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Levi used to see red, and think of you. Your red skirts and blouses in every rose, your lips in every stain of wine. But now, when he looks at you, he thinks of gold.
Gold, like the lamplight on the night you’d stayed with him well past dark, until it was too dangerous to send you back home across the open fields. Like the sun shining through the windows the next morning, illuminating your bare skin and warming the sheets he laid in with you.
When he sees red wine, he can’t help but remember the golden beer that flowed like water at the wedding; and gold, in your ears and around your neck— presents from your father, who wasn’t truly sure he’d be able to take care of you.
There’s the single band of gold around your finger, the only thing he could afford on a scout’s salary.
You told him it was your favourite.
You tell him you feel so lucky to have met him all those years ago, under the light of golden stars, the night before he left for his undercover mission in Marley.
It’s said through tears, because you won’t see him for months now. He holds your face as gently as he can manage and he wipes the tears away. He thinks you’ve got it backwards. You’re the most golden thing of them all. He’s the one who’s lucky
It’s a month after the Rumbling when he sees you appear over the horizon at the refugee camp; and it feels so much like the time he saw you coming across the green, rolling fields in Paradis wearing that mud-speckled dress.
You’re carrying a brown-paper package again too. But this time, it can’t have had anything important in it, because when you see him— tired, broken— it carelessly falls from your hands. You kneel in front of his chair, crying, heartbroken; and he doesn’t have enough fingers to hold your face and wipe away the tears at the same time.
Levi thinks he must be the worst thing in your lucky life. You seem to shed your tears only for him.
He says he’s sorry for taking you away from all the shiny things in your past life. He’s sorry he was selfish enough to ask a nobleman’s daughter to become a soldier’s wife. He’s sorry your life isn’t as golden as you deserve. He’s sorry he lost his wedding band along with his fingers, somewhere back on the island.
He tells you he’s worried you’re sorry too.
You listen to him patiently, and at the end you stand up and roll back your sleeves, and show him that your arms are covered from wrist to elbow with golden bracelets and bangles. Everything you could carry, you say; because you knew you weren’t going back, one way or another.
You’re golden enough for the both of you, you tell him, so he needn’t worry about all that.
Months pass, and the only gold left on your arms is that old band around your finger. All that metal has turned into a roof over your heads, and the fields around you— five hundred paces in each direction. It’s the new pairs of boots you keep giving to Falco because he keeps outgrowing them, and the dresses Gabi insists don’t suit her, but wears anyway.
All these things are golden too.
You send Falco and Gabi off to the fields with a smile and warm brown-paper packages, then come back to sit with him at the breakfast table.
“How’s your pain today?” you ask him, rubbing your swollen belly.
Levi lays his hand over yours, and tells you it’s manageable. It’s even a little true.