[ChallengeFic] Forever Peace
Title: Forever Peace
Author: Terra aka conniferous
Pairing: 4xD
Warning/Rating: angst, T
Status: Complete
Summary: Dorothy and Quatre teach each other the meaning of peace and freedom from fear.
Notes: The companion piece to The Forever War from Dorothy's perspective of roughly the same timeline. Best read after that story but also stands alone. My favorite oneshot and probably the best one I've written. A few weeks late for the February challenge but better late than never, right?
Forever Peace
She is afraid. Fear makes her cruel. She takes the edge off with gay smiles and disguises vicious barbs with laughter that doesn’t reach her eyes. But with him, she feels naked - and it has nothing to do with the friction of bare skin, languid kisses, the strength she delights in forcing him to use. Dorothy knows she is safe with him; the thought terrifies her. Every time she leaves him, she thinks she should never have let him touch her.
He has crushed her pride into dust, and all she has left is the power to decide when to go to him. She is grateful - it angers her - that he is too blind to know she’s done playing games. It begins as a way to show him that he has not touched her; that his intrusions into her mind and her surrender on the Libra were not lasting; that his kindness has not triumphed over her. It is two years and twelve days after the Eve Wars ended when she sees him again.
They meet at the unraveling of the Eve War Memorial. The irony is not lost on her - nor on him, she observes, when he takes the podium and delivers a passionate speech by rote. There is something insincere about his manner that stinks of fear. When the last glass of champagne is imbibed and the last flashbulbs fade, she finds him in the chapel for the nameless dead. His back is to her but the stiffness in his shoulders betrays his awareness of her.
“Your speech was touching. And yet, you’re hiding in here with the anonymous dead,” she says, the click of each step echoing in the empty mausoleum until she stops beside him; they stand shoulder-to-shoulder, reading the single tribute etched in the merciless marble. “I could make an insensitive metaphor - but those are best left for fiction, I think. Why don’t you just tell me what you’re afraid of?”
Quatre turns and her breath catches in her throat because his eyes are moist and his eyes are so blue it is all she can focus on. His first words to her in years are painfully impersonal: “100,371 people died so we could fill a wall with their names.”
Dorothy feels a sudden pressure in her chest; she refuses to believe it could be disappointment. Her voice is clean of emotion: “The history book of the victor is written in blood. It’s the only way anyone remembers - or cares.”
“I can’t believe that,” he shakes his head, his voice sharp, “I won’t believe that they died to buy us some time - just a reprieve until the next war. Their sacrifice can’t be so meaningless.”
“Your sacrifice?” she asks.
“I made these men nameless. I didn’t think I’d live to see the world after war. I never thought I’d have to see families sobbing at graves. Whatever sacrifices I made - I need to know they meant something.” He gestured at the lone epitaph: They refused to stand down at the end of the world. That kind of courage needs only one name. They were our saviors, nameless but never forgotten.
“They’re gone,” she replies, “the only kind of meaning they have now is what we give them.”
“It’s that easy?”
“Or that hard. Does it upset you? That politicians and hypocrites twist their sacrifice into serving whatever happens to be their agenda of the week?”
“It’s shameful.”
“Oh? But you did the same today,” she reminds him. “Did you even write that speech-”
He moves in a blur, gripping her arm tightly; a gasp escapes her lips when he closes in on her, jerking her against him until she is surrounded by heat and the faint aroma of aftershave and she can feel the expensiveness of his suit scrape against her arms. Quatre’s eyes are impossibly blue, bright with fever. “Don’t think you know me, Dorothy,” he breathes in her ear, foregoing formalities, discarding any veneer of civility, “save it for the sycophants panting after you.”
She pushes him off her, ignoring the pulsing red bracelet he leaves on her arm. “Don’t ever touch me again,” says Dorothy coldly. Then she laughs to hurt him because he has hurt her. “How the mighty have fallen,” she mocks.
Quatre turns the tables on her without missing a beat. An ironic smile curls his lips, disingenuous. “I never thought you had that illusion of me.”
Her cheeks flush and she snaps, “I don’t.”
“Be careful, Dorothy,” he says, raising a hand to stroke her hair. “Don’t get too close to me. You’ll be disappointed.” His hand cups the back of her head and he pulls her towards him gently this time. “I’m not whole anymore,” he whispers before dipping his head to kiss her with warm, salty lips. She is too stunned to respond and by the time she can move again, he’s already let go. He brushes her cheek with the back of his hand once, twice. Then he turns away and all she can catch is his bowed head until she loses him in the gravestones.
He leaves her behind again.
When she sees him at a charity ball weeks later, Quatre has a curvaceous redhead on his arm. She coos something in his ear and he throws his head back, laughing. Dorothy turns around, her heart thudding, and heads for the exit, another tightness in her chest she can’t explain. She is pulling on her mink stole in the foyer when she hears his voice rumbling behind her: “Leaving so soon?”
“I can’t see how it’s any business of yours,” she responds coolly.
“No?” he asks, cocking his head, scrutinizing her. “Then why did you tear out of the ballroom as soon as I came in? I can’t help taking it personally.”
“Tear out?” She laughs in his face. “Goodness, do let’s exaggerate. I have a dinner reservation if you must know.”
“At eleven at night?”
She looks at him with mock pity. “Why so shocked? Don’t tell me you’re the tucked-into-bed by midnight type.”
Quatre smiles appreciatively. “Actually, I am. The rumors of my nighttime escapades are greatly embellished.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” She glances at the door impatiently, making a note not to tip the valet. “You shouldn’t leave your date alone too long. It’s not gentlemanly. Besides,” she says viciously, “she may have found another rich arm to dangle off by now.”
He looks stunned at her words. Then he is laughing so hard he presses an arm against the wall to steady himself. “You mean Cathy? That’s Trowa’s sister you’re disparaging with such disdain,” he gasps, his shoulders shaking, “she was curious about the hoity-toity ways of the wealthy and chronically bored. I thought I’d enlighten her. You won’t find anyone less likely to be a gold-digger in the entire Earth Sphere.”
Her cheeks flaming, Dorothy clenches her fists, throbbing with humiliation. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees her car pull up. She manages, “Good evening, Mr. Winner,” before turning on her heel and fleeing outside. That night, she dreams of salty lips and warm hands but when she wakes, his laughter is ringing in her ears.
For days afterwards, she thinks about all the ways she can ruin him and she is so absorbed in her plans one evening that when Quatre suddenly sits down at her table, his boldness startles her speechless. “Good evening, Miss Dorothy,” he says, unfolding the linen napkin and spreading it on his lap. He hails a waiter and orders champagne. Then he looks at her expectantly until she says tightly, “More wine,” and holds up her glass to be refilled.
“Dining alone?” he asks.
“I’m on a date.”
“You know,” he leans close like they’re sharing a confidence, “I don’t think this one’s a keeper. Not much of a gentleman - making you wait like this.”
“I’m not waiting. He canceled.”
“How fortunate,” he smiles, “mine as well. What are the odds?”
“Not in my favor,” she retorts.
Quatre chuckles. “Tell me. Are you this prickly with all your admirers - or is that honor reserved only for me?”
“I don’t see any admirers. And even if I did, I certainly don’t have to answer that.”
“There it is. Skittish right on schedule. I guess it is just me then.”
Dorothy ignores him and flips open the menu. “I hope you aren’t thinking of staying. I may have lost my date but there’s no reason for me to lose my appetite, too.”
“Answer me one question and I’ll leave you alone.”
“Only if that’s a promise.”
He presses his hand over his heart. He tells her solemnly: “I’m a man of my word.”
“What is it?” she asks warily.
“What are you afraid of?” he echoes her question from that day in the mausoleum.
Dorothy holds herself still, unwilling to let his too-observant gaze glimpse a single tremor; but she is trembling inside. She waits until she is certain she can speak evenly. “Right now, Mr. Winner? I'm afraid of the legal consequences of skewering you with my salad fork.”
He laughs, unconsciously cradling his side where she hopes fervently the scar her fencing foil left still aches. “That’s getting old. You need some new material.” Then he slides his chair out and rises to his feet, tossing the napkin carelessly back on the table. “As promised,” he says magnanimously before leaving her alone at the table. She wonders when his mere presence became enough to reduce her to juvenile taunts - and was she flirting?
Dorothy tells herself she is relieved when he keeps his word and she doesn’t see him in person for nine months. She slowly regains control over her feelings; nowadays when she catches his profile on a magazine cover or in a news report, she is unaffected; she vows never to let him make her blush again. It is a vow she keeps even when Relena cajoles her into attending a benefit for veterans and she runs into him in the center of the Darlian’s maze garden. Quatre looks up when she approaches but doesn’t move from his position perched on the edge of the fountain, his hand lazily grazing the water.
Finally, Dorothy breaks the silence. “You weren’t at the luncheon.”
“No. My flight was delayed.”
“It’s not too late to make an appearance now.”
“Why?” he asks tonelessly. “I already wrote a check. Relena knows I hate society matrons.”
“You have to concede it’s a sound philosophy.” She quotes ruefully: “A single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
“This single man is not.”
“In possession of a fortune or in want of a wife?”
Quatre’s expression is inscrutable but she thinks the corners of his mouth quivered. “You play a dangerous game,” he tells her, his eyes hard and she thrills at the weight of his words.
Her heart begins pounding but Dorothy calmly denies: “I’m not playing any games.”
“Come here.”
“Why?” she echoes in the same precise, neutral tones he used earlier.
“Because I want you.” His confession hangs in the air and it tears the breath from her lungs; the naked way he looks at her, unguarded, pulls her a step closer, within his reach; his words are so pristine and honest and so Quatre that she moves without resistance when he tugs her toward him. He grasps her face in his hands and she feels every caress of the calluses on his fingers, the unevenness of his breath, the heat of his stare. “I’ve been waiting,” he says softly, “for you to come to me.”
Before she can stop herself, she kisses him. He pulls her roughly into his arms and she falls against him, digging her fingers into his shoulders. He threads his hand into her hair forcing her to arch into him, his mouth crushing hers in a brutal kiss that is all teeth and temper and possession. Then he tears himself away and looks at her hard, a question in his eyes. She swallows, hovering so close to him that she can count the flecks of gold, and wills her face to give him the answer he wants.
Whatever he sees must have been enough because he starts kissing down her jaw, biting her neck, sucking against the soft flesh in the column of her throat until her vision blurs and she is clutching blindly at him for balance. For an earth-shattering moment, her heart beats so loudly that she wants to tell him the truth - her truth - just to drown out her traitorous pulse. She opens her mouth to confess when he suddenly tumbles backwards and they crash into the fountain. They break apart in the water and she kicks away, cursing herself; she stands up, drenched, shivering.
Quatre’s face is alight with laughter. He sweeps his hair back from his face and he says fondly, “Come back with me, Dorothy.”
She’s about to say yes, which is why she forces herself to refuse. “No,” she shakes her head, “this - this was a mistake.” She climbs out of the fountain and takes off running before she can change her mind. Inside Relena’s dressing room, she fights a furious battle with herself. Walking away is victory, she rails inside her head, staying is admitting defeat. She thinks about how it will feel when he discovers that the woman underneath the cold exterior, beneath the glamour, is broken and aimless. She thinks about the despair she will feel when he leaves her - like everyone leaves her eventually. But she can’t discount how alive she is with him and the joy of being near him.
Finally, her indecision shows her the only way she can have him. Desperately and never fully satisfied but it is safe. She will give in to him but not wholly, never entirely. She must protect that last sliver of herself for when she will have to pick up the pieces. That night, her pulse fluttering in her wrist, she knocks on his hotel door. When he opens it, she tells him: “You can’t touch me. Not ever.”
“Then why are you-”
“Until I’m ready,” she interrupts before pushing him aside and walking to his bedroom like she has done it hundreds of times before. She leaves behind a tantalizing trail of clothing. It is two years, three hundred and fifty-four days since the end of the Eve Wars.
After that first knock on his door, Dorothy sees him whenever he’s planetside. They don’t make dates or appointments. She is with him when he thrums with energy after a successful merger, when he is melancholy and thoughtful, when he is depressed and burned by self-disgust. She knows he is unhappy and she comes to realize that he is broken in a different way than she is. The war still rages for him - and self-hatred wears him away. He can’t accept his actions or his vices; he hides vainly behind his clean-cut public image.
She cannot respect a coward so she tells him the hard truths he doesn’t want to hear. She dresses provocatively in that delicate, innocent way that makes his blood boil. He has seen her naked countless times but she is still afraid of baring her soul - of telling him that final truth. That the war is over and that she is at peace with him. She scrubs her face and slips on the whitest nightgown she can find; she checks for lace and cotton; it covers her body and buttons to her chin. Her reflection in the mirror is positively Victorian - the virginal bride about to ravished on her marriage bed.
Dorothy thinks that maybe tonight she will tell him.
Author: Terra aka conniferous
Pairing: 4xD
Warning/Rating: angst, T
Status: Complete
Summary: Dorothy and Quatre teach each other the meaning of peace and freedom from fear.
Notes: The companion piece to The Forever War from Dorothy's perspective of roughly the same timeline. Best read after that story but also stands alone. My favorite oneshot and probably the best one I've written. A few weeks late for the February challenge but better late than never, right?
Forever Peace
She is afraid. Fear makes her cruel. She takes the edge off with gay smiles and disguises vicious barbs with laughter that doesn’t reach her eyes. But with him, she feels naked - and it has nothing to do with the friction of bare skin, languid kisses, the strength she delights in forcing him to use. Dorothy knows she is safe with him; the thought terrifies her. Every time she leaves him, she thinks she should never have let him touch her.
He has crushed her pride into dust, and all she has left is the power to decide when to go to him. She is grateful - it angers her - that he is too blind to know she’s done playing games. It begins as a way to show him that he has not touched her; that his intrusions into her mind and her surrender on the Libra were not lasting; that his kindness has not triumphed over her. It is two years and twelve days after the Eve Wars ended when she sees him again.
They meet at the unraveling of the Eve War Memorial. The irony is not lost on her - nor on him, she observes, when he takes the podium and delivers a passionate speech by rote. There is something insincere about his manner that stinks of fear. When the last glass of champagne is imbibed and the last flashbulbs fade, she finds him in the chapel for the nameless dead. His back is to her but the stiffness in his shoulders betrays his awareness of her.
“Your speech was touching. And yet, you’re hiding in here with the anonymous dead,” she says, the click of each step echoing in the empty mausoleum until she stops beside him; they stand shoulder-to-shoulder, reading the single tribute etched in the merciless marble. “I could make an insensitive metaphor - but those are best left for fiction, I think. Why don’t you just tell me what you’re afraid of?”
Quatre turns and her breath catches in her throat because his eyes are moist and his eyes are so blue it is all she can focus on. His first words to her in years are painfully impersonal: “100,371 people died so we could fill a wall with their names.”
Dorothy feels a sudden pressure in her chest; she refuses to believe it could be disappointment. Her voice is clean of emotion: “The history book of the victor is written in blood. It’s the only way anyone remembers - or cares.”
“I can’t believe that,” he shakes his head, his voice sharp, “I won’t believe that they died to buy us some time - just a reprieve until the next war. Their sacrifice can’t be so meaningless.”
“Your sacrifice?” she asks.
“I made these men nameless. I didn’t think I’d live to see the world after war. I never thought I’d have to see families sobbing at graves. Whatever sacrifices I made - I need to know they meant something.” He gestured at the lone epitaph: They refused to stand down at the end of the world. That kind of courage needs only one name. They were our saviors, nameless but never forgotten.
“They’re gone,” she replies, “the only kind of meaning they have now is what we give them.”
“It’s that easy?”
“Or that hard. Does it upset you? That politicians and hypocrites twist their sacrifice into serving whatever happens to be their agenda of the week?”
“It’s shameful.”
“Oh? But you did the same today,” she reminds him. “Did you even write that speech-”
He moves in a blur, gripping her arm tightly; a gasp escapes her lips when he closes in on her, jerking her against him until she is surrounded by heat and the faint aroma of aftershave and she can feel the expensiveness of his suit scrape against her arms. Quatre’s eyes are impossibly blue, bright with fever. “Don’t think you know me, Dorothy,” he breathes in her ear, foregoing formalities, discarding any veneer of civility, “save it for the sycophants panting after you.”
She pushes him off her, ignoring the pulsing red bracelet he leaves on her arm. “Don’t ever touch me again,” says Dorothy coldly. Then she laughs to hurt him because he has hurt her. “How the mighty have fallen,” she mocks.
Quatre turns the tables on her without missing a beat. An ironic smile curls his lips, disingenuous. “I never thought you had that illusion of me.”
Her cheeks flush and she snaps, “I don’t.”
“Be careful, Dorothy,” he says, raising a hand to stroke her hair. “Don’t get too close to me. You’ll be disappointed.” His hand cups the back of her head and he pulls her towards him gently this time. “I’m not whole anymore,” he whispers before dipping his head to kiss her with warm, salty lips. She is too stunned to respond and by the time she can move again, he’s already let go. He brushes her cheek with the back of his hand once, twice. Then he turns away and all she can catch is his bowed head until she loses him in the gravestones.
He leaves her behind again.
When she sees him at a charity ball weeks later, Quatre has a curvaceous redhead on his arm. She coos something in his ear and he throws his head back, laughing. Dorothy turns around, her heart thudding, and heads for the exit, another tightness in her chest she can’t explain. She is pulling on her mink stole in the foyer when she hears his voice rumbling behind her: “Leaving so soon?”
“I can’t see how it’s any business of yours,” she responds coolly.
“No?” he asks, cocking his head, scrutinizing her. “Then why did you tear out of the ballroom as soon as I came in? I can’t help taking it personally.”
“Tear out?” She laughs in his face. “Goodness, do let’s exaggerate. I have a dinner reservation if you must know.”
“At eleven at night?”
She looks at him with mock pity. “Why so shocked? Don’t tell me you’re the tucked-into-bed by midnight type.”
Quatre smiles appreciatively. “Actually, I am. The rumors of my nighttime escapades are greatly embellished.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” She glances at the door impatiently, making a note not to tip the valet. “You shouldn’t leave your date alone too long. It’s not gentlemanly. Besides,” she says viciously, “she may have found another rich arm to dangle off by now.”
He looks stunned at her words. Then he is laughing so hard he presses an arm against the wall to steady himself. “You mean Cathy? That’s Trowa’s sister you’re disparaging with such disdain,” he gasps, his shoulders shaking, “she was curious about the hoity-toity ways of the wealthy and chronically bored. I thought I’d enlighten her. You won’t find anyone less likely to be a gold-digger in the entire Earth Sphere.”
Her cheeks flaming, Dorothy clenches her fists, throbbing with humiliation. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees her car pull up. She manages, “Good evening, Mr. Winner,” before turning on her heel and fleeing outside. That night, she dreams of salty lips and warm hands but when she wakes, his laughter is ringing in her ears.
For days afterwards, she thinks about all the ways she can ruin him and she is so absorbed in her plans one evening that when Quatre suddenly sits down at her table, his boldness startles her speechless. “Good evening, Miss Dorothy,” he says, unfolding the linen napkin and spreading it on his lap. He hails a waiter and orders champagne. Then he looks at her expectantly until she says tightly, “More wine,” and holds up her glass to be refilled.
“Dining alone?” he asks.
“I’m on a date.”
“You know,” he leans close like they’re sharing a confidence, “I don’t think this one’s a keeper. Not much of a gentleman - making you wait like this.”
“I’m not waiting. He canceled.”
“How fortunate,” he smiles, “mine as well. What are the odds?”
“Not in my favor,” she retorts.
Quatre chuckles. “Tell me. Are you this prickly with all your admirers - or is that honor reserved only for me?”
“I don’t see any admirers. And even if I did, I certainly don’t have to answer that.”
“There it is. Skittish right on schedule. I guess it is just me then.”
Dorothy ignores him and flips open the menu. “I hope you aren’t thinking of staying. I may have lost my date but there’s no reason for me to lose my appetite, too.”
“Answer me one question and I’ll leave you alone.”
“Only if that’s a promise.”
He presses his hand over his heart. He tells her solemnly: “I’m a man of my word.”
“What is it?” she asks warily.
“What are you afraid of?” he echoes her question from that day in the mausoleum.
Dorothy holds herself still, unwilling to let his too-observant gaze glimpse a single tremor; but she is trembling inside. She waits until she is certain she can speak evenly. “Right now, Mr. Winner? I'm afraid of the legal consequences of skewering you with my salad fork.”
He laughs, unconsciously cradling his side where she hopes fervently the scar her fencing foil left still aches. “That’s getting old. You need some new material.” Then he slides his chair out and rises to his feet, tossing the napkin carelessly back on the table. “As promised,” he says magnanimously before leaving her alone at the table. She wonders when his mere presence became enough to reduce her to juvenile taunts - and was she flirting?
Dorothy tells herself she is relieved when he keeps his word and she doesn’t see him in person for nine months. She slowly regains control over her feelings; nowadays when she catches his profile on a magazine cover or in a news report, she is unaffected; she vows never to let him make her blush again. It is a vow she keeps even when Relena cajoles her into attending a benefit for veterans and she runs into him in the center of the Darlian’s maze garden. Quatre looks up when she approaches but doesn’t move from his position perched on the edge of the fountain, his hand lazily grazing the water.
Finally, Dorothy breaks the silence. “You weren’t at the luncheon.”
“No. My flight was delayed.”
“It’s not too late to make an appearance now.”
“Why?” he asks tonelessly. “I already wrote a check. Relena knows I hate society matrons.”
“You have to concede it’s a sound philosophy.” She quotes ruefully: “A single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
“This single man is not.”
“In possession of a fortune or in want of a wife?”
Quatre’s expression is inscrutable but she thinks the corners of his mouth quivered. “You play a dangerous game,” he tells her, his eyes hard and she thrills at the weight of his words.
Her heart begins pounding but Dorothy calmly denies: “I’m not playing any games.”
“Come here.”
“Why?” she echoes in the same precise, neutral tones he used earlier.
“Because I want you.” His confession hangs in the air and it tears the breath from her lungs; the naked way he looks at her, unguarded, pulls her a step closer, within his reach; his words are so pristine and honest and so Quatre that she moves without resistance when he tugs her toward him. He grasps her face in his hands and she feels every caress of the calluses on his fingers, the unevenness of his breath, the heat of his stare. “I’ve been waiting,” he says softly, “for you to come to me.”
Before she can stop herself, she kisses him. He pulls her roughly into his arms and she falls against him, digging her fingers into his shoulders. He threads his hand into her hair forcing her to arch into him, his mouth crushing hers in a brutal kiss that is all teeth and temper and possession. Then he tears himself away and looks at her hard, a question in his eyes. She swallows, hovering so close to him that she can count the flecks of gold, and wills her face to give him the answer he wants.
Whatever he sees must have been enough because he starts kissing down her jaw, biting her neck, sucking against the soft flesh in the column of her throat until her vision blurs and she is clutching blindly at him for balance. For an earth-shattering moment, her heart beats so loudly that she wants to tell him the truth - her truth - just to drown out her traitorous pulse. She opens her mouth to confess when he suddenly tumbles backwards and they crash into the fountain. They break apart in the water and she kicks away, cursing herself; she stands up, drenched, shivering.
Quatre’s face is alight with laughter. He sweeps his hair back from his face and he says fondly, “Come back with me, Dorothy.”
She’s about to say yes, which is why she forces herself to refuse. “No,” she shakes her head, “this - this was a mistake.” She climbs out of the fountain and takes off running before she can change her mind. Inside Relena’s dressing room, she fights a furious battle with herself. Walking away is victory, she rails inside her head, staying is admitting defeat. She thinks about how it will feel when he discovers that the woman underneath the cold exterior, beneath the glamour, is broken and aimless. She thinks about the despair she will feel when he leaves her - like everyone leaves her eventually. But she can’t discount how alive she is with him and the joy of being near him.
Finally, her indecision shows her the only way she can have him. Desperately and never fully satisfied but it is safe. She will give in to him but not wholly, never entirely. She must protect that last sliver of herself for when she will have to pick up the pieces. That night, her pulse fluttering in her wrist, she knocks on his hotel door. When he opens it, she tells him: “You can’t touch me. Not ever.”
“Then why are you-”
“Until I’m ready,” she interrupts before pushing him aside and walking to his bedroom like she has done it hundreds of times before. She leaves behind a tantalizing trail of clothing. It is two years, three hundred and fifty-four days since the end of the Eve Wars.
After that first knock on his door, Dorothy sees him whenever he’s planetside. They don’t make dates or appointments. She is with him when he thrums with energy after a successful merger, when he is melancholy and thoughtful, when he is depressed and burned by self-disgust. She knows he is unhappy and she comes to realize that he is broken in a different way than she is. The war still rages for him - and self-hatred wears him away. He can’t accept his actions or his vices; he hides vainly behind his clean-cut public image.
She cannot respect a coward so she tells him the hard truths he doesn’t want to hear. She dresses provocatively in that delicate, innocent way that makes his blood boil. He has seen her naked countless times but she is still afraid of baring her soul - of telling him that final truth. That the war is over and that she is at peace with him. She scrubs her face and slips on the whitest nightgown she can find; she checks for lace and cotton; it covers her body and buttons to her chin. Her reflection in the mirror is positively Victorian - the virginal bride about to ravished on her marriage bed.
Dorothy thinks that maybe tonight she will tell him.