Holy shit, chapter 10! I honestly didn't think this story would be popular. I thought it was so OOC that y'all would hate it. =_=U
Enjoy!
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Law felt an impending sense of déjà vu.
He was once again standing at his open bedroom window, looking out on the balmy star-speckled night. The breeze toyed through him, over him, tugging at his hair and pajamas. It was a warm night, untouched by the threat or promise of rain. He smelled soil and flowers and imagined he could smell the little creature decomposing where he had buried it beneath Topaz's rosebush, but that was only his tormented imagination.
He was freshly showered, cool and clean, with his damp hair slicked against his sallow cheeks. His belly was nicely full and he was pleasantly tired from the day's events and stresses yet he felt troubled and uneasy. He wore grey cotton pajama bottoms, a dark t-shirt, and his bare feet peeked out beneath the long hems.
A night bird cried in the distance and an owl hooted.
There was a quiet knock at his door and he turned to face Topaz, lingering nervously in the threshold. Unlike that night he recalled, when she had asked him that wrong question, she was wearing a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top . The shorts ended just above her knees, bearing her naked legs. Her brace was tight on her crippled leg and the scars gleamed like white-hot burns.
"H-hi, Law-kun," Topaz murmured with a touch of nervousness.
Law met her eyes and tried to offer her a faint timid smile. "Hello, Miss Topaz," he said quietly and had to drag his eyes from the floor to meet hers. He could barely look into the illuminated curve of her beautiful face. She looked terrified and exhausted by such potent fear. Her skin was waxy and wan, like his own sallow cheeks.
Fear was an effective survival mechanism, but in the vast quantities slaves and apparently Topaz experienced, it was a potent and debilitating emotion. Fear clouded the mind, choked the lungs, made it hard to think, and crippled the powers of a courageous mind.
"You're scared," Law whispered without thinking.
Topaz shivered and gripped the doorframe hard in her white-knuckled fingers. Then, faintly, she whimpered, "Yeah…"
Law jolted, also suddenly afraid of her reaction to such a bold statement. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I had no right to say that."
She bit her lip. "No, it's alright, Law. It's true," she murmured.
For a moment, they stood in awkward silence.
Then, Topaz hesitantly whispered, "Yesterday, I… asked you to spend the night with me and… everything went wrong…" She paused, as if struggling internally with herself. Then, she appeared to come to a decision. "I know how Bellamy is… He'll strike again, maybe not tonight, but soon. He wants to keep me afraid, fearing for my life," she hesitated again, "and for yours."
Law felt a pleasant shiver run down his spine to pool warmly in his stomach. She cared for his life and that was the most beautiful feeling to have bestowed upon him, maybe not love, but a caring that he had never experienced.
Topaz examined her fingers, bloodied and swollen and red against the white paint of the doorframe. Then, she shoved her fists against her sides as if searching for a pocket to hide them away in. "I know that last time…"
He tasted the words in her mouth, bitter and hesitant and frightened.
"…everything went all wrong, but…" Topaz lifted her eyes to his and whispered, "Let's spend the night together. We'll be safer that way."
Law wet his lips nervously, looked at her shiny white-scarred leg, at his bed, then at his bare feet, and finally back to her. She looked pale and fearful, tears were gathering on her lashes, tears of rejection. Finally, he nodded timidly.
"Of course, Miss Topaz."
Yet when he followed her from his room, closing the door quietly behind himself, he felt a flutter of pure terror tightening in his heart. As good as she had been to him, he still feared her and feared what lay ahead just on the other side of her door.
Topaz's bedroom was nothing like he had expected. He had seen it once before when she had been crying out in her sleep and he sneaked in to check on her, to make sure she wasn't in any danger. Then his veil of terror to find her awake and catch him in her room had clouded his perceptions of it. Now, still touched by a mist of fear, he could look at the room as it really was.
The walls were painted a bright, ocean blue, and the windows were framed by sheer white curtains, like clouds. The ceiling was plain white with a slowly revolving whicker fan. There were two closed doors–one presumably led to a closet and the other to a bathroom, like in his room. The bed had simple but elegant carvings on the headboard and footboard and the posters were topped by highly-polished cherry hearts. The covers were smooth dark blue cotton, stuffed and quilted with down. The sheets were pale grey and silky and the bed was heaped with pillows. An extra knitted afghan in pure white was folded neatly at the foot of the bed. The dressers and nightstand were made of highly-polished reddish cherry and carved in the same simple fashion as the bed frame. There was a pretty glass lamp with a fringed shade and a paperback novel basking in the amber light. Topaz's wheelchair was positioned at her bedside.
Other than those objects, the room was bare of clutter and photographs alike.
Law wet his lips.
Topaz sat on the edge of her bed and slowly, not without some difficulty, began to take her brace off.
"Miss Topaz," Law whispered. "Can I help you, please?"
She smiled and pulled on buckle loose. "Thank you, that would be lovely."
His hands started shaking even before he touched her. Gently, tenderly, timidly, Law wrapped his fingers behind the joint of her knee and lifted her foot onto his thigh. Her skin was warm and soft, but her joints resisted the slightest movement, stiff and unmanageable, damaged beyond repair. Law shivered. His knuckles brushed over the lumpy knobs of scar tissue as he worked down her leg, unfastening each buckle on the cold brace. Finally, her leg slipped free and was warm and bare in his hands.
The scent of her skin tickled his nose and bathed the inside of his mouth. He found nervous anticipatory warmth pooling in his stomach. He would be permitted to sleep in that scent tonight, untouched, un-accosted, just sleep beside her. Maybe, once she was deeply asleep, he would be able to lightly touch her arm and feel her soft warm skin.
Law looked up from the curve of Topaz's knee to the illuminated shape of her face. She was gazing down at him, looking both sad and happy and nervous and troubled. He lowered his hands from her, quickly picked up her brace, set it in her chair, and took several steps away from her. He slammed his eyes into the floorboards, cursing himself for getting so wrapped up in trusting her and touching her.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
"Trafalgar?"
His head snapped up and their eyes met.
Topaz had her hands tucked beneath the stiff bend of her knee, lifting her leg onto the bed beside her. It stretched out lamely on top of the quilted covers and she ran her hand down the mangled limb. Her shorts were loose on her petite frame, the tank top tight on her stomach and shoulders. Her full breasts swelled with each breath and her pulse was beating in her temples and throat. She timidly patted the side of the bed she did not occupy.
"I promise…" she whispered.
Law had to clench his hands to stop them from trembling as he made the few steps around her bed to the side she wished him to lay on. She pulled back the covers for him since the night was cool. Law perched on the edge of the bed and the mattress yielded soft and blissful beneath his tense muscles. That alone coaxed a faint wave of calm through his coiled body. Biting his lip, he rolled his shoulders and then gently touched the cool sleek cloth of the sheets. They were clean, crisp, fresh.
"I promise you." Topaz's warm fingers ghosted across the back of his shoulders, eliciting a shiver from his tight muscles. She immediately drew her hands back and did not touch him again. He heard her shuffling behind him, shoving her useless leg beneath he sheets, getting comfortable, and finally flicking off the lamp.
Stiff and nervous, law lay down like a board beside her, half under and half on top of the covers.
Then, she whispered, "I promise not to hurt you. I promise…"
But, that night, she touched him. Gently, with a kindness so sweet it almost hurt.
Something else tapped at the window.