"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
She would take her daughter’s hate if she could.
She would swallow it down and lock it behind the cage of her heart. She would keep it there forever. She would do it if she thought it would help. She would do it if she thought that, for a second, it would do any good. But she knows that they are from a line of vipers and for all of the hate that she could swallow, there would only be more to replace it.
She would drown in it before it stopped.
But Adna has seen her own heart heal, and Sabbath has said that her father has found something like a second chance in life, so she has hope for Gospel.
Has hope for them all.
It is easier to hope when she is like this, with her daughter at her feet and her cheek to Beth’s chest, and something like joy sparking in her veins. It is easier to hope and to think perhaps she will find something like a happy ending. She smiles against his words, even when they have a bitter bite and she shudders against the truth in them.
“I was never very good at hating you,” she admits because that’s easier than telling him exactly how she feels and how much it terrifies her to feel that way. How she has come to known the depths of it so deeply and so completely and she has known it so quickly.
But she can’t admit these things just yet.
So she presses another kiss to the deep curve of his chest, then lets her mouth glide up and over his neck to his jaw where she lingers, breathing in him. Her eyes close as she leans against his neck, feeling exhausted but somehow completely awake here.
“I missed you,” she says, and this time she does not have to fight to get there.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He knows what it’s like to hate.
For hadn’t it been his hate that had driven him in the beginning?
His hate and his desperate want to be loved.
He had hated his father and his mother and sought out anyone who might bring him back to life, help him to believe himself worth anything at all. But he’d never found them and he’d been made to grow up believing that he was not worth the effort it took to instill some sense of purpose in him. He’d been made to grow up believing that he wasn’t worth anything at all.
But he looks at their daughter now, curled neatly at her mother’s feet, and he knows that he loves her. And she might hate him. She might gnash her teeth and hiss and spit venom at him. She might sink her teeth into his flesh, but he will make sure that she knows her loves her, too. Because he will now allow his daughter to grow up thinking that she is worthless, too. He will not allow her to believe that she means nothing at all to him.
He laughs then, a deep rumble at the center of him. He’s certain she can feel it in her bones, with how closely she is pressed to him. “I think you were pretty good at it,” he counters in that same low tone, lifting his head as she lifts hers. She drags her mouth down the length of his neck and his smile is secret and plain when her mouth finally comes to rest against the hard edge of his jaw.
“I’ve been right here,” he murmurs. “I’ll be right here.”
And maybe he’ll keep this promise. Despite the way their daughter so clearly loathes him. “Do you think she’ll grow out of it?” he asks after one quiet moment. “Hating me,” he clarifies, the words catching in his throat.
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 wonders if maybe she has some of the blame to bear.
After all, she had been growing her daughter in the pit of a belly of hate and fear and confusion. She had been growing her daughter even when she spit venom at Beth as Gospel does now. She had been growing her when they had clashed, when she had been by herself, when she wanted to rage at the heavens for bringing someone like in her life just to rip him out of it. Just to make her mourn the absence of it.
But she can’t think on it now.
She can’t think on it too long.
Instead she lets it roll off her scaled shoulders like it doesn’t sink into her flesh. Like she is not affected by the fear that it instills in her. She just feels the flutter in her belly when she catches the curve of his lips and savors that sweet smile that he gives so rarely. She feels a shiver race up her when he promises to be here and she fights the tears that prick at her eyes because she so desperately wants to believe it.
Stay, she wants to whisper.
I’ll cherish however long you can give me, she wants to promise.
I’ll understand when you need to leave, she wants to lie.
But they all die in her throat and she can only tell him these things with the way she kisses his jaw, the way her fangs skim against his flesh and she presses lips and tongue instead—soft and gentle and nothing of the violence that simmers in her veins. She pauses at his question, breathes him in.
“She doesn’t hate you,” she says, and she believes it. “It’s…difficult to be born like this.” She had not experienced it so early on, but she knows what it is like to feel your nature rise up in the center of you. the way you have to fight or yield to it. “You hunger and rage and feel things differently.”
She wishes she could explain it more eloquently to him—could have him feel the way it means.
“She will learn how to control it and not be controlled by it.”
Another kiss because she finds that she cannot go long without touching him.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
Will he be able to live with being tied to his daughter’s whipping post?
Will he be able to stomach her railing against him the same way Adna had?
He is neither good nor kind.
He is not especially patient, really, despite the storms he is able to weather, unaffected.
He does not know if his daughter will instill these things in him.
If he will be able to grit his teeth and bear it, simply because she is his flesh and blood.
He’d snapped at Adna. She’d finally dredged up all that anger and it had tasted so bitter. It had set his heart to racing. It had threatened to bring him to ruin. His anger had made him cruel and he does not trust that he will be able to hold his tongue simply because Gospel is his daughter.
He swallows his fear, too, although his is born from something else entirely. He doesn’t trust himself not to be driven away by misplaced anger, even now. All he can do is hope for the best. Hope that he can learn how to swallow poison that does not belong to him.
But he takes it. He lets her convince him that it’s true. That she doesn’t hate him, that she won’t ever hate him. That she hadn’t stood there and cried because Adna had chosen him over her. And who is he? No one, really. No one worth choosing, certainly.
Still, there is that half-grin as he nods and allows himself the luxury of believing her. She will learn to love him, maybe. And he will learn to believe himself worth of their love. Because this is what having a family means and if he concentrates hard enough, if he allows her to kiss him, allows himself to hold her, he’ll think that he deserves it.
“I hope you’re right,” he murmurs and closes his eyes, sighs heavy. Their peace depends on it.
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 can only guess at what he thinks. Since the very beginning, from their very first moments together, she has only ever been able to guess at what he keeps locked away. He is carved from stone, and she can only feel along the granite walls of him. He gives no inch. Shows absolutely nothing but the patience and the stamina and the way that he can stand as though he has stood there a thousand years before.
Even when he had finally cracked, lashing out at her the way she had deserved—
Even then she had felt nothing of his inner workings.
She wishes she had. She wishes she could.
But he doesn’t give her such things and she lies to herself and says that she can make do with whatever he is willing to give on. She is willing to live with the silence and the radio static of his silences. She can live with the way that she doesn’t know him and maybe never will. That he will never let her.
She just smiles and leans against him, gives herself this lie.
“I am always right,” she counters with a sleepy smile, feeling him sigh against her. Their peace does not entirely depend on her daughter’s reluctance. Their peace depends on his ability to let his guard down.
Their peace relies on Adna’s ability to keep all of these secrets at bay.
Their peace is tenuous at best, and she knows it, but that does not stop her from cradling it close to her chest, from cherishing it, from hoping against hope that it will survive the first bump in the road.
“You should know this by now, Beth,” a laugh as she thinks about all she has done to prove this wrong.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
She laughs and it echoes in both hemispheres of his brain and in every chamber of his heart.
She laughs and it makes him laugh, too. A breath of a sound as he shakes his head.
He does not argue, just grins good-naturedly and says, “of course.”
Because it is quiet and, for the moment, she is not angry at him for the things he is and the things he cannot change. She is not angry at him for living inside himself for so long that he does not remember how to do or be anything else. She kisses his jaw and he kisses her back, catching her between the eyes, exhales a soft breath.
And then he looks away, he reorients his focus with the child sleeping beside her. She is so peaceful there, lost to her dreams, and the heart swells in his breast. She is beautiful, like her mother. He wonders idly what devastation she might bestow on the world around her, wonders if she will destroy them, too. If they do not destroy themselves.
“She’s beautiful,” he murmurs again, without taking his eyes off of her. “Thank you,” he adds after a beat of silence. “Thank you for giving her to me and for being her mother,” he whispers. He shakes his head and finally looks away, as if convinced that he might disturb her sleep by looking at her too long. That she might swim back to consciousness hissing and spitting, screaming mad.
“I never thought I’d be a father,” he mutters, pensive as he peers into the murky darkness closing in around them. “I’m still not convinced I’ll be any good at it.”
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
The moment is built in filigree and glass. It is delicate and beautifully fragile. It is so painfully trapped in the breath of it and she wonders how long this could possibly last. How long could they remain in the eye of this storm, pretending the tail of it was not going to come whipping around the corner to leave them breathless. Pretending like they could live in this semblance of normalcy.
Pretending like they were both not designed to be the end of each other.
But such thoughts fade into the noise of her happiness and she can only observe the snow globe of the moment. She can only press a little tighter, memorize the thrumming of his heart, promise herself that this will be enough. Promise herself that she will not always hunger for more—always want for more.
When he thanks her, she feels her throat close up. She can barely breathe around it and she cannot fight back the tears that make her sage eyes shine. “Thank you,” she whispers back, her voice thick with tears, the intensity of it beating against her chest where she is certain that he must be able to hear it.
“You’re going to be a wonderful father,” she promises, because she believes it. “If you show her who you are, if you let her see that with her own eyes,” she exhales, pressing her forehead into his neck. “You still don’t understand just how beautiful of a thing that is.” She can’t imagine anyone being able to see Beth, being able to know the quiet and the loud of him, and not be completely enraptured by it.
“When you found me,” she corrects herself, “when I ran into you, I couldn’t imagine moving forward. I couldn’t imagine how I was supposed to go on living.” She says this quietly, he eyes sliding down to make sure that her child is still asleep by her feet. “All I saw was darkness. All I saw was grief.”
She bites back the tears that come, still leaning against him.
“You jumpstarted my heart, Beth. No matter what happens, no matter how long this lasts,” she squeezes her eyes shut, trying to ignore the possibility of an end, “I will always have you to thank for that.”
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He is nothing and no one.
He is not convinced.
There is nothing beautiful or even remarkable about him.
Will he let his daughter see who he is? Someone so desperate to be loved that it left him nothing at all. He isn’t even angry. He has outgrown his bitterness. He has outrun all of the things that set him into motion in the first place and yet, he still walks. Because the habit is ingrained so deeply into his DNA that he would not recognize himself without his restless need for movement, without the hum of kinetic energy in his muscles.
How can he be honest with her about who he is when she so completely loathes him already? But he nods because he feels no inclination to disturb the equilibrium they have found, this brief glimpse of peace as they stand there in the cold, their hearts beating in unison, their daughter sleeping at their feet. They do not know that she dreams of blood and pain and destruction. Or that she is not hungry because the mouthful of his blood had been enough to sustain her.
She continues and he lends her his full attention. He listens intently to the things she says and the way she says them. Her throat tight, the edges of her voice quivering. He swallows whatever impulse he has to speak and lets her finish.
He had not saved her in the way she thinks he had but he does not open his mouth to argue. He just nods and he presses another kiss sweetly against her cheek. He exhales a shuddering sigh and allows her to bury her face in the heat of his neck, the tangles of his mane. He grits his teeth and he nods, his own throat tight.
“I’m happy to be whatever you need me to be, Adna,” he murmurs. Perhaps he should tell her that she saved him, too. But he doesn’t have it in him. ”
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
His affections are fleeting and elusive.
They are like trying to catch onto starlight. They are like trying to hold sand in the palm of your hand. She would chase it forever, if she could. She would run until her feet were bloody and her lungs fit to burst in her chest. She would chase it and never let it go; she would let it tear her apart until she couldn’t breathe.
She is an addict, she knows—or, rather, she would know if she looked at it long enough.
She had grown addicted to the personal torment that is wanting the wind and then feeling it whip through you. The torment of loving shadows and being the sun. But for all of the ache that comes with her want, for all of the thrashing and need, she cannot bring herself to tear away from it—not yet, not yet.
His answer is as elusive as she expects but she doesn’t rage against it. Not today. She just swallows it down, tucks it away, and lets herself be comforted by the idea that he is here at all.
He does not need to open the vaults of his heart as easily as she does her own.
He does not need to unlock the gates and pour it all out for it to be real.
“I just want you to be you,” she whispers against him, into him, feeling the pulse of his heart beneath her lips. Once, she might have imagined what it would feel like to split his flesh apart and feel the way that the pulse pumps out when there is nothing to restrain it, but such things are stilled for now.
She controls the hunger, the animalistic desire for now.
She focuses on the warmth of him and not the thought of the way it looks when fleeing.
“That’s all I have ever wanted.”
Another confession—given so freely and so openly. Adna so unable to hold them back from him.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
It is a lie and he has half a mind to call her on it.
To remove himself from her atmosphere and cast a spotlight on it.
But he is not cruel now, no. He is tender.
Too tender to tell her that he knows she’s lying when she had so viciously railed against everything he is and ever was.
How fiercely she had raged against him, all vitriol and venom. Spitting mad, just like their daughter. She had hated everything he was so absolutely that she had threatened to kill him, bared her teeth and lunged for his throat and he’d dared her to do it, too.
It is not all she has ever wanted from him. He wonders how she can even say it when the memory of her rage is still so fresh. But he has lied, too. They have both lied and they will both have to live with it.
When the world crashes down around them, perhaps their lies will be the only things they have left. The only things they have to show for it. Or maybe it will be what little truth they have afforded each other instead. He has no way of knowing what they’ll have caught in their fists, between their teeth. Only knows that someday they will reach their ruin.
“What a lousy thing to be,” he says with a rueful smile and he shakes his head. What a lousy thing to want, he wants to add but doesn’t. If he leaves, will she find someone better? Will his daughter be raised by someone more deserving of a family, of their love? Will it kill him to know it?
He swallows thickly and tries to dispel the darkness gathering in his head, in his chest. He clears his throat and he kisses her cheek again, as if this might bring him some light.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
