Chapter Text
Jinae is warm in the mornings.
There's something about the air that suggests it's the kind of place where miracles of a certain sort happen. There are fireflies, and treehouses, and lost little sisters looking for someone to call a brother. Lost men looking for home.
I suppose it's my home again, now. Our home.
I sit outside, watching the sunrise. I was always that type or person. Never you. You'd sleep in- Content to hold yourself away from the world until dawn- I always said you missed too much. Now- I'm not so sure. We came so close to missing everything. So close to never having this. Just this simple life. I never pictured it for you or me, never pictured it for any of us. But we *lived* and now we're here, alive, breathing.
I can hear you snoring inside, dead to the world. The nightmares never really go away. Not really. But it's easier to deal with them together.
I trail my hand over my skin, feeling the puckered, shiny texture of the burn and wince at the memory of scalding hot water against my skin. I close my eyes again, willing it away. Love doesn't fix you. It never takes it away. But it makes it easier. I know I'll miss Sasha every day, miss her smile, her laugh, her nonsense... But mourning is all we can do, and we can exercise our grief. A flash appears before my eyes, of her bleeding out on the ground. It's hard not to feel anger, not to feel that all consuming sense of rage that morning I saw you in my cell. But it's gone now. There's nothing we can do except mourn and remember, the way you did for me.
It feels strange, saying that, like I was a ghost all those years. But nonetheless. The rumbling is over. We lived. And we will make it worth it.
I think I need to visit the graveyard again.
You murmur, and roll over in our shared bed. I chuckle into my palm and clutch my steaming hot mug a little bit tighter. We'll need to go into the city soon for more crockery and cookware- Turns out bumming food off of Niccolo isn't exactly the way to live. I love those days with you. The simple ones.
''Marco-?'' I hear you murmur, then call out in alarm. "Marco!"
"I'm outside, Jean!" I call to you, and stand as the sky turns orange. I hear you stand, and walk outside, emerging from the cabin. Your eyes are shadowed with sleep, your hair messy.
"Hey, good looking." You tease. "Come here often?"
"Jean?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut up."
You bark out a laugh, and stretch your back, working out the knots of sleep. "God, remind me to send your mother another thank you note for the blanket."
"She knows." I laugh and reach out to bring you down next to me, guiding my palm up your arm and onto your shoulder. You're not as strong as you used to be- still muscular, but lacking the structure of a soldier. I think I like it better that way- The scars will always be there, at night, when the world might as well not exist. " Leo's starting school for the semester next week. Can't believe he's nine already."
"Any complaints about our resident teenager?"
"A couple."
"God, I do not envy your mother."
You sling your arm around me, warm and protective in a way that only you can be. And we sit there, for a while, waiting, wondering, thinking. The fireflies are gone for now, but I'm still here. I'm still standing. I'm still *alive.* and I'm me again. I'm a version of me I can be proud of.
And that's all I need.