[private] I couldn't utter my love when it counted; birthing

[adna]

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.

ADNA