Chapter Text
As his hands slip from Ophelia’s, Thorn breathes a sigh of relief. Or he would if he had any semblance of lungs in the Wrong Side. He has to admit it felt a bit like a sob. A little more than that, even.
He had been selfish to the last, clinging to the vain hope that happy endings did, in fact, exist (a hope he had never entertained before…). As soon as he had seen her arms slowly being dragged deeper into the Wrong Side—dragged by him—he had released her (her, Ophelia, hands, home).
He stands numbly for a brief moment, before his senses are blinded by a deafening howl, a veritable storm of aerargyrum that ends as quickly as it begins. He blinks slowly, the room he had been standing in—the typewriter, the floral wallpaper, the mirror—have all disappeared to be replaced with never-ending white fog. He stands alone in the void.
Without visual stimulus the memories are insistent. He walks through the thick white clouds until he finds himself suddenly on a shadowy hill, overlooking a valley filled with the blurred outlines of buildings. He takes in the muted shapes of the olive trees, and feels rather than hears Ophelia’s whisper: “You’ll always be enough for me.”
He almost turns to look for her, but stops himself just in time. This place may not be tangible, but the pain of their separation is visceral. He has a high tolerance for pain, but even he knows not to test his limits.
Still, underneath the sharp sting of longing, he feels a sense of satisfaction. A job well done. Ophelia had done it—sent the Other back to the Wrong Side and healed the Rupture. He had never felt prouder of her. And he, he had caught the forward echo and stopped it in its tracks. He had made himself indispensable to her, in the end.
Unbidden, a vision of their first meeting on Anima fills his vision. Her defiant eyes behind darkening glasses, her dark curls plastered to her forehead, her ridiculous grey dress doing nothing to protect her from the rain. His lips twitch slightly. If only he had known how much she contained within that tiny, nondescript form! How wrong he had been.
Still, he has no regrets. Thorn walks on through the white (white, warmth, sheets, skin), something like a smile playing on his lips. He would spend eternity here, dissociated, dissolving into his memories of her, so long as she is safe.
His reverie is interrupted by a sharp click, click! Bewildered, Thorn pats down the pockets of his jacket (somewhere he had regained his old Treasury uniform, although it’s aquamarine instead of its usual black) and pulls out his fob watch. He glances down briefly at the (magenta) watch face before realizing his mistake. There is no time in the Wrong Side, at least not in a way that a watch could make sense of. He scowls at the frozen hands, stuck at three o’clock, fifteen minutes and fifteen seconds, and snaps it shut.
Now, only one thing is left. To find Ophelia’s door.
___
Ophelia breathed deep, emptying her mind, readying herself for yet another trip through the mirror. She had found the trick of it at last, reinversion. By swallowing the Horn of Plenty, her echo had enabled her and her alone to pass through to the Wrong Side. Pressing through the glass of the reflection, she emerges into a world of blinding white shadows.
Since her first trip through the in-between, she has never again felt the pull of the counterpart, as though the sacrifice of her fingers had satiated the in-between’s hunger for balance. Neither has she seen the Other, although she is sure that he lurks somewhere in this inverted world.
She swivels around, widening her eyes as much as she can. She has never stopped looking for Thorn, never will stop looking for Thorn. Her eyes scan the horizon for an excessively tall silhouette. When none appears, she bites her lip against the desire to call for him. It’s pointless anyway—she can’t speak in the Wrong Side.
She strikes out in a random direction to continue her search. As she walks, her mind turns inevitably to Thorn. While the rest of the world has moved on, she has been a record skipping, her days spent on repeated plunges into the mirror and her nights spent lost in dreams of him.
Her pale blue gloved fingers clench tightly into fists. She has long stopped questioning why here, her fingers regain shape and form, reattach themselves to her hands as though they were just waiting for her to reappear on their side of the mirror. She pushes her glasses more firmly upon her nose and continues forward, spotting a door set improbably into the thick clouds of aerargyrum.
Without hesitation, she turns the knob and slips through into a round room. Even through the distortions characteristic of the Wrong Side, she recognizes the Compass Rose. Not just any Compass Rose, she notes as her verdigris cheeks darken with a blush, but the very one where Thorn had first kissed her.
Her eyes close, remembering the soft, shy press of his lips on hers. It had lasted barely a second, but the heat of that kiss burns on her lips still. Ophelia grimaces, recalling the surprised slap she had given him immediately afterwards. Her eyes open to the door with the old wood panel proclaiming “STAFF ONLY”. She is just about to follow the Thorn of her memory through it when she hears it:
Click, click.
___
He isn’t breathing. Is he breathing? Oh right, no lungs.
Ophelia stands, paralyzed, in the center of the Compass Rose of their first kiss. The disbelief he reads on her face surely matches his own.
Even in the bizarre colors of the Wrong Side, she is beautiful. Even reversed, so that the slight dissymmetry of her face is both achingly familiar and yet unfailingly strange, she is beautiful. Forty six seconds pass before her lips soundlessly call his name, and suddenly he is running, devouring the three hundred seventeen centimeters between them in two strides so that he can enfold her in his arms and never let her go.
Bless that damn fob watch Ophelia had unintentionally animated during their years apart. It had begun to click incessantly, forcing him to check it repeatedly and witness the bizarre assortment of times it incorrectly displayed (forty-five minutes and forty five seconds past nine o’clock, twenty minutes and twenty seconds past four, et cetera).
By the third check—he was mildly ashamed it had taken him so many—it had struck him that the watch was behaving suspiciously like a compass. He had followed it without further delay and, miracle of miracles, it had led him to her.
After a long moment Ophelia pulls back slightly, pressing her hands to either side of his face. Her eyes shine as she studies him, gives him a look that sears through him. A look that seems to say he is the only thing worth looking at. In spite of himself, he doesn’t look away this time.
Her hands slide through his hair to the nape of his neck, pulling him down to her. When their lips meet he feels an impossible resonance through his very being, and when he opens his eyes eddies of aerargyrum swirl around them, clinging to the ends of her curls and trailing the end of her scarf.
She smiles and, gripping his hand firmly, guides him through the door marked “STAFF ONLY” and into his former treasury office. His eyebrows raise as he spots a wigged figure hunched over his desk, now covered with files and loose papers stacked impossibly high. It’s nothing short of a travesty. He will have a mountain of work to do on his return.
Ophelia’s smile widens as she grips his shoulders and forces him to turn away from this disaster-in-waiting, until suddenly he faces a mirror. Sixty eight by one hundred and fifty six centimeters. How often had he studied this glass, hoping Ophelia herself would appear from its depths? How many hours had he spent on the threadbare couch, waiting for the moment she would appear to set his nerves afire, again?
Gripping his hand more tightly, she points at the mirror. No, through the mirror. In a flash he understands: this would be their exit from the Wrong Side. He frowns as he detects a slight worry line between her brows, but her smile doesn’t falter. She can’t express what her concerns may be, but it doesn’t matter to him. As long as wherever they go, they go together.
With a last look at the interminable white, he turns to face Ophelia. Sharing one last smile, they turn and dive into the mirror together.
___
With a gasp, Ophelia tumbled out of the mirror, Thorn’s fingers tight around her suddenly fingerless hand. Her heart in her throat, she whirled to face the mirror, determined not to lose him to the Wrong Side again.
Thorn was trapped halfway through the mirror in her room, only his left arm and leg visible. He appeared to be struggling to push his head and shoulders through the in-between. She pulled with all her might, noting dimly that her scarf had wrapped one end of itself firmly around Thorn’s middle and the other around the bedpost. They were slowly but surely reeling him in.
“Thorn!” she cried as soon as his head appeared. “Don’t let go!”
His eyes flashed to hers, filled with lightning. The familiar spark, the indefatigable determination filled her with strength.
“Never again,” he hissed through gritted teeth.
And then, with an almighty tug, he was through. Thorn collapsed on top of her, breathing heavily. Ophelia was acutely aware of his angular body pressed against hers, his warm breath on her cheek, and his pale eyes hovering above hers, wide with surprise.
“That was unexpected,” he remarked in his characteristic monotone.
Ophelia was overcome with breathless laughter. His voice! How she had longed to hear that double bass. She realized then that she had never stopped listening for it, never stopped missing its resonance.
“A little bit more than that even?” she asked, smiling up at him.
“A little bit more than that even,” Thorn confirmed.
He pushed himself off of her, coming to rest against the bed frame. His hands immediately went to the buttons of his jacket, his cuffs, his collar—compulsively checking that everything was in its proper place. His long fingers tightened suddenly on the end of the mandarin collar, brows knitting together in a barely perceptible frown.
“The counterpart,” Ophelia whispered, searching Thorn’s eyes. She could see her glasses turning blue. The in-between would not have let Thorn through to the Right Side without keeping back something of equal importance. A quick scan of his form told her it hadn’t been anything physical—she couldn’t decide whether that was better or worse.
Thorn nodded jerkily, staring fixedly at a point on the floor three centimeters left of his right leg.
“My claws,” he murmured. Ophelia held her breath nervously, unsure of his reaction. After fifty four seconds, Thorn exhaled shakily, a look of genuine relief on his face.
“I’ve lost my claws,” he repeated, incredulously. Without warning, he pressed her tightly to his chest, nose in her hair, lips against her neck.
“I thought I’d live the rest of my days with that loathsome burden,” he whispered into her skin. “I thought I’d spend the rest of my life worrying myself sick that I’d hurt you without realizing it.”
Pulling back to look into her eyes, he shook his head slowly, disbelief softening his features. Ophelia had never seen his face so relaxed—it agreed with him considerably.
His hands slid down her arms, leaving goosebumps in their wake. Gently he slipped a glove off of her hand, and traced the ridges along the edge of her palms, where her fingers used to be.
“The counterpart?” Thorn asked quietly, studying her face. She nodded.
“How did you find me? How long have I been away? If it hadn’t been for that watch—” Ophelia stopped him with a soft press of her lips to his.
“We have much to discuss,” she replied, joy suffusing every atom of her being.
“But first, it’s time for us.”