only because she'd done it for so long. "None of it was true, Nine. None of it-" no, no, that's not right; he corrects himself carefully- "except for one thing."

She makes a noise against his mouth, a wordless question, and he kisses her again and again, a hundred kisses scattered on her perfect face, on her forehead and her eyelids and the bridge of her nose, along the arches of her cheekbones and the line of her scar, the curve of her jaw and the bow of her lip. A kiss for every word he hadn't meant, for every wound she didn't deserve, for every day they'd been apart. It isn't enough, but it's a start.

"I told you I love you. Do you remember that?"

Nine nods, repeating his words back like a recording, even the tone a perfect mimic of his own. "'You know I love you… but this is bigger than us.' I remember."

"That was the true thing. Every single other word was a lie." One more kiss, hand in her hair, a reassurance as she clings to him- he thinks she knew it already, but-

"See?" Her voice trembles. "I know. I know. I love you, too. I told you it was stu-"

He steals the words again. "Shh. Come here."