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Outside, the afternoon is steeped in sleets of gray, a steady sheet of water sliding against the windows, a swell of sound that rises whenever the wind picks up and smashes the rain against roofs and walls with something of a vengeance.
Inside, you've stopped your pacing, bored with your rounds, the place too small to satisfy your hunger for movement for any length of time. Too many obstacles in your way; the table with its mismatching chairs, the jut of the fireplace, the two narrow cots on opposite sides of the room.
You relegate yourself to stillness instead, stand by the window and watch as the world is drenched in a downpour that swallows all light, drawing a blur over the street down below, the crowded housing pressing in from all sides. Hiding from you the buzz of the city, the incessant bustle of people hurrying this way and that, darting and weaving and going about the mundane routines of their everyday lives.
It's been a few weeks since you've last had cause to mingle with them, an anonymous face in the swim of the crowd, one among many, a man with a purpose, a contribution to make. Other than finding a way back home.
Not much work to be found for a man with a prize on his head.
In a god-forsaken colony riddled with a lethal plague, people are more forgiving of someone with medical skills to put to much needed use. Willing to turn a blind eye to a bounty that just won't compare to a child brought back from the brink of death. And so most days, Katrina is the one to earn your bread. And milk, and butter, and all the scraps her clients can dispense with.
She keeps you fed, and you keep her company, and most of the time, the balance evens out to a degree that doesn't aggravate you too much.
You've never had to think of yourself as baggage before.
The stairs creak under the soles of her boots, the softness of her tread announcing her return a little sooner than you thought. The rap of her knock a courtesy you've long since agreed on, way back when you first decided to stick together.
You turn to watch her slip in through the door, throwing off her oilskin cloak with a shiver and a flash of pure disgust on her face.
"Lorca," she says, by way of a greeting, and you've learned early on to discern her mood from what little she chooses to fit into the sound of your name. Tired, defeated, and somewhat resentful.
Angry at herself, or so you glean from the tightness of her posture, the taut lines framing her mouth and eyes.
"I'm glad you're home early," you say, and it's been lonely without you, you don't. Her shoulders slump with the softness of your voice, weary and sad, and as she moves past you can see the angry burn of the scar on her face, the thin, sharp line that runs from the bridge of her nose all over the width of her cheek.
Livid and red where it just barely grazes the inner corner of her eye, and she must have rubbed at it, agitated to the point where she couldn't contain the small, subconscious quirk.
"I've brought dinner," she says, and your ears catch at the roughness of her voice. Upset, unwilling to share, unable, and your stomach churns with it while you set the table.
There's a sheen of moisture on her face, her skin rosy and glistening with it, and you can't help wondering if there isn't more to it than just the weather leaving its traces on her.
"Join me," you say, as much of an invitation as she'll be willing to accept, and you smile when she sits down with you, the smallest possible of victories.
"I'm not hungry," and you've expected as much from the depth of her silence, the deliberate lack of her answering smile.
These past few weeks, she's grown tired and thin, less than she should be, and this, too, makes you want to hold on.
Makes you memorize the shape and lines and angles of her body whenever you think she might not notice, surreptitiously checking for signs of the disease spreading in her wiry frame.
The thought clogs up your throat, a painful lump of don't let it happen, and you wash it down with a gulp of water so it can fester in your stomach when you lie awake in the middle of the night.
She watches you eat, and you glance at her hands, the rub of her fingers over the edge of the table, back forth back stop as she fights the irrepressible tug of the restlessness that just won't stay subject to her control.
Some part of her coiled tight, shut hard around whatever it is that's eating away at her, leaving her tense and prickly and harshly quiet.
Not a crack for you to slip in, start a conversation, and maybe coax out her appetite after all.
Leaving you alone with your thoughts, the inaccessible sight of her, and even while you fight not to stare, your mind's running wild with ways of making her open up to you.
Of finally having her trust you enough.
You've never shown her anything but total honesty, even though there's one thing that in hindsight, you should've omitted to make things a little easier between you.
But then, she'd asked, a shrewd look in her eyes as she inquired about her other self, at a time when the two of you had been less than you are now.
Did you love her? Do you?
Her question giving away so much more than she seemed to be aware of.
It's a truth you regret, now, if only because it's caused her chagrin where there needn't have been any. Giving her the impression of being no more than your second choice, a pale surrogate for what you really desire.
If you can't be with the one you love.
It's a concept you abhor, an idea that, despite your best efforts, you can't seem to chase from the stubborn recesses of her mind.
And it angers you, that she should think you capable of using her in such a manner. That it makes her keep herself at a distance, there but apart, disallowing the both of you from having this partnership be more than a hardship, a tiresome burden to struggle with for months and months.
With borrowed moments of intimacy that you have to wring from her every single time, hours of respite that you've come to crave, that you will take wherever she's willing to let you have them.
No more than an arrangement, necessity sleeping with convenience, and it's tearing you up, one day at a time.
Not to mention those nights, an ache slanting through you when she rises from your cot, your sweat still drying on her skin. Like she can't get away from you fast enough. Like you might take too much from her if she stays close for too long.
Like you can't be trusted with anything more than just the very surface of her.
You won't fall asleep, then, the night a pitch of blackness around you, and you can hear her breathe on the other side of the room, remote, aloof, so very far away.
He used me for as long as it suited him. And when he was done, he never bothered to look at me twice.
An angry confession slipped from her, an admission she'd just as soon taken back if only she could have. A part of her revealed that she never meant for you to see.
Her truths kept jealously to herself, guarded and safe, so you won't find any purchase to hold on to.
But you're not him, and you've looked at her often as of late, no matter that she's convinced herself it's someone else you see.
And you're doing so now, must have done for a while, because there's a frown on her face, a steep line of displeasure sharp between her brows, and she pushes her chair back with a terrible force and a creak that almost makes you flinch. She rises quickly, fluid with a surge of emotion that you're sure she doesn't want you to see.
No matter that perhaps, she needs you to.
"Trina."
The way you say it, with the first syllable of her name just barely swallowed, never fails to make her mellow, make her soft, because this belongs to her, and her alone.
It gives her pause, makes her stop, and you don't waste any time catching up with her.
"Let's fuck," you say as you step close from behind, undaunted by the rigid line of her shoulders. She's more amenable to your suggestion than she looks to be, and you sigh with the slow slide of her hand on your thigh.
Some days, it feels like she's merely accommodating you. Separate and distant, even with the sweaty heat of her skin plastered over yours. Lost in a memory that has nothing to do with you, with this, that will only serve to make you fuck her harder, will have her remove herself from the cling of your embrace that much sooner.
Tonight, her touch is different, indulgent and halting, and you will make this last, wear her out until she forgets to make her escape.
She's letting you go slow, doesn't rush you, doesn't give the impression of this being something she wants, but only if she gets to have it be over with as fast as she can.
You rub at the downy hair on the back of her neck, have it tickle your lips as you kiss her lightly, your fingers busy undoing the knot of her hair. The long strands flowing over your hands, the heat of your face, and you revel in it, the silk-soft slide of it as she writhes in your arms.
Getting her naked is something to be savored, each garment removed with a reverent slowness, the planes of her skin relearned with a vigor that leaves you breathless and painfully hard.
It matters little that she strips you much faster, doesn't linger and hover and brush her mouth over yours like you want her to.
You're content to enjoy the eagerness of her hands on your back, the pliant bend of her lips under your kiss, the flash of desire in her eyes as you move to pin her under your weight.
She rests her hand on that spot over your waist, presses her fingers in, and you arch into her touch, mad for it, that one solitary point of contact she creates for you to hold on to. An intimacy she's comfortable with, a glimpse of everything she won't let you see, not even when she's coming apart under the slow, diligent build of your seduction.
You make her come with deep, urgent strokes, your mouth at rest at the corner of her lips, and she sighs for you as she shakes through her climax, brushes her hand over the small of your back, and you spill yourself with a force that leaves you trembling, aching to push yourself even closer, deeper, all the way in.
It's over too soon, and you bend over her with a hunger that no amount of fucking will ever acquiesce, a desire to hold her and have her mouth fall open under the intensity of your kiss.
And she's vulnerable in her afterglow, lets you slide your mouth over her neck, the rush of her pulse, the sweet, yielding curve of her lips.
Stays with you for longer than she ever has, still in your arms, until suddenly she isn't, and you won't see her flee from you, from this, even one more time.
You take a hold of her wrist, non too lightly, so that if she really wants to break free, she'll have to make a struggle of it.
"Let me go," she says, roughly, her arm stiff and hard with tension, her voice brittle with it.
"No," you say, rubbing your thumb over the incredible softness on the inside of her wrist. Tender, and her mouth twists with it, angry-scared, and she tugs, and then she folds, all of her, inside and out, and she sags back down next to you.
"I'm not yours," she says, harshly, with her eyes closed, her fingers tight and hard and bruising on your arm. You cover the unforgiving curl of her hand with the warm weight of yours, holding on, your fingers working themselves into the spaces between hers.
Mine, if only she wants to listen to it.
"I've thought about walking away. All the time, in the beginning. But every day, I've stayed." You kiss the hard line of her mouth, linger over it until her lips grow soft for you. “I'm not leaving, Trina. I'm never going to look the other way.”
And for the first time, she settles, quiet and still and soft in your arms. Pondering to stay.
Willing to take the risk of trusting you with more than the bare bones of a shared existence.
"Tell me what happened," you murmur over the rush of her breath, the loud-hard rap of your pulse in your ears. “Something upset you.”
She tenses against you, her body small and hard, but she makes no move away from you. If anything, she's slipping the tiniest bit closer with her next breath out.
"I lost a little girl today. She was so small. So quiet and brave, right up until her very last breath. And her mother couldn't stop crying. Wouldn't let go of her. I fought so hard not to lose her. So hard, Gabriel." Another first, because up until now, she's never once used your given name. Avoided it to the point where you couldn't imagine anymore how lovely it would sound. Even like this, wound tight with her pain. "I keep losing them. So many. I can't go on. I can't. No more."
"Yeah, you can. You've saved so many, Trina. More than you've lost. You'll go on, because without you, what chance do they have left? No one else cares. But you do. You keep fighting. You're strong that way."
She peels herself free from your grasp, sits up to look at you with that frown on her face.
“You don't know me.”
“Oh, yeah?” You follow suit, resting your hand on the bend of her knee, rubbing at the warmth of her skin. “You think you can live with someone for as long as we have, and not get to know them far better than they think? You think your silence told me nothing? The look on your face when you came home after another long night spent in your clinic? The way you would sit with me at that table for hours on end while I was busy poring over the mess that is my research? Well, think again.”
You take a hold of her face to kiss her, harder than you've ever dared, and don't stop until she's gasping for breath, her fingers sliding over the arch of your shoulder. And you stare at her face, the wet-lush shine of her mouth, the line of her scar, the sheen of doubt lurking in her eyes.
"Don't look at me like that,” she says, quiet as a whisper, a question somewhere in the lilt of her voice.
"Like what?"
"Like you see her."
"I know exactly who I see. I see you." And you trace the length of her scar with the tip of your finger, up, down, up again, deliberately, and she doesn't flinch, doesn't waver, too strong to hide. Too proud.
Too hopeful.
And so, for the first time in over a year, are you.
Whether or not you'll find your way back.