There were some days of disrepair, but that was not due to immediate injury. In the echoes of everything, some of Tag's more loyal behaviors had altered. Black locks of hair were longer than they had ever been permitted to grow and that bed, well, it didn't get fucking made. Some of it was growth, some of it was repair. He looked out at the sea of their wrecked bedsheets and couldn't find the words.

Ame would cry and it brought the world back together. Penny needed help with homework. Things were happening at Charlie's. What was happening with Leo? And Glenn, what lingering salt did he want to spread on the earth? The Shadow-Man's neat hair and careful appearance had altered, becoming that of a man that just survived a hurricane. Still, Madison's smile appeared and it always, always unlocked his. Sometimes that hurt.

Life was so abundant, so busy. It wrecked momentary truths and offered none of those repeated breaths that let them just know who they were. In every morning, the sun rose from the East. Every night it sank to the West. The world was constantly transformed by those cardinal directions. The garden never was so free of weeds.

Then one morning an idea crawled over the porch steps to them, softly suggesting the most simple thing. Days off from work, time away from everything but one another. Where the day would be at the center point instead of rising in the East or setting in the West. Marjorie was too old to take care of Ame, but with Penny there, she could handle them. Penny could change diapers and babysit, but Marjorie kept her from being alone. With everything else going on in the world it brought him some ease to know that she would be there. With Penny and Ame at Marjorie's for the night, it set no time table on the evening and what it had to be. The air breathed more easily.

He wasn't entirely sure how to finish getting ready. His hair was just? black and an inch and a half long instead of the neat, short dark glass of half an inch that faded down his neck. His breath drew in, a tight breath as he looked at the mirror. It was still his face, still one he recognized, looking back. He stepped out and went to the kitchen, preparing a drink from what lingered of the liquor Fin had gotten them. He felt strangely uncomfortable, that she would see him and there would be some disapproval. For so long he was an unchanging figure in her life and recent alterations to his fabric had begun to show.

She had left Fin to the bar so she could leave on time and be at the door with enough time to duck in, change out of her tee and shorts and boots and turn herself into someone you had a date with, as opposed to a flustered mother with her hair filled of seven winds. Madison is in through the door; keys thrown aside onto the couch with her purse, kicking off boots, dragging the tie from her braid, when she looks across and sees him in the kitchen; just the side of him, holding the bottle.

A pause overwhelms all movement. It felt like she hadn't really seen him in days. Or rather, that she hadn't paid attention to him in the flurry of every day, between two kids, a home life that never stopped being a hurricane of motion, activity, life, tasks, errands, and a bar. The tie was tossed over to her bag as she walked barefoot over to the kitchen and stepped up beside him, and before she knew it, she was tracing kisses up the shape of his defined jaw to his cheek. "God...feels like we haven't stopped in weeks." There was a feeling of frustration in that as she admitted it and stepped back with a hand out to sweep some of the longer pieces of his hair from his features.

She would never complain about them having a full life. However chaotic it could sometimes feel, it was always them, and the two children they loved. There was no weed growing in between that anymore. Glenn had finally surrendered. And in the echoes of his dusty footsteps was only more room for Tag and Madison to fill with themselves. There were still bricks to be chiseled clear from their walls, there were still secrets and questions, and his resentment of her for allowing Glenn still hurt her at times. Still resonated in her chest even though she understood how wrong she had been to allow that man as much credence as she had given.

But looking at Tag there, she realized it had been so full a life that somehow she had lost sight of the details. Her own hair was now at her bottom and dried and curling tight at the ends. Life went on when you weren't looking. People changed. Even husbands and wives who seemingly knew everything there was to know; they had changed, in ways that were observable and ways that were not.

The sound of her boots a gentle thunder before she rolled up. Recovering from the hurricane was difficult, even if Glenn seemed far off he sometimes had to repeat that to himself. Prior to it all, he had an unshakeable belief in her because he had been so sure, so knowing, of what his place was with her. Sometimes that wound showed, in quiet moments where he smiled apologetically for having the scar.

There was all this space to fill, but he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it. Sometimes, it was clear he felt a little lost but her hand came from the dark and realigned him. Those bright, confident moments sounded like dawn breaking.

He'd just set his glass down, a soft, heavy sound of it on the counter when her lips connected to his jaw. His smile appeared, carved up carefully as he studied her face. His left hand drew back, resting on the side of her waist so that his thumb could rub gently into her side. "I don't think we really wanted to stop."

Prairie eyes narrow some as she drinks in his expression and tilts her head. "It's... it's been hard, baby, to do that. Because of.... the things that come in and fill the silence." She looked down to his hand on her waist and rested her hand atop it; fingers stroking a pattern along the backs of his knuckles. "Things we get worried about sayin' and feelin'." Guilt still waged a war in her head, like her other demons, but she met his eyes again. "Let me get changed."

And like sudden shadows over sun, she is gone. Down the hall and into their room to exchange the day's wear for a simple, white linen, spaghetti strapped dress that billowed at the knees but cinched at the waist and a pair of simple, wedged heels. A comb through her hair until the curls were burnished with shine and tangle free (until the next few winds came to bury themselves in the dark of it and send it wild) and a spray of perfume. The one he liked the best. Then she joined him again in the kitchen. Eyes going over his hair. "I don't mind it longer, you know..." as she reached out with a hand to comb her fingers back through black glass, like she always had. She caught her breath and found his eyes again.

"You have somewhere in mind?" Her breath gone a moment, and then she smiles. "Or shall I steal you away somewhere?"

"Are you sure?" About the length of his hair, small cut smile.

Most of the time, he wanted her. That smile that belonged to her would show up and that easy part, the one that enjoyed what it felt like to be vulnerable and cut apart by her, would show. Recent events had introduced something new. Not just that he wanted her, but that he feared wanting her. It wasn't what someone would have expected-- he feared that there wouldn't be her knife there, cutting into him. That beautiful sort of pain she always knew how to inflict on him.

She has become the princess and he, the prince, again. Though her hair is a bit longer, her smile apologizing for the trials he endured instead of enjoying them as heroic victories. He's not such the polished knight anymore, the battle to be there having given him fresh scars, all of which read like her signature. She was written all over him, if she squinted she'd see it. She'd know he never could have gone far from her.

"I don't want to do this," he said, then turned to her more fully, his hands holding her sides, "I mean, I want this," his hands squeeze her. It says her, this moment, them. He wants that but, "You're not a dress and I'm not a button-up shirt." There is a pause before he looked to her, blinking before a slow smile appears, "If you think you're still quick enough to steal me... I'd like to see it."

There is his smile, the beautiful one that dawns when she's around and catches him somewhere in his ribs, her fingers weaving in between the braided bones. It appeared because she laughed and he realized he hadn't heard that little spill of sound come from her, for this reason, in a while. It rolled into the air for Penny, Ame, or some circumstance. But it hadn't been there between them like a marker of joy because of the enormous gravity of the world.

Her steps lit to the ground, cut around him and then urge him to sit where she'd been. He gripped the chair and turned it so that when he sat, it was facing her. His head turned up towards her lower one. He's trying to read the future, to know the words before she says them but all he can do is wait. The dark man's quiet stretches on, giving her voice all the room it needed.

She can see the tangle of question in his straight shoulders, so used to holding up their world, even when it threatened to roll and break. She can see it in the dark eyes that always hold that patient wait, and for her, that something else, that gleam of knowing and trust and yes I will, Madi; anything with you. Who else had ever wanted her down to the bones, to the blood? Who else had asked for all of her, as painful, as overwhelming as it could be. Sometimes, he still felt far away. Even as they removed the bricks, even as they took to the defenses and the wire and removed them with quivering touches and porch conversations that rode into dawn and changed the flavors of their mouths and the tone of their thoughts.

There's a sigh, as if she was about to express some tragedy, except that she is lowering herself down onto his leg; the weight of her backside along his thighs, her legs stretched to the side and knees up to brace the chair. A fingertip to his mouth as she leans in to kiss his throat. The very tip of her nose drawn along the column as a hand sought out the scars beneath his shirt, traveling the passages that spelled his rebellion, his sorrow, his freedom. She smiles, against his skin and raises her head, tossing her hair as she kisses the other side of his throat. "Tag, I want you more than I ever did. Do you know that?"

Was she bracing him for a tragedy? He wasn't sure, just that she wasn't chuckling anymore, nor was she frowning. The daybreak was still in her eyes and then she moves in, closer to him. There were many times that the dark man was far away, it was a tendency he'd had for so many years. One of those bricks he needed help loosening.

He'd been so shy about his scars, they represented so many things and for the longest time, he was at a loss for how to even begin to explain them. Something about it always hurt when she reached out and touched them because it always brought love into her gaze. As if it soothed her to know someone else has hurt and suffered just as much as she had. His hands can't just rest to the side, they drop down to her knees so he's not in the way of her fingers plucking along the old story written in his back.

The petals of her mouth open, pressing a path against his throat. He can feel it, warm against his skin when he draws in a breath, "I never knew that love could make someone so... crazy. That it could make me... so crazy." Thoughts of broken mugs clattered in his brain. He wet his lips, his hands sliding up enough to squeeze the soft part of her leg above the knee, "I still feel these... new things because of you. I'm not sure how you do that to me."