Catherine
*I'd find a way to promise you forever*
*Even if forever means i'm gonna have to sell my soul today*

Five people carry Valerian Barca into the good doctor's office at 4:12 a.M. Hazel Calhoun is one of them. In her quest for help she pounded so hard on Ruth Hansen's door that the hunter nearly pumped her full of lead. Already the side of her fist is purpling. There's an ugly tear in her dress where she caught her skirt on something, tripped and split her head open on a knuckle-sized rock. She can hardly feel any of it. Her face looks as though it was etched from stone, set into something cold and distant and robotic. (It is still pale and slicked with sweat.) Hazel prides herself on her ability to keep her head. She can keep her head. *Keep your head,* She starts to try to chant, but Valerian's agonized moans have made a home in her memory, and *Keep your head* Becomes *Please, God – please, God.* She doesn't cry, though. Hazel is not a crier. It's an instinct long-silenced. 

Somehow the world shifts and suddenly they're walking into Dr. Olander's office. Someone yells something and a few people move to clear a table. The room is abuzz with activity: candle light illuminates yard after yard of blood-soaked gauze, and limbs bent at awkward angles thanks to the broken bones therein. Those who are lucky enough to retain consciousness can only whimper out their agony. Metal tools clink against one another; conferring voices argue back and forth about who to help first, who's bleeding from where, what needs setting, who's not breathing. When they set Valerian down on the table, the sight of him transfixes her in the worst way. Hazel survived an epidemic – she knows the pallor of death, its visage embedded into some of her earliest memories. 
_ _

Something inside of her unhinges. Hazel has never loved anything enough to be so afraid to lose it, except maybe her mother, who she has already lost in just about every way one can lose one's mother. She cannot remember her mother's name or her face, but she remembers the way it felt to be loved. With so little context by which to color that memory, it is most easily felt in the moments of profound absence – there is some kind of poetic irony in her having been introduced to that love only to see it absent in the world around her for so many years. Valerian knows that love, though. She hears it in the way he speaks about his siblings, in the way he cares for them. She's seen it in his weeping like a child to think of them alone during the blizzard. The very first time he had met her, he'd bought a blouse for Olivia. In a quiet sort of way, Hazel has known for a while that she has been lumped in with the younger Barcas – someone he views as worth protecting, someone for whom a sacrifice was worthy. 

It's a kind of poetic justice – in committing so brilliantly to his role, in eschewing his humanity for his family's survival, he has condemned himself to death. How funny, then, that the parameters of her reality have at last defined themselves in the caving-in of this new world. How divinely comical that she might think to have found joy here, that she might think herself deserving of peace. They have both come home to Purgatory, set upon by Hellhounds until there is nothing left to be devoured.

Only a fortnight ago, she was amazed by how earnestly she wanted to protect him. Now when it really counts she is unable to deliver. Someone shoves her backwards and out of the way, and she lets them do it. She'll let them do it if it means they're treating him with urgency. The reluctance on some folks' faces says enough. 
_ _

*"We need to call the time of death,"* Says someone. An otherwise loud and chaotic doctor's office is suddenly muffled, as if underwater. She has sunk to her knees. Hazel does not cry. She does not cry because it is loud, and messy, and inconvenient, and because as far as her working memory is concerned, it has never, ever yielded positive results. The reflex is so tightly buried that she doesn't remember how to relax whatever emotional muscle she's clenching like a vise. Even now, shaking here on her knees as grief threatens to swallow her whole. Someone speaks up to defend him. It's not enough, she knows. He's dead – they're doing chest compressions on a corpse. 

*I should have told him I loved him,* She thinks. *I should have kissed him. I should have known it would end like this.* It is not the first time she has acknowledged that she loves him, but it is the first time she has used the word, even if only within the confines of her own mind. What a shame it is that she will never say it aloud – no one here deserves to know, and certainly not before Valerian. How bitterly unfair, she thinks, that finally she has gotten to experience what it might be like, only to have it ripped away. His moans of agony echo in her memory, punctuating the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears. 

She finds purchase along the far wall to pull herself up to her feet. Hazel is unused to losing her balance. She's a solid and sure-footed person. Now, though, she has been so thoroughly hit by the horror and grief of the moment that when she stands, she looks as though the wind could blow her over. Even still, she doesn't cry. Her face is pale and a little green, glossy with a sheen of perspiration, but there's nothing in her stomach to even retch up. 
_ _

From where she's standing now, she has a clear view of the top third or so of his face. Every once in a while, someone moves and she is horrified by the open angle of his mouth, the deathly pallor of his skin. She has already told herself that he is dead, point blank. Still, she cannot seem to look away or move. Miraculously no one makes her do it. Right now she lacks the capacity to even register the judgment in folks' eyes, but on some level, Hazel is aware of the way they regard her as though Valerian is undeserving of her reaction. The weight of this is crushing. The world goes black at its edges. 

*"Do you feel that?"* Snaps a voice at the very periphery of her awareness. *"That's a pulse."*

Time passes. Someone's shouting. Hazel feels herself get shoulder-checked, hard, and she careens backwards into a display case. By some miracle, the glass doesn't shatter, but she can feel the spots on her shoulder blades that will bloom purple in the coming hours. She couldn't care less. *Mr. Barca's alive* Is the solitary buoy in an otherwise black and churning sea. Even now, though, she is unmoving. Hazel always knows what to do. She never freezes like this, but so consumed is she by dread and grief and denial that she cannot seem to get her limbs to do anything but waver there, threatening to drop her to the bloody floor. The next several minutes ago by in a blur, and Hazel can't identify what exactly has happened until the room is all but empty, save for a few souls, and the sheet has not been pulled over his face.
_ _

She isn't sure exactly how she winds up at the side of the bed. There's a chair there – it's covered in bloodied rags and gauze. In the next moment that refuse is on the ground and Hazel is seated. She folds herself there next to him, and with a hand so light and ginger it doesn't even touch his skin, she lifts the sheet to glimpse at his bandages. 

In spite of knowing what she will see there, a gasp leaves Hazel's mouth. The wound up his abdomen has been wrapped and packed and stitched, but he looks so *Liquefied,* As though the wind could blow and send heaps of flesh sloughing off of his bones. And his poor face – his face, so handsome and boyish and soft. It bears now the kind of gash she knows will not heal as forgivingly as he would like. For the first time since she has known him, he bears at long last the full extent of the consequences of his actions. She wants to protect him all the more for it. 

Sometimes, when it loves, the prey becomes the predator. Sometimes, love blackens the lamb. There is a darkness in Hazel's features that suggest she is *Daring* Someone to say something. Instead, they clear the room. She trembles – with rage, with relief, with the enormity of her emotions. What does she say, now that they're alone? It's not like he can hear her. 

Maybe he can. Even if he can't, they'll be words for him – for no one else's prying ear or judgmental eye. She'll spend the rest of her life repeating them, anyway.
_ _

"Hi," She begins, and immediately her throat clenches. Hazel chokes back a cough. One hand comes up to clutch Valerian's in her own – she tries not to think so hard about how cold and clammy he is. The other hand wraps itself around the base of her throat. She gasps, and shock washes over her face to feel her eyes sting with tears. She's unused to the feeling – it burns. Hazel scrubs at her eyes and, sniffling, leans inward to press a kiss to his temple. After a moment she pulls away, buries her head in her hands, and begins to weep. 

It is a soft and hoarse and wheedling sound. After so many years of restraint one might think that Hazel's tears might be like the breaking of a dam. In reality they are something closer to rain in the desert after a long, dry winter. Even so, what might have been cathartic under other circumstances is instead a sound born of pure overwhelm. Maybe the crying continues for two more minutes, or maybe twenty, but after about five she manages to do it in silence. 



*I can't believe how much I need you. Please come back. Please stay here,* She thinks, and her face contorts as she begins to weep again, leaning over to bury her head in the crook of his neck. The skin there is stained with iodine, and smells like blood and sweat and sterilizing alcohol, but there is some of him, too.
James
When Valerian Barca leaves his childhood home, guitar in hand, there is a woman at the end of the driveway. She has no features, yet he knows she is not his mother, nor his sister, nor any of the friends he has made a youth. There is a woman at the end of the driveway who is holding an embroidery needle in one hand and is covered in valerian flowers, and she is calling to him: *What took you so long? Everyone's waiting on you. Why did you make me wait, Valerian?*

*Why didn't you tell me you loved me, Valerian?*

He goes chasing after her, the guitar strapped to his back by the armstrap, and when he reaches the end of the driveway, she is gone. His head turns around left, and then right, brown eyes wide. He yells out a name, though the language he speaks it in is discernable, the identity of the unknown woman obvious to him yet his subconscious refuses to acknowledge it. He sees her now at the end of the sidewalk, of the paved path that was made when Florian's legs went out, neat bricks lined in alternating patterns so his wheels wouldn't get stuck in the mud anymore. He goes running after her, and he is wearing a black cardigan when he reaches for her, her visage wisping out of existence. She is in front of him again, this time deeper into town, and he goes running, running, running—

*HAZEL!*

_ _
He calls out her name, and the woman turns to look at him, here. Her features fill in with the pieces of her that Valerian has committed to memory. The future, personified: the reason he is packing everything up and starting over. The only living being in this world worth being a good man for that isn't related to him by blood. His hand trembles when she takes it, examining it like she was going to take that needle and stitch him back up. She's already fixed too much of him for him to ask any more of her, and he promises, in that moment, that she won't have to do anything more. That she can rest, finally, and if she wants to survive, she can survive alongside him. How he loves her so. How he was a fool for not telling her.

*I need you,* She says, *Please come back.*

*How do I get back to you,* He asks, desperate, now taking her other hand in his, not caring how the needle sinks into his flesh. Let her hurt him; let her ruin him if she so wanted. There is nothing that Hazel Calhoun could do that would warrant any malice from Valerian Barca—*No grave could hold my body down, I'll crawl home to her.* Hazel says nothing in front of him, but instead turns, pulling her hand away from him and her needle out of his skin, and she points — points right into the outskirts of town, to the ruins, to the barn, to the *Cage.* To be known is to be loved; while the predator does not become prey when it loves, it can cage itself. Make itself small. Make itself safe and known.

He steps into the cage. (He's not sure when he got here.) His arms are heavy as his hands touch the bars, fingers loosely holding the iron. His eyes close. He breathes— in, and then out—

In... And then out...

In. And then. Out.

_ _
*Hi.*



One arm rises, slowly, to wrap around her, ever the protector even in his most weakest time. Even when he is bleeding and broken and bruised, he makes himself a shield for her, protecting her from the ne'er-do-wells of Briar Ridge who will never understand what they have. Who will never understand how she has *Changed* Him, made him better, domesticated that which sits in his belly once named ambition. He protects her tears from ever reaching anything other than his skin, and his head turns, hiding its grotesqueness, its scarring, against the side of her face.

"*Hello, my dear,*" He whispers, his lips soft against the edge of her hair, "*Sorry I'm late... Let me get a look at you... Let me see that you're okay.*"
Catherine
His voice is hoarse with pain, dehydrated and raspy, but nothing has ever sounded sweeter than the knowledge that he is *Back.* Valerian's arm comes to find purchase atop her body and she indulges in the sensation for a moment – how beautiful it is to be *Home!* – before she gently moves his arm back down. Hazel laughs, a silent and breathy expression of sheer relief to see him conscious.

*"Sorry I'm late,"* He says, and Hazel's smile is so tired but so wide. She is quick to bring a hand to his hairline, stroking back wavy locks where his sweat and her tears have been. 

"No, I'm fine," She says tearfully, sniffling as she frets over where to put her hands, where to comfort him first with no experience. "Oh, I was so worried." *I thought you were gone,* She thinks. *I missed you so much,* But she can't bear the thought of overwhelming him too quickly, going *Me me me* At someone just back from the dead. She's forgotten all about the cut on her temple – but it's stopped bleeding on its own, and if it scars, it scars. Hazel tends toward vanity, it's true, but she wants to remember this in some carnal and tangible way. 

She can't scoot her chair any closer, and just finds his hand with her own. There's a sharp inhale as a jolt of pain shoots up her arm, and she registers that in pounding on Ruth's door, she's stupidly bruised her left hand – her sewing hand. The flesh there is purpling from the bottom of her hand to the edge of her pinky. It hardly matters. It's only an excuse to spend more time with him. It's not like he can squeeze too hard, anyway.
_ _

"There's a bandage over your eye. That's why you can't open it," She manages to get out as she collects her breath for what she hopes is the last time. The sky is still not light out but the room has begun to purple. A candle flickers on the distant table. Hazel is reminded of mere weeks earlier, nestled up (a safe distance apart) on the floor together among furs and blankets. She fell asleep first – she knows she did, because she never would have done it on purpose. She fell asleep first because for the first time in her working memory, she has found a home within another person. 

*"You were dead,"* She whispers, and her voice is quieter. Hallowed, as though the office is instead vaulted ceilings and stained glass. As though something in the eaves can hear. 

*"Let's just be together, okay?"*
James
She pulls away, and he's half high on the morphine and half-lost to the pain as he looks at her, smiling, gazing over all of her. She in, in the most wonderful of ways, his guardian angel - the woman who brought him back to the world of the living had her face, and selfishly, he'd never tell her that. That's something he wants to take on his own, to keep and to hold — that his soul knows hers innately, and in some way, hers wanted his. Their hands meet, and he is freezing to the touch, indulging in whatever warmth she wanted to give or could give. Her hand is bruised, though, and he turns it over in his own briefly, looking at it, frowning at it. He has more to say on it, but he's not in the best state of mind to be interrogating her as to how she got the bruise, if it hurt, if she needed something to stop the swelling... Any attempts at doing so would likely end in slurred inquiries.

His other hand rises to touch his face when she says he's been bandaged. It's tender to touch, even behind the gauze, and it falls to his chest just a moment after. That surely would scar—he wonders what it looks like under there. If he'll lose his eye. If she'll think he's handsome with the grotesque nature of the skin being the way that it is. He's certain that while Hazel likes her vanity, she may not be so cruel as to abandon him for looking a bit off-kilter in the presence of the werewolf's attack. His lips purse in thought, and he turns his head to look at her, to keep his gaze focused on her and only her. What a fool he was - what a stupid, stupid man he was.

_ _
She's alive. She's *Safe.* She's uninjured, save for this unknown bruise on her hand that he will ask about when the morphine stops trying to take him out completely. He wants to be awake and present for this moment; he wants to not waste any more time. *You were dead,* She says, and he nods. He knows. He couldn't have spoken with his father otherwise; he couldn't have been called away otherwise. He is cold, cold to the point of shivering, and when the blankets affix themselves around him a bit deeper due to a mild scoot that warrants a hiss of pain, their eyes meet.

"*Hazel,*" He whispers, trying to get her attention again. She has seen him in many stages over the last few months: egotistical and brave, charismatic and self-serving, fearful and small, annoyed and angry, loving and seductive, and now... Broken and frail. As if the outer shell of Valerian Barca had been chipped away, leaving only the softest meat of his heart for her. She could reach in and take it, if she wanted, probably — there isn't much separating the organ from the open air at this point, isn't there? He reaches up to caress her cheek, his hand trembling with the attempt, and he he smiles. "My Hazel. I promised you dinner... Promised you... Everything." He laughs softly; it becomes a cough.

Oh, how Atlas has fallen — how broken he is here in front of her, and perhaps that's the part that makes this next moment so tragic. He had imagined perfection: a dinner date, a proper courting... But he's not sure if he'll even make it through the night. He's here with her, sure, but who's to say the cold cannot still claim his injuries? Who's to say that the wounds will not get infected? Who's to say that something may not happen, and his brush with death will become a proper dance — even Lucifer must be slain, doesn't he? He cannot go any longer without allowing himself this. He is the only one who can do this.

_ _
"Together... Yes, I quite like that." He whispers, taking in a shuddering breath as he tries to keep his voice steady. He doesn't cry — he cannot cry, quite literally, with the bandage on his face and the injury it guards. (His tear ducts are damaged; this is common; they will heal with the rest of him, however long that takes. He *Will* Heal.) He imagines their home together; the Barca Estate, repaired. He imagines sitting by the fire, lazily picking through some song or another on the guitar while his head rests against her knee. She sits on the couch, embroidering something, making a face whenever he plays the wrong note. There's a dog sleeping in the kitchen, desperate for some sort of warmth by the oven boiling soup. Florian and Olivia have both found love — the house is theirs, and theirs alone. There is quiet for the first time in so very long, and he is *Desperate,* Maddened, to make that a reality. He will heal. He *Will* Heal. 

His brow furrows. "*I should have kissed you. I should have told you that I...*"
Catherine
*"I promised you dinner,"* He says. *Fuck dinner,* She thinks, and smiles gently at him. It disappears when he coughs. She knows that must reverberate – she knows that must *Hurt.* Hazel's stomach knots to imagine his pain. Her grip tightens on his hand, warm and reassuring. Miserably, she sniffles, but smiles nonetheless. 

It's too early to tell whether Valerian is not yet cognizant of the extent of his injuries. Either way, it should have been expected that he might try to power through them. *Did you think you were the exception?* She had asked him months ago, and in every action he had taken since, he had affirmed her question. Hazel's hand comes to collect his own when it flutters up to her cheek. Gently, she lays it back down. 

"Stop it." Hazel's voice is soft, ragged, raw. Somehow she manages at the same time to be insistent. "You shouldn't be doin' all of that." *We still don't know if you'll make it through the night,* She thinks, and new tears spring to her eyes at the cruelty of this place. Stubbornly, she wipes them away before they can fall. (They are really not so different.) Her hand comes up to stroke his hair. She has never done this for anyone before but she remembers how it felt to have it done to her. The comfort it brought was always so grounding. The rhythm she adopts is slow, feather-light, intentional. 

"When you're better we'll have dinner," She promises, leaning in close to him again. Hazel rests her head on the edge of the bed and gazes up at him. She's never seen him at this angle. It strikes her that she ought to commit this to memory, too, just in case. Of its own accord, her hand squeezes his, just the once. 

"And we *Are* Waiting 'til you're better, 'cause we're goin' out, so I won't have any arguments," She continues in a murmur. *I want everybody to see. They can choke on it.* 
_ _

A comfortable silence envelops them for a long few moments. Hazel drinks in the opportunity to be so close. The circumstances are so far from what she would have wanted, but at least in some small way the stars have aligned for this little moment. *I'll protect you. The shop can wait. The world can wait.* 

His brow furrows, and her own furrows in kind to match it, immediately displeased by anything less than content on his face. When he speaks next her stomach flips, and she only smiles, a wide, sad, forgiving thing. He hasn't finished the rest of his sentence. Whether it's because of exhaustion or hesitance is anyone's guess; either way, Hazel could never blame him for it. 

"I expect you'll get another chance," She answers after a moment, and in spite of the circumstances there is something a little cheeky in her eyes, just for him. It disappears in the next half-second. "Whatever you have to tell me can wait. I think you should try to rest some more." She chuckles gently. "Been tellin' you to do that for months. Guess you'll have to listen to me, now."
James
Her hand is in his hair, and he is not unlike a cat here, eyes closing (*I love you,* The expression tells her, *Tell me you love me too.*) as he relaxes under the cool touch of her palm. She gazes up at him, sure, but he does not feel anything other than the weight of the hospital bed shifting under her gentle press. If he knew that she looked at him simultanouesly so reverently and mournfully, he might take his position as a de facto corpse more seriously. Alas. Time will heal all wounds, even the ones that line the walls of her heart with every glance she takes to him. When was the last time *He* Was taken care of? When was the last time anyone brought him into their arms, kissed his brow, stroked his hair, and promised that he would be alright?

_ _


He finds what strength he has left to squeeze her hand three times. *I love you, I love you, I love you.* The smile that rests on his face as he blinks, slowly, the glaze in his eyes now a combination of adoration and fatigue. He surely will fall asleep, broken and fatigued of no fault of his own, while his body fights against the injuries and infections, but for now, this moment is theirs. He has it written across his face: *I cannot wait to tell you anymore. I have to tell you now, in case we are faced with the worst.*

_ _
Alas — now that he he has said it, ironically, he feels more empowered than ever. *I love you,* He remembers himself saying, feeling the way it so easily left his mouth, like a hymnal. He will command his body to fight, to overcome these injuries, to feel the body and the bone snap back into place. Even if he deals with pain for the rest of his life, even if the Valerian Barca of the now must rest more often, he will know that he did so in order to live the life he wants to live. Selfishly, he wished he'd met her before he ran away, fearful of his truth, but he can no longer live in the past — at least, not about himself. His father has commanded him not to. In some ways, then, it is fitting that Octavian stayed behind in the house while he pursued Hazel out of his own madness — if his father is the past, the woman he loves must be the future.

It is signed in blood and love, then: he will give it all up for her. He believes her, now, when she looks at him like he is deserving of more than this world's cruelty. It is signed in blood, then, that he would do what is best for him— no. For *Them.*

To hell with the rest.
Catherine
He loves her. In her youth she dreamt of this moment, and thought it might feel like seeing the world in color for the first time. In truth, though, that color has been slowly bleeding into her field of vision for months now. He loves her, and it doesn't come as a surprise. He loves her and it feels like a prayer – not a prayer of reverence but of last rites. He loves her, verb, as what may very well be among his final acts. 

Their dynamic has been a hilly one, highlighted by the push-and-pull of traded vulnerability. Among the few constants is Valerian as protector: for his siblings, for Hazel, for the things he holds dear. He, too, was forced in some way to abandon his childhood before he was ready. He has had no one to protect him, and yet he has never complained. 

It couldn't have been much longer after they'd met that Valerian had decided Hazel was someone worth protecting. He had snatched her away from the snapping jaws of a monster; he had put the gun into her hands when she asked, and taught her to point it. Hazel had been self-sufficient for so long that at first, she had scarcely known what to do with the way he sought to protect her, to keep her safe. A younger Hazel might have found that repulsive. This version of Hazel relishes the feeling of being seen as worthy of a soft and gentle existence. This version of Hazel is okay with admitting that she has wanted nothing more than this peace and safety and ease for as long as she can remember. 
_ _

"I love you, too," She says, and her admission is the utterance of an oath etched across her heart. She has come to be so defensive of him – protective in her own right – but that defense was always underscored by self-preservation. He had suggested a night at the Speakeasy and, fearing judgmental eyes, she had turned him down. Fearing consequences, she had eschewed a public alliance with him in favor of playing it safe. The way her priorities have shifted is nothing short of the world having turned on its axis. She had felt the truth of it in the way her heart plummeted into her stomach to see him fall, there, when both of their gunshots were rendered useless. It had been written into law when she stood beside him, stalwart and glaring in the faces of those who would sneer. It had been etched into her soul when she shouldered past them in spite of having been shoved and body-checked and snarled out of the way. Hazel protects what she loves. She will not be shamed for loving. She will not allow the one she loves to be shamed, not when he wears the evidence of his efforts in spades.

Not when it has been such a long time coming. She couldn't have predicted the potency of those instincts, but Hazel has always been so quick to bare her teeth when she needs to bare them. The sun is teasing at the horizon and the sky has long since begun to purple. At some point in the darkness, the lamb has donned the wolfskin: Valerian lies weak and vulnerable before her, and Hazel, bloodied and full of righteous anger, will not abandon him. There is a darkness to her which seems unfamiliar but which Valerian has seen before, in little glimpses. She wears it now like a badge, like a cloak, like a warning. 
_ _

"And I'm not leavin' you," She adds, decisively, in a soft voice which betrays the gravity of this admission. So many times she has been the rat who jumped from the sinking ship. She will be its captain, now. "I'll take care of you. You don't have to worry."

Hazel's eyes are heavy and wet with emotion. She doesn't dare let go of his hand before his grip loosens on its own. Selfishly, she doesn't want to let go; in another world they are in some bright, electrified hospital with a wide, clean bed and she has curled up beside him. This is Briar Ridge, though, and such pleasures are denied even before they leave the realm of dreams. 

"Sleep now," She murmurs, because he needs to. "I love you," She says again, because she wants to.
James
She loves him, too. The way his face changes is nothing short of impossible, the way his ~~eyes~~ eye widens slightly, the way whatever blood remains in his body finds his cheeks. She *Loves* Him. He could die a happy man, but he won't— no. Valerian will live. Valerian will live, if only so he can take Hazel Calhoun to dinner at his home, and make her a meal. He will live, if only so he can spoil her with being in a home that is warm and comforting and not one she has to cover with doilies to have some semblance of dignity. No, he will live, so that she can become a Barca, so that she can be his *Wife,* So that he can be her *Husband.*

His devotion is as heavy bleeding as his wounds are, and he smiles— how beautiful he is when he smiles, even if it is a little one, even if it is reserved only for her. *I'm not leaving you,* She says, and he knows. He knows now — however could he have been so foolish as to be this way when she just needed more time? How could he have been so stupid to do anything but let her set the pace? How *Stupid* Could he have been to think that there is any greater bliss than this?

_ _
*I love you,* She says, because she wants to, and it is all he needs to listen to her. He will follow her every command obediently like a starving dog, a whimpering hound waiting outside her door. No longer does he have to scratch at the door for entrance, though, for she has built him his own space that he can come and go as she pleases. He can curl up by the fire while she sits on the couch, tending to their wounds of the physical or otherwise.

*I love you,* She says, and he thinks he may finally understand poetry, the way that the sonnets lilt and tilt this way and that. He thinks he knows music again, and the thinks he could write ballads on the way her lips form around the words. He thinks he might be a patron of the arts now, if all of the arts look and sound as beautiful as Hazel Calhoun does when she says *I love you.* 

"Okay," He whispers, and he leans his head back against the pillow. His hand has yet to fall slack, his body yet to be lost to the whispers of the necessary slumber. He'll do what she asks, because she knows what's best for him like this. There are few people he would listen to while so vulnerable in such a way, but with Hazel Calhoun, he would open up his ribcage and let her reach in to claim his heart (or crawl between the bones, replacing that small portion of himself that Adam gave up to create Eve; it pales in comparison to what Valerian would give up for Hazel).

_ _
"I love you," He whispers one more time, because he has to have the last word, and he's smiling as he falls back asleep. It is a gentle and tender thing, the way he loses himself back to the unconsciousness of gentle slumber. His body calls for him to rest, and this time, his mind permisses such a thing - safe in the gaze of the woman who has told him *I'm choosing you.* His breathing slows first into something low and deep—gentle, and necessary for this kind of rest — and then, finally, his hand loosens.

The third finger on his left hand is still looped against hers.