AN: This one kinda got away from me. It started as a prompt and then got a sequel, and that sequel needed fixing. So there are three parts to it.
I
"I think I know how to use a bed."
"Yeah? That's why we're sitting on the floor," she counters mockingly.
He fiddles with his hands, pulling on the hem of his pajama, till she sneaks hers in his and forces him to stop.
He doesn't turn to look at her, like he didn't when she quietly sat down next to him, smoothing her clean pinafore in the soft light of dawn and complaining that soldiers now came back needing retraining in social standards.
"I don't want to sleep," he admits.
"Captain -"
"Or I wish I could, but…" he rectifies interrupting her, "You can help with that, you have pills, right?"
This time he does look her in the eyes and she shivers. Haunted, like most of the other patients' back from the front, and misty with fears, but hopeful still, that the horrors of the war in the continent they'd witnessed won't plague his nights again. She made peace with herself long ago when she first volunteered in the British Red Cross and thought she was grateful, at least, that she never saw the same empty look in her late husband's eyes.
"Your S.O. said you have nightmares," she says tentatively.
"My Superior Officer…" he laughs humorlessly.
"Yes, Colonel Jaha."
His gaze shifts back to her small hand in his, soothingly warm and strong, for a woman. "I told my friend, Thelonious, that I had these nightmares every night…" he clarifies, deceived.
"I'm sorry. I'm only here to redress your wound."
He smiles weakly to himself. "Of course."
"It would be easier if you were on the bed," she suggests then with raised brows.
"Right," he says fixing the opposite wall morosely.
She helps him off the floor, taking the weight off his wounded leg as much she can, till he's settled back in bed, and when she's finished changing the bandages she offers to bring him tea.
"What's your name?"
"Nurse Griffin," she answers still sitting on his bed, wrinkling her pinafore and her nose, "Abigail."
"Marcus," he concedes to the impudent smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
II
"That's progress," she mocks when she finds him in bed in the morning. He watches her smirk and frown or laugh with the other nurses or shake her curls at him and smile indulgently, he watches her still feel alive. When she helps him stand, helps him walk, or when he can limp down the hall and she keeps him company, he feels a bit of that strength seep through, like a disease, and before he can prevent it, he's guiltily, dreadfully, breathing again.
Marcus mostly reads and sometimes, when she brings tea, she stops by his bed, smoothing her pinafore and wrinkling her nose, arguing characters and plot points, making his skin itch to touch her and his blood boil, trying to fathom how such an annoying woman could possibly be so appealing. Abigail enjoys teasing him just as much.
"You're doing much better," she says each day as encouragement sharing a smoke by the plane tree when he limps outside the door. He smiles weakly to himself, watching her defy the odds to hope and forcing guilt and loath and sorrow out of his eyes. Till he stops limping and she stops praising in words, and they both start fretting, because he, too, dares to dream of an after, when he'd ask her to dance.
But the telegram comes earlier than her day off. When she steps in the dorm to find him clean shaved and dressed she knows.
"Where to?"
"Does it matter?" he replies, almost calmly, letting her read the dispatch for herself, "I guess this is goodbye."
"Won't you write me?" she asks dismayed.
He smirks looking at his boots and hopes she'd understand. "What for?"
"To tell me when you're back," she replies stubbornly.
But her eyes grow darker as he mentions busy days, already thinking he's got a girl in every port. "What if I don't come back?"
"What if you do?" she insists.
"What then?" he dares, staring at her wide eyes and fisting clammy hands, skirting the untold. The question hangs between them, swaying with every breath they don't take, then she clenches her jaw at last, because there are no promises he is willing to make and no dances she should miss for a dead man's words. So she tiptoes into his space, and he has to stop her before their lips brush, holding her there, close like if he'd taken her to that dance hall, forehead touching, fingers entwined.
"We'll think about it then," he says, "You don't think about it now."
She nods and he's gone with words unspoken.
II
Nobody now gives me grief like you used to.
Marcus volunteers to cover for the Blake kid when he receives a telegram with news of his sister's wedding. He should have been on leave, back in London for a few days, but he has nothing to go back to, his mother died in the ruins of his home in the blitz and he can't remember the taste of vengeance anymore. He would have asked Abigail to the dance hall, he would have forgotten to be afraid and learned the shape of her laughter, or the depth of her strength, maybe. Instead, he reads the closing sentence to her latest letter time and time again, smiling weakly to himself.
Pretending she's not his only motivation is harder and harder, but pansies and daisies are blooming in the cracks of the broken roads and fallen buildings of the continent, and it would take too much courage to die in spring and ruin their spirit. He doesn't write her any of that.
Nobody now gives him hope like she used to.
She hasn't got a reply from him in over a month when they all gather around the radio for Churchill's speech. The nation explodes in choirs and dances in the streets and the houses, and the girls at the hospital all find a partner to awkwardly twirl with, coaxing her into drunk singalongs and infinite rounds of toasts. At dawn, she sits on the floor where he fought his nightmares and waits to be happy as well. But nothing comes, so she smoothes her pinafore and goes back to work.
She's preparing a patient for a radio treatment when he shows up at the hospital, almost three full weeks later, and when she sees him standing in the middle of the hall with all his limbs and guarded eyes it's nothing like she fantasized about. She doesn't run in his arms, she doesn't welcome him with a smile, instead she presses a hand to her mouth to stifle shaking sobs and finally cries.
"I dreamed about you every night," he confesses brushing away tears with kisses and then lifting her off the ground to spin her around, like dancing.
She laughs, kisses him back, with so much fervor they stumble against the wall. When he kisses his way down her neck and she buries her hands in his hair, later, on her kitchen floor, she wrinkles her nose and wonders if they'll both still remember how to use a bed.