#stalker!valarr

North is cold this time of year, it always has been, always will be. It’s cold and dark and miserable and it perfectly matches how you feel inside, the turmoil and darkness and loss. The undercutting sadness that has been running through your veins since you got the call about your mother, since you fell to the floor, screaming. 

            You know, logically, as any burgeoning adult does, that you will see your parents die and you more than most understood that mortality, your father having passed when you were ten, stolen by a sickness that invaded his lungs. But you thought you had more time. You thought she would stick around, that she would stay. 

            But she didn’t. 

            She’s gone and you are sitting on a private plane, your body curled into the man you love, heading to her funeral. 

            A funeral you thought would be much later in your life. 

            “Love?” Valarr whispers, his hand moving against your hair, smoothing down the strands, smoothing the loose ones, the fly-aways from your face. “Do you need anything?”

            “I need my mother back,” you whisper, curling deeper into him, your arms holding tight to him as you squeeze your eyes shut tight. It hurts so much to look out at a world that your mother doesn’t occupy, doesn’t reside in. 

            There will be no more late night phone calls, no more whispered encouragements, no more I’m proud of yous. There will be no more baking and dancing and laughing and singing. There will be only an emptiness that you don’t know if you can ever fill. 

            You want to be a mother, but you never thought you’d ever face the prospect without your own. 

            You will never again be someone else’s child. 

            And that is a pain that you are far too young to bare. People may say that it’s easier for you, losing her younger,there’s less to miss, but it’s worse. It’s worse because you should have had more. You should have had more time, more memories. 

            You should have been there. 

            She will never be there to see you convocate, your degree held tight in your hand. She will never be there to hear about your first day in grad school. She will never see you walk down the aisle; she will never be there to whisper that’s the dress with tears in her eyes. She will never hold your hand again as you cry about the things that hurt, heartbreak and loss and remembrances. She will never again sit beside you on the couch, the two of you singing along to the musicals. 

            She will never again cry listening to Meryl Streep sing “Slipping Through My Fingers” her eyes flicking to you because you are her baby who has been slipping through her fingers since the moment you met Brendan Stark. 

            She will never sit beside you, your hand in yours as you tell her that you’re going to be a mother. She will never be there after you give labour, excited to see you and the baby. She will never be there to give you advice on how to be a mother, never tell you no one knows how to be a parent until they are one. She will never be there to help you watch your baby. She will never be there for another Solstice. She will never be there for anything again. 

            “I’m no one’s child now,” you whisper, your words muffled, swallowed by Valarr’s fleece-covered chest. It’s the worst bit of it all, that loss of an identity, that loss of being someone’s baby. You were a child and now you aren’t. You belonged to a family and now you don’t. 

            You had a family and now you don’t. Never again will your name be linked with someone else’s. Never again will anyone exclaim upon meeting you, oh, you’re her daughter.

            “It will be okay, love,” Valarr whispers, his arms tight around you, holding you in place, holding you steady. “It will stop hurting…so much.”

            He’s been your rock these days, these months of planning and phoning and crying and screaming. He’s been the one who holds you when you cannot hold yourself up, he’s the one who ensures that you take of yourself, that you don’t just collapse into that pit that you want to. That you don’t just fall into the abyss. 

            “Why does it have to hurt?” you cry, the words rough and ragged, voice hoarse and jagged around the edges like your shattered, grieving heart. 

            “Because she was your mother,” he whispers, one hand rubbing circles on your back, a soothing kind of way. “And she was a good mother. You’re supposed to miss them when they go.”

            “I just thought—” you break off, choking on the sob that rises in you, the sob catching in your throat, that thickness of it so familiar as to never change. It feels like your throat has been thicker ever since you heard the news, like your body has shifted, rearranged because of your grief. 

            “—that you would have more time,” Val whispers, his voice soft and low and soothing, tinged with a bit of his own sadness, his own loss, his grief a comfort. “I know, love. I know.”

            “I just—want my mom,” you cry, pressing deeper into him, even there’s not much more space, there’s not more you can press into him without hurting him, not that he complains. You can feel the plane shift, tilting down, the small airstrip outside of your town close now. 

            That’s another part, another thing that has you crying, body shaking, nose running, throat thick and eyes just wells of salt water. Your home. The home your mother built for you, the one she rebuilt after the passing of your father. 

            You remember how she painted every room in the house a new colour, framing pieces of your writing and your artwork, hanging them in the living room along with movie posters for the movies you always watched together, things like The Princess Bride, Pretty Woman, The Runaway Bride and A Walk to Remember. The bookshelf she built with you, the two of you swearing over the IKEA instructions, the one lined with books and CDs, things like her signed Belladonnaalbum and your childhood music. 

            You remember how she made the house a home that didn’t ring with the hollow absence of a man who should still be there, but wasn’t. 

            And now you have to face that house and its emptiness, no longer warm from her presence but chillingly cold from her absence. 

            “We’re here, love,” Valarr says, his hands stilling on you as the plane evens out, wheels down before slowing to a stop on the small stretch of clear tarmac. 

            “I’m not ready,” you whisper, your eyes stinging with the familiar burn of tears. For a while, you had thought the tears were gone, but they came back. And they haven’t left. “I can’t face that house without her there.”

            “She is, in a way,” he says, his own eyes shining as you pull back from him, sitting up, the heels of your hands digging into the soft skin of your cheeks as you wipe away the never-ending tears. “Her essence will remain even as she passes onwards to the afterlife.”

            “She didn’t believe in the Seven, Val,” you whisper, lips curving up despite the tremors running through them, the tremors trying to force them into a frown. “She believed in nature, the Old Gods. She believed that she’d find her way back to nature, that we all become heart trees when we pass.”

            “What do you believe, love?” he asks, tone gentle as he rises from his seat, his hands taking yours, his thumbs rubbing along the top of your hands, touch warm and gentle, his thumbs just slightly calloused as he guides you to your feet. 

            “If there were any gods in this world,” you whisper, the burning in your lungs and tightness in your chest telling you that anger, the only other emotion you have felt has arrived, “they wouldn’t have taken my mother yet. I don’t believe in gods. There is man and there are monsters. There are no gods here.”

            The anger is something that you like better than the tears, better than the sadness, the one emotion that seems to permeate your entire being because anger is something that makes you feel alive. Less like a ghost in a human body. 

            Anger is something solid whereas sadness is something abstract and yet infinite. 

            “Let’s go, love,” Val whispers, his hand resting on the small of your back, guiding you from the plane, guiding you down the plane’s steps, your feet landing on snow-dusted tarmac, your boots making a clicking sound against the tar bound road material. A town car, black and imposing waits at the end of the runway, waiting for you and Val. 

            He guides you towards the car, his one hand on your back, his other on your arm, touch gentle and guiding, steady as he holds you up amidst the black ice and the wind. The brutal, cutting wind that as it hits your cheeks, burning your skin, tears forming in response to the cold rather than sadness, feels like a homecoming. Like North is welcoming you home. 

            Winter is coming but it’s not here yet. 

            “Jesus,” Val hisses as he slides into the backseat of the car after you, rubbing his hands together, snow flecking the dark material of his coat. “It’s freezing out there.”

            “That’s summer, you know,” you tell him, leaning your head against the frosting over window, taking note of the sunshine despite the fogginess. North is not an easy place to live, not an easy place to grow up in, rather it’s a place that quenches those who grow there in pain and suffering. 

            You know that better than most. 

            “Come here, love,” he whispers, holding out his arms to you, but you shake your head at him, feeling your face tremble, chin weakening, slackening, tears building in the back of your throat, in your sinuses. 

            “Not yet,” you tell him, a watery smile curving your lips as you turn back to the window, watching the landmarks of your youth drift by, blurring together with the speed at which the driver drives. You can see the snow as it drifts down in lazy, wet clumps of several snowflakes held together by the freezing of the tendrils together, a sort of bonding. 

            You can see the shops of your town, the shops you can remember wandering in as a child, fingers trailing over sunlit, dusty counters, leaving shapes behind on the glass. You can see the way the shops fade, their snow-heavy awnings replaced by the residential streets, the narrow mazes of streets and the dark, thickly walled houses clustered together. 

            You know now that it won’t be long before the driver turns out of town, takes the small backroad towards the farm, the only one in your section of North, known for the greenhouses that keep all matter of agriculture growing even in the worst of conditions. You know now that it won’t be long before the familiar sight of your childhood home, the two-story farmhouse made of a blue brick, windows gabled and triple-paned, frozen over probably from the summer frost. Soon, you’ll see the wrap-around porch and the widow’s walk, the one you claimed when you were five, the one your father put a roof on, helping you put bookcases and chairs up on. 

            It was your place to run to when everything was too loud, too much. 

            You want to run there now, to disappear, but you can’t. Because you are a child no longer. Sometimes, you have to grow up. 

            “We’re here,” you whisper, your voice broken as the car pulls into the long gravel drive, the tires crunching over the varying size stones. “I’m home.”

            Valarr didn’t know what to expect of your childhood home, perhaps a small house in a residential neighbourhood, surrounded on all sides by well-meaning neighbours he would have to scare away, but whatever he expected it was not this. 

            It was not the farm with the vast expanse of land, greenhouses shining in the distance, a house made of blue brick, frost-covered windows and strange rooved contraption on the roof with all-weather fairy lights strung around the strange railing. 

            It was not this house with an inside that is warm and seems to carry the scent of baking cookies in the blue painted walls. It was not this house with the candid photos of you and your mother hanging on the hallways. It was not this house that screamed life in every place. 

            He understands now, why you wanted to make his house a home. 

            Because you have never not had a home, whereas he has only had residences. Until you that is. 

            “Oh, Mom,” he hears you whisper and he glances over his shoulder, taking in the way you seem to crumple, your hand on the white-wood, stickered frame of a photo where you seem to be about five and are dancing with your mother, her hands holding yours, her smile turned to the camera, a kind of understanding smile, no doubt your father having taken the photo, while you are caught midmotion, midjump, your hair flying everywhere. 

            “Love?” he calls out and you turn from the photo, your face swollen and salt-stained, lower lip trembling as you shake your head and push past him, running to the bathroom and slamming the door behind you. He would worry if he didn’t know already what you were doing, that you were vomiting, that you had been all week, ever since you got the call from the hospital that your mother had died. 

            He places his hand on the knob, the sound of your retching echoing through the door as he turns the knob and steps inside, kneeling down on the floor behind you, your head bent over the toilet, his hands replacing yours with your hair. Seeing the toll your sadness takes upon you is the only reason for that seed of guilt in his stomach. 

            But a brief amount of pain is nothing compared to what losing you would do to him. 

            He doesn’t mean to hurt you—it’s just a necessary evil. 

            Your limbs feel heavy as you step up onto the small podium your town has out in the forest, the one for the funerals, the stage just in front of a heart tree, a way to pay respect to the Old Gods, the Old Faith. The one of the North. 

            Your hands tremble, the paper on which you’ve written your eulogy crumpling with every miniscule tremble and quiver of your fingers, every clench of your palm. Your heart pounds hard and fast and heavy in your chest, your lungs constricting and burning with held breath as you step up, setting the crumpled paper before you, vision just slightly blurry from tears, from panic, from that strange light-headedness you get when you step up before a crowd of people. 

            You smooth the paper out, the wrinkles of the white printer paper sliding rough against the skin of your palms, a light coating of sweat shimmering on the white paper from the sweat gathering, beading along your palms. 

            “Hello, everyone,” you say, your voice picked up by the microphone, amplified and carried across the audience, the very large audience. The one composed of your townspeople settled into the folding chairs, their faces saddened and tear-streaked just like yours, hands joining with hands. Memories passed in touches and whispers. “Thank you all for coming to my mother’s funeral. She would have really appreciated it.

            “You know…I thought she would be around for a long time, that we would have a long time to make memories, but we didn’t have that. I should have known better than most that she could just…” you can feel your throat tighten, thickening even more, “die because I watched my father die from lung cancer when I was ten years old. But I guess…I figured that the Old Gods would watch over me, would grant me my mother’s presence for longer since they had to take my father.

            “I know my mother would say that they took her for nature’s balance, that the Old Gods don’t like to leave things uneven, but I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what I believe, if I believe in any form of god at all because from where I’m standing…they haven’t been here. But neither was I. I have this guilt because I wasn’t here for so long. I have this feeling that if only I had been here more. If only I had not been so afraid and just…” you pause, blinking away the tears that are falling, the paper before you blurring, “just come home! Then she would still be here, but I know that’s crazy. 

            “What’s hardest for me though, is knowing that after today…” you search the crowd, gaze landing on Valarr in the front row, his program held tight in his fist, his eyes never once leaving you. “After today, I will be no one’s child. I will be an orphan, both my parents gone. We say it’s hardest to say goodbye when we know them longer, but that’s not true because had I been older, an adult rather than a kid playing at grown-up, I would be more prepared. We all think we and those we love have a unique invulnerability to death, but it’s not true. We know it’s not true when we get older, when we mature.

            “I haven’t gotten that, yet. And it’s too late for my parents now. My mother was a woman who put everyone else first. I mean, she employed so many people on the farm, kept it going rather than giving up after my father died. She kept her produce as local as she could, keeping costs lower here. And she cared for everyone. I’d come home after school and there would already be other kids there, kids that had gotten hurt because my mother…” you sigh, shaking your head as memories flash before you, a million moments with her, “was trained as a nurse and she never forgot it.

            “She was the one we all went to for our problems and now we never will again. She will never again listen to us and what we’ve gone through and offer us advice. Now, we go alone. I go alone. I will never have my mother at any event that she should have been at. I will get married without her, I will learn how to be a mother on my own, without her there to help me. I will grow and only have the memories of her. The thing that’s hardest about all of this, is that I had just seen her and my last words were, we’ll talk later, Mom. 

            “And later never came. Because I got caught up at work and so did she and we just. Kept. Missing each other. I told her later and never fulfilled that. I put it on the back burner because I’d thought I had time. That’s the worst trick of life, thinking you have time when you really don’t. But I will say that even with all these regrets…I feel so lucky to have been her daughter, to have called her mom and heard her call me her child. And…if the Old Gods are real…I hope that in the spring, we see a new heart tree grow, a new sprout as she joins nature like she always believed. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.” Your body is shaky and that sour taste you’ve had for weeks tingles in the back of your throat, saliva filling your mouth. 

            You take off running, running, running from the podium, back to your house, the house that is yours, the farm that is yours given to you in the will. You push through the back door, just reaching the bathroom in time, hurling into the toilet, nose running, eyes streaming.

            It’s then that you begin to wonder. Wonder if maybe, just maybe, this is not sadness or sickness but a different form of change. A different form of ill. 

            “Shh, love,” Valarr says, stepping in, kneeling behind you, his hands taking your hair, your hands instead gripping the sides of the toilet, the porcelain cold and smooth against your fevered palms. “I’m right here.”

            “I need you—to buy me…something,” you gasp out, the vomiting having slowed, the heaving in your stomach less and less as you collapse against the tub, the porcelain basin your backrest. 

            “Anything,” he says. “What do you need, love?”

            “A pregnancy test.”

            The tests are all lined up on the sink, flipped over, the results loading, loading, loading. A buzz echoes through the silence of the bathroom where you sit on the edge of the tub, Valarr’s arms around you as you wait with bated breath for that sound. 

            “Are you ready, love?” he asks and you shake your head, lungs constricting as you shrug. 

            “Doesn’t matter,” you whisper. “I need to know.” He stands, his one hand lacing tightly with yours as he flips first one and then another and another and another until are four are face-up, the small digital screens displaying PREGNANT.

            “We’re having a baby,” Val breathes, glancing at you, mismatched eyes, those perfectly imperfect eyes glimmering with love and light and adoration as he pulls you to your feet, his arms lacing tight around you as tears bubble up and out of you, falling from your eyes and wetting the fabric of his button-up. 

            “I never thought I’d be a mother without mine,” you cry and Val just holds you. He always holds you. 

            His arms are the ones you trust to catch you when you fall. 

She’s pregnant. 

She’s having my child, her child. Our child. Isn’t that the greatest miracle the world has ever known? A child borne from real, true love. 

She’s doing better now, better over the loss of her mother because…I think a part of her takes this child as a sign from the Old Gods that she’ll be okay. I think she’s starting to have faith again, even if it is not my faith. 

Although, perhaps the Old Gods are the right faith for what is stronger than an idea that refuses to die?

I bought a ring. I designed it and have it now, I’m asking her to marry me, the child is the perfect reason for her to say yes because there. Is. No. Saying. No.

There is no leaving. Not now, not ever. 

Not when she has my child.

—V.T.

            “Love?” he calls out, stepping out from his office, notebook locked back up in its place. “Where are you?”

            “In here!” you call out, your voice coming from the nursery. You both painted it last weekend, the scene he’d imagined months ago when you insisted that he paint his room, make his house a home. 

            “I have a question for you,” he says, stepping into the pale blue room, the one whose walls already have murals of dark blue dragons and clouds and stars and moons. The one which has a crib and play mat ready, a desk where you can study while caring. The desk where you are now. 

            “Good,” you tell him, looking up from your laptop, eyes locking on his. “Because I have one for you too.” Your tone is so serious that he can feel his breath catch, lungs freeze and blood run cold. Have you found his notebook? Have you learned the truth? Are you going to use it to leave him?             “By all means, love,” he says, trying hard to maintain his composure. “You go first.”

            “Okay,” you say, rising from the chair, crossing the floor to him, your hands taking his and if you had found the notebook would you be this tender? “Mom left me the farm and I’ve delegated the running of it to someone in town that I trust. All the profits are mine and Raymun and I are working out some stuff with that, but I want a promise from you.”

            “What promise?”

            “I want you to promise me that every summer, you and I and our kid will go to North, to my house. I want a new beginning in that house.” You take your joined hands, settling them on your stomach, the one that is not yet showing, but soon will be. “This kid is our new beginning and I want them to know my childhood. My home.”

            “I promise,” he vows and you smile at him, the one that stops his heart and brightens the entire world. 

            “Now, what’s your question?”

            “Well,” he pauses, removing his hands from yours and adjusting the pant legs of his trousers before sinking down to one knee, drawing the black gold ring from his pocket, the one with the ruby and the sapphire twined together like the sun and moon. “Will you marry me?”

            “This is something you said we had to do yet you’re the one running late?” you cry, hearing Valarr rummaging around in his office, his choked laugh echoing down the hall to you and you roll your eyes, leaning up against the kitchen counter, the granite top digging into your hip as you wait for him.

            “We’re not late,” he replies, stepping out, his hands smoothing down his tie and suit jacket as he paces towards you, his steps long and languid in that predatory stalk he has, “we’re simply not inanely early as you would have us be.” You roll your eyes at him as you step forwards, your hands going to the collar of his shirt, straightening and tightening his tie for him, smoothing down his jacket for him, his hands resting on your waist as you do so. 

            “You’re the one who said we,” you gesture emphatically between him and you, defining the ‘we’ you spoke of as if he doesn’t know, “had to go to this gala to—and I quote—properly announce our relationship. And yet, you won’t soothe my nerves by letting us get there early and slip in before the stupid press arrives.” He lets go of your waist and the far too expensive dress he insisted on buying you because your dresses were too simple, his hands coming to rest on your forearms, his face crinkling in a delicate laugh. 

            “The press is the whole point, love,” he tells you, his lips still curved in that laughing grin of his, the one that has you leaning forwards, pressing a chaste kiss against them that still has the ability to curl your toes and make you want more. 

            “This event won’t make people hate me any less, you know,” you whisper and then he’s hugging you, his arms around you and yours around his, his chin resting on the top of your head as yours presses into his chest. 

            “I don’t care what people think, love,” he whispers, his breath ruffling your hair. “I only care about you.”

            “But your family will care what people think,” you tell him as you pull away, turning from him, your one hand sliding into his, fingers interlacing as you grab your clutch and turn back to him, lips pressing together in a sad, defeated smile. “And it’s early enough, Val, that if they want this to end…it ends.” You watch as his face darkens, a heat taking root in his eyes, one that is dark and possessive and dangerous and yet far too attractive. A heat that makes that feeling of wrongness surge inside of you again. 

            “Only we get to decide if this ends, love,” he says and you understand the darkness in his eyes, the heat that burns in all the wrong ways is not about you leaving, not about this ending, but about other people being the reason it ends. “No one else has a say in us but us.” His tone is deep and final and you can’t help but smile at him even though you try not to. 

            “Gods,” you murmur as you lead him to the door, your clutch in your free hand, “you’re damn protective, aren’t you?”

            “I’m protective because I want you to realize that this is still a normal relationship. A normal boy and a normal girl and that means that we are the only ones with a say in our relationship. My family does not get to decide; your friends do not get to decide. Only us.” His tone is pleading now and you turn back to him, one corner of your lip curving up in a grin, one that has him softening as you set your clutch down on the table by the door, resting your hand on his cheek, leaning forwards and pressing a deep, lingering kiss to his lips. One that tastes like promises and beginnings and normal. 

            “I like how that sounds, Val,” you whisper as you pull back, resting your forehead against his for just a moment before pulling back, picking up your clutch and pulling him out the door. “But I swear! If I look bad in any of these photos, it’s your head on the table!”

            “I can live with that, love.”

***

            The limo pulls to a stop outside the museum, a red carpet extended across the sidewalk, people stepping out onto it in perfectly pressed suits and elegant dresses that are so minimal you know they cost more than your house, heels dangerously tall and for the first time all night, you’re glad that Valarr bought you the crazy expensive dress because he’s right—any dress of yours would be severely understated. And not in a good way. 

            “Holy shit!” you hiss, peering out the window at the crowds of paparazzi framing the carpet, cameras flashing, people held back by velvet ropes. “This looks like some old-school fifties glamour event! You said this was a charity gala!”

            “It is, love,” Valarr whispers, his breath hot on the back of your neck, the tingling from his presence, his closeness doing nothing to negate the churning of anxiety in your stomach, the way it digs into your chest like a spiked ball, drawing blood on every inhale, every time you try to draw breath because you do not want to be here. 

            You do not want these people seeing you, seeing the way you are, the way you look. You do not want to give them more ammunition. You just want to go home, curl up in your bed in pajamas with tea and whatever snack you feel like, pretending the world doesn’t exist. 

            But you can’t. 

            Because you promised Valarr you would help him with damage control. Fixing the way the world saw you and your, you guess, relationship. Because you want this relationship to work, because you know it’s good. Because he looked at you after he heard what Brendan did to you and he didn’t look at you with horror as in how come you didn’t leave but instead looked at you like you were miraculous because you survived. And to him, he said, that was everything. 

            So, how can you not do this for him?

            He looks at you the same way that he always has, nothing changing so this is the least you can give him. 

            “What’s going to happen out there, Val?” you whisper, turning back to him, your hand reaching for his, fingers interlacing, his grip warm and strong and solid, a reassurance that he is there, that is real. That he is there for you. 

            “We’ll step out,” he says, his voice low and tone calm, reassuring, “and the reporters will call out questions which we’ll ignore until we reach those stairs there where everyone’s paused…because that’s where you answer questions. We’ll answer a few, let people see us and then we’ll go inside and find my family at our table for the dinner. Alright?” He looks at you with his perfectly imperfect eyes, the most beautiful part of him because they’re not perfect, not equal, rather strange and magical and everything. 

            “Okay,” you breathe, your teeth sinking into your bottom lip, not out seduction but nerves as you nod once, the motion sharp and far too quick, his free hand reaching up to just gently grip your chin, steadying you with his warmth, his safe presence. 

            “I need you to be here, with me,” he tells you as the limo inches up, just one car ahead, just one set of passengers before the two of you have to suffer through the gauntlet of something Valarr was raised to handle. “I will not let you fall. I will not let them hurt you. I will protect you. Do you know why?”

            “Because if I fall, it makes you look bad?” you ask, your tone striving for humour but falling flat as his expression darkens, becomes serious and somber, his attention solely on you, gaze strong and powerful and perfect. 

            “Because I love you.” You tense, that feeling of wrongness and strangeness and too soon filling you, making you want to run, to flee. To get away from him. And you think he can feel that tension like prey caught in a trap in your body because he lifts his hands to hold your face so tenderly, his eyes solely locked on you. “And I know you love me too. You don’t have to say anything, love. I know you’re scared…but you’ll get there.” You don’t get to say anything against him, don’t get to tell him that it’s too fast too soon, just slow down because the limo stops right in front and then someone is opening the door. 

            And the press sees the outside of the moment, the rich boy heir holding the face of the girl he’s been seen with like she’s the most treasure in the world, her hands resting on his forearms. The press gets the aesthetic, not the truth. They don’t know the feeling of fear building in your ribs, the hint that maybe this is wrong. 

            That maybe you need to leave. 

            “Show time, love,” Valarr whispers, letting go of your face, one hand looping through yours as you step out, Converse sneakers flattening on the sidewalk as you step out, three-piece suit-wearing Valarr right behind you, his hand gripping yours firmly, tightly. A chain to make sure you can’t run away. 

            “Mr. Targaryen! Mr. Targaryen, do you have anything to say to the rumours that—”

            “Valarr Targaryen, what do you have to say about—”

            “Do you disagree with the statements about—”

            “Mr. Targaryen—” It’s a never-ending roar as the two of you walk towards the stairs, the stairs where you will stop, where Valarr will speak. About the two of you. About who you are to each other even as you feel like a doe in the crosshairs of a rifle—like you’re just waiting for either the snap of a branch that makes you run or the bullet that strikes you dead. 

            “Mr. Targaryen,” calls out an elegant voice as the two of you stop on the question steps, “this is the first time you have publicly been in a relationship in the last three years. The world wants to know: why now? Why her?” He looks at you but you can’t look at him, your free hand fisting in the material of your dress, bunching it up between your fingers as you look down at your sticker covered Converse—the one piece of your wardrobe you refused to not wear. 

            “Because she’s everything,” he breathes out, voice soft and it’s so soft, so perfect that you look up at him, needing to know if this is an act, but the tender look in his eyes is anything but. “I met her in a coffee shop when she bumped into me. She didn’t even look just…dragged me after her to buy me a replacement coffee for the one she knocked over. She didn’t even know who I was and once she did…” he lets out a small laugh, glancing back at the reporter who asked the question, “once she did, she gave me her hat to cover up my streak, here,” he gestures with his words and the reporters all let out small respectful chuckles, “so that I could continue to go incognito as she put it. From there, I was done. I think I fell in love with her in that moment and every moment since has just made it that much stronger.”

            “Do you love him?” another reporter calls out to you, the microphone moving forwards, moving towards you as Valarr pulls you back just slightly, holding up a hand, a protective barrier, the expression on his face anything but friendly. 

            “She’s not taking questi—” he starts, but you put your free hand on his arm, causing him to look back at you and you nod once at him, telling him to let you handle this. 

            Because maybe you don’t feel love right now, but you might. And maybe, it’s alright…maybe he really does love you and he just knows. 

            “I’m scared to say I love him,” you answer, turning to the reporter, trying to play at someone you’re not while also walking the lines of truth. You need to give them just enough of you that it makes sense, but not enough that you feel flayed open. Walk the line. “I said I love you to someone before and I got hurt. Badly. Over and over and over by that same person. I tricked myself into thinking…” you look down, your throat thickening as you run your tongue over your teeth, trying to do anything to break through this pain, this reminder that Brendan will never not affect you, never not hurt you and Valarr squeezes your hand, just once, a reminder that he is there. 

            That he is there and that you do not need to do this if you do not wish to. 

            “I tricked myself into thinking that his abuse was a form of love,” you continue, looking back up at the reporter, noticing their solemn faces, the loss of the greed and story sensation, instead seeing you as a person. “That every time he hurt me, he did it because he loved me. But that is not love…I know that now. But I am so scared to say that I love someone because I can’t stop thinking that if I say it, they will hurt me. So…I want to say I do love Valarr, but I can’t. Not yet.” You swallow, hard, and look down again, Valarr pulling you by your interlocked hands into his embrace, his other arm snaking around you, grounding you in the moment, his embrace a comfort. 

            “I know that must have been hard to tell us,” one reporter continues, stepping forwards, stepping closer and you pull back from Valarr just slightly to look at them, to meet their gaze as they smile at you softly, “but I can’t help but notice your—frankly amazing—Converse which is not something we normally see on these carpets. I was wondering…what do you have to say to the people who call you a gold-digger, if anything?” You smile once at them, that sardonic smile you have, one that says all you need to say and yet nothing at all. 

            “I would ask them…why the fuck do you think I’m a gold digger? Do you think it is impossible to like Val, here, as a person because he is one? No, actually, to the people who say I’m a gold digger, let me tell you a little story. So, my first date with Val, he takes me out, we stop before a real fancy restaurant and the first thing I do,” you pause, looking back at Valarr, at the expression of awe and desire and envy on his face, a confusing mix that has that warning bell in your head ringing again, the one that says run. “The first thing I did was pull him back and tell him no and then I took him to a diner and I bought us pie which we took back to his place, ate on his couch and watched The Princess Bride.” The reporters are laughing, but not in a way that is at you, rather with you at the incredulity of the situation, of you and Valarr and the way it’s working even as your gut twists. 

            “Love,” Valarr says, his voice rising, voice cutting through the crowd, through the people, straight to you, a way of almost marking you as his before these people—even though this was his idea. “We need to go now. I’m fairly certain we’re holding up the crowds.” And then he’s pulling you after him while you wave once at the crowd before using your free hand to lift your skirts, running after him, Converse hitting the sidewalk in a way that doesn’t hurt like heels would have. 

            “I think I did pretty well,” you tell him, your tone high in that way you have when you’re seeking reassurance, when you think you did something right yet everyone seems to act like you did something wrong. “Right?”

            “Oh, my love,” he breathes, turning to look at you in the doorway to the building, people crowding around an old-fashioned dance floor, holding flutes of bubbling champagne, “you did wonderfully. I simply needed to take you away before someone tried to take you from me.” And before you can process the strangeness of his sentence, he’s letting go of your hand, pulling you to him, his hands cupping your face as he presses an open-mouthed kiss to your lips, his tongue sliding along your lower lip, until you gasp, lips parting, allowing him entrance like he wanted, your hands finding the back of his neck, fingers twining in the lower strands of his hair. 

            It’s a kiss of marking and possession and yet startling gentleness—the marking and possession not to remind you, but everyone else. He kisses you like you are everything—like he could never hurt you without hurting himself and that is why it silences all the fears and worries and what ifs and runs running around in your mind. Because he kisses you like he can’t, physically cannot, harm you. 

            Because it would harm him too. 

            “Couldn’t wait for the privacy of the hall, my boy?” calls out a deep and genial voice, one of age and wisdom and light-heartedness. One of fatherly affections and love. A voice of knowing—Baelor Targaryen. 

            Valarr pulls back just slightly, his lips reddening, puffy from the force of the kiss which he gave you, his hands still holding your face, cupping it so gently that it almost hurts from the tenderness of the gesture, your arms still around his neck, body listing to his, just slightly. 

            But not too slightly that everything is caught on camera, flashes shining all around in a disco ball of pictures taken. A private moment all in public. 

            “There is no privacy at things like this, Father,” Valarr replies, his hands falling your face, one coming to rest on the small of your back, your hands clasped together as you fidget, twisting and twining your fingers together, sharp bursts of pain echoing through your bones, your joints at the movements. Just enough pain to keep you focused, keep you here. 

            Prevent you from spiralling or worrying about those ice-blue eyes and candle flames, the feel of burning hot wax sliding along skin with murmurs of you can never leave me. Prevent you from thinking about him and whether he’s here. 

            “Perhaps not, my boy,” Baelor replies, stepping down, his hands clasped behind his back, looking every inch the businessman he’s known to be, “but the hall has much less…lighting issues.” He turns to you, smiling just slightly, a crooked kind of grin, one that makes his stern and professional features far more boyish, younger and kinder. Relatable. 

            “Hi,” you say, lifting up one hand to wave a little awkwardly, pressing your lips together in a thin line, unsure of what to do, of what to say. 

            “So, you’re the girl my boy is obsessed with,” Baelor says, moving to you, his mismatched eyes a perfect mirror of his son’s, twinkling with mirth where his sons twinkle with love and burn with possession. “It’s wonderful to finally put a face to his…reminisces.”

            “Didn’t know he’d talked about me,” you reply, following after Baelor as he turns, stepping up and into the hall, the ballroom of centuries past, of elegant people whirling on marble floors in clothes looked like they were spun by gods. 

            “He talks about nothing but you,” Baelor replies, tossing the words over his shoulder as he leads you and Valarr up a side set of stairs, up and onto a landing, to a round table, lined with elegant glass wear and china, a centerpiece of roses and calla lilies twined into an arch upon the dark stained wood. 

            “There you are, brother,” calls out an impatient voice, one that cracks like a boy just changing, turning. A boy learning to shift in skin that isn’t stagnant but changing faster than he can process. “And here,” the boy continues, stepping out from a shadowed alcove, his hair dark like Baelor’s, missing the white streak of his brother, eyes that same mismatch as they glimmer at you, “is a girl far too good for you.”

            “This delightful bastard,” Valarr says, his tone measured and even. Calm, despite the war raging on his face when you glance over at him, “is my younger brother, Matarys. A teenager who, unfortunately, cannot keep his mouth shut.”

            “I’m simply trying to save the poor girl from spending the rest of her life with a bore,” Matarys says and then his arm loops through yours, pulling you with him to the table. You glance over your shoulder at Valarr, your expression twisting into a mask of comedy as you mouth help me before your expression cracks into a grin and you turn to the boy beside you, the brother of the man you…like, listening to him speak of being young and dangerously handsome. 

            Unaware of the storm simmering behind you. Growing stronger in your absence. 

***

            You are Valarr’s, he knows this and he knows that you know it. He heard it in your voice when you spoke of being afraid to say that you love him even though you do. He saw it in your face when he told you the truth for the first time, let the words he’s held onto for three years out. He felt it in that kiss and yet…

            And yet you’ve wandered to the table not with him but his brother. Laughing at something Matarys said, talking with him, only occasionally looking back at him, checking always. Like you’re afraid almost, like he’s scared you. 

            But he knows that can’t be it because you love him. He knows that you do, you practically admitted it before the entire world. Yet, you’re not with him. 

            “How long, son?” Baelor asks, his voice low for Valarr’s ears only. “How long have you watched her?” Valarr turns to his father, fear constricting his throat, expecting to see anger or hatred or disgust in his father’s eyes but instead only seeing understanding, a twisted form of respect. 

            “Three years,” he whispers, watching as his father nods, slowly and sagely, lips curving up in a smile as he glances over at you where you sit at the family table, engaged in conversation with Matarys and Daella who has wandered over from Maeker’s table. 

            “You’ve told her you love her?”

            “Yes,” he answers, expression knitting together in confusion, stomach tightening and twisting, limbs feeling light and airy, strange. Like the world is shifting beneath his very feet. 

            “Good,” Baelor says, turning to face Valarr, the mismatched eyes gleaming with a light that is unholy as he smiles at his son, a watery tear-filled smile. “Walk with me.” He looks back at you, at the way you look over at him to smile, the way you are surrounded by people who are not him and he’s about to refuse when his father says, “Maeker will not let anyone take her. He knows what she is to you.”

            “What she is to me? How could Uncle possibly know that?” he asks, Baelor merely smiling at his son as the two turn and walk away, Valarr constantly looking back at you until you fade from sight, completely gone. 

            “It is the Targaryen curse,” his father says and Valarr pauses, the words stirring something in him, a fear deep and unnameable. 

            “A curse? How is love like this a curse?!”

            “Because we love to ruination. We love to our destructions and our deaths. We love one person with all that we are and we never let them go. That is her, is it not?” Baelor folds his arms, biceps flexing with the movement, one eyebrow arching as he watches his son, waiting. 

            “She is everything and I will not lose her!” Valarr hisses, watching as his father smiles, nodding once, a satisfied glimmer in his eyes. 

            “Good,” he says again and Valarr is left shaken, wondering and watching his father, gut twisting and churning, waiting for the curse, for the negativity. To him, loving you to ruination would be a blessing, the only proper way to succumb. Dying with you, his love, utterly ruined by you. “Do not let her go. Do not give her an inch. Do not give her any reason to flee. You grab hold of her and you do not for any reason let go. Cut off all exits, all escapes. Any way to flee.”

            “Father?” Valarr asks, that feeling of thickness and fogginess welling inside of him as he looks at his father, looking at the way his expression has shifted, changed. 

            “You keep her with you always because I will not see you ruined because you let her go. You make sure that allroads lead to you and only you.” Baelor’s expression is dark, dangerous almost. “Now, I heard her speak. Who hurt her?”

            “Brendan Stark. Beat her and threatened her that whenever she came home, stepped foot on North’s ground, he’d make her his wife. No escape,” Valarr answers as the two turn back, walking back towards you, towards your presence and light and the gentle way you hold Valarr, the way you hold him like he’s delicate, like he’ll break.

            Like he needs you. 

            “And what do you plan on doing in return?” Valarr looks down at his feet, at the Converse you insisted he buy, telling him if he was making you wear a fancy dress, the least he could do was compromise on shoes to match with you. 

            “I’m going to utterly destroy him. Cregan wants investors, we buy the company and liquidate what we can while shifting control to ourselves. Host a celebration for the purchase, invite them and…send Brendan home with a…reminder of what will happen should he cross her again,” Valarr says and Baelor looks over at him, a twisted form of pride in his eyes. 

            “I’ll start drafting up the paperwork,” he tells his son and Valarr stops, his hand going to his father’s wrist, pulling him to a stop before he lets go. 

            “Why are you helping me with this? Shouldn’t you be telling me to stop, let her go? Love her in a less…consuming way?” Valarr doesn’t understand why his father is more understanding than most people would be, why his father acts like this is normal, a birth right. 

            “Because I was exactly the same as you, so was Maeker and so was my father. It’s how we Targaryen’s love. We love to ruination and beyond,” he answers and Valarr can feel the ground shift underneath him again, especially when he sees you, watches you stand, excusing yourself from the table, walking over to him. 

            Like you couldn’t bear the separation either. 

            “What if she finds out?” Valarr whispers to his father, his gaze so focused on you, entranced by the way you walk towards him, the way you smile, the way you are. Simply entranced by you.

            “It does not matter,” Baelor replies, “you do not give her the option to leave.”

***

            It is later that night when he pulls you away, pulls you into a shadowed alcove, his hands resting on your waist as he pushes you into it, one hand leaving your body to reach into his suit jacket, pulling out a little black box. 

            “That better not be what I think it is,” you tell him and he lets out a small laugh, pressing it into your hand, the one he removes from his chest, mourning the loss of your touch. 

            “Open it,” he says and you comply, flipping the top of the box to see a key resting on crushed black velvet, sitting on a key ring with two charms—one a piece of pie and the other metal pressed to read The Princess Bride. “Move in with me?” His voice is quiet and calm and you look up at him, pulling back just slightly. 

            “What? We’ve barely been dating—”

            “And I’ve been living with you for most of this time. And I do not want to go back to mornings that are not loud and full of you. I want you with me, stealing my clothes and teaching me about movies that I should see. I want you to teach me how to live a life that isn’t governed by other people,” he whispers, the words raw, seemingly ripped from his throat and even though you feel that bit of wrongness and strangeness and you hear that voice in your head whispering run, you ignore. 

            Maybe he’s a red flag, maybe you’re just ignorant and colour-blind but you remember that kiss on the entrance, the way he kissed you like hurting you would hurt him more. 

            The way he kissed you like you were everything. 

            “Fine,” you tell him and you watch as his expression brightens, lightens, shifts and changes. “But only because Dunk and I own the house so they can’t change my room without my say-so.”

            “Should I call the movers then?” And you can’t help but laugh, hitting his chest just slightly as he leans in, pressing his lips against yours in a slow, soft kiss, one that has your one hand reaching out to grip the fabric of his button-down shirt, gripping it between your fingers, trying to pull him back when he parts from you just enough to breathe out, “so that’s a yes then, love?”

            “Shut up and kiss me.”

***

I did not expect the truths I learned tonight. I learned that the way I love her is the way that my family loves. Once and to ruination. I learned that the way I love her is the only real way to love. 

Love once and love to ruination—mine and hers. 

I did not expect it yet I appreciate it all the same, that knowing that if she ever wanted to leave, she couldn’t. That my family would help me, prevent her from leaving by blocking any exits. 

And they love her too. That was a relief. Not that they would have changed my mind, I would rather they all suffer than have me ever part from her. 

I nearly did hurt Matarys but only because he was hogging her attention. Father says that when he finds his soul, he’ll get better. And she seemed amused by him so there is that, I suppose. 

She said yes tonight, she said yes to moving in with me. To being with me in the mornings, in the nights. 

She said to the press that she’s afraid to say I love you because she said it to Brendan and he tried to destroy her. But she said that she wants to. 

Which means she does love me. 

She just can’t say it yet. And that’s alright. She’s here, with me, in my house, my control. 

I can wait when I have her here. 

And she’ll say it. 

She’ll have to. 

—V.T.

***

            It’s a few weeks later as Valarr is placing his notebook back, notes on you and your skin and the way you feel against him in the mornings written down on the waterproof paper in stark black ink that he hears the doorbell, hears you answer the door. 

            Hears the gasp. 

            He shoves the drawer closed and flips the lock, stepping out of his office, racing to the door, to see you with your arms wrapped around a woman who looks like a version of you thirty years from now, suitcases beside her. 

            “Mom!” he hears you whisper, pulling back, your arms still on hers and her arms on yours, the two of you and intertwined unit. “You didn’t tell me you were coming!”

            “You have your internship this summer so I knew you wouldn’t come home., I figured I’d have to come here,” she replies and her voice is deeper yet so much like yours at the same time. “Is that alright with you, Valarr?” And her eyes flick up to him, the colour yours but the temperature tepid, not warm, not cold. 

            Unsure. 

            “Of course,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to meet you. I’ve heard so many things about you and they’ve all made me miss my mother so, it’s wonderful to have you here.” And that’s when the temperature in those eyes that are yours yet not warms and she smiles. 

            “Then this will be a perfect two weeks!”

            He wonders as he helps you and your mother to one of the guest rooms, just how long these two weeks will truly be. 

You hold your phone tight in your hand, head leaning against the window of the car Valarr called, your attention on the moving landscape outside the car, but your mind focused on the comments, the people. What they think of you. 

            You hadn’t cared this morning when Valarr didn’t put on his hat or his sunglasses, no disguise because you’d been living in that bubble of “this is Valarr. He’s just a guy” and now that bubble has popped because he’s not just a guy, he’s Valarr Targaryen, an heir. An old-money heir and you’re nobody to the world. You’re just a survivor from North with a brain that spins like rapid-fire. A brain that no regurgitates the comments and the cruelty, things you wish you’d never read. 

TargLover: who the fuck is she?! GoldenBoy09782: gold-digging slut ValarrsBitch: must have been a really good fuck

            There were more, but they were worse. Things about how you should be dead, shouldn’t be allowed within ten feet of him. Things about you’re worthless, nothing, waste of space. You’ve heard all that before, but this was the first time it was strangers and not him—not Brendan. 

            “Love?” Valarr’s voice is soft, tender. Gentle. The tenderness and gentleness hurt you, kill you even because it’s not his fault and yet a part of you blames him irrationally. It’s irrational but it doesn’t matter. The hurt is there, the pain is there and it’s not going away. It can’t. It’s there to stay, another scar over the ones Brendan carved into you both literally and figuratively. “Are you alright?”

            “Fine,” you whisper, voice soft and quiet, broken just slightly as you lift your head from the window to look over at him and the way his beautiful eyes are glimmering with pain and regret. Hurt for you. And that’s when the blame leaches away because he feels like it’s his fault his enough for the both of you even when it isn’t. It’s why you reach across the backseat, taking his hand in yours and squeezing it softly before letting it go and shaking your head, tears welling in your eyes as the image of a candle shadowed face with ice blue eyes gleaming flashes before you, pink lips curling and you shut your eyes tight, squeezing them together while your breathing grows difficult. 

            You don’t like to think of him, of the past. You’ve spent the past three years running from him and what he did to you. You spent three years avoiding home, having your mother visit you instead of you going home to a kingdom that feels like a prison. That very nearly was. But now you can’t help but think of him. You know he’ll have seen it, you know he’ll have recognized you but what will he do?

            You hope nothing. You hope he won’t ever see it, ever care. 

            You open your eyes at the feeling of Valarr’s hand on your leg, his touch soft and gentle but fierce and protective all the same, his palm warm and fingers firm upon your knee. 

            “You’re not fine.” The words aren’t said with a dramatic proclamation but the simpleness of someone stating facts. Like your emotional instability is just a fact, one he’s prepared to deal with. “But you don’t have to tell me why you’re not.” His words are soft but they’re tinged with hurt. He wants to know why you’re not fine. He wants to know but he’s not pushing. 

            And that’s what makes you know you have to tell him. He deserves to know. 

            Just not right now. 

            “I will tell you, Val,” you whisper and you flick your gaze up to him, noting the way he sits up straighter, pivoting as much as he can in the backseat of the car, attention on you, “just not right now. I need to…I need to just feel right now, not…not talk. I just want to be with you and my friends and enjoy a movie that I have seen far too many times and pretend that this hasn’t happened. Just…just for a little bit, I need to pretend.” He nods once, his eyes softening the longer he looks at you, gaze steady and he nods once, lips curving just slightly into a smile tinted with sadness. 

            “I like that plan,” he says and you smile at him now, a real one as you sit up straight, noticing a streak of paint on his forehead, one that looks like a drip from a roller. You’d been painting his room with the second coat when your phone had buzzed with that message from Tansy, the one that told you of the article. 

            Of your presence in the media—again.

            “You’ll like the movie,” you whisper, placing your hand over his on your knee, pressing down once as if you’re reassuring him that you aren’t going anywhere. 

            “If you like it, I’m sure I will too,” he answers as the car pulls to a stop before your house, the outside bright and cheerful, clapboard shutters on the windows. It’s what drew you, Tanselle and Dunk to the house in the first place—the way it looks like a home. You unbuckle your seatbelt and open the door, the handle cool and smooth in your hand as you push and step out onto the sidewalk, standing and looking up at the sky, clouds hanging heavy and grey, swollen with rain. 

            “Looks like a storm will be rolling in,” Valarr tells you as he steps beside you, his hand finding yours, fingers interlocking. You turn to him, turn from the sky with a smile as the two of you walk up to the house, towards safety and warmth. Family and friends. 

            “I love it when it rains,” you say and no sooner do you say that then do the first drops of rain begin to fall, landing on the sidewalk, one you, hitting the ground and your skin, scattering into a million more droplets, so miniscule that you can’t even see or count or contemplate them all. You can’t help but laugh, stopping in your walk and just pausing, tilting your head and letting the water wash over you, the rain cleansing you. 

            Rain has always come when you needed it. When you left North, left him it rained when you stepped out of the airport as if it were washing the last dredges of snow from your body, the temperature warm, the feeling wet. It was strange but now it comes when you need it and you hope it’s a sign. 

            A sign that something good will come. 

            Valarr looks at you like you’re a miracle, like you’re an impossibility. You can see it in his eyes when you tilt your head down, the rain coming faster now, needling your skin, the temperature cool against your burning skin and his eyes are soft and warm, looking at you with an expression of complete and utter adoration. Something you have never seen before. 

            “You’re remarkable,” he whispers and then he tugs on your hand, pulling you to him, his one hand coming to cup your face as he presses his lips to yours, an open-mouthed kiss that tastes like him and passion and spring-rain. Something wonderful and strange. 

            “Get in, you freaks!” You hear Tansy yell and you pull away from Valarr to notice her standing on the porch, the awning covering her, preventing her Cinnamaroll pjs from getting wet, her hair bound back tight. “You can have your Notebook moment another day!” And then she’s inside, slamming the door behind her, causing you to burst out laughing, the first time since the article reached you.

            And when you look up, you see Valarr looking at you with a soft smile, hair plastered to his forehead, his silver streak darker than before, the strands heavy with water. 

            “I like it when you laugh,” he whispers, his thumb rubbing circles on your cheekbone, his eyes looking at you with a warmth you’ve never seen before, the feeling of the rain on your skin second-place to the feel of his hand on your cheek, his hand twined with yours. The feel of him and you. 

            But then you shake your head once and pull away, tugging him after you up the driveway to the house, your hand twisting the doorknob, shoulder pushing the door in because it sticks on its own doorframe, the smell of sugar and butter wafting over you as soon as you open the door, the smell accompanied by Duncan’s angry shout of “just get out of my fucking kitchen!”

            “Why is he yelling like that?” Valarr whispers, his breath warm and fanning over your neck, telling you how close he really is to you. 

            “Cause Tansy’s probably trying to fuck with whatever he’s baking,” you tell him, pulling your hand from his to tug your jacket off, the cuffs sticking to your wet skin. 

            “You’re such a control freak!” You hear Tansy yell and you raise your eyebrows at Valarr as you turn to hang your coat up on the coat hanger Raymun bought—entirely because it looked like the one in Beauty and the Beast. 

            “Told you,” you mouth at Valarr, hearing Tanselle’s irritated footsteps, the stamping of her slippered feet growing closer to you. Valarr smiles, lips pursing slightly as he tries to suppress it, hanging his coat beside yours on the rack, one hand reaching up to brush his wet hair back from his forehead, the water having rinsed the specks of paint from his skin. 

            “Can you believe him?!” Tansy cries and you turn from Valarr to see your best friend standing in the hallway between the kitchen, living room and mudroom, her arms crossed and hips asymmetrical, one swung outward. Dramatic to the extreme. 

            “Yes,” you tell her, stepping into the house, hair sticking to the back of your neck with rainwater, “you suck in the kitchen, my friend. Remember when we tried to make breakfast when we’d first moved in here? You boiled water until there was no water left!” It was before you and Tansy knew of Dunk’s skills, back when you’d been struggling trying to figure out how to make things work in the house, no cafeteria just a walk away. She’d forgotten she put water on the stove to boil and came back to a kitchen that was just smoke and steam, an empty pot where water had been. 

            After that, Dunk banned her from water and the stove. 

            “That…that doesn’t count,” she cries as you step around her, looking back at Valarr who stands, watching the two of you with a strange look on his face—one almost of hatred and envy, but it’s gone as soon as he catches you looking, the expression morphing into a soft smile, the one you’ve grown accustomed to. 

            “It does. The kitchen is Dunk’s baby. He’s not letting you ruin it again,” you counter, your hand coming to pat her on the shoulder, a palm mark left behind on her light blue pajama shirt, a mark from the rainwater on your skin. “And now, I’m going to do change into dry clothes with my…my…with Valarr and dry off before the movie. Okay?” She sighs and rolls her eyes, dramatic to the extreme before she relents and you reach back for Valarr’s hand, pulling him after you, up the steps to the second floor and to the door that leads to the bathroom. You knock twice on the closed door and when there’s no call or any response at all, you open the door and step in, going to the rack that’s bolted to the wall beside the shower, grabbing two towels and turning back around to Valarr. 

            “Don’t you have a linen closet for these?” he asks you as he takes the one you hand him, a fluffy white one with ag emblazoned on it for guest. You step out of the bathroom, closing the door behind you after flicking the light switch off and you shake your head at him. 

            “It’s just easier if we store towels in the bathroom because that’s where you use them,” you tell him, surprised that you have to explain that to him while you duck around him and head to the rickety set of stairs that lead up to the attic, pushing the hatch open and stepping out into the library, bookshelves surrounding you like extra walls, extra security and safety from the world that seems to hate you. 

            “Is that how you structure this house? By things purpose?” he asks you, his hand coming to rest on your lower back, his palm warm through the soaked fabric of your shirt, almost feverish to your rain-chilled skin. 

            “Obviously,” you answer, stepping into your bedroom, the walls in that colour you chose, the one that’s a balm to your soul, calming and relaxing, decorations just that of you, always you. That’s what you wanted—a room that wasn’t a lie, wasn’t you pretending to be someone you’re not. You just wanted it to be an extension of who you are, that place you could go when the world was cruel and hurt. 

            When you needed to shut it all out. 

            “Do you intend to turn my room into something like yours?” Valarr asks you, his voice different, almost questioning, confused. Something you’ve never associated with him. You didn’t think anything could confuse him. 

            “Turn it into a place that screams me? No, we’re gonna make it you,” you tell him, lifting your towel and running it over your head, over your hair, squeezing the ends, water soaking through the fabric, shifting from you to the material as you cross the room, pulling open your closet door and snagging a baggy black hoodie and a pair of pajama pants, pulling them from their hangers. 

            “How are we going to make it say…me?” he asks you and you pause, the towel still held tight to the ends of your hair, the look on his face making your chest constrict and heart squeeze. It’s a look of pain and confusion, one that reads of impossibility. Like what you’re speaking about doesn’t exist, can’t possibly. 

            “By figuring out who you are,” you tell him, setting your towel down on your bed and crossing the room to him, your hands coming to rest on his arms, thumbs tracing circles on the still-damp cloth, “and what you want your space to be.”

            “You make it sound so simple,” he whispers, one hand coming to rest on your cheek, his fingers pushing still damp strands back. 

            “Because it is,” you reply, tone earnest and expression even more so. He looks at you like you’re something remarkable, impossible. Unreal. It affects you and you lean forwards, pressing your lips against his in a soft and slow movement, the kind that says I’m here, I’m real and I see you. You pull back to notice his eyes half-closed, an expression of contentment on his face while his hands come to rest on your waist, the towel tossed over his shoulder. 

            “Can you do that again?” he whispers and you laugh, pulling back from him and shaking your head. 

            “Get dressed in dry clothes. We’ll get warm and then we get to watch a movie with my crazy family down there,” you tell him and he groans dramatically, reaching for you and pulling you back against him, his head falling into the crook between your neck and shoulder. 

            “Do we have to? Because I can think of another way to get warm…” he trails off, the innuendo heavy in his tone and you can’t help but snort, pulling away from him and pulling your shirt over your head, laying it on your bed. “You’re really not playing fair, darling,” he says and you turn to him, eyes narrowing, a look that says fuck off. 

            “Stop. Being. Horny,” you tell him, enunciating each word as clearly and precisely as you can before you grab your hoodie, pulling it over your head and then unbuttoning your jeans and trading them for the pajama pants while he strips and changes into his own set of pajamas—a matching set of a silky material that looks professional even for rest. 

            “What now?”

            “Now…we go watch A Knight’s Tale with my friends. It’s intense, I’m warning you now.” He looks at you with an expression of adoration, one that says you’re remarkable, a miracle. Impossible. 

            “If you like it, I shall too.”

***

            You were sitting on one couch, Tansy’s head in your lap, Valarr on the other sitting stiffly beside Raymun who had his feet up on the couch, not too far from Valarr’s legs and Dunk was in his reclining chair—the one Raymun bought him for his birthday because he claimed he wasn’t sharing the couch with him anymore because he left like no room. 

            “Relax,” you mouth at Valarr and he sighs softly, but he does as you ask, shrugging back into the couch, forcing his body to let go of the tension, to simply be. You’d wanted him to sit beside you but Tansy had immediately declared when the two of you descended that he was not sitting beside you because she wasn’t going to have to witness him feeling you up during Monday movie night, hence the reason her head was on your lap while she was stretched out across the couch and your legs were up on the footstool. 

            You turn from Valarr, to the Tv where the late and great Heath Ledger charges on a horse with his lance held aloft, phone buzzing in your pocket. You pull it out, doing your best not to disturb Tansy as she whispers, “he was so hot!”

Valarr When does the movie become good?

            You look up at him, unable to keep the horrifies expression off your face, the scandal of his distaste sitting heavy in between you two. 

You Wtf is wrong with you? This movie is amazing!!!!! You’re just blind.  I mean LOOK at HIM, how could the movie be anything but good?

            He looks down at his phone, then back up at you, smiling at the way you arch your eyebrow, daring him to contradict your statements. The only response is his quick thumb movements over his phone screen and the buzz of yours. 

Valarr He’s an idiot.

            You can’t help but snort at his simple statement, one that if he were speaking would be delivered in the same proclamation voice he has for everything. The one that says it’s just a fact of life and you go to reply, to counter without outright disagreeing (because he’s right, Will is an idiot) when a notification pops. One from your news app—one about Brendan Stark. 

            You can’t help the hitch in your breath when you notice it; notice the small image where he’s pictured, his smile cruel and deadly, ice-blue eyes sharp and bright. You click on it, click on the notification the way you do every time, the way you torture yourself over him, over the danger of him, of what he was to you. Of what he did to you.

            But this time it’s good. 

            HEIR TO STARK CORPORATIONS ANNOUNCES HIS ENGAGEMENT. 

            You stop, you freeze, everything focused on the article before you, the one that tells you that you’re free, that he can’t hurt you again. 

            That you can go home. 

            “Tansy, get off me,” you whisper, her head turning to look at you, eyes meeting yours, the warm brown like burnished gold glimmering with confusion. “I have to call…I have to call my mom.” She must see it in your eyes because she sits up, no questions asked and you run from the room, you run into the hall, clicking on your mom’s contact, hitting the call button and waiting. 

            “Honey? Honey, are you okay?” she asks, the call not even ringing for a full ring before she answered, her voice the one of your childhood, the one that soothed you after nightmares and held you when you told here everything that Brendan had ever done to you. Everything he would continue to do if you let him. 

            “Mommy! I’m-I’m perfect,” you cry, overcome with emotion, with freedom. The weight of Brendan and his expectations and his threat finally gone. “Did you…did you see t-the news?” you ask, tears flowing down your cheeks, emotion giving way to tears, ones of freedom and relief and happiness. 

            “No, honey. What’s on the news? Why are you crying?” Her tone is soft, the worry muted. She’s learned over the years that you need her not to overstress, not to make her worry yours too, to just listen, let you get there yourself. 

            “Brendan…h-he’s engaged,” you say, the tears giving way to a strangled kind of laugh, one that has your mother gasping, not from pain but from relief. “Mommy! Mommy, I can come home!” And that’s when you let loose, sinking to the ground, your back against the wall, knees to your chest. 

            “I can finally come home.”

***

            Valarr didn’t know what happened when you ran from the room, your phone clutched in your hand like a lifeline but he knew he needed to know. He followed you, even as Tansy tried to stop him, Dunk holding her back. Valarr hated the two of them, the two sides of the same coin—one hating him outright, the other pretending to like him simply to poison your mind later, but he couldn’t deny that Dunk’s help allowed him to slip out of the room just in time to see you begin to cry, sinking down and whispering to whoever was on the other end of the phone that you can come home.

            He sees red at your words, wondering about who you’re whispering too, who dares to act like a home for you when that is him. He is your home, no one else. How can you forget that?! Haven’t you seen the truth?!

            Of course you have, he knows you have. He saw it the morning after the first official date, when you were in his kitchen like you owned it, wearing his clothes and laughing with him, kissing him like he was everything. Like he was all that mattered. Like he was your home. 

            But being around your friends is corrupting you, making you forget…but then he hears you hang-up, hears the goodbye you whisper and the red is replaced by cold. A dreadful cold, the kind that says there is something he doesn’tknow. 

            Because you whisper, “bye Mom.” And then you look up at him, eyes glazed with tears, cheeks red, tear tracks burnt into your skin by your own sadness. 

            “What’s wrong, my love?” He wants to feel angry, but he can’t. He can’t because that was your mother and he would give anything to speak to his just one more time, just hear her tell him that she loves him one more time. He can’t begrudge you yours. 

            “Nothing…” you pause, smiling up at him despite the tears, your body somehow more relaxed than he has ever seen it before. “Nothing’s wrong,” you whisper, standing and walking to him, his heart beating harder when you wrap your arms around his waist, holding tight to him, his arms wrapping around you in an automatic response because he hasto touch you. He needs to touch you. 

            Always. 

            “Then why are you crying?” he asks, tone soft and you pull back, slipping your hand into his, leading him up and back to your room, sitting him on the bed, the whole twisted, sordid tale of Brendan and you slipping from between your lips, your expression pained and shamed. 

            And all he wants to do is end him. End Brendan for ever hurting you, ever touching you, ever giving you a reason to doubt your perfection. Ever preventing you from going home, the threat of Mrs Stark.But at the same time, he’s grateful because he hears how you tell him that the whole time Brendan controlled you and abused you, you felt in your heart that it was good and you know you can’t trust yourself, your instincts. 

            Because you tell him that sometimes…sometimes you feel like this relationship is bad, but because of Brendan, you know it’s good. 

            You know it’s good. You know it’s good and right and perfect and you’ve finally let him see all your broken parts. All the broken pieces of yourself that you hide from the light. 

            You’ve let him in so completely that he knows.

            He knows that all his broken pieces fit to yours, his slotting in like puzzle pieces, aligning properly inside of yours. He is what makes you whole; you are what makes him whole. 

            Together, you are complete. Apart, you are broken. 

            And now he knows: he will never let you go because in you, he is whole and right and complete. 

            Without you….

            Well, that’s not going to happen now, is it?

***

She told me her past. She told me about him. She told me about what he did to her, what he made her feel. She’s let me all the way in, she’s let me hold her and comfort her. 

She’s chosen me to be the place she goes to weather all her storms. She’s chosen me as her shelter. She knows. 

She must know. She must know what we are, how my broken pieces fit to hers. How I’m the only one who can make her feel whole. 

How I am what makes her whole. 

I knew it once I saw her. I knew it once I heard her speak because everything in me came alive. 

She is everything and I am everything because of her. And she knows. She must know. 

I can’t wait anymore. She’ll understand. I just can’t wait. And I’m going to make Brendan pay. 

Pay for ever hurting my love. 

—V.T.

            Valarr slips his notebook back into its compartment, hearing the sound of you in the kitchen, mixing something up calming his heart. You let him all the way in, no secrets you said. You said that if he was going to date you, the least you could do was be honest. 

            And that was what told Valarr you understood. You understood that the two of you were meant to be. That he is all you need. 

            And that’s why he won’t wait any longer. Not when you understand, when you know.

            “Babe, are you coming?” you call out, your voice soothing and stirring Valarr in equal measure and he closes his eyes just once, taking a breath in and letting it out. 

            “Be right there, love.”