He tries, but there's no way he can brace himself against her presence. Not when she's like this. So distraught all her barriers have come crashing down.

The separation was your choice.

He can't have these memories. Whatever the reason, she has said no, so that's the end of it. But he can't then have these memories. He doesn't want to be able to remember what her body feels like, if the memory is all he's ever going to have.

This isn't fair.

The panic grip of her arms around his neck, the press of her whole body against his, the brush of her lips on his hair, his temple.

Don't touch me unless you mean it.

He wants to enfold her, wrap himself all the way around her, hold her to him until she stops shaking, but he knows if he does he will never be able to let go again. He closes his eyes. Has to. The only distance from her he can achieve.

Please don't.

He puts his hands to her waist, tries to move her back. Her body gives him space, but she presses her forehead to his and she cradles his face with her hands, and when he tugs those gently down even her fingers seek out his. She just keeps reaching for him. And it's agony.

"I heard about the fire," she says. "What happened?"

"It was us. To get them to stop the train. We managed to break out, but we were under fire from the Germans, and... Harry."

Now she draws back. Reminded of the world beyond just him. She crumples in on herself, too distressed already to be able to contain her reaction. And he can't. He can't just let her stand there. Alone with her grief, even if it's at her own request. He can't do that to her. She, who taught him that touch is comfort.

Aurora.

He draws her body back to his, taking her weight as she collapses against him, and he gives in to the need to hold her, his arms gathering up her broken pieces and cradling them close. He has never held anyone like this. So close she's almost a part of himself. And it's overwhelming. Her chest hitching against his ribs, the small sobs she tries to smother in his shoulder, the flavour and the texture of the vulnerability that she never allows herself to show. All of it soaked with the lingering grass-and-earth smell of his own grief.

Please don't let go. Don't ever let go.

When she stops her tears, wipes her eyes, draws away, it's as though she takes his skin with her, ripped off like the yank of a Band-Aid everywhere their bodies touched. Like his insides are raw and exposed. Like he won't ever be whole again without her.

As real as the present every time.

This time all her barriers go back up. Her stance turns cold and guarded. By the time they part she won't even look at him. Rigid with the shame of having exposed her own lie. She can't even pretend to believe it herself. All she can do is turn and run.

But now no memory will ever be enough.

And Alfred is alone again, as tortured by the certainty that she loves him – the truth of it betrayed over and over in the grip of her arms and her hands and her fingers – as he was by the doubt. But this time stripped of the permission to love her back, stripped even of the freedom to hope.

He never would have believed that any memory of her would be among the ones he would rather be able to forget.