Almost

Summary: He would never understand entirely. He never had. He might never.

Notes: Another scene written long before "A Land Without Magic" supposing at the dark curtain of what the writers would one day reveal to us. The details are fuzzy, but the scene makes its own point.

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This was a terrible idea

It had been a noble enough intention. Or a desperately unstoppable one.

He could understand Why she was standing out there on the front steps, with her face tilted to the sky when the rain started falling. Who was there to even say when the last time she'd heard it, no less felt it, as anything more than the whisper of any number of three decades of drugged dreams was?

At least until it had gotten heavier. Harder and harder, pelting the windows on the sides of his house. Until her clothing had started to soak through. Until he opened the door and said her name. Once. Twice. To no more response than the slow wave of her hair growing dark and heavy with water.

Until just now, when she'd turned at the third utterance, at the touch on her shoulder to face him. Pale and perfectly graceful as a princess, still, with raindrops clinging to her eyes lashes like dew drops, even in sodden blue Jeans. But it was her eyes more than the raindrops, that were like never seen tears. The inescapable fire-bright blue of summer so focused on him as she blinked against the torrent of water.

Not like a child who'd been lost for so long, or gotten lost again, but like a woman who was only biding her time to show the storm What that word even meant. What anyone of them thought it meant. Even, as she took the one step up to be level with him, with where he'd had to walk to touch her shoulder.

The continuous fall of rain, nothing to elastic sensation that always made close not close enough. Another half step. The unending patter and plink, nothing to the inescapable torrent of sound that seemed to fill every space w here words left them both silent. And another, until her shoe ended against him. A challenge, daring him.

To deny what he already had, maybe could still to anyone but her. To take his hobble and run away, now, when the puff of her breath became the smallest cloud between them. When the rain couldn't be seen, because there wasn't anything that could stay long enough between them as they stared at each other. Not rain. Or time. Or tale.

The last thought is the reason he closes his eyes, firming his jaw, to look to the side of her. The only thing let to him. As though she isn't burned there. Inside his eyes, his skin, whatever shred he had of a heart or conscience. A mark she placed that, a place she'd crafted, that he could never scour free.

It should be impossible. That the soft sigh, an openly grateful shake of sound, that escapes her, is louder than the thunder that rolls over them after it. When he has to open his eyes, because hands wrap at the lapels of his jacket, pulling him forward, at that same time as a gently solid impact hit his chest.

Water and warmth seeping through the fabric of tie and shirt, from the head resting there. The tension in her face somehow gone just as suddenly.

"Belle." He raised his hands to set them on the far edges of her shoulders, not even having decided what he meant to do with them there, when she shook her head, against him, fast and almost hard. Like she might burrow through him.

With a shake of her head, she waved off whatever explanation they would pretend didn't masquerade as both reasons and apologies they couldn't give or ignore. She didn't look up. She simply talked into his shirt. Her tone not sad or embarrassed. Almost entirely direct, with a the relief of having passed. Once more. Up the brink, but not over it entirely. "Just hold me."

He would never understand entirely. He never had. He might never. The girl who had chosen to be content with the lite where she gave up everything. for so many other lives.

Who was standing in the rain, still consenting with each breath, even without a deal to force her, to let another whole town, another whole bloody war, be worth more than all she could (forcibly remind without a word might have tear every deal and chance apart) be.

As a pawn, as a prize, as a girl, as loved.

And in that, he would never deserve her.

But that didn't mean he had to let go yet today.