— I'll break you a hundred different ways —
He cannot even begin to comprehend how she is handling this so well, because though he remains stalwart and almost apathetic on the outside, he is complete disarray on the inside. He was already a poor father. He had a first child that he has never met, and never cared to try and meet; he cannot even remember who the mother was. And Choke...he didn’t know how to be a father to him, to a boy that he has never even admitted out loud that he was truly his. He played the role of adoptive father, rather unsuccessfully, but never could bring himself to tell Wonder the entire story.
He had failed to be a father, twice, and now suddenly he had three children with someone who was irreplaceable, and he couldn’t shake the fear that he would let her down.
She presses a kiss to the side of his mouth, and reflexively he leans closer, curling his neck to draw her to his chest, always careful of her antlers. “I love you, too,” the words are spoken so low, almost on a breath, etching them across the ivory of her bones and into the red and wounded skin. He wants to tell her that everything beautiful about them is because of her. The way Rosine glowed and the opal of her hooves, the warmth of Tamlin’s eyes, and the strength of Thorn’s heart – those were all her. He had nothing to lend any of them, at least, nothing good. In the warmth of the sun he almost forgets his own curse, but that too is a fear gnawing at his subconscious, afraid that come nightfall, they would be like him.
He doesn’t get the chance to voice any of that out loud – if he even would have to begin with. When she is again overcome by the throes of labor, he knows that his heart stops, and when it finally jump-starts again, it is at a reckless pace.
“Shit,” he mutters under his breath, mostly to himself, as he clenches his jaw tightly to keep from losing his mind. Four. That wasn’t even possible. Wolf pups weren’t possible. He isn’t sure if this is some sick, twisted way that the universe is trying to remind him that he is unworthy of her, her love, and anything in this world that might be good, but he wishes now, more than anything, that he had stayed away from Tephra. “Wonder,” he murmurs her name into that soft spot behind her ear, almost forgetting the other three children because all he can focus on is her. He can see that she is exhausted, that this birth is harder than the rest, and again there is nothing he can do for her.
The filly finally comes, but he cannot breathe a sigh of relief yet, because he can see the fatigue so plainly on Wonder’s face and in her beautiful eyes. He watches her with his chest tight and his throat closed, watches her clean the bright copper face of their daughter, and he doesn’t know how to pull up anymore threads of happiness because he doesn’t fully believe that she is going to be okay. He can see that the little girl is beautiful, with a faint glowing to her skin and the small wings folded at her sides, just like her sister. Just like him. Wonder’s voice is the only thing that stirs him out of his frozen, anxiety-driven reverie, when she asks if he can believe it, and all he can say is, “No. No, I can’t.”
What the fuck is what he wants to say, but he doesn’t.
He moves closer, eventually, reaching to touch his lips to the newborn filly’s forehead, and to lip softly at the short, wavy locks of her mane. Wonder had not named her yet, and even though she hadn’t verbally asked him to, he says quietly, “Bea.”
Rosine, Thorn, Tamlin, and Bea.
Four.
She asks him how he feels, and there is a rare, but short burst of a sound that is similar to a laugh. With the pups curled into her side, and the two fillies huddled close, too, he moves back to Wonder’s face, reaching down to trace the armor of bone at her forehead, and along the torn edges of skin until his lips caress the curve of her cheek and the groove of her throat. “The better question is, how do you feel?” How did I not lose you, is what he’s thinking, but cannot bring himself to say. Cannot bring himself to accept that that was a very real possible outcome to this scenario.
Choke. He had more or less forgotten about him, other than being repeatedly reminded of how his birth had caused the death of his own mother. With his lips still idly tracing up and down the crest of Wonder’s neck, he finally answers her question with crooked smile against her mane. “He will probably be as shocked as us.”
— and I'll make you remember my face —
OH MY FORK WE DID IT.
@[Leah] @[phaetra] @[Squirt] @[Choke]