Interludes

Chapter 3: Cress

Author's Note: Full disclosure, I love this chapter.

Disclaimer: All characters and previous events belong to Marissa Meyer and The Lunar Chronicles

Cress was busy twirling around in front of a mirror in her quarters when she heard a knock on her door panel. She yelped and clasped her hands over her mouth at the sound. The wide skirt fluttered around her legs.

"Cress?"

Thorne was outside. Outside her room, while she was busy twirling around in her ballgown for what was probably the hundredth time.

"Um…" was all she could say back.

Her heart flip flopped in her chest at the sound of his voice. It always did. It had been over two weeks since they had met. They had spent several days in the desert, practically been massacred by an army, infiltrated the palace and kidnapped the Emperor of the Eastern Commonwealth. She and Thorne were perhaps the closest pair on the ship, platonically speaking, and yet his presence still made her body vibrate like a struck piano string.

"Are you indecent?" came his hopeful response.

She rolled her eyes and decided to push aside her embarrassment in favor of seeing him on the other side of her door. After all, he could still only partly see as it was. The drops were finished, but the healing was just starting to progress. Yesterday he had told her he could see colors again.

Cress took a deep breath and approached the door. If anyone understood how to be vain, it was Carswell Thorne. Teasing her would only be teasing himself.

She leaned against the doorframe and let the door slide open between them. He stood with his eyes covered by his hands and she laughed out loud. Two fingers split apart and she saw one of his bright, blue eyes meet hers.

"Oh," he sighed, sounding disappointed, "You don't appear to be indecent. You're…" Thorne lowered his hands and placed them on either side of his hips. "What are you wearing?" His eyes squinted unevenly as he tried to make his vision more clear.

"It's my ballgown from the palace. I…" she shook her head at her own silliness. "I wear it sometimes and pretend."

"Hmm," he strode in her room without an invitation and pressed the close command as he slid past. He plopped down on her bed and leaned back on his hands. "Explain."

Cress was still standing by the door, swinging the skirt around her knees absently. The bright blue stood out as a sharp contrast to the worn metal of the room. "You know how pretend works. You pretend you're good with women every day."

Thorn snorted loudly and rolled his eyes. "You free a girl from a satellite and she's a comedian in fourteen days flat. Amazing." He leaned forward. "I want to know why you're pretending in this instance, specifically."

"Oh…" she sighed and looked down at her bare toes poking out from the bottom of her skirts. She grabbed fistfulls of the flowy, blue fabric and squeezed so she had something to hold on to.

So she could pretend he was holding her tightly on the dance floor. So she could imagine what his hands felt like on her bare skin. So she could cope with their friendship without losing her mind every time they were together.

Suddenly she decided that changing the subject was the best course of action. "Did you come to my room just to embarrass me?" she demanded.

He shook a finger in front of his face. "No changing the subject. I asked first. You tell, then I'll tell."

"Don't I get any privacy?"

Thorne dropped his hands dramatically on his knees as he stood up. "You opened the door, darling," he said, reaching to take her hands so he could pull her closer to her bunk. He sat down again and crossed his arms over his chest. "I just want to know why you're dressed up so pretty and don't want anyone to see you."

Her face lit on fire and she hurriedly pressed her hands flat to her cheeks. So pretty. He thought she was pretty? To be fair, the dress was exquisite. Even with the rips and stains leftover from the escape from the palace, although she imagined he couldn't see any of that now.

"Who said I looked pretty?" she asked, fully aware she was fishing for compliments from the man she was in love with. The man who would probably never love her back.

He snorted. "I don't need eyesight to know you look pretty."

Cress indulged herself in a small, dreamy sigh before finally answering his question.

"It's too special of a dress to never wear," she started, as she pressed her hands down the front of her bodice to smooth out invisible wrinkles. "Who knows if I'll get a chance to wear it ever again after we get to Luna. I just…" Cress tugged at her hair. "Sometimes I sit in here and pretend I actually attended a ball, as a guest. Not as a criminal, or whatever we are."

"Revolutionaries." Thorne corrected her, taking on Cinder's new, preferred term for what they were doing. He cocked his head to the side. "So you're saying that Wolf wasn't a good dance partner?"

Cress giggled. The poor, heartbroken soldier had barely met eyes with her the entire night, let alone pay her any attention. "No. Maybe if I was Scarlet, he would have been more inspired. We didn't really say much to each other. Well, he didn't have much to say to me."

He tapped the tip of his finger to his lips. "Hmmm."

Her stomach dropped with nerves and embarrassment. "It's stupid, I know. When I was alone I would daydream all the time. I would dance around and pretend you- er, someone was dancing with me. I had music and lights and...well, it was all sort of juvenile, really. I didn't know any better." Cress' voice faded to silence, and she let her gaze fall down to Thorne's shiny boots. They looked newly polished.

"Would you sing?" he asked. He seemed to have passed over her obvious confession.

"Now?"

"No, when you were pretending." Thorne got to his feet and took a step towards her.

She twisted her fingers together. "Sometimes." With a grimace, she shook her head and corrected herself, "No, most times."

Another step. The look on his face was serious and focused, a habit left over from his blindness. It was as though he stopped considering how he looked on the outside when he was unable to see, himself. She liked to think she was seeing the true Thorne when he did this. Her Thorne. Even now, her breath hitched in her throat at the look on his face. His icy eyes were narrowed as he did his best to meet her eyes.

He reached a hand out and she balked, until he slid it snug around her waist. He took her hand with the other and lifted it shoulder height. "It sounds to me like you need a proper dance lesson."

His proximity, after a few days of friendly distance made the excitement bubble in her throat until she let out a giggle. "Here?"

"Where else?"

Cress looked around her tiny quarters and shrugged. "Somewhere with more room?"

"There's plenty here. Just don't step on my toes, clumsy. I don't want to lose concentration."

Before she could say another word, he was moving and she was pulled along for the ride. One step, two step, three step. She did her best to keep up, grateful for the swirling skirts around her legs to hide her uncoordinated stumbling. They floated behind her like wispy clouds in the wind. Thorne's hand was spread wide on her back, fingertips pressed to her bare back. His hand held hers tightly. For a moment, she closed her eyes and set the scene around them.

A handsome rogue who snuck into the ballroom had asked her for a dance. She was the more desireable girl at the ball, and he was a wanted man. Everyone watched them as they glided around the dancefloor effortlessly. Her dress fluttered behind her and the tails of his fine jacket did the same. When they looked at each other, it was instant chemistry.

When she opened her eyes again, Thorne was smiling down at her. The corners of his eyes crinkled. "You were doing it, weren't you?" He stopped, lifted his arm and spun her. She gasped at the unexpected motion and watched the room blur around her until she collided back against Thorne's chest.

She let her fluttering heart settle before she looked up. "Why are you here, Carswell?" she asked, instead of answering his question.

"Ooh. First name. You must mean business."

Cress noticed that they hadn't started dancing again, yet he still held her close. He had a day's worth of stubble on his face. It caught the light when he moved his head.

"I miss you sometimes," he said, matter-of-factly.

Her stomach flip-flopped. "You...do?" He missed her?

Suddenly he was hugging her and she felt him speak into her hair. "Yes. You spend a week with someone night and day, and you sort of expect them to always be around."

She pressed her mouth shut so she didn't ruin the moment by saying anything else. His shirt was clean and crisp against her cheek and she could hear his pulse in her ear. If she could, she would probably stay here forever.

Thorne pulled back eventually, holding her at arm's length. "I also came here because of something Cinder said."

Cress blinked back at him. Cinder? She wracked her brain to as she tried to remember if she'd said anything incriminating to her cyborg friend. Nothing came to mind. "What did she say?"

He waved a hand dismissively, as though her words weren't the point. "Something weird about the size of Jupiter."

Jupiter. Still nothing.

"The point is you lied to me!" he said. His voice sounded genuinely hurt.

Cress reeled back. "Lied? When did I lie to you!"

"The night you put the first drops in my eyes. When I asked you if you still were in love with me."

She froze. Cinder knew? If that was true then even Wolf probably knew she was undeniably in love with Thorne. "Um…"

"And I supposed you lied about thinking I'm a hero too?" He didn't sound as noticeably hurt in regards to that omission.

Cress clenched her fists tightly. She could still remember the moment exactly - heart pounding, skirts clutched tightly to her knees, eyes wide, knowing he couldn't see her squirm. She'd been protecting him by keeping her mouth shut. Maybe even protecting herself. To be called a liar was an injustice. "I didn't lie," she said through her teeth.

"You said nothing!"

"Exactly. That's not a lie."

Thorne crossed his arms indignantly.

"Would it have made a difference?" she asked, stepping forward. "It's not like you'd believe me anyway."

"And about being in love with me?"

She shrunk back again, caught in a corner. "It wouldn't have mattered." Her voice was small and nearly too soft to be picked up around the roar of the engines. She chanced a look up at Thorne, whose face had fallen. A line deepened between his eyebrows as he watched her.

"Of course it would have mattered," he said softly. He reached out for her again, hand waving enough to show her he was still a few days away from seeing fully. She held her hand out and he clasped it, tightly. "I may have lied too."

Her heart leapt into her throat, beating so loud she was sure it was detectable. She could not get her hopes up again…

"I said something like 'I wouldn't know what love was if it was...' and I never finished."

Cress remembered the moment vividly, and yet she was unfamiliar with the expression. "What would you have said?"

She heard Thorne take a deep breath through his nose. He squeezed her hand tighter. "I wouldn't know what love is if it was staring me in the face."

Don't get your hopes up. She screwed her eyes shut and refused to look at him.

"And, well...you were staring me in the face, which would imply that I had no intention of loving you. Which would be untrue, on a few levels. And I didn't want to say that."

Cress was holding her breath.

Thorne took a step closer so he was practically standing against her. He pressed his hand to the side of her face, leaning close so he could see her better. She slowly opened her eyes to meet his. "Cress, how can you still love me? After everything you know?"

Her mouth was dry enough to remind her, all too vividly, of the desert. "You don't see yourself very clearly," she said.

He was silent for a moment, until he said, "Cress, I can't see anything clearly." After a second, his face broke into a wide, open-mouthed grin.

She sighed.

"Get it, because I'm blind?"

"Yes."

He cackled to himself then reached for her hand once more.

"Carswell, I thought I was going to die. Every day I was convinced I would be killed in the desert, in the back of a van, at the palace. You helped me, you came after me, you saved me. You were completely selfless, and you still can't see it."

"You saved yourself," he pleaded. "I was just...there."

"You kissed me."

He couldn't help but smile. "We talked about this already."

"You didn't have to do that, but you did. You thought we would be killed. You cared enough to keep your promise. You cared enough about me!"

He had no response.

Her heart was racing. The confession she'd swallowed back that night was on the tip of her tongue and she wasn't sure if she was brave enough to share it. Pricks behind her eyes made her breath catch and she blinked away the threatening tears. Why should she hide her feelings after all he had done for her. Didn't she owe it to him? She looked up at him and felt her resolve crumble. He was everything she wanted.

"When we met, I was in love with you because I thought you lived your life as a hero." She tried to swallow her heart in her throat. In a whisper, she added, "Now I love you because you're my hero."

His hands were on her face, wiping away the tears that had fallen. "Oh, Cress."

She was too determined to stop now. "I don't intend for you to love me back. I really don't. I'm young, naive and...silly, frankly. But if it's truth you want, then yes, I still love you. I love you more than ever, and I can't imagine that you could do anything to change my mind."

There was barely a beat after she finished speaking before he was kissing her.

It was brief, and not nearly as passionate as their kiss on the rooftop had been, but this kiss was real. There were no promises in place this time. Captain Carswell Thorne was kissing Cress because he wanted to. He kept his hands on her face when he pulled away.

"Aces, what am I doing?" he asked her, eyes wide. Before she could attempt an answer, he kissed her again, and again, each time longer than the last. His lips were soft and firm against her own, as though he was determined to communicate everything that way. She clutched helplessly at the front of his shirt, relying almost entirely on his grip on her face to keep her upright. Finally, after a particularly long and wonderful kiss, he pulled back enough to look her in the eye.

"Cress, I meant what I said before, that I've never been in love. I have no idea what it would feel like-"

"Even if it was staring you in the face?"

"Hush."

She giggled, but Thorne was serious. "I don't know what this means. I don't know what we are to each other now. All I know is that I need you around. I want you around. You make me smile and I get this…" He gestured at his chest. "Thing in my chest when do do something sweet that I don't deserve."

Cress could hardly hear him over the thundering in her ears. Was this really happening? His fingers moved over her face nervously, as though he was desperate to keep her still.

"What I'm saying is that when I try to imagine what love would feel like, I can't imagine it being any more meaningful than what I already feel for you…"

Cress knew she was crying again, but all she wanted was to blink away enough tears to see (and memorize) the way his face looked at that moment. He looked so vulnerable and sincere. His eyebrows crumpled and his adam's apple bobbed up and down with nervous swallows.

"I want to love you, Cress. I want to be that for you, but you'll need to help me."

She nodded rapidly. After a moment she let out a nervous laugh. "You are such a liar," was all she could think to say, wrapping her fingers around his wrists.

"I prefer the word scoundrel." He winked and pulled her close for another kiss before wrapping her tightly in his arms. She hid her face in the crook of his neck. "Go easy on me, won't you? I don't know what I'm doing."

"Have you forgotten that I lived in a satellite for seven years?" she reminded him, voice muffled in his shirt. "I'm as clueless as they come."

His chuckle was a low melody in her ear. "I couldn't go into this revolution, or whatever we're doing, without telling you the truth."

She pushed back to look at his face. "I'm glad you did."

The gazed silently at each other for a moment, before he looked down at her gown. "When I can finally see again, promise me you'll put this back on?"

She pulled the skirt out with her arms. "Maybe I'll have a nicer one by then. One that's not ripped and ruined."

"I don't care. I want to see what I missed that night in the cockpit."

Cress realized he wasn't interested in seeing another version of herself. One with smooth hair, pinched cheeks and red lips. He wanted to see what she really looked like, when there was nothing but love shining through her eyes back at him.

"If I'd been able to see you, there's no way I would have been able to lie."

She wondered if that was true. He was far better at masking his feelings than she was. If he had seen her face, he would have known for sure that she loved him. Perhaps that's how Cinder and everyone else knew the truth.

"Do you want me to let you get back to your-," Thorne gestured with his hand towards the mirror, "Pretend?"

Cress stood on her tip toes to kiss his cheek and smiled when he leaned into her lips. "I'm pretty certain real life is better than imaginary at this particular moment."

He smiled in his patented, "devilishly handsome" way and wrapped an arm around her waist. She was pulled against him more roughly than she expected. "Good," he said, leaning close, "Because I don't want to leave yet." Then he kissed her, and he didn't let her go for a long time.