The Fateful Heart 2

Evaline finished wringing most of the excess liquid in her hair, noting how it now smelled to be a mix of basil and chamomile. She smiled up at James and then also grabbed a washcloth, slowly scrubbing it with her soap.

"So we are both cats, then," she commented.

James was getting the spaces between his toes and chuckled.

"Metaphorically, yes, but that is as far as the comparison goes."

Evaline's smile naturally faded as conversation died down since they were more focused on scrubbing themselves now. Unlike James, she decided to scrub top-down, starting with her neck and shoulders, then her arms.

"Does it hurt?" she softly asked after a bout of silence.

James slowed in his movements. He'd moved to his other foot, and scrubbed up his leg - though, for that, he scrubbed blindly underwater.

He glanced down at himself, as if he would be able to see past his shoulders. He couldn't. Everything was hidden underwater, which was both a curse and a blessing. It hadn't helped that he'd practically ripped off his bandages with no caution before jumping into the bath.

It did hurt. It always hurt to some degree.

He tried not to look too grim and kept his face neutral and nodded.

"...Yes," he said quietly.

Evaline pushed her hair aside to attempt to reach her back. She glanced at James, and she knew that look. It was the look of hiding back pain, which at this point, she was starting to recognize well.

She figured he was always in pain, especially this past week. She just didn't want to bring it up.

She thought it was important to talk about, though.

"Always?" she clarified, voice still soft and gentle. "Or just this past week?"

James didn't look up at her, and instead kept his hands busy scrubbing away dirt, sand, and grime.

"This... whole time we've been together, really," he said slowly. "Things from - some things are just finally starting to really heal. But not everything."

Evaline slowed her hand movements for a second, letting James's words soak in. Ever since she discovered the nature of his wounds, she wanted to avoid talking about that and any pain it may have caused him. She couldn't imagine the trauma he felt that day—days, weeks, maybe longer, she didn't know—and she didn't want him to relive it. He wouldn't just be able to relive it through memory; his wounds were a constant reminder that it happened.

Still. They both appeared to break their promise weeks ago. She'd tell him if she went back in time, and he'd tell her when he was in pain. It seemed they both didn't hold up to their side of the bargain, but they had their own reasons. They didn't want to burden the other.

It wasn't a burden, though. Not to her.

"You can tell me," she said after a brief pause, blindly reaching behind to scrub her lower back. "It's okay to tell me if some days are worse than others. I don't want you to do something that will hurt if I can do it instead."

James stopped scrubbing, and let the washcloth float up to the surface, the steam carrying in upwards. He stared at it and thought about all of the forming scars, partially healed and still-healing wounds on his upper body, and how tiring it would be to navigate around them.

So far, while they'd been in the bath, he'd just been ignoring them. But he knew if he wanted to actually get fully clean he'd probably have to step out and take time, where he could see.

He let out a deep sigh.

"I don't want to sound... like I'm complaining," he said quietly.

Evaline suddenly stopped in place and looked over at James, eyes serious.

"James. Telling me your pain level is not complaining. That didn't even cross my mind, and it would never. I just..."

Care about you.

She had realized she was being strangely bold right now. This wasn't like her. But... it felt okay. It felt good to say. Maybe James would think so, too.

She took a deep breath. The once-perpetual anxiety seemed to have disappeared, somehow.

"I care about you," she said quietly, trying to meet his eyes.

James sunk a little deeper into the water. His eyes only flicker over to her before pulling away. Just a minute ago, he had been laughing without a care in the world, and suddenly he felt so exposed again. He knew it was okay. Evaline was trustworthy.

He tried to shut up the voice in his head that kept imagining Evaline getting annoyed with him. Telling him to tough it out, because talking about it wasn't going to make it go away. That wasn't her.

He pinched his eyes shut for a second and took in a deep breath.

I care about you, was hard to receive. Harder than it should've been.

The water level was just below his lips.

"It's just that... I don't want to be babied. I don't want to stop doing things when I can, even if it hurts. I'm hurting all the time. If it's constant then it doesn't matter how much--" he didn't realize how that sounded until it came out, and he felt a wave of shame slam into him.

He crouched down so the water came up to his nose.

Evaline watched James sink lower and lower in shame as he was unable to meet her eyes. A part of her wanted to splash over to him and pull him up, but she decided against it.

She empathized with him. She really did. She knew what it was like to conceal and to keep going, even if you didn't want to. Of course, James shared a different kind of pain than her, but she understood enough to know that it must have been exhausting.

Nye had given her time to heal.

She wanted to repay the gift on to him.

"I won't tell you how you should or shouldn't feel," she said slowly, carefully. "And maybe it doesn't matter to you, but it matters to me. For you to minimize pain, I mean."

James took in another slow breath through his nose, trying to control the buried emotions beating at the walls of his mind. Things he wasn't ready to face or relive yet. He didn't know if he'd ever be.

There was a long pause that followed that was far too long than Evaline deserved. He knew she deserved an answer, he just couldn't figure out what to say. He felt like the hell of that week - being trapped with Butch and Reed and Oliver - was just replaying somewhere, in the background of his mind, and even though he couldn't access it, it still made his skin crawl, and he didn't know how to shake it.

Slowly, he lifted his head and neck from the water but still didn't meet Evaline's eyes. He did turn in her direction, though.

"Thank you for caring," he said carefully, knowing that the words didn't sound genuine as they came out. He wished he could focus on what he wanted to say, but he felt like the cloud over his mind was coming back with full force, making everything muddled and messy. Like how the steam in the room made everything look a little blurry.

"I'm sorry I just don't know how to respond to these things," he finally said, opting for the truth even if it didn't sound as nice as he normally tried to word things. "Minimizing pain might help me heal faster, but it's not every day that things are unbearable. I can... try to tell you how things - how I feel. I think."

He paused, wishing he didn't feel as empty as he did.

"I'm not sure exactly how to do that."

It was Evaline's turn to be patient and attentive now. She owed it to James. No, actually, not owed. Deserved. He deserved it.

At the back of her mind, it felt surreal to her that she didn't want to shut down, or struggle finding words to say, or want to change topics. The steam was filling her head, like a thick mist. Thoughts were no longer chaotically running around. She felt like she knew the right things to say.

"That's okay," she said, "I understand. And I don't want you to be uncomfortable."

She paused, an old memory resurfacing that had been a playful theme in her life. Maybe sharing the story would help.

Evaline leaned back along the edge of the tub, deciding to finish scrubbing later so she could devote her attention to James.

"You know, you're not the only one who wanted to know when I've gone back in time," she said. "And I didn't know how to express it, either. How to tell others, I mean. It was then suggested to me that I use the phrase 'time is down' as an easy explanation. Like, time's up. But time isn't up, because it hasn't happened yet. So, time's down."

She weakly smiled.

"It worked well for me, and I, admittedly, still use that phrase years later, even right before coming to Nye. Maybe something similar will help with you, too. A phrase to voice that you are in too much pain to do something, so it's like you're saying it without really saying it."

James finally looked over at Evaline when she started sharing, and he kept his eyes fixed on her face. It wasn't until she was done that he looked away again, down into the water.

"Would it be too uncreative for me to use the same phrase too?" he asked.

He didn't feel like coming up with something. He couldn't think of anything subtle enough. His brain felt too full.

Evaline's smile widened as she shook her head. "Of course not," she said. "I'm happy to share the phrase."

But then her mind bounced to the implication. James, somehow, had some strange magical connection to dream the lost memories and peer into timelines. Or at least, one timeline, and not extensively. She didn't know if this would develop any further.

"Just let me know if you start developing time magic, though," she said in an attempt to lighten the mood. "Then we'll have to think of something else."