They got home from Brazil just after midnight.
Lyra dropped her bag by the door and stood in the kitchen, feeling the weight of everything pressing down on her.
Ana's tears. The way she'd held Yosef like she was holding onto someone she'd lost. The emptiness in her eyes when she said Don César's name meant nothing.
The most important thing that had ever happened to Lyra, meeting Yosef, experiencing Tartaria, understanding what the world had lost, was seen as a lie by everyone else who lived. A delusion. A breakdown.
Only Yosef knew it was real.
Only Yosef remembered.
She felt tears prick at her eyes, hot and unwelcome.
"I need a drink," she said, her voice rough.
But she didn't move toward the cabinet. She looked at Yosef instead.
He was standing by the window, watching her with that steady attention he had. Like he could see straight through her.
She walked over to him and put her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat under her palm.
"Or maybe I need you," she whispered.
His hand came up to cup her face, his thumb brushing away a tear she hadn't realized had fallen.
"The most important parts of our lives are secrets," he said quietly, his eyes locked on hers. "Our origin story, how we found each other, where we came from, what we survived, it's ours alone. Just like everything else we've shared. The world doesn't get to validate what happened between us. They don't get a vote."
His other hand slid to her waist, pulling her against him until she could feel the heat of his body through their clothes.
"What we have is real because we lived it. Because you feel it every time I touch you." His hand moved lower, to her hip, his fingers pressing into her skin. "Because when I'm inside you, there's no room for doubt. No room for anyone else's reality but ours."
Lyra's breath caught, heat pooling low in her belly.
"We're the only witnesses to our own story," Yosef continued, his voice dropping lower, rougher. "And that makes it sacred. Not less real, more real. Because it belongs only to us."
He leaned down, his mouth brushing against her ear, his breath hot on her skin.
"Let me remind you what's real."
She shivered, desire chasing away everything else, the exhaustion, the grief, the doubt.
She reached up and kissed him, hard and desperate, her fingers tangling in his hair.
He made a low sound in his throat and lifted her, her legs wrapping around his waist as he carried her toward the bedroom. As if she were as light as a plate of food and she was the main course. His hands were everywhere, her back, her thighs, sliding under her shirt to find bare skin.
They barely made it to the bed before she was pulling at his clothes, needing him now, needing to feel something other than loss.
He caught her wrists and pinned them above her head with one hand, his body covering hers, his weight pressing her into the mattress.
"Tell me what you need," he said, his voice rough.
"You," she gasped. "I need you."
He kissed her again, slower this time, deeper, his free hand sliding down her body, learning every curve like it was the first time. His fingers found the button of her jeans and it popped open as if he willed it so, sliding the denim down her hips.
She arched into him, wanting more, needing more.
"Patience," he murmured against her mouth, and she could feel him smiling.
"I don't want patience," she said, pulling her wrists free and reaching for him, her hands sliding under his shirt, feeling the hard muscle beneath.
He groaned and pulled the shirt over his head, tossing it aside, and then his hands were on her again, more urgent this time, stripping away the rest of her clothes until there was nothing between them.
She pulled him down to her, needing the weight of him, the heat, the solid reality of his body against hers.
His mouth moved down her neck, her collarbone, lower, and she gasped, her fingers digging into his shoulders.
"Tell me I'm not crazy," she whispered.
He looked up at her, his eyes dark with desire.
"You're not crazy," he said. "You're awake. You're alive. And you're mine."
The possessiveness in his voice sent a thrill through her, and when his mouth found her breast, she cried out, her back arching off the bed.
He took his time, torturing her with his tongue, his teeth, until she was trembling, desperate, begging.
"Yosef, please—"
He moved back up her body, kissing her deeply as he positioned himself between her thighs.
"This is real," he murmured against her mouth.
And then he was inside her, filling her completely, and she gasped at the sensation, at the way her body yielded to him, welcomed him.
He moved slowly at first, deliberately, watching her face, reading every reaction.
"Faster," she breathed, her nails raking down his back.
He obliged, his hips snapping forward, driving deeper, and she moaned, wrapping her legs around him, pulling him closer.
The rhythm built between them, urgent and primal, and she felt herself climbing toward something overwhelming, something that would shatter her completely.
"Look at me," Yosef commanded, and she opened her eyes, meeting his gaze.
The intensity there, the raw need, the possession, the absolute certainty, pushed her over the edge.
Her orgasm hit like a freight train, her body locking up tight before releasing in a rush of pleasure so intense she gasped his name, her inner walls clenching rhythmically around him as she came.
But he didn't stop.
He kept moving, slower now, riding out her orgasm, and before she could catch her breath he shifted the angle and she gasped, her oversensitive body already building toward something else.
"Again," he said against her mouth, his voice rough with control.
"I can't—"
"You can."
His hand slid between them, finding the spot that made her see stars, and she shattered a second time, her back arching off the bed as the orgasm tore through her, harder than the first, making her cry out as she clenched around him again and again.
"Yosef—"
"I'm not done with you yet."
He pulled out, ignoring her whimper of protest, and flipped her onto her stomach. His hands gripped her hips, pulling her up onto her knees, and then he was inside her again, deeper from this angle, hitting places that made her cry out into the pillow.
She was already so sensitive, so wrung out, but he knew exactly what he was doing, exactly how to angle his hips, exactly where to touch her, exactly how much pressure to use.
"One more," he said, his voice strained now, his control finally fraying. "Give me one more."
She didn't think she could. Didn't think her body had anything left.
But then his hand was between her legs again, circling, stroking, and she felt it building impossibly fast, impossibly intense.
She pushed herself up off her hands, balancing on just her knees, and reached down to grab her own nipples, pinching them hard as the orgasm built.
She came hard, harder than she'd ever come in her life, the orgasm ripping through her with such force she screamed, her fingers twisting her nipples as she came and came and came, the climax rolling through her in endless waves, peaking and cresting and peaking again.
Her vision exploded into white light, then bursts of color, gold, violet, electric blue, dancing behind her eyelids like fireworks. Her ears popped, pressure releasing with an almost painful intensity, and then there was ringing, high and sharp, like she'd damaged something.
She couldn't hear anything but that ringing. Couldn't see anything but light. Couldn't feel anything but the overwhelming sensation of her body shattering into pieces, the orgasm stretching on and on, refusing to end.
And then she felt him, his rhythm breaking, his grip on her hips tightening almost painfully, and he buried himself deep with a final thrust, groaning her name as he came inside her, his release prolonging hers, making her cry out again as another peak hit.
Only then did her orgasm finally release her, leaving her collapsed and shaking.
He pulled out gently and she fell forward onto the bed, boneless, her body still convulsing.
Her body wouldn't stop. Jarring spasms rippled through her, making her jerk and twitch like she'd been struck by lightning. Her legs kicked involuntarily. Her hands clenched into fists so tight her nails bit into her palms.
Tears were streaming down her face, silent, unstoppable, running from the corners of her eyes into her hair. She wasn't crying, wasn't sobbing, but the tears kept coming like her body didn't know what else to do with the intensity of what had just happened.
Yosef pulled her against him, holding her through it, one hand stroking her hair while her body continued to jerk and convulse against his.
"I've got you," he murmured.
She couldn't move. Couldn't think. Her vision was still spotty, colors bleeding at the edges. The ringing in her ears was fading slowly, replaced by the sound of their ragged breathing.
Her entire body felt like liquid, like she'd been pureed in a blender and poured back into herself at a cellular level and put back together wrong.
Or maybe right.
It took a full five minutes before the jerking stopped. Before she could draw a full breath without it hitching. Before the tears finally dried on her face.
"Better than a drink?" Yosef asked after a long moment, his voice rough and amused, sounding distant through the residual ringing.
She tried to laugh but it came out as more of a breathless, broken sound. "I think... you broke me again."
"Good." He pulled her tighter against him, both of them still breathing hard. "You needed to forget everything for a while."
She had. God, she had.
Her thighs were trembling. Her vision was finally clearing, the spots of color fading. Her ears still felt full, like she'd been at a concert standing too close to the speakers.
Her body felt heavy and sated and completely wrung out. She was pretty sure she'd have trouble walking in the morning.
As they lay together, she reached down between her legs, her fingers playing with the toy that Yosef had left in her cereal box.
"We're going to need a bottle of Tylenol for the bedside table," she said, her voice hoarse. "For me. You crack me like an egg every time." Yosef had no idea what Tylenol was but he could follow her context.
"Industrial size," she added.
"We'll find proof," she said quietly, once her brain started working again. "Physical proof. Things they can't erase."
"We will," Yosef agreed, pressing a kiss to her shoulder.
Lyra forced herself to sit up, wincing at the immediate protest from her body. She padded to the bathroom and took two Tylenol with a glass of water, then climbed back into bed.
Yosef pulled her against him, and she settled with her back to his chest, his arm draped over her waist.
She closed her eyes, feeling the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against her back.
She'd lost so much. But she still had this. Still had him. Still had the way he could take her apart and put her back together with nothing but his hands and his mouth, his body really.
And that would be enough. For now.
The next morning, Lyra sat at her kitchen table with a laptop, a notepad, and a growing sense of futility.
The internet was useless. Every search led to the same sanitized results, the same dismissive articles, the same careful erasure.
There were a couple vaguely worded videos that used codes and metaphors to talk about Tartaria, but no information that filled anything in. One did give her a list of libraries, places with such massive catalogs of random information that there was no way anyone could track it all down for removal in a hundred years. The fact that nobody used libraries anymore, and the fact that Tartaria was a thousand needles in ten million haystacks, was also a powerful tool of dissuasion for anyone looking.
She closed the laptop and looked at Yosef, who was sitting across from her, watching her with that steady patience he had. I will even except microform, non-digital, it may not be the actual but it is recreation magnified. It would be a start.
"We need to go deeper," she said. "Older. Things they haven't digitized yet."
"Physical records," Yosef said.
"Physical records," Lyra agreed. "Libraries. Archives. Things you can hold in your hands."
She pulled out her phone, not to search the internet, but to find addresses.
The Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Twelve hours by car.
They could start there.
Lyra spent the next two days filing Freedom of Information Act requests. Dozens of them. Targeting the State Department, the CIA, historical preservation offices, military archives, even the U.S. Department of the Interior and National Park Services. She would have filed to the Department of Education if that was actually a real thing.
She didn't expect most of them to yield anything. But even redacted documents might show gaps. Patterns. Places where information used to be.
Before they left, she stopped at a phone store and bought him a basic smartphone.
"You don't have to use it like the other people you see," she said as they got back in the car. "It's a good tool when it's needed. It's a disgusting addiction when it's not."
Yosef turned the phone over in his hands, studying it.
"Show me what I need to know," he said. "The rest I'll figure out if I have to."
She showed him how to call her, how to text, how to use maps. The basics. He nodded, absorbing it, then slipped the phone into his pocket almost like he had one for years. For some reason Lyra found it funny how fluid his phone to pocket movement was.
When they got home, they loaded up the car and pointed it south. Lyra felt like she was beginning her trip to Mordor.
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