AN: Another song fic for you all; I hope you enjoy!
My babe would never fret none
About what my hands and my body done
If the Lord don't forgive me
I'd still have my baby and my babe would have me
- Work Song, Hozier
She knows he is not all bad.
She knows it by the tenderness of his touch, by the ache held in his eyes, by the redemption he so desperately wishes for. She knows it because for all he's been through, that man still exists. The man he claims was lost, but that she's determined to help him find. The one who loves so fiercely, as if there's no other option, as if it's impossible for him to be any other way. The man she sees whenever she looks at him, the man that's still there in his eyes.
And she knows he doesn't believe her when she says it, when she whispers across the space between their pillows that he is good, he's a hero. She knows he still doubts this truth, in the late hours of the night and early hours of the morning, when the world is almost silent, she knows he turns over and remembers all the pain he's caused.
But she'll never stop reminding him. She'll reach for him each morning, searching for his hand with her own, place a palm over his thudding heart. She'll tell him the story of how she'd held it in her hand, how it glowed bright and red and true, how she'd never found him more beautiful than in that instant, his love in the palm of her hand.
She believes in him. Even on the worst days- the days she begins to doubt herself- she'll never lose faith in him, in them, not for a moment. She'll tuck her head against his chest and listen to the sound of blood thrumming through his veins, the sound of his survival, the evidence that he's been a fighter all along.
When she tells him she is happy, doubt flashes in his eyes. But she thinks he must know somehow, must feel the proof of it the way she does, the love that's cost them so much but allowed them to gain even more.