The Poet and The Soldier

Four.

The door slams shut behind Isadora as she turns to face her silent apartment, having just seen off an astonished Gregson. That should keep him busy for a while.

She taps her fingers against her folded arms as she surveys her living room. The open windows let in a breeze that would normally be wreaking untold havoc on the usual papery occupants, but after waking up on her sofa about a week ago to find the floodgates of words had been opened, she'd been struck with the urge to clean - or to at least dig out some paperweights.

She's also righted the other armchair, so now two of them sit facing each other in the centre of the room. They fit together like a chemical reaction, creating a sphere of gravity that keeps the rest of the room in place.

It had been that gravity that drew Isadora into the old stuffed armchair, pen and paper in hand, spewing out more words in a single week than she's written in the last year. Whenever she'd paused in her scribbling, her head had lifted to stare at the unassuming, khaki green leather chair opposite. Sometimes Anna would be there, smiling back at her.

That's why the poems have to be perfect.

She goes to stand on the sofa, flipping her pen between her fingers as she contemplates the pictures pinned to the wall. She gently detaches one of Anna staring straight down the barrel of the camera, like she knew Isadora would be there. She wonders what caused that particular expression.

"I still don't know," Isadora muses.

The leather of Anna's chair creaks behind her. "Know what?"

Isadora turns, drinking in the sight of Anna sitting comfortably in her armchair, flipping through the newspaper with a steaming cup of tea on the table beside her.

Isadora jumps off the sofa and steps up onto her chair, sitting on its back with her feet on the seat. She poses her elbows on her knees, observing Anna over the tips of her steepled fingers. Anna continues to read, oblivious. At least, Isadora thinks she is, until Anna's eyes flick up to meet hers, and she winks.

"I still don't know what you are," Isadora blurts.

Anna smiles behind the newspaper, not commenting as she flips to the international news section.

Isadora continues to watch Anna, examining the way she has settled into the cracks of Isadora's life in just a week, wondering what it looks like from the outside, because from where she stands it feels as natural as breathing.

They clicked like a light switch, bringing brightness to her life, like a room that has been edging so slowly into darkness during sunset that the change is dazzling in its unexpectedness. And, like a light bulb, Isadora can feel the charge racing through her veins, weaving around them in a way that is electrifyingly horrific in its consequences, but she can't bring herself to care.

A pretty generic addicts' problem, that.

Isadora springs to her feet again, prowling through the room, picking up notebooks and putting them down. She glances over at Anna again, but Anna merely shakes the newspaper to straighten it out, the resulting rustle blending seamlessly with the faint sounds of traffic drifting in the open windows.

Days of quiet domesticity interspersed with Isadora's black moods, lessening in frequency; Anna waking screaming from PTSD fuelled nightmares and Isadora being right there beside her, endless cups of tea and restaurants and midnight walks around town when neither of them can sleep and getting home and falling into bed together with their bodies intertwining like yin and yang, with heat and gasping and the slick sound of lips parting, the silence in the space between like sunshine through storm clouds and you think of a future you didn't know was possible paired with a past you didn't know you had, you think maybe in an alternate universe, you think thank God I've found this-

A dizzying flash of deja vu mixed with a stabbing pain in her chest has Isadora staggering, and Anna is instantly by her side, guiding her to the couch.

"Put your head between your knees," she orders, straightening. "I'll go get-"

"No," Isadora says weakly, ignoring Anna's instructions and feebly snatching her hand. "I know." When Anna doesn't pull away, Isadora's voice softens to a whisper. "I know."

Anna's silence is telling, and her eyes are unreadable as she gingerly lowers herself beside Isadora. She hesitantly leans forward, biting her lip, and Isadora does what comes naturally and meets her halfway.

Isadora kisses away the dent on Anna's bottom lip, discovering those white teeth are as smooth as they look, and the way Anna's hands come up to cup Isadora's head, cradling it as she tips it to the side speaks of an aching intimacy that shouldn't be possible, but Isadora accepts it because there's nothing she can do. There's nothing she could ever do.

After all, she never could resist Temptation when she came calling.