He presses his lips to her temple and her hair rustles against his cheeks like folded paper. Pressed into tiny squares so small you could lose them in the palm of your own hand, over and over, never on the same lines.

Battered and soft and formless.

She doesn't wake up, just stirs against him, turning her head, turning away. She doesn't like to be touched any more in sleep than she does when she's awake, because touching means giving up her secrets. He holds her closer. Drinks in her lies.

There's never enough there to satisfy him. He wants to know more, go deeper, but she's always asleep, always dreamless, only awake enough to turn away when he looms too close.

It's enough. It will always be enough to hold her.

In the morning, it's business as usual. He wakes up, lays in bed with her for as long as he can before he's too restless to stay. She sleeps on as he sits up, tucks her hair behind her ear. Being a child suits her, he supposes. Suits her better than it suited any of the rest of them, and perhaps that was why she was so desperate to become an adult.

It's only a theory, nothing more. It's the most he has, caught between his fingers before the rest of her fled away, somewhere high up where he'd never reach her.

Outside of the sky, outside of the world, never stopping, no matter how many times she stumbled. Always running, too afraid to look back.

The sun is always what pulls him out of these thoughts, drags him back to the reality of here, alone, bound and not tired of the earth under his feet. It's enough not to see her soaring over his head. It's enough not to see her turn away again.

Broken, bloody, formless. Unbound by his rules, just like he's unbound by hers. (But she never sees it that way, does she? She needs him to exist in the same chains that cling to her throat, her arms, her legs, and maybe she needs him to be free of the pull and shove of the earth, the wind, the rain.)

When he gets back to the house, there is always coffee ready, and Viper is pouring over the morning newspaper, like knowledge really is power, and power really can fill the gaping holes in her life.

Not him, never him.

He greets her with a smile, a brush of his hand if she seems alert. She acknowledges him with an incline of her head, or a small hum of thought. She's never had breakfast by this point - he always looks in the refrigerator or the cupboards for something to eat (healthy, of course - other than a small stash of chocolate in Viper's drawers, neither of them has much inclination for anything less than practical).

"How did you sleep?" she asks, without fail, and when he looks at her, he wonders if she's been loosing sleep. Because of him, maybe, or because of all the changes in her life, in his life, in their lives. All the growing up everyone has to do, all of a sudden, all over again.

"Fine," he replies, "And you?"

"Fine," is her response. He starts making rice. Partially so he doesn't have to face her when he asks.

"You seem tired, though," he doesn't want her to feel obligated to give him the answer he wants, "If you'd like, I can sleep in another room."

She always hesitates, just a little. Afraid to admit it, or wishing she didn't have to deny it?

" . . . No, this is fine."

It's always enough.

And yet it's never enough to satisfy him.

Some days, she has missions. She's gone for hours at a time, always seems peevish when she gets back home.

He offers to take her out. There's a really extravagant (and expensive, which he figures she'll appreciate) restaurant he could get them into without too much hassle.

"Mm. No, this is fine."

He sits with her as she reads - something thick and musty and old, with fragile, folded pages (battered and soft and broken and bloody) - and when she falls asleep, her head is always pillowed against his shoulder. He lets her lay there until she starts turning, inward and outward, because he's afraid to disturb her.

Then he picks her up and carries her to the bedroom carefully, like she's water or ice.

Melted and frozen and formless.

Always enough.

More than enough.

But never, he thinks, enough to satisfy.