Although she was exhausted, Delilah was still far too wired
to do more than sleep for a few hours; sleep which wasn't entirely restful, even with Envy remaining next to her. Dark dreams kept creeping in; blood and loss and crying children made her sleep fitful, even as she clung to him, subconsciously afraid of waking to find him gone, to find it all part of a dream.
Finally, her brain had quite enough of that and she woke, the worst of the edge of exhaustion whittled too far away to make a return to sleep feasible at the immediate moment. But she didn't move save for opening her eyes, feeling him next to her. The ground in the awoken world felt no more steady and secure than it had in her dreams, and she didn't dare risk her hope to stretch it far enough to believe that the moment would last. Once he knew she was awake, would he leave? Would he return later, when she finally succumbed again to exhaustion and went back to bed? What
did his agreement to stay all entail?
True, he
had called her his wife in the clinic, but while he was still very much William underneath everything, in many other ways, he was a stranger. She could not read him quite as well as she used to, and she was afraid of assuming too much, of stepping too far out to discover where any boundaries might be, on the possibility he might change his mind, driven off by too much familiarity. He had made it clear in the past that he was
not William, not any longer, and she was just nervous enough to not dare press for too much of him.
He was there, he would remain with her, and he would not be returning to that bitch. That was enough, and if that was all it was to be, it would
have to be enough.
So Delilah didn't move even after waking, committing the moment as deeply to memory as she could. Just one more, one last chance, just in case that would be all she would have.