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Zandrel

My warrior has known great pain.

Some part of me already knew, but having the confirmation of it stirs something low and dark in the bottom of my soul, something that seeks impossible justice and retribution for her suffering.

But all of that is pointless right now.

There’s no justice to be had for some nameless, faceless Vrosri strike force carrying out orders in a war happening several galaxies from here. There’s no chance for retribution even remotely near my grasp. There’s nothing to do but hold Ros to me and give her what little comfort I can offer.

Because it was there, in Roslyn’s voice, in the way her whole body went still when I touched her scars and asked about how she got them. A pain threaded all the way through her. A pain I recognize.

The scars she carries from someone else’s war, the sense I know she’s tried to make of them, the weight of knowing they never will make sense, not entirely.

In sleep, Roslyn curls even closer to me. She nestles into my embrace, tips her head up to nuzzle against my jaw, and tightens her grip on the arm I have wrapped around her like she’s making sure I don’t leave her.

Fates, I wouldn’t move from this bed for anything in the universe.

As the night grows later and the Eritin moons track their paths through the sky, sleep evades me.

My mind won’t quiet. It’s filled with plans for tomorrow and the echo of everything Roslyn shared with me tonight.

But there’s nothing I can do about any of it now, and that, more than anything, is the most difficult to accept.

The contradiction of it all hounds me into the early morning, when my eyelids finally begin to grow heavy.

I am a being of action.

Of doing, of fixing, of getting to the heart of a matter and tackling it directly.

To rest and offer solace and simply be is not in my nature.

But here, tonight, it’s all I can do.

Here, with Roslyn beside me and my heart slowing to beat in time with hers, there’s nothing for me to do but accept it, difficult as it may be.

When I finally drift off, my last thought is one of wry amusement and disbelief at how easily sleep comes once I finally accept it, once I let it in. This peace, this quiet, this moment of nothing to do and nowhere to be but here, with her, offering the comfort I can.