She does get it over with quickly. The violence of her heaving subsides into tapering hitches, then to a final shivering hiccup. Her nails come out of his shoulder dry, which she thinks nothing of, not seeing the glimmering crescents of transubstantiating blood. She wipes her face aggressively on the pillow's case, so when she wriggles her way far enough back to lift her head to look at him her face is pink and matte with friction.

Her eyes are rimmed in red darker than her pale, tear-spiked eyelashes. They meet the oil spill black and coronal white of his without flinching, without the awareness that a flinch might be called for.

"Okay." She brings her hands up to rake her hair back and twist it into a loose, unbound lock that gets the sticking strands out of her face. "Okay. I'm done."

Like snapping the cover of a book shut. Like it's that neat and easy, which it never is, but it can be for now. She's pretty good at the for now. She twists to rub her still leaking nose on her shoulder, all dignity abandoned, and then unwinds.

"Are you," she starts, uncertainly, and her hand comes up to cup his face.

What did Lazarus say when he stepped out of his tomb? What did he think looking at the faces of his sister and his town when they saw the miracle? It was one of those things she always thought someone ought to have remembered and written down. Did they look at him with this mingled disbelief and grief? Did it feel like she feels now, bewildered and stumbling?

"Are you all right?"