Zelda had leaned her head against his chest, which was nice in so many ways. He could smell her hair. He could feel the warmth of her chest pressed up against his. He could move his hands from just resting on her hips to wrapping around them and really holding her. He could have done this forever.

His instinct was to respond with something like we've got it now, but before he even started to form the words he realized it wasn't really true. Nice as this was, it wasn't the same as what they could have had if their first time together had been under different circumstances — if he hadn't been drunk, if she hadn't been unsure, if they hadn't just stumbled into it like they were lost and trying to find their way back home. Alfred thought that had been the first time he'd seen her hair down, for instance — looking back now he could imagine brushing a piece of it back off of her forehead, wrapping a little twirl of it around his finger, really experiencing it. He wasn't going to be able to do that now. He wasn't going to be able to run his fingertips over the contours of her body the way he could have done if they were alone and naked and had all the time in the world. There had been a small window, following the sex, where they could have been really intimate, and in many ways it was closed now. The worst part was that Zelda probably didn't even know what she was missing, because she'd never had anything else. He'd taken her very first time and made it... lackluster, at least compared to what it could have been. No wonder they hadn't spoken to each other for months afterwards.

Alfred turned his head and kissed her forehead. "There's not a lot of room for this, is there?" he commented, continuing to hold her. "In lives like ours. We didn't really have a chance then, and we probably won't have another one for a long time. Maybe ever."