Sophie spread three coloring books across the small table like she was dealing tarot cards—each one a different window into possible peace. Garden scenes, geometric patterns, fairy tales. I reached for the geometric one without thinking, drawn to the clean lines and predictable patterns. Structure. Control. Everything inside the lines.
"I used to do mandalas," I said, running my finger over a complex circular pattern. "During residency. Supposed to be meditative, but I turned it into a competition with myself. How perfectly could I shade? How precisely could I match colors?"
"Of course you did." Sophie's smile held no mockery, just recognition. She chose the fairy tale book, opening to a page with a castle surrounded by thorns. "I bet you alphabetized your crayons too."
I looked at the box of sixty-four Crayolas I'd been unconsciously arranging by color gradient. "Spectrum order is more logical than alphabetical."
She laughed, that bright sound that seemed to make the room warmer. We settled into our respective pages, and I tried not to think about how my hands had been covered in blood fourdays ago. Now they held "Cerulean Blue" like it was the most important thing in the world.
Silence wrapped around us, but not the uncomfortable kind that demanded filling. This was the quiet of parallel play, of existing in the same space without needing to perform connection. My breathing slowed to match the rhythm of coloring—in on the downstroke, out on the up. The repetitive motion soothed something in my brain that had been screaming since the moment I'd fled the hospital six months ago.
Sophie worked on her castle in purples and pinks, ignoring conventional color schemes entirely. The thorns became rainbow gradients. The princess in the tower had blue hair. Rules existed to be broken, apparently, at least in her fairy tales.
“So,” she said, “how did you tell Kostya you were a Little?”
"He just knew," I said quietly. "Like he could see it in me before I even admitted it to myself. He gave me rules that first night. When to eat, when to sleep. I should have been terrified—this stranger controlling my life. But it felt like breathing after drowning."
Sophie reached across the table, touched my hand briefly. "Because it wasn't control. It was care."
"It was both," I corrected. "That's what makes it perfect."
We colored in comfortable silence for a few more minutes. I'd finished one section of my mandala, all cool blues and greens, ordered and calm. Sophie had turned her castle into a rainbow explosion that hurt to look at directly.
"He loves you," she said suddenly. "Kostya. I've never seen him like this."
I looked up, meeting her eyes for the first time in twenty minutes. "Like what?"
"Soft," she said simply. "He’s been smiling. Not the terrifying smile he does before breaking someone's kneecaps. A real smile. Nearly gave Nikolai a heart attack."
"He smiles with me," I said, defensive of my dangerous man.
"Exactly." Sophie leaned forward, abandoning her coloring. "That's what I mean. You make him human in a way I don't think he's been in years. Maybe ever. Nikolai says even before everything with their mother, Kostya was always the hardest one. The enforcer. The monster, though he'd never say that to his face."
"He's not a monster," I said automatically.
"No," Sophie agreed. "He's not. But he thought he was. Until you."
I thought about Kostya this morning, promising to come to a pastel nursery because I needed him. The Beast of the Bratva, playing with stuffed animals because his Little needed her Daddy present.
"I don't know how to be what he needs," I admitted. "I'm so broken, Sophie. Six months of running, of hiding, of being terrified every second. What if I'm too damaged? What if my trauma trauma-bonds him into something unhealthy?"
Sophie laughed, but not unkindly. "Maya, honey, we're all trauma-bonded. Every relationship in this life is built on damage and the choice to love anyway. You think I'm mentally healthy? I'm married to a man who orders murders over breakfast and I call him Daddy while coloring princess pictures. We're all fucked up. The trick is finding someone whose damage fits yours."
"Like puzzle pieces," I said, understanding flooding through me. "Broken edges that match."
"Exactly." She picked up her crayon again, adding purple streaks to the sky around her castle. "Besides, you stitched him up in a basement while he was bleeding out. Your entire relationship started with trauma. Might as well lean into it."
Despite everything, I laughed. It felt good, laughing about things that should be horrifying. Finding humor in the darkness we all lived in.
"He's coming at three-thirty," I said. "I wanted him here, but not the whole time. Needed to prove I could do this without him first."
"Good instinct," Sophie said. "It's important to have spaces that are yours, even when you're owned by someone." She said 'owned' so casually, like it was normal. And here, in this sunshine-yellow room with our coloring books, it was. "But having him here at the end? That's perfect. You can show him what you made. Little you showing Daddy your art."
My chest went warm at the image. "Is that silly?"
"Everything about this is silly," Sophie said, gesturing to our entire setup. "That's what makes it perfect. When everything else is life or death, sometimes you need silly. Sometimes you need to show your murder-daddy your coloring and have him tell you it's pretty."
Murder-daddy. I laughed again, harder this time, until tears gathered in my eyes. Sophie joined me, both of us giggling over our childhood coloring books, finding joy in the absurdity of our lives.
