He didn’t even know when his walk turned into a run, the walls blurring to the side of him as he crossed the entirety of the house in a matter of minutes.
He paused for no one as he burst through the door, the two other bodies in the room outside of Josephine’s coming to their feet immediately upon his entry.
“Josephine.”
Her name was a prayer on his lips as he stumbled over to the bed.
Josephine was propped up against pillows, the sheets drawn up around her chest as she offered him a small, wan smile.
She was pale and frail, surrounded by all of those pillows, her features strangely unanimated, but she was sitting up. Whole and in one piece.
“I was hoping you would come,” Josephine whispered, reaching towards him despite her parents’ continued presence in the room. “Are you okay? Did they tell you? Oh, Henry, I’m so sorry.”
Sorry?
Henry blinked owlishly at her, sinking onto the bed beside her as he took her one hand in both of his.
“Sorry? What do you have to be sorry for?” he asked haltingly. “It is I who should be begging your forgiveness. I never imagined …”
“How could you?” Josephine struggled to sit up, her blue eyes flashing, but Henry gently eased her back onto the pillows. “She tricked all of you! Don’t you dare apologize to me over the ravings of a madwoman! She took so much from you …”
Henry’s chest tightened, wonder creeping in amongst the relief as he stared at the pale warrior woman before him. She looked ready to rise up and go into battle in his name regardless of her injuries right then, a righteous fury filling her eyes.
Out of the corner of his eye, Henry saw her parents steal from the room, leaving the door cracked for propriety behind them – but even that only by the barest bit.
“What if,” he mused, his heart full as he looked at her, “we agree not to apologize, either of us, for her actions?”
Josephine’s eyes flickered, her shoulders relaxing slightly as the barest hints of a smile played about the corners of her lips.
“Then let me apologize for the grief you must feel, at the very least, knowing what really happened.” Josephine’s other hand lifted, covering his knuckles as she stared into his eyes.
Henry swore she could see parts of him that he hadn’t even known existed.
“Only if you allow me to apologize for the pain you must still be feeling physically,” he compromised, squeezing her hand before removing one of his to pull back the sheets she was under.
He didn’t want to see the injury, but he needed to verify that it was bandaged. The same way he needed to still hold her hand in his other to verify that she was really there, alive and well.
Or, at least, relatively well.
“What a pair we make,” Josephine murmured, lifting the hand he didn’t hold to brush lightly through his hair.
The move was so familiar and fond that it caught Henry’s breath.
His eyes lifted slowly back to hers, his body inclining forward all on its own until he could press his lips against her forehead, his whole body sagging when he did.
She was alive.
She was alive and in one piece.
He didn’t think he had ever been so fervently thankful before in his life.
“Am I allowed to ask how you are doing, really?” Josephine pressed, her knuckles pausing against his cheek as he pulled back from kissing her forehead.
He laughed, the sound more of an exhalation than any real amusement.
“I … am glad to know why Martha was murdered. And by who,” he admitted haltingly. Even if the knowing did hurt.“There is a peace in knowing, at last, that she can well and truly be set to rest.”
Josephine nodded, relief colouring her own features along with a sadness that would have been out of place on anyone else.
