Heart
For the lovely Romirola, who was kind enough to come over to Tumblr to give me this awesome prompt - it was so much fun to write!
Nonspecific framing: I envision it as taking place some indeterminate time after Season 3, but it's spoiler-free. Also not either of the two possible paths I originally expected to follow. Oops?
He looks at the gift she has shoved into his hands, then at her, then back to the gift as his hands begin to shake. "Why?" he blurts out, because he doesn't understand any of this – why she's giving him a gift, why she's here, why they aren't spitting invective at each other as they so often seem to do (but there's a softness to her he's not used to seeing, a shadrow of gentleness in her eyes that makes him hold back his usual response, biting or sardonic and just baffles him even further) – and it's why this and why now and why here, fifty leagues removed from Paris and five hundred more from the people who might have done anything so simple as give each other a gift.
Her mouth twists into a familiar smile, edged and bitter, and yet he does not think she mocks him so much as she does herself or perhaps them both, "Because you need that, husband mine; because we have both forgotten and need to be reminded of the truth."
The words do nothing but intensify the trembling, until he sets the small casket down onto the table, presses his hands to the closed lid to try to still them on the carved wood, feeling the curves of petal and bud and leaf under his touch. He burns to see what lies inside it and yet he knows (god in heaven, how could he not know, when the wood is warm and shivers beneath his hands) and he has been cold for so long, so cold that he aches for what is within just as much as he fears it, because no matter how hollow he feels within it's safe, and he dares not wonder if long-ago promises are worth the danger of opening, the box or his soul or his –
"It's yours," she says, though, just as he thinks to thrust it back at her (and he doesn't want to, wants to hold it close, but he's terrified and it leaves him frozen, fingers digging into the intricate carvings), "it has been for years – it never stopped being yours, even on the worst of days," and he looks at her, truly looks, and as he starts awake gasping it does not seem surprising, no matter how harsh the words, that she had been empty-handed when he could see his heart in her eyes.
PS: to the anon who left me a prompt on the last chapter - thank you! I love it and I'm totally throwing it onto my to-do list. (You can always submit prompts to me on Tumblr - link on my profile page; my askbox accepts anons so you don't even need an account.)
... I think there were some other prompts in older comments too; I should really sort through those this weekend.