I stared at her from across the table, she stared back at me. Our teacups had lost their steaming tendrils, I don’t know why I’d bothered to make tea, it just seemed like the thing to do.

My house wasn’t spectacular, but it was clean and comfortable, I’d made sure of that. I thought she could be comfortable here, and that’s what she needed after all she’d been through. I saw the places where her rose colored hair was still missing pieces, I didn’t know if she’d been pulling them out herself or if her grief just made the strands fall from her scalp, like it was too weak to hold on to them anymore.

She was covered in scars. A gash across her nose and cheeks remained discolored and dented, it likely would forever. Her fingers were still black, from tip to her second knuckle, I doubted those would ever be as pristine as they used to be.

She looked a far cry from her glory years in school, I’d gotten a taste of her in her prime. I was the luckiest boy in the world that semester, I thanked the powers of fate every single day we were together that her boyfriend had cheated with my girlfriend and brought her to me. Though in retrospect, I see how that was so unbelievably immature. Looking at her broken image now, I realize that beyond owing her my life, I never wanted anything bad to happen to her. I never wanted her to hurt, I really did love her.

I still do.

“Why did you ask me here, Ced?” She asked, her voice was quiet now, but it had a way of filling the space. It was hard not to recognize her presence as significant. She was a hero, after all. My hero.

“I wanted to see how you were doing,” I started, it wasn’t a lie, not really. But there was more to it, and I knew she could see that. “I haven’t seen you since his funeral.”

I owed her everything. If she hadn’t been there with her brother when the enemy attacked, if she hadn’t pushed us forward so we could escape, I’d surely be dead.

If I hadn’t run like a coward, if I had gone back for her like I should have, if I had kept looking for her with the others instead of assuming she had to be dead; she would be just as pristine as she had been the day they took her. It was my fault, I knew that, I had abandoned the girl who made me so lucky.

I must’ve looked like I was thinking about how grateful and guilty I really was, because she nodded, slowly. It was as though she’d caught on to something she’d already expected to be there. My heart sank in my chest, _please don’t dismiss me_. I knew she was still grieving, but we all were; the war took everything from us. It took my father, her fiancé, our teachers, our friends, it took pieces of her she would never get back, I knew that.

I reached across the table for her hand, she started to pull it away, but I held on. The clock ticked on rhythmically, filling the heavy silence between us once a second. She stared at our hands for a moment, mine covered hers almost completely, hers had always been so small compared to mine. I slipped my other hand under hers to sandwich her fingers in the warmth of my grasp, she deserved softness and warmth, more than I could give to her. She looked at me again, her lip quivered.

“Ced, I...” she choked on the rest of her words so they trailed away into the ticking of the clock. She shook her head and furrowed her brows, her eyes glassy with tears and a mix of strangling feelings I desperately wanted to take from her.

“Violet, Please..” I whispered, I sounded so desperate- I was desperate. I felt her hand relax a bit begrudgingly. I cradled her hand in both of mine, her hands were softer than mine, even with the callouses that hardened the coal black stains on her fingertips. I wanted nothing more than to kiss them, to show her that he wasn’t the only one who could love her scars. I could love them, I did love them. But I refrained, barely.

She swallowed, I could tell she didn’t want to cry anymore. She had cried so much at her fiancé’s funeral, she hadn’t even cried that much when she’d escaped those dungeons. He was her anchor, I knew that, she would never stop loving him.

But he was gone now. Her brother wanted to get married to his own sweetheart, to move on from everything that had happened. Her friends that were left all wanted to move forward, but she was stuck. They didn’t understand that, but I did, I understood it.

The clock ticked on as I held her hand in mine, I knew she wouldn’t feel it, but I felt so right with her there. I could envision it so clearly, her learning to love it here in this little house, learning to love being here with me. I knew she’d loved to sing before, maybe she could fill the rooms with her songs. If not, I would get her books. She loved to read, loved to learn. I would fill these white walls with shelves and shelves of books and scrolls and artifacts- anything she wanted. I’d give her anything she wanted.

“I want to take care of you,” I confessed, tears choking my throat. She put her face in her other hand, her shoulders shook. I knew she didn’t want me, but I had to try. “I love you, Violet, I love you so much- please!” I begged her, I would beg her as many times as it took. She shook her head and tried to pull away from me, but I rounded the table and I knelt beside her. “Oh Violet, pretty flower, please, please look at me..”

“Stop!” She hissed, her hand falling away from her face as she looked up to my ceiling.

“I can give you a home,” I continued, I clutched to her skirt like a child and I couldn’t help myself, I leaned in closer to smell her. She smelled like love, she smelled like the lake we once sat beside and held each other by. She smelled like a time long passed, I resisted as long as I could. “I can be whatever you need, please, let me be the man I should have been for you then, I beg you!”

I buried my face in her lap. I felt my own body shake with the sobs of my shame and my desperation. The clock ticked on, like a metronome counting the beats of our sad, sad, song.

“That was a long time ago, Ced…” she finally muttered, I looked up at her, she didn’t look at me. Her eyes were locked on the white porcelain sink on the wall, or maybe my mother’s lace curtains in the window above it. They fluttered in the breeze, I could tell she wished to blow away in that wind.

“It doesn’t have to be so long ago…” I whispered, I reached for her face. _Look at me_. I pleaded internally, she looked through me. I saw all the pain, the anger, the feeling of a chest now devoid of a heart that beat for anything but mechanical obligation, it was all in those stormy eyes of hers and I trembled.

“I will never love you, Cedric,” she whispered to me, her spilling tears fell on my hands like boiling icicles, sharp and hot. “You will always have a place near my heart, but you will never touch it.” She trembled, and I knew what she said to be true.

“I don’t need any more than that,” I choked out, she looked both surprised that I would say such a thing, and like she didn’t believe me. “You never have to love me, Violet. All I ask if that you allow me to love you.”