Between the Grapevines

"Immy?" Fayza asked, rushing toward the older woman who stood outside of the hospital room with one hand on her cane and the other raised to the sky in gratitude. "What- why are you outside?"

Um Muhsin turned to her with a weak smile on her trembling lips. "My daughter, your husband is awake. The fighters are with-."

But she could not wait a moment longer.

"Riyad," Fayza dragged open the hospital door to find herself faced with the backs of six larger men. She could not see past their broad backs and high shoulders to the bed she knew rested in the middle, but nothing could stop her now. So, she continued forward to the men who hadn't heard her, pushing through them with a pounding heart and struggling lungs.

And the next time she uttered his name, her gaze had met with the heavy and cold eyes of the man sitting beneath his sheets. The plastic pipe had been removed from his mouth so he could speak but the lines of the band that had held it remained faintly drawn across his cheekbones. The dark circles beneath his eyes made Riyad seem almost intimidating in his silence, his attention locked on the girl who'd forced her way in front of him.

But his expression did not shift or soften at the sight of her and Fayza's heart fell past her feet. Why did he seem like a completely different person than the man she had caught in her arms and waited beside the past days?

No... it couldn't be, right?

He remembered her before.

She did not hear the men when they resumed speaking, uttering a word or two before nodding in their heads in respect and leaving. If Riyad had heard them, he did not show it until he turned to nod after they'd taken their leave. But, when they closed the door after themselves and left the two of them alone in the room together, his attention returned to her.

"You...," she began, her words trembling from the weakness rippling across her body. Under his gaze, she was not the lioness she cultivated of herself in the face of her enemies. Under his gaze, she was a little girl who'd fallen in love with the gentle heart of a man. "...know who I am?"

He listened to her question in his silence. Fayza felt the room getting smaller around her with each passing moment he did not respond in. Then, when he opened his mouth, the entire world quieted to carry his hoarse whisper. "Min 'Alam Al-Arwah," he breathed. Ever since The Realm of Souls.

Fayza's sigh rocked her body and the relief washed over her with enough power to bring her tears back. "Thanks be to God," she cried.

Riyad extended his hand to her when he saw the weakness in her legs, drawing the teary girl toward the bed as her head fell forward. If Fayza's gaze had not fallen to the bed beneath her, she may have seen the change in her husband's expression. His tired eyes softened at the sight of her, his brows knitting at the look of her sorrow.

"Forgive me," he whispered to her, their foreheads nearly touching from their proximity once she sat beside his legs. A gentle smile tugged at the corners of his lips as he raised his left hand to wipe away her running tears. "I frightened you, didn't I?"

She pulled in a trembling breath so that her voice might calm enough to respond to the patiently waiting man. "You said your shahada," she tried to begin. But the memory of how he'd looked through her, his soul slipping and his breathing labored, while struggling to recite his final testament was enough to bring forward more tears. "You couldn't even see me-."

"I see you," his fingers wrapped around the hand she lifted to rub her eyes, catching her arm as his thumb rose to wipe her eyes. Instead, he laid her palm across his chest to feel the hammering of his heart. "You were all I could see my entire journey back. You are all I can see now. Feel this heart beneath your touch, you were the one who breathed life into the soul it sustains. It would not beat between my ribs now without you."