Archive of Our Own ^beta

Cress bustled around the galley, clearing the dishes they had used for breakfast to take her mind off everything. Unfortunately for her, it was rather mindless, leaving her plenty of time to reflect on yesterday.

Yesterday. How could it have only been one day since her whole life flipped upside down again. Thankfully their mission had succeeded and Emperor Kai was safely aboard the Rampion, but it was the last thing Cress could think about. Her father was dead. She had only known him for a week. And she had only known his identity for thirty seconds before she was ripped apart from him again.

She had spent her whole life feeling unwanted and unloved but all that time he had been searching for her. He did so many terrible things to find her. And he hurt so many people before that too. But so had she. She couldn’t judge him, not when she was almost entirely responsible for the success of Levana’s invasion of Earth.

Just as Cress was getting really worked up, doing a very bad job of not thinking about things, a metallic tapping sound rescued her. He always did, didn’t he?

Thorne’s cane entered the room first, followed by himself. Cress paused, his entrance pulling her out of her destructive thoughts. “How are you this morning, Mrs. Smith?” he asked with his perfect roguish smile. Cress didn’t answer, still somewhat lost in her head. Thorne faltered. “Cress? It is you, right? If this is Wolf things are gonna be a little awkward.”

She managed a small laugh. How could he always cheer her up instantly? “No, it’s me, Captain,” she said. “Sorry, I don’t exactly know what’s gotten into me. I’m just a little… out of it today, I guess.”

“Perfectly normal after your first major mission on the crew, I think,” Thorne said, rounding the table, with a mixture of happiness at the sound of her voice and concern at her mood playing on his face. “How did you enjoy the whole escapade? Feeling heroic?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows. When she hesitated to respond he took her hand. “Cress? Are you alright? You’re not giving me a lot to go off here and I can’t exactly read your expression right now.”

Cress immediately felt guilty for ignoring him. “I’m sorry, Captain. Just a little overwhelmed by yesterday.” She tried to put on a cheery voice but failed.

Thorne, sensing she needed a distraction, said, “It’s only natural after helping save the galaxy. And if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could you help me with the eye drops again?”

“Oh, of course!” Cress said, embarrassed she had been so entrenched in her own problems she’d forgotten she was supposed to help Thorne get his eyesight back.

“Perfect. Right this way, then.” He pulled her out of the galley and down the hallway towards his room. “I left the drops in my room,” he explained as they walked. Cress blushed at the thought of entering his bedroom. Then she mentally berated herself, reminding herself that once the Captain did get his eyesight back she would have to keep these little displays of emotion much more hidden than she currently did.

“Right,” she said shakily.

Thorne gave her another charming grin and said, “Don’t get embarrassed now, Cress. I believe I remember us sleeping together in a bed of sand once so this is nothing new.” They reached his door and he fumbled for the handle for a second before opening it. “Ta-da! I think I left the drops somewhere over there,” he said, gesturing to his cluttered desk against the left wall.

His room was bigger than the other crew ones, with one large bed instead of a bunk bed, the desk, and extra storage in the form of cabinets. It was a little messy, but who could blame a blind man for not being completely tidy?

Cress went to look for the bottle but stopped when she saw the large map hanging over the desk. It was Earth laid flat but it was covered by so many little pins and notes that a lot of it was obscured. She squinted at one of the notes attached to France in the European Union. Paris- no fun during wartime, especially not with loony lupine Lunars, it read. She smiled at his goofy literary choices in description. “Are these all the places you’ve been?” she asked in amazement.

“Yep,” Thorne said, coming to stand right behind her. “Plus a few little stories. I like to think of them as my notes in the margins of the Earth.”

Cress sighed romantically, imagining all the sights Thorne must have seen on Earth. She hoped one day she could see more than a dusty desert that almost killed her and the inside of a palace where she also almost died. “Wow,” she said simply.

“Wow, indeed. I am quite the world traveler, huh?”

“Quite,” she responded. “But you don’t have to rub it in.” Cress nudged Thorne in the shoulder, then went back to looking for the bottle.

“Oops,” he said, smiling at her. “Didn’t mean to brag.”

“I just hope I can see half the places you’ve been. You know, once this is all over, of course.”

Thorne’s face fell a little, as if the thought of her having to wait to fulfill her lifelong dream pained him physically. “You’ll see everything and more. We’ll have to start looking for new places to go on Mars once you’ve seen all of Earth.”

Cress’s heart skipped a beat. We? Did he misspeak? Surely he didn't mean he also saw them traveling the galaxy together in their future after the revolution. That was a fantasy even she limited visiting because it seemed so far out of the realm of possibility. Could he feel the same? Or did he mean we as in the crew in general?

As Cress was once again freaking out, Thorne sat down on his bed, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I can barely even remember some of the places I went to now.”

Cress finally found the eye drop bottle behind a stack of papers and brought it over to Thorne, hesitant to touch his face again. “I found the drops,” she said.

Thorne looked almost startled. “Oh, I forgot about that. I guess that is what we were doing,” he laughed. Cress didn’t laugh back. She was too focused on the Captain’s face. His perfect face that was right in front of her. With a perfect nose that had brushed hers and perfect lips that had kissed her not even a full day prior. Cress thought she could melt right there on the spot just from the memory of their kiss. “Any day now,” Thorne said, interrupting her thoughts. “Or are you too bust ogling my dreamy eyes?”

Unable to admit he was correct, Cress stuttered, “No, I– just reading the instructions for the drops again, sorry.” She hoped her lie sounded convincing as she lowered her hands to his face, using one to hold him still and one to grasp the bottle.

“Don’t worry, I couldn’t blame you if you were.” Cress managed a strangled laugh, trying to sound natural and relaxed and not completely in love with Thorne.

It became quiet as she distributed the drops into his eyes. She did it gently, but with much focus. Still, concentrating on the eye drops couldn’t quite take her mind off of the subtle feeling of his stubble in her palm or the way he seemed to soften at her touch. She held his face for a moment longer after she finished giving him the drops, then pulled away.

“All done.” Cress moved towards the door, trying to put distance between them but she didn’t get more than a step before Thorne grabbed her hand and pulled her back towards him.

“Wait. Don’t you want to hear about my adventures?” Thorne asked. Of course, there was nothing else in the galaxy Cress wanted more but she felt every second she spent around him she fell deeper and more hopelessly in love with him. “It would be nice to reminisce on simpler times. Before Cinder got me roped into a moon revolution, I mean. I was still a criminal mastermind which is not exactly simple, but still.” He shrugged. “It’s okay if you want to go. You probably have important coding…things.”

“It’s okay, I can spare a few minutes,” Cress found herself saying. How could she ever refuse a request to spend time with the Captain? She was officially hopeless. “I was only cleaning up the galley.”

“Just the answer I wanted to hear,” Thorne said with a grin.