Note: This is part two in my tiny Valentine's Week series
Lief was exhausted, but sleep refused to grant him peace. His head and body still throbbed from Neridah's blows, and his flesh had been scraped raw by the merciless Sands. The nights were growing cooler, which made sleeping outdoors all the more uncomfortable. He longed for his small bed at home, and for warm, hot cloths to press against his wounds. He could hear Barda's steady breathing beside him, and the crackle of the fire by his feet. With a sigh, he blinked his eyes open and sat up.
Jasmine had taken first watch. Her knees were folded to her chest and her hands wrapped around them. She turned away from the fire as he stirred, and gazed at him with red-rimmed eyes.
Lief recalled the dull, wounded expression on her face when he and Barda had congratulated her after she had beaten that strange man, Doom. He had been so excited for her at the time that he had not thought of what she might really be feeling.
"I would have done as you did," he murmured, half-thinking she would not hear.
"What?" Jasmine turned to him, her brow furrowed. The fire had flushed her cheeks, or perhaps it had been the scorching sun.
"What Doom did— what he said to you— that was cruel. If someone used my mother to hurt me, I would want to hurt them too."
Jasmine turned her doleful gaze back to the flames. "He was trying to make to make me angry, and I let him do it. It was a trick, and he did not even know what his words would mean to me." But a little of the tension seemed to melt from her shoulders.
That is what Jasmine needed sometimes, he had begun to realize. She did not want anyone to soothe her. She just wanted to be understood.
He shuffled closer to her, and his heart beat quickly, as it had when she had smoothed the healing balm onto his chest. Slowly, he reached out a tentative hand, and lightly covered her rough knuckles with his fingers. Her own fingers curled up with awkward tension but she did not pull away. She met his gaze, and reflected in her green eyes he saw sorrow and fear and hope. After a moment she shook her head as if to clear it, and turned back to the fire.
Knowing that she would say no more, Lief drew his hand away, and lay back down on the hard earth. He closed his eyes and felt sleep suddenly begin to drag him under. Just as darkness flooded his mind, he heard her whisper so softly that he would later believe he dreamt her words, for when Barda woke him for his watch he would not remember what she had said.