Emerald Ashes

Exhaustion

*scroll for some Luis candy*

Corvo

L's fingers twiddled with the hair curtained around her face. She twirled the strands around her fingers and kept her gaze low. "I left out the... I can't even think about it, I'm sorry." Her words were soft, barely audible like she didn't want me to hear it but I did. I reached across the small gap between us and took one of her hands from her hair. Our fingers folded around the others. With my free hand, I clipped her jaw and pulled her chin up so she was forced to look at me. Wide milky-white eyes stared back, the intense whites around her irises were spiderwebbed with little red veins. The room around us vanished, and for a moment it was only the two of us settled into each other, looking at one another without any shared words. I knew her vision limited her abilities to see me, but the expressions on her face whenever she saw my form enter the space made my heart swell. She smelled of lavender, and of morning tea steeped in an old family heirloom pot, and allowed to simmer in the sunlight. That dazzling odor I smelled out at the ruins of Ruby, and again in the basement with my friends, was a fantastic reminder of her impact on my well-being. Every second I spent with her, I felt the knots in my shoulders and back loosen. Years of tension and anger built up in an overwhelmed jar finally dissolved when the lavender and mint hit my nose.

"I know, and I don't expect you to tell me those things until you're ready. It's your trauma, not mine, and I have no right to it, but just know I'm always here for you," I said. My voice strained, my wolf fighting to free himself from the cave I locked him in. He wanted to know just as much as me but until L found peace with what happened to her, we were left in the dark and I was content with that. I had to be, for her.

"I want to tell you, I do," her tone choked and she sniffed. "I don't want any secrets between us anymore but... I just can't. Not right now." She shook her head and wiped her eyes with her free hand not twined with mine.

"Let's focus on the topic at hand instead," I recommended and she nodded, dropping her gaze. I didn't pull her chin back. Instead, I let my hand drop back onto my lap. She kept the hand mingled with mine intact, however, and gave it a squeeze. "You've given me a rundown of your time with Peter, and you touched on Allison's involvement during those years. What made you believe Allison was lying, and that she wasn't the person you thought?"

L hesitated and lifted her gaze to the door where it lingered for a moment. Satisfied with the quiet on the other side of the wood panel, she returned her attention to me. The hall beyond the office sat quiet without the breath of another living thing. I would've known if someone lingered near the door.

"After I started protecting her, Peter's interest in her dropped considerably. At first, I didn't notice but the longer we were down there together I started to realize Peter never went into her cell unless to take her elsewhere but they were never gone long. No cries, no pleas for forgiveness or... anything. Sometimes at night, when Peter thought I was asleep, he spoke with her about things outside the bunker, like she knew about it. I only ever caught snippets of their conversations but I heard enough to form my own observations." L took a long breath and turned her eyes to me. I met her gaze, my silver eyes with her milky irises and pupils. Stark contrasts of each other, yet no matter how often I looked into the webbed coverings masking her deep ocean blue eyes beneath, I never grew tired of them. I longed to see her blue irises one more time; to implant a memory in my head and replay it whenever I struggled to sleep. Her galaxy eyes, ones I could suffocate in, were luxuries I took for granted the handful of times I witnessed them, and now, with webby cotton blindness over those crystalline sapphires, I wanted nothing more than to see them again.