I feel a flush of embarrassment bloom across my cheeks at the mention of this. It’s a memory I can’t look back on without cringing. Five years old, and I confessed my love for him. Five.
“Yes.”
“Hmm.”
For a moment, we watch Uncle Warrose and my mom talk at the opening of the cave. He’s so young here. There is no white in his beard or dark hair. No frown and smile wrinkles creased over select places on his face.
“Can we talk about what happened in the asylum?” Niklaus readjusts his legs next to me.
I shrug.
“I know it’s low on our priority list…but I don’t know how to act around you after it happened. I’m confused.”
I pull a wool blanket tighter around my shoulders. “Which part is confusing you?”
“All of it. The treatments. What Apple May did to us. We did what we had to do, I know that, but fuck…” He clenches his fists and opens his mouth to add something but decides against it as he attempts to tone down his temper.
“We did do what we had to do.” I stare back at him without blinking. “And it’s a good thing we’re no longer patients, because we don’t have to pretend to be husband and wife anymore.”
Niklaus lifts his chin to look down at me with a gaze showing more confusion than before he decided to bring this topic up. “No, I guess we don’t.”
“I can forget about touching each other because we wereforcedto if you can…”
His Adam’s apple shifts, and he nods while looking away.
“And if you ever use anything that happened in that asylum to humiliate, degrade, or bully me when we finally get home…I’ll fucking destroy you.” The quick spark of anger and hatred dissolves as soon as I see the hurt burn in his eyes.
“You think I would do that? Sapphire, we were emotionally, physically, and sexually abused in that place. I’d die before I weaponized that.” That hurt modifies into shame because he can remember as well as I can why I have to put my guard up so quicky. But as expected, that shame disintegrates into apathy. “We’re better off forgetting then.”
Mabel Rose.
Wood-carved figurine.
Dorn Leviat.
Disrespecting my father’s name.
Pushed in the creek.
Milk dumped down my back.
My father’s picture burned on my desk.
Vandalism.
Rumors.
To my surprise, it’s almost difficult to recall his sins toward me after everything we’ve been through. Not just because of the memory gaps from the electroshock therapy. But because there were moments when he’s all I had, and I’m all he had. I grasped at anything, any bit of light in the pit of hell. It was Niklaus. He was there. He was a warm body. That’s all. I swore I’d never let go of this hate for him. Every time he’d made me cry. I swore it to myself.
But right now, I’m too tired and sick to revel in a grudge.
Right now, I need to sleep. I need an ally. It takes too much energy to hate someone as much as I’ve hated him. I can resume when I’m feeling like myself again.
“Let’s sleep while we have the protection of my parents right now, okay?” I finally say.
Niklaus stares at the fire a moment longer, pushing away his clean plate, and adjusting our pelt of furs to sleep on. As I snuggle into the heavy blankets, the soreness in my muscles can finally melt and skitter away from the constant tension in my bones. My eyes fall shut, throbbing and dry from the large amounts of tears I’ve shed lately. My breathing stretches and deepens in its soft rhythm.
And I wish I could stay here forever.
