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It’s a nice day out. The sky is sapphire blue, not a cloud in sight and it’s warm, but not warm enough to explain the sweat running down his back as Sky attempts to do a single set of mobility exercises with his sword.
It shouldn’t be this hard and, two months before, it hadn’t been. Then the school had, literally, collapsed, all of it shaking and Bloom-
He lowers his sword back down, squeezes his eyes shut and reaches up with his left hand to wipe the sweat off his brow. Even if it’s his non-dominant hand and definitely not the one that’s fucked, it still shaking. Badly.
Sky groans, lets his sword fall back down in the grass and collapses sitting down next to it, stretching his right hand in front of him, in an attempt to touch his toes. He used to be able to do this. Now his shoulder burns and the pain is so intense, after he tries to exercise, that he sees little spots before his eyes.
He lets his hand fall next to him on the grass and sighs. He’s made progress from that first day he had woken up, in the middle of the woods with Bloom crumpled under his arm, only to find out his shirt was stiff with dried blood and he couldn’t feel his right hand at all. Out in the woods he hears a shout, but it’s not panicked, it’s frustrated. He’s heard it many times during the last two months.
He gets up with a grunt, struggles to grab the heavy sword on the ground and then makes his way back to the cabin they’ve since called their own. It was abandoned when they found it and during the first day they had hidden in the shed, instead of the cabin, just trying to catch their breath and assess their wounds.
Sky could still see, vividly, the horror that took up Bloom’s features as she saw just how much blood was in his shirt. Her shaky hands undoing his specialist harness and trying to peel the sweater off of him, only to find out it had glued down to the wound and they would need water to even get it off of him, if they didn’t want to risk reopening the whole thing and have Sky lose even more blood.
He drops the sword near the door, wipes his feet on the hard front door mat and then goes straight to the kitchen sink, washing off the sweat from his face and neck, letting the water slip inside his shirt and straight to the jagged ugly scar on his shoulder. Then he washes his hands once more and looks out of the window, to the patch of grass and nothing more, where he had been attempting to exercise.
When under Rosalind’s regimen in Alfea, he hadn’t ever thought he could get tired of doing nothing . However life loves proving him wrong.
Sky hears another faint shout and then loud swearing as Bloom storms towards the cabin. She stops on her tracks when her eyes pause on him, her cheeks red from the straining exercise or embarrassed that she got no progress on her end either. He leans against the sink and offers Bloom a tight lipped smile, “no luck either?”
Her shoulders drop and her face crumples. She puckers her lips in a displeased manner, “not one bit… I couldn’t even light a little branch.”
“It’ll come,” he promises, but the words sound hollow. Sky isn’t sure he wants her to have her powers back. He understands her plight, he does. He understands too well the feeling of uselessness and helplessness, the desperation to be able to do anything for those they’ve accidentally left behind during the blast… But they can’t. He can’t fight and Bloom doesn’t have powers and coming back would just be handing themselves over to be used as leverage against her friends, against Silva and Ri-
Sky’s thoughts are cut short as Bloom wraps her arms around his middle and squeezes him tightly, burying her face in his shirt. He squeezes her back just as tightly and plants a kiss on top of her head. Her hands, resting on his back, are warm, overheated, “It’ll come,” Sky whispers again, kissing her temple.
Bloom pulls back, nods hastily and then runs a hand through her hair. It’s chin length now, she had planted the rusty large scissors in his hand two weeks before and told him to chop it off. He had argued, hesitated, gotten angry at Bloom for even suggesting he hold a sharp object near her throat when his arm still had spasms and he could hardly control his fingers.
Her eyes had burnt into his, aqua not orange, but just as bright and heated.
“You’re not going to hurt me,” she said petulantly, pulling her hair out of the ponytail, “do it.”
It had taken him twice as long as it should have and Bloom had a little nick near her chin from when he got too excited over managing it and ended up scratching her, but Bloom had smiled brightly and shaken her now ginger-bob, “told you… How do I look?”
Beautiful. Lively. Free.
Bloom, now, opens the fridge and then sighs, “we need to go downtown again.”
“I’ll go check the traps-”
“Already did. Tough luck, big guy,” Bloom grins, closes the door with her hip, “We can go after dark, it’ll be fine.”
They’ve gone down to the little village only three times. During one of these Bloom had been all by herself and when she got back with food and the penicillin that Sky desperately needed to break the fever, caused by the hole in his shoulder, he had already worked himself into a panic.
He tagged along during the other two times, as they broke into houses and restaurants, thieves in the night. It was a far cry from Alfea, it had only been two months, but he could already feel bits and pieces of his old personality softening up and melting away like scar tissue. In order to survive here, in order to survive with their own conscience, they had to change, they needed to adapt.
“Come help me,” Bloom calls him, piling up the last of their food on top of the sink. The frozen rabbit they had hunted. His arm mobility could be fucked, but the specialist skills were still there, still drilled in his mind by his fathers’ voices and Bloom was a quick study.
He takes the full piece of meat from her, runs it under the warm water of the tap to soften the frosting, while Bloom starts skillfully chopping away mushrooms they found out were edible through recklessness alone. They’ve managed to grow lettuce - even a child could do that - and are now attempting with carrots and potatoes, in good timing really, because even Sky is getting tired of the birds and rabbits every other day. Bloom’s always been skinny, but she’s all sharp elbows and knees now and it scares him sometimes.
He starts breaking into the piece, removing the meat from the bones, with clumsy and rough movements, making more of a mess than needed, but not once does Bloom offer to help.
It’s sickening how many times under Rosalind’s drills or during Andreas’ suicide missions Sky had fantasized of a life with no war, where he could just exist with the woman he loved. The type of life where they’d cook together and sleep in the same bed and not worry about the other coming back from a mission gone wrong, evil commanders and cruel headmistresses. Now he’s got it all, but they’re both itching to run.
Bloom’s hands brush over his as she takes the now torn apart pieces and dumps it all into a pan. She stops before the oven, hesitates as she glares at the gas stove, then sighs and reaches for the dead lighter they’re using to light it up. Sky pushes her gently to the side, sets out to watch the grilling and Bloom plants inox clamps into his left hand.
He’s getting pretty decent with his left hand.
“I think we should try to find newspapers, cell phones- Anything,” Bloom says, toying with the frayed edges of her top, in order to avoid his eyes, “so we at least know what’s happening in Solaria… It’ll give us a hint about Alfea.”
They had walked through the woods two days before, gone as far as they dared in order to look at it. Part of the whole construction was still down, nothing but rubble even two months after the whole ordeal. They couldn’t see more than that from the hill, not without risking getting closer and setting off an alarm, ending up kidnapped again, so Rosalind could sink her claws in Bloom’s Flame… And if Bloom didn’t have the Flame anymore, as it seemed, then they would have no use for her and-
“I think we’re risking too much, too soon. If even a single person sees us in town and recognizes us…” Sky shakes his head and Bloom pouts, crossing her arms to her chest.
“We need to know something , Sky. It’s a risk, but I’m willing to take it. What if Rosalind fell? What if we’re hiding for nothing?” she doesn’t believe that, Sky knows she doesn’t. Bloom still wakes up screaming, covered in cold sweat. He knows she’s aware Rosalind and the Burned One army and the torture for the Dragon Flame are just around the corner, waiting for her to do something foolish.
“Rosalind didn’t fall, B,” He tugs at the piece of rabbit inside the pan, turns it over, “we’d know.”
“Not hiding here, we wouldn’t,” Bloom pushes, then comes closer. She gets right before him, cups his chin and forces their eyes to meet. Hers are clear and honest, hopeful, “I know… I know we’re a liability now. I know. But I can still fight and you can teach me … And we’re not dead, Sky. As long as we’re not dead, we need to do something.”
She’s right, it sinks through him like ice in his veins. He knows it, he’s known it, it doesn’t make it any easier to hear it out loud. They’ve fought about it before, flip flopping between each side to take. Sometimes it’s Bloom who’s so drawn into herself that he barely can get her out of the bed, Bloom who thinks there’s no hope and they’ve lost the war, lost everything. More often, it’s him… It’s him because they got caught in the South Wing gate because of him.
It was his fault. His soft heart, him wanting to believe his best friend was still inside the cold persona he had taken during Rosalind’s term. Him refusing to really see Riven, him who had told Riven through what gate they’d leave and begged him to come with. It was Sky’s fault the soldiers had surrounded them, that they had tried to execute him in front of Bloom.
All the blood in Bloom’s hands, how her powers had exploded and how the Dragon Flame had burst out of her with such force it had drained her dead, it was all on his shoulders too.
“Alright,” he breathes out, then leans in and rests his forehead against Bloom’s. She presses hers against his, her whole body seems to exhale in relief as he agrees.
“We’ll go tonight,” Bloom says, strongly, then cups his face and kisses him, only to wrinkle her nose mid kiss and pull back, an adorable smile painted on her face, “You need to shave, Sky. Really .”
It’s so unexpected that it causes him to chuckle. He runs his stiff fingers through his auburn beard, which is much fuller than he ever managed to grow before, “I thought you liked it, B?”
She rolls her eyes, “not this long, no,” then her face brightens up, “I’ll shave it for you.”
Sky raises his eyebrows, “If you want me to die that badly, you can just kick me out, Bloom.”
“Drama queen,” Bloom mumbles darkly, turning her back to him and then vanishing inside “their” two rooms only cabin. It’s theirs now, Sky grins at the thought, feeling a weird sense of possessiveness wash over him. They’ve bled in here, they’ve woken up screaming in the uncomfortable bed, they’ve fucked… It’s theirs and if whoever actually owned wanted it back, they’d need to go through them.
Not that it would be too hard, he grunts at the thought and moves the pan from the fire, fills it up with water halfway through and throws in the rest of the ingredients, before putting the pan back on the heat.
Bloom returns with the bottle of cheap hair conditioner they’ve smuggled weeks ago and that’s running low, a razor and a resolute look on her face.
“Sit down,” she bosses him, crouching down in front of the sink to grab a plastic container and filling it up with water too.
“Do you even know how to do it, B?” Sky rolls his eyes, but sits down on the wobbly chair she pulls with her foot. Bloom shrugs, plants all the items on top of the little table where they eat all of their meals.
“It can’t be too hard.”
“Why don’t you just trim it?” He suggests, eyeing the razor wearily, “I’m harder to recognize with the beard, it stays.”
“Coward” Bloom grins, but she nods in agreement and rushes out of the room, only to come back with the same safety-hazard scissors he used on her hair. She attempts to lean over him, then sighs and shoves Sky’s hands off his lap, then straddles him.
“Don’t make me look like a clown,” he warns her, before snapping his mouth shut as he feels the cold metal brush against his neck. Bloom hums, squints as she starts going at it. The hair falls down his neck, tickles his exposed throat and covers the front of his shirt, all while Bloom breathes on his face, noses so close they’re almost touching as she trims the mustache area.
She puts the scissors down, then pats his face, shoves all the little hairs down to his shirt and then presses a kiss over his lips. Sky smiles into the kiss, wraps his good arm around her waist and pulls her closer. Bloom groans, wraps both her arms around his neck and then her fingers go to his hair, tangling into the overgrown golden locks.
She pulls him to her and bites his lower lip, then kisses him again and presses their foreheads together once more, so strongly he thinks it’ll leave a red mark, “We’re going to the town, we’ll get the news and then… Then we’ll help,” Bloom says forcefully, opening her eyes to look at him, “No more hiding.”
He opens his mouth to remind her of her missing powers, his fucked up shoulder, but Bloom shakes her head, glares at him.
“We’re not dead, Sky. We don’t get to hide forever,” she smiles, then her eyes flicker orange for a split second, “I fell in love with a fighter. So we fight.”
So they fight, he agrees, feeling all of her warmth fill him up too. So they fight.