Chapter Thirty-One: Love Reaction
by thelittletree
Convinced of my deception
I've always been a fool
I fear this love reaction
Just like you said I would
A rose could never lie
About the love it brings
And I could never promise
To be any of those things
If I was not so weak
If I was not so cold
If I was not so scared of being broken
Growing old
I would be
I would be
Frail
---Jars of Clay
Elira woke once in the night as Vincent shivered beneath her in his sleep. One blanket was definitely not enough protection against the drafts in this place, but it comforted her to feel the heat of blood rushing under his skin where she lay warming him. No longer frozen, he was just cold from the air, and she woke him to help him carefully back into his clothing before slipping into her own. Once she'd finished, though, she found herself hesitating. Would he accept her closeness again? Should she just lie down beside him? Soon, however, the question became delightfully academic. Like someone gravitating toward a flame in the cold, his hands fumbled for her, trying to pull her back against him. And, with a contented sigh, she nestled herself into his embrace for the remainder of the night.
When she opened her eyes again, hours later, it was still dark and Vincent seemed to be asleep, his chest rising and falling evenly below her. A quick touch to the skin of his neck reassured her that she'd kept him warm enough. With a sigh, she gingerly made herself comfortable and allowed the soothing rhythm of his heartbeat to lull her into a half-dozing state. It wasn't likely that she would drift off again, but she resolved to let him rest for as long as he could. After yesterday, he certainly needed it.
'Over,' she mulled to herself. 'It's all over.' And it was almost too much to believe. After weeks of looking toward this day, they were finally here, both alive and on the other side without Chaos. In the cool, hazy hours before dawn it still felt slightly unreal, like a dream. But Vincent was real, breathing beneath her, and the thought made her eyes ache again with tears of joy. He was alive and he no longer had anything to fear. Now he could begin to live.
'My Vincent,' she said to him silently. 'I won you back. You're mine now, and I'm going to make you so happy.' She wondered with a wan, weary smile what he would think of her claim. He still wouldn't want to be alone, so maybe he would stay with her even if he didn't love her. It was all she wanted, she recognized with a short-lived twinge of contrition at her own foolish heart. It almost didn't matter if he loved her or not, as long as he stayed with her.
'Please stay, Vincent. Just like this, forever...'
It was a selfish desire, of course, but it hurt to think that he might want to use his freedom for something other than living with her. Though it was an entirely possible alternative. He'd certainly made no promises to her, and they'd never talked about what would happen afterward.
And maybe she hadn't really wanted to think beyond freeing him, in case it meant he would leave her. Because now he didn't have to hole away in an apartment in Neo-Midgar if he didn't want to. He could go wherever he wanted, do whatever he wanted.
If he let her, she would even follow him, no matter what he did or where he went. It frightened her a little to realize what she would give up for him if she had to.
The gray light of morning was just beginning to filter into the temple when he finally woke. Brought out of her thoughts by the change in his breathing, Elira shifted a little to look into his face. She smiled at him as he opened bleary eyes to reveal those beautifully strange and familiar irises. "Good morning, Vincent."
He blinked once and then his lips twitched a little as he tried to nod. But then he gave a grimace and lay his head back onto the dais. Before Elira could say anything, he answered the unasked question in a quiet, rough voice. "I'm all right. Just stiff muscles from lying here all night."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't even think to put anything under your head."
"Don't apologize." She saw his mouth twitch again. "You were my blanket, I wouldn't have asked you to be my pillow as well."
She grinned and then noticed something unusual about his face. Raising a hand to show him what she was about to do in case he wanted to object, she put her fingers to his cheek and ran them softly over the prickle of black stubble. "You're growing a beard," she observed quietly.
His eyebrows went up in surprise. "I thought I recognized that particular itch."
With a smile, she began to scratch his chin. He gave a small grunt and turned his head, trying to direct her hands. She laughed a little and decided to indulge him. "So how are you feeling?" she asked him, running her nails over his jaw and down to his neck. "Besides stiff and itchy?"
"Mm." He opened his eyes and licked dry lips. "Thirsty," he said.
"Okay." It didn't take long to locate the water bottle, and then she was kneeling beside him, alternately trying to unscrew the cap and straighten her wrinkled clothing. "Here, can you sit up?"
Without a reply, he began to try to push himself from the dais, but his muscles were obviously still recovering from the physical trauma of death and cold. His arms shuddered and eventually, with a gasp, he fell back. "Dammit," he swore softly.
It surprised her. She'd only heard him swear once before, in the MiraCletus park when he'd missed the bottle. "Are you all right?"
He sighed heavily to himself before giving a small nod. "This is going to be frustrating," he muttered.
"Probably," Elira told him with a sympathetic half-smile, trying to lighten the mood. "But at least you're not alone."
He gave no response. With her own sigh, she moved to help him to lift his head to take a sip of water. He coughed at first, but then he was drinking slowly, his throat working to swallow. Elira tried to look encouraging as she thought about the food they had in the satchel, wondering what would be both light on his stomach and easy to chew. As he finished with the water, she pulled the bottle away and took a swig for herself, trying not to think about where they were going to get more when they ran out. It was less than a quarter full now.
She chose something simple to eat, but by the end of the meal Vincent was getting positively fed up with his own weakness; wisely, Elira decided to give him a little space and went to search outside for a well. If archeologists and scientists came up here to do research there had to be a water source somewhere. Eventually, she ran across a natural spring and, after testing it, she filled the bottle and headed back to the temple.
Vincent was nearly hidden behind the crystal's pedestal when she returned. It was evident that he'd moved himself to sit propped up against the rock, and now he was polishing the pieces of his gun, though his movements were sluggish compared with what he'd been able to do in the forge. Elira smiled at him as she approached, but he only looked up once before continuing with his work. It wasn't until she was sitting down nearby to get herself something to eat that he spoke.
"I apologize if I was short with you earlier," he told her quietly in a gruff voice.
She smiled again; he seemed always discomforted by the thought that he might chase her off, despite the number of times he'd tried without success to leave her behind. "It's all right, I think I'd be frustrated, too. Though..." And she deliberately looked between him and the blanket he'd left behind with a grin. "...it looks like you're recovering fairly quickly."
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and then gave a shrug. "I don't like being this vulnerable, so I don't plan to be this way very long."
She thought he probably knew a lot about being vulnerable, after having been experimented on and then made helpless by his own negative emotions to a demon. But... "Vulnerable to what?" Chaos was gone, after all.
"Everything," he answered simply, turning the barrel piece around in his fingers to inspect it before putting it down to grab another segment of the gun.
Elira considered him for a few moments while she ate. Still so afraid of being caught off guard, and she began to remember things from earlier that now seemed completely predictable: his avoidance of people, drawing away from her after getting closer again and again like he couldn't make up his mind, asking her not to touch him, covering his mouth against laughter. More than he'd feared Chaos, the fear that had been driving him from the beginning was the simple fear of losing control, of being vulnerable -- to whatever. Even her? She pursed her lips as she swallowed a bite of food. "Vincent, do you trust me?"
He glanced up from his polishing, seemingly startled by the question. For a moment the expression on his face made her think he was going to ask 'Why?', but then he turned his eyes back to his work. "Yes, of course."
But he wasn't meeting her gaze. At first, she was inclined to let it drop, but something about this suddenly felt very important. After a moment, she got up and walked over to him before sitting again at his side. And then she looked at the side of his face as he continued with the maintenance of his weapon. "What do you trust?" she asked him quietly.
He glanced at her once and then she saw his eyebrows twitch downward. "What do you mean?"
"I mean..." And she abruptly realized she wasn't sure what she meant. With a sigh, she dropped her gaze to her hands and started to rub her fingers together as she tried to sort out her thoughts. "I mean," she began again, "do you trust me not to hurt you? Emotionally, whatever. Do you trust that I don't want anything bad to happen to you? Do you trust..." She stopped and swallowed through a constricted throat. "...my love?"
His grip fumbled suddenly, but he managed to grab the piece he'd been polishing before it could fall. And then he took a breath and closed his eyes. "Elira..."
"No, don't," she interrupted him. "Please, this is going somewhere and I just need you to listen for a minute. I'm sorry, I know this is making you uncomfortable, but I feel like I have to know." She was trembling beneath the surface, and there was pain there. An old, familiar pain. "This isn't about love and it isn't about trying to tie you down." As much as she wanted it to be. "It's about me being able to trust that you're not going to suddenly run and hide again without telling me." Like falling in front of a train, without a good-bye, she realized. "I don't know what you want, I don't know what you've thought about for the future, if anything. So I don't know if you're planning to leave. But if you are, I want to be able to trust that you'll tell me first, that you'll trust me enough not to..." She swallowed again. "...not to hurt you, or hate you that you'll talk to me first about it. All right?"
He was staring ahead, not really looking at anything, she thought. And then he sighed with a frown and lay his head back against the pedestal. "Oh, Elira," he breathed. "You always manage to find the questions with the difficult answers."
Something in her pinched, but then he was turning to look at her with those steady gray eyes and she knew he wasn't finished. "I'm sorry I hurt you before. I didn't mean to; I didn't want to. But there have been so many things..." He trailed off a moment, and Elira's mind supplemented, 'to fear.' He sighed again and put the part of his gun down to rub at his forehead beneath the bandana. "You're the first person I've trusted like this in a long time," he admitted quietly, staring down into his lap. "It's...a little disconcerting, especially when I know that you..." He paused again with a small shake of his head.
"That I love you?" she suggested.
He gave a slight nod.
"You're afraid of love."
He closed his eyes in a kind of resignation. "Wouldn't you be?" It was nearly a whisper.
"Maybe." She thought she probably should have been after Eagan, but she realized that she'd trusted something in Vincent from the beginning and her heart had gone tripping over itself to follow him. "But always running away from it is the best way to make yourself miserable and lonely."
"You think I don't know?" He breathed out a small laugh and slowly went back to polishing. "I've been miserable and lonely for as long as I can remember. Until..." He paused and glanced at her.
'Until me,' she understood, and there was a flush climbing her neck. "But you're still afraid."
He reached for another piece of his weapon. "I won't run," he told her softly. "After I've recovered, we'll go to Bone Village and wait for the barge. I..." He stopped his fingers for a second before continuing. "I don't know what I can promise after that, though...I have to admit that I would like..." He swallowed visibly. "...to stay with you."
It felt like there was something blooming in her heart and there were suddenly tears coming to her eyes. Abashed, she wiped them away and chuckled when Vincent looked at her. "Sorry," she apologized. "God, I never thought I was one to cry so easily." When she glanced back at him, he was smiling a little, and then, like someone shyly offering a flower, he opened his arm to her.
In a second, she was there on her knees beside him, holding him and letting her silent tears leak out into the crook of his shoulder. Awkwardly, Vincent rubbed her back with his hand and patiently waited for her to finish. When she withdrew a few minutes later, something tender in his eyes, in those wonderfully expressive gray eyes, made her ache. And she couldn't stop herself.
Kissing him like this was like savoring something she'd only been allowed to sample before, constantly afraid of being caught with her hand in the cookie jar. After a few moments, however, he was gently urging her away, breathlessly saying her name to get her attention. Eventually, she made herself sit back to look into his face.
He was smiling again, that little smile, and there was something meaningful in his gaze as he quietly caught his breath. "I think it might be a good idea to stop," he told her. "I can hardly move; I doubt I'm up for anything..." He made a gesture with his hand and there was a definite blush coming to his skin.
Elira gave a laugh and wiped her face on the sleeves of her jacket. "Oh, if it's not one thing, it's another with you," she joked, and then as his smile twitched larger she reached out and tweaked his nose. Startled, he jerked back a little and then stared at her for a second in a kind of shocked incredulity. His expression sent her into a fit of delighted giggles that were only urged on when his mouth began to tremble and his eyes to crinkle with supressed mirth.
"Oh, come on, Vincent!" she exclaimed, thrusting her hands forward toward his ribs, intending to tickle a reaction out of him. "Let loose a little!"
And, with his reflexes still hampered by physical weakness, he couldn't stop her in time. Between frantic protests and his desperate but futile attempts to grab both of her wrists without using his prosthetic, there was the sound of him laughing – a deep, pleasant sound. And Elira was sure she'd never heard anything so beautiful in her life. After a few moments, though, she took her hands back and jumped up to run over to her pack as if afraid of retribution.
Vincent was glaring at her as he pushed himself back up against the pedestal and straightened his shirt with short movements. "Don't ever do that again," he instructed her firmly.
But she couldn't stop her grin. "Stick in the mud," she accused him.
He rolled his eyes and went back to polishing. But before giving it his full attention he cast one more glare at her and, while he shook his head, Elira was sure she saw his lips twitch.
By the afternoon, they were leaving the temple. Elira wasn't exactly looking forward to the trek back through the Sleeping Forest, but Fate seemed to have other plans: half-way through the city an all-terrain vehicle coming up the road stopped alongside them.
"Hey, Miss Maddison!"
It was the man from Bone Village, Mason Lasling, and he looked covered in rock dust. Elira smiled at him. "Hello! How are you?"
"Fine. I see you made it up here, you and a friend." There were two other men in the vehicle with him; the people he'd been talking about bringing with him to the city, she supposed. "How do you like it?"
"It's beautiful," she told him. "I can truthfully say I have a new understanding of the Cetra." She sensed it when Vincent glanced at her and had to spend a silent moment repressing a chuckle. "So, are you heading back?"
"Yep," he answered, squinting despite the shade of a battered old hat. "You, too?"
She nodded and then licked her lips. "Um, is your offer of a ride still standing?"
He smiled until the corners of his mouth were hidden behind the edges of his drooping mustache. "Sure. Come on, get in. There's lots of room."
Elira turned to Vincent to see what he thought. For a moment he seemed undecided, but then he nodded. With a grin, she took his hand and led the way into the car. "Thank you, Mr. Lasling," she said over the sound of the motor as they drove out of the city onto a dirt path that seemed to skirt the heaviest part of the forest. "This means a lot to us."
"Hey, no problem," he said over his shoulder. "People have got to help each other out in this world."
And she squeezed Vincent's hand, still in her own. "I know."