He sketches her from memory, pencil tracing the contours of her body along the spread-out roll of paper. She is asleep, tucked in against him, but he does not need to see her to draw her. She is imprinted across his memory, carefully obliterating every dark thought, every past murmur of discontent and pain. Everything is Christine, and Christine is everything. There is nothing more left in the world for him now but her.

The pencil lines are delicate, and yet they do not capture the true delicacy of her. The brush of her eyelash, the arch of her cheek. He carefully pencils in each hair of her left eyebrow (276), and then the same with her right brow. He suggests the dimple in her chin, dots in the freckle nestling just over her collarbone.

He is a cartographer, and this is a map. It demands accuracy.

The pencil strokes carry him lower – the soft swell of her breasts, the grace of her fingers and line of her knuckle, the dip of her bellybutton. The sense memory of all these places, both known and hidden, where he has kissed her, tingles on his lips. And it is almost enough to make him want to take her, here and now, but she is asleep with her sweet head on his shoulder and besides, the morphine will not permit him such a pleasure.

(The morphine was so very necessary, earlier, when his fingers would not stop twitching. He measured the dose, and administered it, then dozed for a time with his beautiful wife bathing his head, and woke with the overwhelming urge to draw her.)

The tiredness weighs heavy on him now, set into his bones. He carefully, ever so carefully, finishes the last details of her ankles, and toes, then sits back and surveys his work.

It is perfect, utterly perfect. She is perfect, an undeniable fact.

He sets down the pencil, gently pushes the weights off the corners of the paper, and rolls it tight. He has no need to look at it, when the real thing is asleep leaning into him. Perhaps he will hang it in his work room, to look at and study when his head refuses to settle long enough to compose. She will not mind, surely.

Slowly he stands from the couch, stretches the aching stiffness from his bones. His watch dictates that it is an hour from dawn, but what does the rising and setting of the sun matter in this underground world? Gently, he takes his beautiful Christine in his arms and carries her to bed. She is in her nightdress, and his dressing gown.

(Again, that low hum, deep in his abdomen, subdued by the morphine.)

He has not the energy left to undress, simply kicks off his shoes and crawls in beside her, drawing the covers around them and pulling her tight to his chest. She nuzzles into him, sighing softly, and his eyes slip closed, a world of peace wrapping itself tightly around him.

He is deep in sleep when she wakes, and she has no desire to wake him. It is some time since he slept well, and though she hoped that the morphine he took would help him, he did not doze for long in her arms before he woke and insisted on drawing a map of her. She wonders, idly, where that map might be now, but dares not move to find it for fear of waking him.

(She would prefer if he did not use the morphine, had given it up before their marriage. But she knows, deep down, that such a thing would be terribly dangerous for him. He has been using it for so long that to give it up now would probably kill him. To keep using it will likely kill him too, but it might give her longer with him and she is too selfish to shorten their time.)

He must surely be uncomfortable, sleeping in his dress suit. If she were a different wife, he a different husband, she might undress him and exchange the dress suit for his night shirt. But then she would see his scars, and how could she look at him, knowing what he has tried so hard to hide (though the scars are a problem only to him) and knowing that he doesn't know that she knows.

But it would be so easy. It would answer some of the questions that burn deep inside of her, to know him, all of him. And yet, yet she would still be unsatisfied, because it wouldn't be quite what she wants. He would still be dressed when he makes love to her, she would not get to have him skin on skin.

She would be betraying his trust so terribly, almost worse than when she unmasked him. How could she do that to him?

She sighs, and presses a soft kiss to his forehead. He does not stir, and she hopes that, for once, his dreams are peaceful.

Carefully, she slips off his jacket, unhooks his watch and lays it down on the bedside table. She took his cravat off him earlier, when he took the morphine, and now she unbuttons his waistcoat, slips her hands down and unbuckles his belt, unbuttoning his trousers.

She is still wearing his dressing gown. He never took it off her when he carried her to bed, and so she unties the sash, slips her arms out and throws it aside. She does not need the warm scent of him on the collar when she has him lying here beside her. Gathering him in her arms, she burrows deeper beneath the bedsheets. She will not sleep again, has slept enough, but she does not need to. All she needs, right now, is to hold him to her, just like this.

He whimpers, low in his throat, the first sound he's made since she woke. She fumbles slightly at the buttons of her nightdress, and opens them just enough to reveal her breasts. Though he is asleep, he nuzzles into that space between them, lips softly brushing her skin. It settles him, as easily as if he were a child, and his warm breath against her is enough to let her dream of a long future before them, where he trusts her implicitly to love him no matter what she may discover of his past.

(Later, she promises herself silently, later she will convince him to let her see him. She must, for both of their sakes.)