Chapter Text
“I almost lost you tonight.”
Obi looks down at her, cradled in the crook of his arm. After things had quieted, they hadn’t much energy to move and she had come to sit by him, pulling his arm around her tightly and refusing to move, regardless of his lack of clothing.
“I’m made of tough stuff, Miss. I would have made it,” he softly replies, pressing a gentle kiss to the crown of her head.
She shivers against him, her grip on his hand becoming impossibly tight. “You don’t know that.”
He smiles grimly against her hair. Of course, nothing was for certain, and he had more than his fair share of close calls. His body was evidence enough of that and his luck was bound to run out one day. “I was trying to give you enough time to escape, Miss,” he confesses, causing her to start. He pulls back just as her eyes, wide and pained, look up at him.
“There were too many of them for me to fight off, but I would have escaped,” he continues, pushing her hair from her face, “and I would have found you.”
Her eyes swell once more with tears, and it breaks him a little seeing her shed them for him. “But you were hurt,” she chokes, looking from his face and down to his body, her eyes tracing the fresh bruises and scrapes there.
Obi reaches out, tilting her chin so that she is forced to look away from the worst of his injuries. “I was,” he admits calmly, “and I would have taken far more if it meant that you could get safely away.”
Shirayuki’s eyes overflow, hot tears tracing the curve of her cheeks and he brushes them carefully away. “Why?” Her voice is rough, strained, and he realizes then that she would never completely understand this part of him. He tries the best he can anyway.
“I would rather die countless times than to see you used that way,” he answers honestly, his gazed locked on hers. “No one deserves the fate that man had planned. Especially not you.”
The look in her eyes is something that he recognizes, something that he disagrees with regardless of her pleas. She had begged him so many times to take care of himself, to place himself at a higher value, but he couldn’t. Not when it came to her.
“I need you to trust me in these matters, Miss,” he continues, tugging her towards him so that he could tuck her head under his chin. “Trust me when I tell you to run. And trust that I will always come back to you.”
Her free hand comes up to wrap around his shoulder, and she clings to him silently. He feels her tears run down his chest and his heart pulls as she shudders against him. Obi counts his heartbeats in-between the sporadic clutching of her fingers and the drops of dampness against his skin as she quietly sobs against him.
After a long moment, he feels her breath deep, pulling back to wipe her wet face with the flat of her palm before looking up at him. The green of her eyes are still swimming in an ocean of tears. “I need you to stay with me, Obi,” she whispers, the notes a little high pitched as if it physically hurt her to say the words. “You need to walk beside me for a long, long time. You’re not allowed to leave me.”
He didn’t think his heart could handle much more abuse tonight. It ached and trembled in response to her words. “I never plan to leave,” he whispers, a bare breath of words between them as he brings his forehead down to touch hers.
She swallows, a shaky smile pulling at her lips. She closes the distance between their mouths and the absolution he finds at the soft touch is more than he had ever felt at the feet of any god.
She flinches back, eyes wide, and her palm comes to rest gently against his face. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she says, her eyes rapidly searching his. “Your lip…”
Obi feels a smile pulling across his face and he ignores the protest of the skin there at being stretched in such a way. A small spark of joy flickers amongst twinge of pain in his chest and he leans down to close the distance between them once again.
“Some things are worth suffering for.”