girlwednesday | DUPLICITY → CONTACT

Unlock your window.

[And the mystery thickens.]

[she frowns at her phone, then unfolds herself from where she's been sitting on her bed before making her way to the window. doing as he says, she unlocks it.]

now what?

[He doesn't answer. Mostly because his hands are busy.

But she won't have to wait long before her window is slipping open and he's climbing through it.

One moment he's sliding the window closed and the next he's moving towards her, taking her into his arms and moving to bury his face in her neck.]

[in the overwhelming chaos of the explosion and the stress-filled escape back to the city, there had been precious little time to talk, much less connect on a tactile level. even simple hugs had fallen by the wayside in an attempt to return to the city that they'd all known but weren't sure they could trust any more. only a look had served as a goodbye before their group had scattered and, in the ensuing losses, all felicity had time for was her own grief, finding ways to cope with what she'd done and what had been done to her and those she cared about.

seeing ezio come through her window is the balm she isn't aware her soul needs and his touch soothes so many raw wounds that she's not aware still exist. Tears spring to her eyes as he pulls her close and one hand clasps the back of his head to hold him close.

exhaling on a sigh, she feels the tension she's been carrying ease slightly and her next breath is shaky as she tries to keep her composure.]

[All of his thoughts, all of his energy had been focused on simply getting them back to the city. On keeping them all safe, on keeping them from being hunted by the guards they were all sure had followed them. There had been no time for words and comfort, no time to grieve what had been lost, what had been taken from them.

It felt his entire world had been shattered into pieces and he didn't know how to pick them up and put them back together.

Arms tightened around her, breathing her in slowly as if she was the only thing keeping him from stopping altogether.]

She's gone. [His voice sounded so quiet, barely above a whisper as he spoke against her skin.]

[It's different for Felicity, she knows this. In her case, she's the one that was married, not Oliver. He didn't have the same attachments she did and it's only been her own knowledge of their lives that's kept her on the straight and narrow. Her love.

With Ezio and his past, it's been the experience of being in a new place, of finding a connection, of falling in love with that one person. She's very aware of how he feels about her, knows that there's room there for more than one, but she also knows how he really feels about the tiny woman that had been his submissive on paper, but had meant so much more than that to him.

This is his agony and her hold on him tightens in response as she feels her heart break for him. Her voice is a whisper as she turns her face into his neck, too.] I'm so sorry, Ezio.

[Losing someone that you love is still an ache that never lessens, still a pain that settles into your very soul. It is agony, like a knife that is being repeatedly stabbed directly into his heart and there is nothing he can do to make it stop.

He should say that this is for the best, that she's back where she belongs. But she isn't. Because she no longer existed in her own world and all she had to return to was her own death.

She was supposed to go back with him an now -

Now they would both go back alone.

It seemed almost wrong to come to her with this pain, to come to her to seek out comfort for it. But she had been the first person who had crossed his mind, the only one who's comfort he wanted. She would understand.

There's nothing more than silence for a few long moments, simply allowing himself to hold her, to feel her against him. To feel the beating of her heart against his chest. When he speaks, his voice is an actual whisper now, muffled by her skin.] May I stay with you?

Of course.

[To know that he's lost that, even if she's not aware just how finale it is, makes her heart ache for him as well as for herself. This place is wrong on so many levels and now to add one: bringing people together only to pull them away again. It dawns on her in her very next thought that there will come a day when this man will be taken from her, too, and she finds it impossible to breathe.

Mourning what isn't yet gone doesn't do her any good and she pulls back just a little.]

I just need to shut the window and you can stay for as long as you need to.

Edited 2019-02-24 05:40 (UTC)

[One of them will lose the other eventually, that much is already certain. Before now, he had never thought of what it might mean if one of them was taken, if one of them was sent home. Mourning what was right in front of him, mourning the possibility of it seemed like a waste.

He wished he had thought of it, wished he had spent more time memorizing everything he could. There was guilt there, regret, just as there had been with Cristina.

Letting her go is almost painful, and his arms don't quite listen to his brain. It takes fall too much to let her move away, to step towards the bed, to start peeling off the layers of clothing until he's wearing nothing more than underwear. Crawling under the covers is an almost mindless task, done only out of muscle memory, and he watches her with longing until she returns to him.]

[When she'd gotten his text, she'd been working on a code to do some low level looking around and had been coming up short. Dressed for bed in a pair of panties and a t-shirt, she walks around the bed to crawl back into it, sliding the tablet she's been using onto the nightstand next to her bed. He looks so exhausted laying there and she gives a small sigh before turning out the light.

He'll feel the covers shift slightly before there's a dip in the bed and she speaks quietly even as she moves closer.] Oliver's gone, too.

[Her husband, even if she wasn't his wife. It's not like she's alone, really. She has friends from home - namely Ray - who'll always protect her and help her in ways that she needs it. But it's not Oliver and Felicity pauses in her movements before she curls up against him, sliding her arm over his stomach and leaning up against his side.]

[She speaks, and her words bring along a flood of guilt that he hadn't been anticipating. It had been so easy to place his pain upon her without a second thought, to turn to her for warmth, for comfort while she had been holding in her own suffering.

She speaks, leaning into him and he doesn't hesitate to wrap himself around her, arms encircling her waist and drawing her in close. Doesn't stop himself from shifting, from placing her head upon his chest so she can hear the way his heart beats.]

I am sorry, Felicity. [She may not have been his wife, but he was her husband and the pain of that loss was real, a weight that had fallen onto her that would never fade away.]

DUPLICITY → CONTACT

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