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You’re on the grass with Isa again.
You don’t know how many times you lay there with him, during the loops. Dozens, maybe? You remember the blades of grass bending between your fingers, tickling your palms, the taste of dew on the night air and the strings of fuzzy seeds that clung to your cloak for hours afterwards. You remember stars, stars, stars, strung up against the fathomless depths of the sky. You remember how the view caught in your throat, that first time, and you remember how that feeling changed.
Lying there, lying here, you remember the way Isa looked at you, eyes filled with a wonder better earned by the sky. You remember the care he took to understand your muttered curses, to find that place, where the stars wept bright silver across the dark and the sky felt closer than the ground beneath you. You remember the way your rib cage constricted, realizing that at the end of everything, he just wanted to spend time with you.
Against the gentle backdrop of that scene, you remember Isa’s lines, right down to the letter. Things he never said to you, that still linger when so many other conversations have gone. For as much as memory slides like water from your mind, this is something you know you won’t forget.
Ironic, really, that so many of your clearest memories are of moments turned sour by repetitions that never occurred. Isa doesn’t remember lying with you in that field. It didn’t happen in the last loop, so for him it didn’t happen at all – false memories of timelines undone by your death so they never existed in the first place. Dozens of fields and picnics, all reflections of the same evening when you listened and learned and loved him, by his words and his fears and the way he perceived you.
He’d already been planning to stargaze with you when you arrived in Dormont, you know that much. You wonder why he hasn’t proposed it again, since the loops ended. You haven’t asked.
You don’t want to linger on it, not here, not now. This is different from the loops anyway, the sun still lingering in the sky, casting a labyrinth of shadow through the interlaced branches of the surrounding trees. In the absence of stars, you watch a steady procession of sculpted clouds across the visible patches of sky. You didn’t even mean to end up here, sunlight warm along your skin in the growing crispness of the autumn breeze, coarse roots pressing against your spine with your partner by your side. You’d just been whittling away at a piece of wood, leaning against him, and the ground had tugged you both steadily down until you were staring at the sky.
You’re halfway on top of him now, and even through multiple layers of clothing you can feel the heat of his chest, heartbeat tucked away inside a sturdy ribcage that lifts and lowers your head as he breathes. His fingers trace small circles along your wrists, just above your gloves and below the silver constellations you carved into your own flesh, in that final loop.
He’s offered to speak with you about the scars, to listen. You don’t know what to say.
Ideally, you would resign that particular violence to the hideous perfection of a nightmare, months of ceaseless repetition crafting patterns that reflected infinitely off each other, self-propagating to fill a hall of mirrors, your skin just the same as the sky, your teeth closing around the molten plasma of a star. Ideally, you’d brush it off the same way you would a bad dream, banished to the mists of the later loops, where the scars you left could be excused by impossible circumstance. Then, couldn’t you swear it would never happen again?
Instead, there lingers that familiar impulse, engrained in you during the loops, to bring your knife up to your throat in a grin wider than even you could muster, recurring remembrance of blood so hot it made you shiver as it ran down your forearms to gather in your fingernails. You remember puncture wounds connected by trails of lightless fluid, gathering so thick and sticky in the lining of your cloak that you thought, somewhat hysterically while bleeding out, that you’d never get it clean.
Sometimes, when you fall asleep, you empty yourself out again as your family watches, and wake up near certain you are back in the loops.
(Sometimes, you imagine absentmindedly raising your dagger to send yourself back, and back, and back, irrevocably – that same stroke which should have reset the loop instead cutting you clear of this world, forever.)
Sometimes, while carving, you look up and catch the glint of metal reflected across Isa’s eyes, and the quiet trust behind that gleam. You remember the first time you used your dagger to loop, the look on Isa’s face – shock that had only just started to disintegrate into horror, eyes blown wide and pupils tiny as he raised his hands, maybe to disarm you, maybe in defense as he realized what violence was about to occur. Not quick enough to defend the one who needed it, in the end – but what right have you to say that? The one who killed his Sif, right in front of him? None at all.
He saw more of you, in that moment, than he ever had before. More than you ever wanted him to see. Past puns and your friendship and the delicate skin of your throat, eyes locked on the sudden flash of the blade, he saw you and his shoulders stiffened in terror and he cried out –
“Sif? What are you doing?” You’re on the grass with Isa again, and your fingers have tightened so harshly around your leg that had it not been for your gloves, your nails would be digging into skin. Isa’s hands have gone still, pressing into your wrists, ready to lift your fingers away. You do it first, relaxing your hands and flattening them against the grass and pebbles, tangling your fingers in the scratchy roots.
His chest still rises and falls so steadily. Controlled.
You wonder how much he wanted to restrain your hands. If it was anyone else grabbing you so tightly, he would have. You remember him throwing himself in front of you in battle, you remember scissor craft shattering against his attacks any time a Sadness came near. If anyone else had slit your throat during the loops, you have no doubt he would have retaliated with the full force of his strength. Isa defends his family from those who would do them harm.
What makes you any different?
He’s waiting for you to say something. You’ve agreed that you’ll talk more, that you’ll tell the others if something is bothering you. After nearly destroying the world over a miscommunication, it’s the least you owe them. But as the blood slips back into your skin, your face heats and your eyes burn and you find there is nothing to say.
You snuggle in closer instead, tucking your legs in and around Isa’s, pressing your skull back into his sternum until you hear his next breath come in shallower. You hold for a moment longer, then release.
You grab his hands and pull them around your chest and squeeze until he matches your pressure with his own, arms closed so tightly around you that you swear Isa, and not gravity, is the thing keeping you from drifting off into the vastness of the sky. You lie like that until your breath stops shaking, pleading with Isa not to say anything, and he doesn’t. You are so relieved he doesn’t.
A couple of days after the loops ended, Isa came to you with a thick, battered darkless cloak folded carefully and draped over his forearm. Someone had pulled it off of you after you passed out, after the Favor Tree, and you hadn’t yet found the courage to ask what had been done with it. He came in smiling sheepishly, showing you some of the near-invisible seams where he had repaired the slashes of paper and scissor attacks. The lining sang against your skin, soft and clean, his fingers raw when he handed it to you. You wondered how long it took to wash away the blood. Suddenly, you couldn’t think of anything to say.
(A few nights before, you had woken in the middle of the night to find him sitting by your bed, shoulders squared and hands tensed into fists, metal studs glinting on the knuckles. Like an enemy had tried to take something precious from him, and he was silently steeling himself to fight the Universe itself to protect it. You had wondered, half-delirious, how long it would take him to realize the enemy was looking up at him from your bed.)
Right here, right now, he holds you.
Right here, right now, you lift an arm towards the clouds, start naming animals and landscapes until he joins in. Together, you claim to see the outline of Bonnie’s latest desserts, the monster from Mira’s latest book that she can’t stop talking about, Odile’s hands raised in Paper Craft. Isa lines you up for puns, and half the time you’re able to follow through.
After long enough, his responses start to slow, and his grip on you loosens as he plays with the fabric around your shoulders, pulse picking up beneath you. You take that as your cue – ha – no – you roll over, sliding off of him for a moment before clambering back on, hands cupping his face, knees wrapped around his stomach.
You meet his gaze. So much of you is laid bare in this moment, told by the slight tremor of your shoulders, the deepening shadows visible beneath your eye, the subtle twist of your jaw as you bite your tongue. So much besides stays hidden, past barriers of skin and time, scars and blades hidden by folds of fabric, and violence by realities undone.
He looks at you like the sky looks at the sea, eyes lit up by a radiance he cast. That love aches so badly that you lean down, and he raises his head to meet you halfway, lips colliding and eyes sliding shut so you don’t have to look anymore.
He kisses you, as the sun slides further down in the sky and the weeds tickle your knees, and a sudden uptick in the wind makes you shiver, pressing closer, begging his body to keep you warm. He kisses you, and you match his intensity, coaxing your tongue between his teeth, feeling his stubble sharp and irritating against your jaw. He kisses you, and you remember grabbing his shirt, yanking him down, forcing something from him that he says he would gladly have given, stealing something that barely distracts you now. He kisses his best friend, and his mouth fills with your saliva.
You wonder, not for the first time, what he sees in you. You kiss him hard enough to hope he’ll continue to see it.
You disgust yourself.
When it’s been long enough, you don’t pull away so much as drag your face down to rest on the knitted fabric of his sweater, fitted beautifully over his chest. You burrow into him then, your left ear pressed so firmly against his rib cage that you can barely hear his muttered “I love you” over his rapid pulse. Your heart is hurrying, too. You don’t know why.
“I love you too,” you whisper. The sun continues to set, and you wonder how long you have before the stars begin to wake and turn their faces towards the earth. You wonder if he’ll ever ask to go stargazing with you again. You wonder what you’ll say, if he does.
He’s so warm. He holds you like something precious. He holds you and it’s the best feeling in the world, and while one part of you weeps in relief at being wanted, another still waits to be seen. What will happen, then? When he finally, fully knows you? The very idea of it empties you out onto the dirt. He feels the shudder in your breath, and holds you even closer.
You’re on the grass with Isa again.
Soon it will be dark enough for stargazing.
You are loved.