Blood and Water (♠ Blue Suit ♠)

Tome took Joachim from her in time for her to fall, and was stuck between the continued holding of said dragon, and catching her. He compromised, holding Joachim in one arm and putting the other around Mia, and it took a second or two for the situation to register in his mind. Namely, the fact that her chest was pressed against his arm where he held the dragon between them.


There was a long silence.


". . . G . . . Got your feet again?" He managed, quietly and carefully, after a moment, head turned away. "Ill close my eyes, and you can get back in the bath, so I can walk out." This so wasnt happening. He had no experience with these sorts of situations!


((Gtg to work bye!))
 
Mia felt herself starting to panic and she, quite helplessly raised her head so as to look at his face. Tome's head turned away, surely to give her some 'privacy', it took her a couple of seconds or so after he spoke to quickly slip out of his grip and, picking up her towel in the process, she went around him to position herself behind him.


For a brief moment, she pressed her forehead shyly against his back before she raised her hands and used them to push him gently out of the bathroom "I'm almost done" She whispered after she was sure that he was completely out of the bathroom and closing the door behind his back. With still innocent flushed face, Mia made her way back to the tub, careful not to be a klutz and slip again, and leaving the towel aside, she got inside again, immersing her complete head on water.
 
Mia's skin wasnt so warm for it to be plausible, but her touch burned where it pressed against his back, and he found himself not breathing entirely fit as he closed the door behind him. He sat on the bed with


Joachim, stroking the little dragon to comfort him, and settled himself. When he felt somewhat normal again, he tried to analyze the feeling rather than just dismiss it as always. He didnt know what to think. He was trying to change, trying to be better for her and not be such an emotionless wall, but . . . He just didnt know how to be normal.
 
Mia gave herself one last look on the mirror, holding the dirty clothes with one hand as she used the other to absently run her fingers along her dripping wet hair. With a sigh and a last encouraging nod of herself, she quietly made her way to the door and as silently slipped outside, her head turned to the side "I cleaned up the mess a bit" And her voice came out incredibly calm and unusually casual "I'll get Joachim to sleep"


All perfect and normal, well partly... if it wasn't for the fact that she was laying her gaze on anything other than him. If there was one thing she was afraid of, was of him of not being able to be by her side. That... Well that was one of the greatest fears that came with the fact that this feeling was quickly growing on her chest.


Approaching Tome with her sight fixed on the little dragons on his arms, she gave him her better 'casual' smile "Sorry for the wait" She commented. It hadn't been the situation itself that had her acting that way... more like his reaction to it, it made her think he was troubled... and the only man that had been troubled by something years ago had left her and her mother.
 
Something felt off. He watched as Mia came into the room, in his peripheral from where he sat on the floor, and finally looked at her when she got close to him, frowning a little. It wasnt as if she would notice. She wouldn't look him in the eye. Was she mad at him? Had he done wrong, following her into the bathroom when she screamed? Should he have backed out immediately?


"A-All right." Tome said, quietly. He handed Joachim to her and got to his feet. "Ill try to be quiet for him."


He grabbed some of his clothes and went into the bathroom, washing himself off a bit before getting into the tub, so as not to leave dirt rings behind. He lingered more than usual, thinking still, and kept an ear out just in case anything happened while he luxuriated for the first time in years.
 

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"Ok" And finally, when she was sure he wouldn't get a look of her face, she raised her head a bit so as to take a glimpse of him as he entered the room. Had she been wrong? Had she been an idiot, as she had feared, to harbor an inevitable small hope of them growing close? Of him... loving her? Because it felt that way, it felt that they hadn't grown closer at all, on the contrary, they seemed so so far.


Placing Joachim gently on the bed, Mia crawled on top of it before turning and leaning her back against the wooden headboard. Why had that to be so damn complicated? He did know about her feelings by now, right? Hadn't she been absolutely clear back then when she kissed him? Did he not want her? Ah... Her heart ached if she thought about it like that. Also... What if he saw her scar? That scar she hated so much, so much.


And just like that, she couldn't help it but fill her heart with horrible and pessimistic thoughts and memories. So, raising her legs to her chest and hiding her face with her arms, while one of her hands rested against her hair, she stared absently to the side. Never would've she believed that such a thing would start to be such an important part of herself. Such a feeling that she was just learning... That could take her to heaven and to hell in the blink of an eye. Joachim was still by her side, lazily laying on top of the bed and against her legs.
 
When Tome emerged, it was without sound. He had gotten into those habits long ago, entering and leaving rooms in silence so as not to alert foes, or wake Fawn. He hadn't noticed that he was 'sneaking', then, when he saw how Mia was sitting on the bed - vulnerable, forlorn, in pain. He'd been taught to read body language, during his learning years, and that much was clear, sitting there and screaming at him so loud he imagined it might hurt his eyes should he look at it any longer.


So he didn't.


He sat on the bed next to her instead, put his arms around her and sat on his knees with Joachim safely between his legs, held her close and slid his fingers over hers into her hair. He had never known what upset Fawn, in the moment, and whenever there was a possibility it was his fault he would always hold her, always beg her for forgiveness until she forgave him or told him what the real problem was. He didn't know if it would work the same, but he couldn't just sit back and let her slip through his fingers. That was a sort of pain he still had not learned to deal with.


"I'm sorry." He said, with just a hint of desperation in his voice, and tucked her head under his chin, holding her with gentle but caring arms. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I didn't see anything." That was a bald faced lie because he'd seen everything there was to see, just - he hadn't been trying to, and it was different for him; he had never been so sensitive about nudity as others, and it didn't bother him, so he sometimes had trouble understanding people in that area as well. "Don't be angry. Please, don't be upset. Only tell me how I can atone." He would let her see him as he had seen her, if that was what it took.
 
Mia had failed to notice Tome coming out of the bathroom until his arms were gently wrapped around her, and even then she couldn't believe it. Suddenly, it was not her and her thoughts alone, there was him and his hand on top of her own and her hair, there was even her head tucked under his chin and her body so close to his that she even felt her breathing stopping just to start again once she heard him apologizing.


She remained quiet through his entire short speech, and even after he was done with it she couldn't utter a word, nor move because she couldn't simply sort her thoughts out. First she felt her eyes filling with tears before she was able to move and to actually think, then the hand that had been frozen against her stomach raised slowly just to find its way to Tome's back.


She was not angry! She could never be! It had been her fault after all, her entire fault. Her lips quivered and she had to breathe in and out before she could actually get any words out "I'm not angry" And her voice came out as soft and low "I'm not angry" She repeated and moved her head a bit to bury her face on his shoulder, being it that it was the only thing she could say at the moment without blurting out her real feelings, the ones that she was so desperately trying to avoid saying.
 
Tome shifted a little to accommodate her new position, and was grateful when Joachim rolled out from under him to curl around his feet instead. Tome held Mia close still, letting her hold tight to him, as tight as she wanted, even though her fingers occasionally pressed into old scars that gave a twinge of pain that wasnt really there. Phantoms of times past.


"You can be upset if you want to." He pushed. "You can be angry. It's all right. I understand." Because, Mia was a bit like Fawn, sometimes. Neither of them had ever liked it when he heaped reproach on his own shoulders - they had both actively protested that, in fact, which was what he was counting on to try and find out what was actually wrong. "Please, just forgive me. You have every right - I should never have come in at such a time, I - I am truly . . . truly terrible . . . at everything, even when I try. . . I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He didnt know how else to get her to speak to him, without getting her almost-angry or fully angry with him first.
 
Mia's brows furrowed when Tome kept on apologizing, even more when he spoke the words 'truly terrible'. She shook her head again, but didn't lift her face off his shoulder "Don't apologize" And her complain came out as muffled. She couldn't have him saying those things about himself and she wouldn't be 'forgiving' him because that'd mean he had to apologize to begin with and there was no reason for him to do so.


Her fingers curled a bit on his back and she pressed herself a bit tighter against him. "Don't. You came in because I yelled... You worried" And he always did, he cared for her, in a way gave her a type of love she had always longed for, he gave her so much, that she couldn't possibly know what could she ever give in return "...I love..." And she didn't get to finish that because she caught herself in time to stop, her heart was pounding, literally hammering against her chest and she knew that it was strong enough to be felt.
 
There was a very long list of things Tome could be very sure she was not about to say. He could not, however, discount his own name from the list. Because . . . Because he'd heard her, what felt like so long ago, having a conversation with a barely hatched dragon that he was never supposed to hear. He felt lost and unsure and he wanted to ask someone to help him figure out what to do. But he couldn't. There was no one to tell him what he should or should not do anymore, and that thought was perhaps more terrifying than some of the things he had been told to do.


He had, many times, leapt without looking on someone else's orders. It was time he do the same for himself, no matter the fall that undoubtedly awaited him.


". . . I love you." He said, in a voice quieter and weaker than he thought he may have ever used before, beyond the few days after Fawn had been killed. Because he did. He loved her as strongly as he had loved his baby sister, the only ever person he had had to bond with in that way. Perhaps he even loved her more than that, but it was different and hard to tell. He didnt know what he was doing, or what would happen next, and it was terrifying, but he would not let her continue to feel the pain she so obviously felt. If he got to have that pain instead, and she were better, he would accept it, and suffer on her behalf. Suffering was something he was intimately acquainted with, and it was something he didnt want her to know as he did.
 
". . . I love you." He hadn't... Mia's grip on Tome's back weakened while her posture itself stiffened. She... couldn't believe it. Those words had not left his mouth. She hadn't heard it she... she... she hadn't imagined them. "Ah.." The tears welled up and she just couldn't stop them, she simply couldn't and her mind so stubbornly refused to believe in some words that she knew would be her fall if proved to be wrong.


As such, she didn't speak, the words chocked on her throat and she didn't even know what those words were. "No.." And her voice came out as a hushed whisper. She shook her head and quickly, almost desperately, slid both of her hands to Tome's chest and pushed him away gently yet firmly "You couldn't..." She couldn't hide them, the tears that were streaming down her cheeks and staining them "You can't say those words" Her voice was shaky and she couldn't even maintain her eyes fully open as she blinked once or twice to stop the damned tears.


It was denial, absolute denial, she was afraid, so afraid of those words "You can't... " But what if he could? Why was she so against about it? Why was it so hard to understand herself on that crucial moment "You... You don't have to... If you don't... I love you" And even if she was feeling as if she'd choke, those words took a weight off her chest. With a slow movement she tugged on Tome's shirt. It was enough just to take a look of his eyes and her own widened.


She lifted one of her hands to her face to cover her mouth "You do?" And her voice came out as breathless "Oh my God, you do" Slowly, her hand lowered and just as slowly the most warm and happy smile crept over her lips "I-I love you too... Oh Tome, I really do love you too" Each time she said it, she felt how her chest got lighter and lighter. She didn't even know when but she was suddenly hugging him again "I love you too" And she couldn't stop a shaky chuckle to leave her mouth.


She knew there was a possibility, a highly likely possibility that he didn't mean the same 'love' as her, but she didn't care, right now she didn't care. As long as he loved her... she didn't care if it wasn't the way she did... She couldn't care right now. Even if that'd be devastating later, it gave her pure bliss and peace right now.
 
No.


A blade in his gut. He'd felt that before - he knew what that felt like, and this felt an awful lot like that. It was funny, really, how much one word could feel like the overwhelming crush of pressure down on his shoulders and chest and lungs - it felt like drowning, and he couldn't swim back up if there was no water at all.


When she pushed him, he fell back onto a hand, conscious of Joachim still but sagging, hurt and confusion and loss filtering into his expression just the tiniest bit before he closed that part of himself off and refused to let anyone see, not even her. You cant. He felt like throwing up.


She pulled on him, tried to tug him closer and put her arms around him, like she wouldn't let go. But it felt too much like he couldn't breathe, and any words that followed hard.y took the edge off. He stayed stiff in the embrace until the moment he pushed her away by her shoulders, shifted his weight up and back until he could step over Joachim and down onto the ground, looking at her with just a slight widening of the eyes his only expression that betrayed anything was wrong.


"Can't. . ." His fingers curled in loose, helpless fists at his side, and he fought to keep his expression even. "Why can't I?" He looked at her, a hurt registering in his eyes only that he couldn't shut away. "Am I so incapable? Am I - Am I so unwanted?"


Let's go home. This could be home.


Tell Malia about your dream, she'll love you. She'll want you.


I brought this for you, it's a gift.


You can't love me.


All those things she'd tried to give to him or do for him and . . . for nothing? Just be taken away by that one word? He wanted to turn and run. Escape out the window and never stop running, run until his feet bled and then keep going. "Am I so incapable?" Don't touch me. He felt ill.
 
Oh... That was the only thing that came to mind when he pushed her away and got off the bed. She felt cold and for a moment she realized what of an idiot she had been for allowing herself to grow so vulnerable in front of him. He had dropped it, her heart... no... he hadn't because he seemed to have refused it as soon as he pushed her.


"Am I so incapable? Am I - Am I so unwanted?" Those words didn't even make sense! "Am I so incapable?" Suddenly everything was wrong and she couldn't understand why. "What? No!" She felt puzzled and she too felt sick. Where had that even come from? No... No she did know. He had said "Why can't I?" Why did it seem that they were bound to misunderstand each other?


"Tome... Listen to me" Slowly, she carefully crawled off the bed "Listen. I didn't mean you can't... love me. I meant... I meant you couldn't say those words. You don't understand Tome!" And there she was, making a fool out of herself as she grew frustrated, so frustrated "I have dreamt with you saying those words for days! Long days! If you had said them but not meant them I... You could not say them and not mean them... Because I wouldn't be able to handle it... I..." She bit her bottom lip. "Why are these things always so messed up!?" She couldn't even say those words, she couldn't get him to understand her.
 
Tome stepped backwards when she came towards him, hit the back of his legs on the other bed and sat down a little too hard, eyes turned away because there were pins there that he refused to let turn into any sort of moisture that could be called tears. He didn't move away more than that, just didn't look at her, and listened even though his head was starting to hurt, his jaw clenched too tight. His brow furrow a bit, muscles shaking slightly from the tense way he held them.


Why could he not say he loved her? What was so wrong with that? Had he not always told her the truth? Whether it was scary or would anger her, he had always told her. He'd told her at first that he didnt care for her, had told her when it would be dangerous for them, in their travels, had said as much that he would beat the man that was her father if she said she wanted him to.


"Wh-Why can I not mean what I say?" His palms smacked against his forehead and his fingers gripped too tight at his hair because he understood that sort of pain and it was grounding. "Am I so incapable of truth or of love that I cannot possibly mean it?" It hurt too much. He just wanted to go curl up in the tub again, make the water so hot it burned his skin and stay there until it felt like ice. "I speak plainly - I have always spoken plainly! Why can you not just do the same!"


He bit down on his own lip, the pressure inching towards drawing blood, and tried not to just run away. He had to hear it first. He had to hear her tell him she wanted no part of his so-called 'love' that he couldn't possibly mean, so he could leave with good conscience. Could be driven from his newly found mother and the baby that depended on him and perhaps not let it eat away at his soul so jarringly as it should. He had to hear it, or his heart wouldn't believe. If he could hear her say those words, he could let it break, and let it struggle to mend crooked and hideous as the rest of him rather than sit here in this limbo of uncertainty. Was that the best he could hope for? Was he so unworthy?


The answer had always been Yes.
 
Mia was speechless for a moment because he was right, he was right and it had been her fault. A sigh left her lips and she fell back on the bed, her hands shakily running through her hair. "Yeah, you're right, I'll be clear" She said and as in a nervous gesture she ran her hands up and down over and over again.


"No, I didn't mean for it to be taken as if you're incapable of truth or of love. The reason for me saying that was..." She had to take a deep breath again "Tome, I do love you and believe you're capable of doing the same, perfectly capable" She did believe that and she had to look up at him to show him she meant it. How could she not be? He had showed her nothing more than care lately, nothing more than that "But I... I was scared. I know you're honest but I'm insecure, I feel insecure all the time. I had forbidden myself of hoping that you'd love me back not because of you but because of me, what possibly could you like about me?" Her eyes closed for a moment as she tried to arrange her ideas.


"Truth is, I hoped all along and it hurt each time I thought you wouldn't come to love me and that you'd find someone else and that I'd have to be there, because I swore I'd always be there with you and because far more painful than seeing you with someone else would be not seeing you again. The only man I have loved in my entire life left my mom and me, and this kind of love is so new... so different that I don't know what to do with it" Her eyes pried open, the tears begging to come out again "I was wrong, but I was blinded by fear of harboring any more hope. I can't see a life if you're not there anymore, I simply can't... So when you said you loved me I freaked out because I was too afraid of taking those words and hoping, I forgot how honest you were, maybe it was just my way of stupidly trying to protect myself of getting hurt, because I know you Tome, I know you wouldn't hurt me, not the you right now"


Mia had to press her fists against her eyes as they got more and more watery "Forgive me. I know it is my fault, forgive me" Finish it, finish it come on "I know you meant them, I-I simply was too stupid so as to think you maybe didn't because... because I'm scared, I'm scared you will realize there's no reason to love me and will hate me. Please don't hate me" Her voice was weak and pathetically begging, something she hated but couldn't stop by now.
 
Tome didnt know what to do. It was all very confusing, and he still felt lingering pain and sickness, but he made himself focus through it because he'd gotten used to doing that, as he grew up. He listened to her, and he struggled to understand though he was ill equipped. He could see pain, and he could understand pain, and the struggle she had with deciphering what she felt, as if parts of her heart mirrored his.


". . . I don't . . ." He shook his head slowly. "It's new for me . . . as new as it is for you. . . Maybe more so." He'd never had much family to love, and he had little experience with people in general. "But we can learn together, if we must. We may both of us stumble and fall, but we will always stand because . . . because I won't live without you any more than you say you will without me."


". . . You're beautiful." He said after a long pause, even though it made his cheeks a little pink, because he wasnt one to notice such things, never mind say them out loud, but this wasnt about him, it was about her, about trying to convince her of her worth as she had tried to convince him more than once of his. "You're smarter than your past has tried to let you be and you're strong. Stronger than I could ever be." He shook his head faintly. "You tolerate me, and you try to help me when I don't deserve it. . . If not for you, I wouldn't be alive." He was certain that, had she not come for him, he would have stayed with his sister's body until he died of thirst.


His fingers curled tight in the bedspread and he finally got back up, moved over to where she sat and pulled her into his lap as he sat down there, wrapped her up tight in his arms and closed his eyes. "I can't see anything I shouldn't love. . . Not anywhere."
 
There it was again... so easily giving her pain, so effortlessly giving her happiness. Mia could just remain quiet as her heart filled with nothing but warmness at his words. Somewhat, Mia had always lived with a sense of unworthiness on her own way, unwanted by her father, becoming a slave and treated as nothing but trash, even less than that. And there it was Tome, who hadn't been any different from them at the beginning but was treating her with so much care and treasuring her with so much... love right now. Could she really, and finally, allow herself to believe in it now? Would he receive her heart now?


Quietly, she hid her face into the crook of his neck at the same time she softly wrapped both of her arms loosely around him and gripping as gently his shirt "I love you, I have done so for a while" She said silently, because she wanted to say it one more time, not to win an argument, but for the sake of something she had been wanting to reveal for quite a while but had held back up until now.


She wanted to try, she wanted to learn by his side because it could've never been someone else. Perhaps everything that had happened up until now had been leading her there all along, she knew as he said that they could stumble and fall, but as long as they had each other they could stand, be back and strong. Both of them, together. They would be happy together, with little Joachim by their sides as well, of course. If it had finally come to this, it was just the beginning for them as well, the beginning to it all.
 
((My feels DX))


Tome nodded and held her close, opening his eyes when Joachim whined. The little dragon crawled into the space on Mia's legs he could reach and curled up there touching them both, and it felt like family in a way he'd never got to have before. It felt like home.


Tome nodded a little, keeping as much of her in his arms as he could, and leaned his cheek atop her head. "I love you, Mia. I love you both. . . You're all I need." He wished for his mother, now that he had her, but he hardly knew her, and he knew that he could stand having to leave her more than he could stand losing the thin, strong girl in his arms.


This could be home now, and this could be family. Maybe that was all he'd ever wanted, all he'd never let himself hope for because he could never have. Maybe he got to have that now. And maybe . . . just maybe . . . he knew who had brought it all to him, even if she were no longer here.
 
Being in Tome's arms and having Joachim on her lap was indeed everything she could ever need, both of her guys. She slipped one of her hands to the little dragon and caressed him softly as she kept her other arm around Tome. She wanted to stay like that, forever if she was allowed too. When he told her he loved her in response, she felt like crying again, if only because of pure crystal clear happiness.


And then, a bit of shyly actually, she pulled her head back a little and gave him the tiniest gentle peck on the lips before she rested her head on his shoulder again "It's the same with us" She replied contently as she allowed for her eyelids to fall into a peaceful gesture.
 
Tome flushed just slightly at the kiss, not because of the action itself but really the meaning behind it. He shifted up the bed a bit until he could lay Mia gently down with her head on a pillow and Joachim on her stomach. Tome curled up against her side, pressed up to and slightly around her, and arm over her stomach that Joachim stretched out to lay along. It was comfortable and warm and Home, and he felt content.


"Goodnight, Mia." He whispered softly, and leaned his head against hers to close his eyes.


((I'm trying to think of what we can have happen next. Maybe we can skip to when Joachim's starting to learn to fly? And they could find that one kid I think I talked about a long time ago but can't upload the picture for until I get my laptop later lol he was a little dread and he had a clover in his ands or something, if you remember at all))
 
(Yeah, I think we can time skip to that. But I don't remember about the kid though, sorry :c Who was he again?)


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