FicWad

The children had been terrified of him at first, their active imaginations coming up with dozens of stories about the horrible things he must have done that led to him getting all of his scars. She had tutted at them, because laughing didn't feel right when it might encourage them to come up with even more horrible stories about him, and encouraged them to try approaching him. And, because they loved her, they did what she wanted.

He had won them over in five minutes, with a card trick and a story cribbed straight from an opera.

She watched him with them now, magically producing coins from their ears, mouths, and nostrils to their delight, and smiled softly. She would never have imagined him getting along with them so well, 'good with children' just seemed strange next to such other descriptions as 'gambler' and 'kidnapper of opera-singers', but she was glad that he was. He wouldn't fit in the life she had made for herself otherwise.

She liked moments like this, when she could just look at him and /feel/, holding up what she felt for him in her mind and comparing it to the love she felt for her children and that that she felt for her friends, carefully filing away the way the similarities and differences deep within her heart so that there would never again be a time when she would wonder what it meant to love and be loved in return.

Then, and this is something she never would have understood before, she let go of all those thoughts as she walked out the door and went to join him. He looked up and flashed her a grin as she approached, and she felt an answering flash of warmth inside her heart, and as long as she had those things she didn't need anything more.