"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
Adna is still not certain how or where she stands with Beth.
She has no idea what brims beneath the surface of him—has no idea what drives him or what he thinks or, heaven forbid, how he feels. He is like the ocean and the longer she stares, the more she realizes is just under the surface. The longer she looks, the more she sees endless black and the ripples of thrown stones.
It does nothing to deter her though, or stop that reckless pounding of her heart when she thinks of him. It does nothing to quiet the pounding of her pulse when she considers him—when she thinks of that serious gravity to his face, or the curve of his neck, or the way it feels when he finally lets her in.
Even if it’s just for a second.
Even if it’s just for a moment.
She does her best to keep such things tucked away, to pretend that they have no effect, and if she goes to sleep with a war-battered heart, then it is her mistake to make. Just as it is her mistake to make when she wakes up and feels the rhythm of life that begins to grip at her belly. If she feels any fear, it is drowned out by the instinct that takes over. She doesn’t cry out—can’t imagine asking for help—but neither does she hide. Instead, she finds a quiet spot, swallowing hard and then letting nature take its course.
When the minutes pass (and then the hours), she focuses on the task at hand.
The rest fades into the background until that tiny girl slips from her.
She feels relief and exhaustion and something completely foreign when her heart clenches in her chest. She reaches out for the tiny scaled girl, such a perfect miniature, and she feels tears on her cheeks, but they are not quite the sorrow she had felt when her first children had taken their first breath.
This is terrifying and electrifying and she lets it flood over her as she presses kisses to her daughter.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
It is excruciating.
The time in-between.
The first thing she ever does is grimace.
Because the pressure is unbearable and it’s so cold she can’t catch her breath. She is acutely aware of the heat of her mother’s breath and the feverish way she kisses her but she shivers, too. And when she finally opens her eyes they are a bright, vibrant green. Freakish. The teeth fanged so that when she moves her tongue in her mouth it comes away bloody.
How bitter the iron taste of her own blood as she blinks through the darkness, her vision shifting to something new – something she has no control over. The edges of things soften, morph into bright colors so that she can see her mother clearly in the dark. The girl still grimaces as she fights her way to her feet, sways and shudders.
Snaps her head around so quickly that she loses her balance when the two of them are joined by another warm body. A figure that pauses at the edge of their space. A breath escapes her like a hiss.
She cannot see him smile. She does not see the way he glances at her mother and says, “just like her mother.” But Bethlehem can see every inch of their daughter. The scales and those bright green eyes. All that venom. He looks then to Adna and that ghost of a smile remains. “She’s beautiful,” he murmurs as the child hisses and spits and staggers to her feet again.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
Her daughter is bright and fierce and she loves her wholeheartedly immediately.
It takes no time at all for Adna’s heart to clench in her chest and even though there is part of her that mourns the fact that she has passed on her curse, she cannot help but find her beautiful. One day, she will need to tell her of the hunger. She will need to warn her of the way that it spreads throughout your veins and fires all of the wrong synapses. She will need to tell her about the way her body will betray her.
But not today.
Not when she looks up and sees Beth approaching. Her throat clenches and she feels herself nearly come undone but manages to hold herself together. She rises to her feet and meet her daughter’s fiercely green eyes, so much sharper than the sage of her own, and smiles, feels the fangs press against her lips.
“She is beautiful,” she affirms, her head swimming with the nearness of him. So much unsaid between them and she feels the distance but as with every other time, she doesn’t close it. But neither does she spit venom at him. She just smiles, feels the need to fidget and then calms down, smoothes the edges of her nerves until she is still. She should tell him about Sabbath, she thinks. She should tell him that she knows about the daughter he shares with her sister. She should tell him that she knows about Prayer.
But these things escape her and she clenches to these moments of peace just a little longer.
“We never did decide on a name, did we?”
She glances up, searching his eyes, doing her best to keep these secrets at bay.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
The vision flickers and his shape loses its color.
She blinks through the murky darkness at him.
Plain, she thinks, and does not understand the way her mother looks at him.
She does not know anything about love or the terrible things it makes people do. She knows nothing of the secrets her mother swallows as the two of them stagger to their feet in unison. She garners strength from her mother’s strength, steadies herself against her mother’s side. She gnashes her teeth at him, immediately hates him from encroaching on their space.
But it does not deter him. He is not afraid of her. He does not back down, just looks at her with that same patient smile. His daughter. He had hoped that she might look like her mother. Unique, unlike him. Adna smiles at him while their daughter hisses venom and perhaps this is all it takes to compel him to go to her, to press a kiss against her forehead.
“No,” he mutters, taking one step back then to give them back their space. A ring of quiet that belonged only to them. “No, I don’t think we did.” He remembers that night and how that thing had twisted in his gut and how he had wanted so desperately to be anything other than what he was. How viciously he had wanted to be someone who stayed, someone deserving of a family. This family.
“What do you think?” he asks then and he shifts his focus back to the child who bares her fanged teeth, who sinks them into his shoulder. But the venom is weak and leaves only a humming in the muscle. He laughs, a stunted sound as he takes another step back to wedge more space between them.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
Adna melts at the brush of his lips and it takes everything within her to not show it. To simply give him that small smile even when she feels the distinct tightening in her chest and the fluttering of her belly.
This is temporary, she thinks. She reminds herself.
Her sister’s words continually play in her head (they will leave you in the morning) and she wonders if Beth had found Sabbath when Prayer had been born. Had they stood like this, as a makeshift family? Had he pressed a kiss to her forehead too? Looked at them with that same patient smile?
Had it been just like this?
It is poison in her veins and on her tongue and she just swallows it down.
She startles a little when the baby viper strikes out and finds purchase on his shoulder. She wants to breathe an apology, say that it will never happen again, but she knows better than most that there is no way to control that. There is no way to promise that the snake will not behave as a snake.
And there is no way that he would want a family of vipers.
She swallows the bitterness and shakes away the tears before they form, reaching out to press a soft fanged kiss to her daughter. Never regretting her for what she is or wishing she would change.
“I was thinking Gospel,” she says quietly, and she isn’t sure if the name feels fitting because of what she knows or despite it, but she cannot take it back now. She glances at him, wondering if he perhaps will put two and two together, hoping against hope that he will not, and then busies herself with the child, pressing another kiss to her daughter and wondering how long it will be before Beth leaves them again.
How desperately she does not want to be the one who is left.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
For him, there is no connection to make.
He is unaware that there is another child out in the world, coal black and beautiful, who bleeds his blood.
He does not know that her name is Prayer or that she is plain, like him, instead of scaled like her mother.
So, she says the name and the only thing that stirs in his chest in something he can only guess is paternal instinct. Gospel. She is a beautiful child, even as she gnashes her teeth and his blood drips from her lips and she looks at him with so much loathing. Beautiful and lethal like her mother. He does not deserve them and perhaps this will be why he leaves, someday. But not now.
Now, he nods and the smile remains but he keeps his distance because he does not know how to be a father. He was not built for it. He was built for the leaving, not the staying and it is clear in the way the child glares at him, vicious and unblinking, that she would shed nary a tear if he left.
“Gospel, I like it,” he concedes and nods and shifts his focus back to Adna’s face. “It suits her,” he says. His blood tastes different than her own as she licks it off her teeth. It tastes faintly of her own but something else, too. It slides easy down her throat and she sinks a little heavier against her mother’s side. She wants to sink her teeth into him again, wants to bleed him dry.
She hisses and grimaces and folds herself into her mother’s shadow and hates the way he looks at her, looks at her mother.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
She wonders at the way the moment splits her apart.
How she can feel so blissfully happy and so terrified of the ending. How she can feel something like love stirring in her chest and the way that it wars with the urge to flee. Maybe it is this that makes her blind to her daughter’s vicious nature. Maybe she doesn’t see the way that her daughter’s eyes look so cold, so empty, so deeply predatory.
She misses it completely.
She looks up again, feeling the heavy press of Gospel to her side, and wishing fiercely that Rupture and Bela would be here to meet their sister. For a second, she frowns, glancing into the shadows and wondering where the twins would be, where they are now.
“I’m glad,” she says and then swallows hard, wishing that she could be quiet. That she could relax into the moment and be as peaceful as he is. He deserves that, she thinks. He deserves a quiet kind of love. Something gentle and sweet that did not demand so much. That did not constantly rage at him. Did not demand and fight and push him for the impossible.
Another breath as she tries to catch her breath.
“I’m glad that you’re here,” she nearly qualifies, tucking her daughter into her side and hating the way that hope blossoms in her chest at the feeling of the three them here together.
It could be like this, she thinks.
It could be the three of them together and she would be happy.
But he has told her from the beginning who he is and she knows better than trying to force him again. Trying to push him into something that he doesn’t want.
So she doesn’t. For once she doesn’t try to push him.
She just savors this time with him.
Tries to remember every second, every detail, every moment.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He has been unfair to her in allowing her to think he means anything at all, he knows.
He is undeserving of whatever she feels for him that could very well qualify as love.
She should not feel any inclination to look at him that way.
But he remembers the way she’d insisted she was capable of deciding for herself who she should miss, who she should care about. Why hadn’t he fought her harder on that? Why hadn’t he gone then? Because her stomach had been swollen with his child, perhaps. Because he felt something that could be called love, too? He doesn’t know but he cannot find it in himself to resent the way she’s looking at him now. A stark contrast to the way their daughter is looking at him, those bright green eyes brimming with a loathing only the two of them – Bethlehem and his daughter – know he deserves.
The child stares at him as fiercely as she can, willing him to go. This plain, ugly thing. She wants him to take those eyes – so steady and so patient – and take them back into the darkness from whence he came. She wants to be alone with her mother, just the two of them like it’s always been.
She hates the silk of his voice, wishes he was darker. Meaner. Like her. She hates the way he looks at her mother and says, “where else would I be?” And there is something in his smile that she does not understand. Something that makes her hiss and spit and shake her little head. He looks at her then and the smile shifts into something different. “You’re just like your mother, aren’t you?” he asks her and she hisses again.
“Such a lucky thing, you,” he says and she wants to lunge for him again. She wants to sink her teeth into the vulnerable underside of his throat. She wants to sate the vicious hunger. “Gospel,” he says and something shifts in her so that she has to turn and press her face into the heat behind her mother’s elbow, hating him and the cold and the hunger.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
Her daughter has all of her rage but at such an early age.
Adna had been such a sweet child. She had been joyful and soft and all of the goodness of her mother wrapped in all of her father’s boldness. She had been courageous and fierce and so ready to become a warrior like her dad. She had wanted to patrol borders with him. Learn how to fight to protect the things that she loves. Instead she had learned what it means to be split open and how to fight to stay alive. She had learned how to be guarded. How to be safe.
She does not recognize that her daughter has the hunger so early.
Misses the signs that point to her family’s darkness curling in her like smoke.
She laughs mildly at the sound of her hissing and spitting. Smooths the fluff of her forelock and smiles into it. “Let’s hope she’s not like me,” she says before catching herself. “Whatever she will be is perfect, I am sure.” She swallows hard and then says. “Your grandfather will be so proud to see you, little Gospel. He is going to love you so completely.”
She doesn’t mention how he will mourn for another cursed child.
She doesn’t mention that he has no idea how she will bring herself to show him.
She just finds Beth’s face, all of the rugged stoicism, and breathes it in deep. “Anywhere, I suppose,” answering his earlier question. She can’t imagine anyone wanting to be here with her, even if it means being with their perfect child. “I’m glad you’re still in Taiga.”
Then another breath as her daughter curls into her.
“Have you decided to stay,” a short laugh, “for now at least?”
Then, softer, to her daughter, “You can sleep. If you are getting tired, little one.”
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
Her mother touches her and it helps scatter the fury that coils within her.
She does not understand her anger but she does not question it either.
She thinks maybe this is simply what it means to be alive.
To be alive is to ache and to hate and to spit and hiss and grimace.
To be alive is to rail against the things you hate only to watch them remain unmoved, unchanged, unfettered by your hate and your rage. She catches her clumsy tongue on her teeth again, drips blood from her chin and he just goes on looking at her.
He seems on the verge of saying something when her mother speaks up and he looks away from her. “Perfect,” he says, “like you.” The child wants to scream and kick and punish him for thinking that he can speak to her mother like that.
But her mother speaks to her and she peers up at her. Her grandfather. She does not know what any of this means and it only lends fuel to the fire of her anger. Bethlehem thinks of his own father and how he never had it in him to be proud of anything at all. He grits his teeth and he looks away. From the both of them. He shifts his focus into the murky darkness that surrounds them and he shakes his head.
Had he promised her that he’d leave or had she merely learned to expect it from him? His self-loathing swells to rival his daughter’s loathing of him and he swallows thickly. Her question sinks into the marrow of his bones and he wants to recoil, skirt out of its reach, but it makes him ache before he can stop it and he drags his gaze back to her face, shackles it to the soft green eyes staring back at him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, plain. The heart twinges in the cavern of his chest when she turns to softly address their daughter, who fiercely shakes her head and mutters something he cannot hear into the plains of her mother’s shoulder.
What she says is this: “I want him to go.”
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
