10:45pm
Xander limped down the hall of the hotel, leaving a thin, dotted trail of blood behind him. If nothing else, Caster had told the truth on this: right now, in this moment, Xander hated him.
For the sake of their lie, he had been cut to pieces, and his body was covered by shallow cuts and gashes. None were so severe that his life would be in danger, but he'd be damned if it didn't hurt. Every movement felt like sandpaper, and he wondered to himself if he hadn't let things go too far. Pain and injury were familiar friends to him, and, more than that, the wife that he was going to see was an experienced herbalist, meaning an excellent healer in all kinds of remedies, but, even still, he was beginning to regret being so lenient in allowing what Caster did. Thankfully, it shouldn't matter too much: she could be trusted to tend to him, and, to be perfectly honest, that was part of the point. These wounds were light and simple enough that he could tend to them himself, though not to the same quality, but, if half of what Caster said was true, he'd earn a lot more trust if he allowed her to take a direct role in his recovery.
The door to their room was soon approaching, and with every limping step towards it the hole in his chest became deeper and darker. It reminded him of when he'd first started to court her, the sort of butterflies he felt whenever he even thought about talking to her, but it was fundamentally different in a way that could never be mistaken. He couldn't explain it, but this fear was not for himself, his reputation, or even their marriage: coffee and cream couldn't be separated, after all. He was scared for her. He wanted her to go, and even if he couldn't quite bring himself to want to leave the job unfinished, he wanted her to leave at least, and to go as far away from here as she could. It wasn't an irrational fear, and as much as he wanted her by his side always, they couldn't be together if death took them apart.
Besides that, it was about time that they moved to a normal way of life regardless. They'd been married for nigh-on a decade, but, with work interfering so continuously, it sometimes felt like they'd never even reached their honeymoon. It's tiring to spend so much time away from the one you love, and they were of the same mind on this: soon, though they would never say when, they would fall back on their savings, retire to a normal life, and solidify their union in the form of tiny hands and feet to fill whatever quaint home they'd bought for themselves. The only question was where to retire to, but, if nothing else, anywhere was preferable to here, even if she were there alone.
He could only marvel at his own nonsense. This job left such a bad feeling in him, and yet he couldn't bring himself to leave. He would've laughed at himself, except that it would have aggravated the lashes across his chest.
Before he knew it, the door was right there in front of him. He looked from one side to the other, silently wondering where Radiya was or could be, but such questions couldn't be answered with his musings alone, and so he went to knock-
...
His hand hovered there- just off the door. It was both stiff and never-still, shaking in its place on his wrist and refusing to move forward. He tried to build his will against whatever anxiety kept him from seeing his wife, but he failed, and it sent him turning away from the door as if some invisible hand had reached out to strike him.
'Dammit. I can't do this.'
He stared down at his hand, gripping it with his other. He couldn't be sure what it was that had possessed him, what had jumped out of his own body to slap him awake, but he could feel love there, and, more than love, wisdom. He shouldn't see her, not right now, not as he is. A man shouldn't be so weak as to show up on his wife's doorstep for no reason except to lie to her, to lead her astray. It was a betrayal, not only of their relationship and the covenant which it was built upon, but of common decency, and of the bare minimum of pride that a man ought to possess.
Right or wrong, whether he was lacking in honor or resolve, whether he needed to change his course or steady it, seeing her now was a bad idea. He would come back, of course he would, but now was not the time. He was not yet the kind of man that he needed to be.
He allowed a sense to shame to wash over him, and moved to start limping back the way he came, his destination uncertain-
-The door opened.
There she was, as beautiful as he'd ever seen her. Her eyes were red with deep shadows, her hair was on-end and unwashed, and she stood with an expression so shocked that it would've been funny in any other circumstance. Nevertheless, she was his wife, and she was beautiful.
Like a crocodile finding a wounded faun, she leaped forwards and clasped around his body in a tight embrace, her tears already starting to stain his shirt.
"Ow, ow, ow! Not so tight!"
She pulled away from him, and it seemed that it was only here that Filza noticed the blood that leaked from every crevice of his body, "Oh-Oh my God!" She led him by the hand, "Come inside- oh my god."
She sat him down on the bed, and began to fiercely pull away at his clothes, anxious to reveal every bruise, lashing and scrape his body had endured. It wasn't long before he was reduced to only his underwear, and she collected her herbs and first aid supplies to begin the real work. As she began her nursing, he really did feel naked, as if all his imperfections were exposed, and yet, she seemed not to notice, and attended to him with all the love and care that one would expect, perhaps even more.
This, of course, only made the guilt worse.
She dotted away at each wound one-by-one, each touch of cotton sending a burn across his flesh, and a yet-stronger lashing across his heart, "...I'm guessing you want to know what happened."
She still seemed like she could fall into sobs at even the slightest provocation, "No... I don't care. You're safe now; that's what's important."
Various words touched his tongue:
'It was Caster.'
'He killed Chauncey.'
'I have to take him down.'
All sorts of lies came from the shadows of his heart, but they were all sent running by the sight of Filza's innocent, tear-stained love.
He couldn't lie to her, "So...where's Radiya?"
She sniffed, "She's out...looking for you."
He bit his lip so hard that he tasted blood, "Dammit. I really messed up... didn't I?"
She looked up at him, and, with wet eyes, hurried to wipe away the red that had started to trickle from his lip, "No, no, no. It's not your fault, it's nobody's fault. None of us thought that things could go this wrong."
'Didn't we?' He thought, but didn't say.
She kept tending to the multitude of wounds, but, with each one, her touch became softer and slower, until eventually stopping entirely, unfortunately pressed against one of his scratches.
"Aiyay-"
He gently clasped her hand and moved it away, the consistent pain finally becoming too much. There was no resistance there, and, allowing his hand to slide to her wrist, he could feel her whole body quietly trembling.
Before he could steel his heart enough to ask what was wrong, she answered the unspoken question, "We should leave. We need to go."
He spoke in a whisper, speaking in soothing tones to console her as best he could, "Go where, my love?"
"Home! Our home! Anywhere but here!" She looked at him with fearful eyes, whatever dams behind them bursting to let tears stream down her cheeks, and a thin line of mucus from her nose, "Xander...Quayyum, Chauncey... they're not coming back, are they?"
'They're alive,' he thought to himself, 'They're fine,' he assured himself. And yet, though he believed it, he couldn't say it. Looking at his love's tears, even things he thought to be true became suddenly unthinkable.
"F-Filza. I have a job to do. If you want to leave-"
She took both his hands in hers', "No! We need to go together! The minute Radiya gets back we should go. Please."
He slipped one hand from her grasp and slipped it around the one that had taken it. Looking at his wife, the love of his life, he couldn't help but feel responsible.
'How', he asked himself, 'How long has she been like this? How long have I kept her waiting in fear?'
Was it hours? No.
Was it a day? No.
It was years. It was nearly every day since they met, ever since they fell in love. It was every time he was out of view, every time he went on another dangerous mission, every time he didn't call her back, and every time he neglected her, not out of a lack of care, but a lack of understanding. The understanding that she loved him, and that she was scared for him, and scared to lose him, and that she always had been, and always would be. These very real dangers only revealed those deep fears which always lied just under the surface of her flawlessly beautiful skin.
A million thoughts, one million memories, clamored in his mind, and he lived through several lifetimes just by meeting her gaze. In those lifetimes, the wisdom of the ancients, like a burning bush in his heart, were made clear, and revealed to him the simplest of truths: he was a mercenary, he was a sinner, and he was a broken, broken man. But, first and foremost, before anything else, he was a man, he was a friend, he was a husband, and he was a million other things in the eyes of the woman before him, her dreams filled with flattering titles that he could never think himself worthy of, but which she would knight him with nonetheless. He had no earthly duty, not one, that came before her.
Tears stung at the edges of his own eyes, "Yeah... yes, you're right. We can't leave tonight, that'd be suicide, but, in the morning, we'll go home. I promise."
She smiled a sweet, impossibly innocent smile, one that he met with his own, more somber glee. His fingers, made coarse like sand from long hours in a desert sun, gingerly wiped at her face, removing the tears that clouded her beauty and revealing, underneath it, the freshest, fullest, ripest fruit that he'd ever encountered: an apple in a tree, waiting anxiously to be plucked.
So he took a taste, and it was every bit as sweet as he'd anticipated and more. The nectar that coated his lips and mouth was maddening, and that honeyed fruit soon filled every corner of his mind, until there was nothing but sweetness left. What's more, with every fruit he took, there was another, and another. Each time he closed his eyes, a new harvest awaited him, and each time he opened them again, a new spring had come. And while his lips moved to taste sweetness, his hands moved to feel it, to touch it, to hold it fast and keep it all for themselves.
Slipping under her, he forgot any physical pain or discomfort that remained and lifted her off the floor. She was cradled in his arms and, with one more parting taste, he laid her atop the bed, climbing after her so that his beloved fruit was never out of reach.
She laughed a beautiful, irresistibly girlish laugh, "Xander...is now really the time?"
Even as she said this, there wasn't an ounce of resistance to be found. Not in her delicious, closed-lip smile that gleamed like pearly gates, not in her eyes, which glowed with the light of a thousand worlds, and not in her body, which dangled its fruit low so that even the young deerlings could take for themselves.
His hands climbed this tree greedily without missing a single foothold, and he offered her a smile both strong and weak. A smile of one resolutely resigned to his future, to his fate, and not out of reluctance, but because there was never a choice to begin with.
He whispered in her ear, "Weren't you the one pestering me about starting a family?"
When he pulled away from her, he found those pearly gates opening to let him inside, but, instead of graciously taking the fruit as he had, he instead showed his appreciation for the flower that bore it, kissing each petal with gratitude and love and, not to stop there, he did the same to the branch which held the flower, and to the trunk that held the branch, even unto the roots, lazily drifting down his apple tree like a leaf on a windless afternoon, and, indeed, it was an afternoon, for the night would bring a honeyed moon, and these two had no intentions of letting the sun rise so soon.
...
Had someone been in the hallway outside the couple's room at this time, they would have heard a number of things, had they been listening. They'd have heard sweet nothings in a voice so low that you could never know what they were saying, and, even if you could hear it word-for-word, it would still sound like nonsense: the sort of insanity that only those madly in love could ever understand. They would have heard the unmistakable sounds of love and passion, both titillating and Godly, and muffled only by modesty and the thin walls of the hotel. In other words, they would have heard the sounds that only a husband and wife, bound and blessed by and for one another, could have made, sounds subtly but still clearly distinct from the lesser love-making that so many content themselves with.
This is all to be expected from a husband and wife alone together and in mad, truly mad love, which is what made the other sound so disorienting and even frightening to a more innocent mind: the sound of a locking door. It is, of course, common practice for a man and woman to lock the door, but this man and woman were currently preoccupied with each other, entangled in the ties of arms and legs, so that not even they noticed the odd click. Had someone been in the hallway, provided they were listening carefully, they could reach no other conclusion than the presence of a third person in the room, and would've been left to consider the contradiction in the sounds of blessed matrimony and the close presence of an onlooker.
But, of course, there were no eavesdroppers in the hall that night, or even in the neighboring rooms. Some may think of this as being for the best, and others for the worst, but even time won't say who was right.
....