“May I?”

She let out a tiny sigh and nodded. She tried to move to allow him better access, but he pressed a firm hand on her shoulder.

“No, you stay down.” It was no difficulty at all to climb into the bed beside her, though it was slightly more challenging to lay in such a way that they both fit. The nurses had done this on purpose, he thought bitterly. What did they expect him to do with an injured woman? She could barely walk!

She made it easier, and surprised him, but turning and wrapping her arms around him, curled against his chest. She was so hot...he had once found that unsettling, but now all he could think was that she was like the sun, warm and comfortable. He rubbed his thumb in circles over her open skin.

The silence ordinarily would have been comfortable, but the words of the nurses and guards still rang loudly in his head, and he could not shake the conviction that she should be doing something. Crying, screaming, talking...anything. But she just stared ahead, eyes half-closed, ear pressed to his heart.

“Tell...tell me of my name again.” The request sounded silly as soon as he said it, but it was all he could bring himself to say. What else could he say? He could not ask if she was alright...she was not.

He tried to imagine a smile onto her face. “Again?” she murmured, but complied with him nonetheless. She rolled over slightly, hissing in pain as she did so, and traced the characters onto his forearm, touch featherlight. She said his name again in her tongue, soft and breathless and alien.

“You never told me what it means,” he remembered.

“I suppose it translates to fire,” she said. She traced more symbols on his arm, and then gave up and simply stroked his skin. “Not the physical fire...the fire within one.” Her hand slid up his arm to his shoulder, and from his shoulder to the center of his chest. “The soul, I suppose, or the heart. It is said that we live so long because we keep our fire low, so as not to burn it all up.”

She did not speak up again for a long time. They both drifted in and out of sleep . . . and late in the night he awoke to see her standing, or rather leaning, against the window, staring out with eyes that were wide and should have shone with tears.

It is unnatural, even to our kind…

He was slow in getting up, unsure if she had slept uneasily. But she turned to him when he approached and did not turn him away. He wrapped his arms around her and let his chin rest atop her head. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t lean into him either. She was not stiff, but she was not welcoming. He could hear her heart, beating so quickly he could scarcely count the beats. A million questions and comforts came to mind, but none of them came out of his mouth.

“Please...I would not see your fire go out,” he murmured, grasping at straws. “It breaks me to see you like this, smothering yourself. I can’t bear watching the woman I love hidden away like this...and knowing she will not let me help her.”

She stiffened suddenly; he knew she would pull away the second before she did, but he could not have predicted her words, harsh and cold.

“Don’t.”

Confusion and anger struck him immediately, and he struggled to keep them down. She didn’t need that. Not now, not from him. But he could not bear to hear that she didn’t trust him enough to help her, that she didn’t care enough to let him see her heart.

She kept talking before he could reply, and her words struck him to the bone. “Don’t make me feel. Not now. Not again.” The words, heart-wrenching as they were, were spoken in such an emotionless monotone that she may as well have been asking him what was for dinner. “I can’t...not again.”

Anger was replaced almost instantly with pain and pity and affection so bitter that his hands shook when he reached for her. She did not resist him, letting him pull her back into his arms. Her body now molded easily to his, as if by instinct. Her head laid itself against his chest, and he kissed her hair again. He didn’t realize it before, but she was shaking.

“I can’t…” she whispered again.

“I’m right here.” He wasn’t sure what he meant by that, or what he hoped to accomplish by saying it. “I...you won’t be alone in this.”

“I...I can’t do it,” she continued. “Please, I...if I feel this pain again, I will break.”

“I will put you back together,” he promised. The words came easily, without thinking.