Please have mercy

Patience

She was weaving the colors together, creating a pattern on the loom. At this stage of the project, it was impossible to tell what it was, doing only the first few rows. She had been at it for a few hours now, having to stop to find the right wool and the correct colors she wanted. The machine was huge, bigger than she was used to, it used more strands than her previous ones, which made her able to form intricate designs.

She was trying to recreate what she had seen in the chapel, the mural with the dark-clad man on a setting sun, a planet with sand, red skies, and orange moons. She had learned that the man shown had been the creator of the death star, which made her decide that she would exclude him from the tapestry. She didn't know what she would do with it yet, certain that he would not let her hang somewhere in the room. She'd give it to Numa perhaps, as a blanket to keep in her quarters.

While weaving, she thought of the permission to preside over the inquisitions, a small thing she had earned. It still bothered her to know that he had kept her duties away from her until now, she had not even been aware that she had things to do. As he had said, it was basic paperwork and dull readings that consisted of reports, only needing her to sign it at the end. Catching up on it had taken up most of her time, staying in a corner of the room she had transformed into her office.

Lost in her thoughts and the repetitive movement of the loom, all her concentration drawn towards it, she did not hear her husband enter the room. He walked behind her, stopping behind her shoulder to watch what she had created. He touched her shoulder, making her jump out of surprise in her seat.

"Good evening," she uttered, holding the strings of wool together. He unclasped his mask and threw it on the couch. It still surprised her when he did it, seeing his face always seemed like a novelty she would never tire of seeing.

He bent to kiss her forehead, making her question if it was for accessibility reasons since the top of her head was far more easily reachable than her mouth, or if it was a small subtle way to punish her for something she had done since he was forgoing the only thing she had explicitly told him she liked.

She still wouldn't touch him of her own volition, if she wasn't explicitly invited to do so, accepting whatever he would give her and returning everything in equal manner, letting him take the lead.

His eyes drifted to her hands and to the tapestry, observing the colors she had chosen: vibrant bloody reds. If he recognized the reference, he said nothing of it. Holding her by the shoulders, he moved to sit behind her, pushing her forward on her bench as she put his legs on the outside of hers. She kept it as an indication to keep weaving, letting him watch without a word.

After a minute, his hands moved from where they had encircled her waist to her thighs, sliding down and gripping her in a comfortingly yet alarming manner. She had no desire to entice anything intimate, it was the wrong day to do so and his gestures evoked his intentions in a strong way. She took his hands away from her legs and placed them where hers had been on the strings, her feet stopping the heavy pedals.

Putting her hands on his, using her fingers as if they were hers, she guided them to show him the movements of the weaving, pulling the cords together. His hands were bigger than hers, and gloved, which made it hard to make precise knots, feeling as if she had to push against him. He let her control him, watching as she repeated the movement until he could remember it, syncing with her to weave as she pressed the pedals and switched the colors of the strings.

It was an endearing sight to watch him try and learn something she was fond of, a simple hobby that was so far from his usual realm of knowledge. A delicate maneuver that he seemed to excel at although it was quite unusual to see him act so minutely. Even if she could take her mind off things for a while and concentrate on the manual work, she couldn't stop her body from constantly reminding her that he was entirely pressed against her, feeling his chest on her back and his breathing on her ear as he leaned his head on the side of hers, still feeling the burn of his kiss on her forehead.