— I'll break you a hundred different ways —
He is rarely from her side anymore, especially once he had realized she was again with child. The birth of the quadruplets weighed heavily on his mind as the weeks passed; afraid that it would happen again, afraid that this time her body would fail her and she would be taken from him. He never voiced these concerns, of course. His granite expression serves as a barrier between his thoughts and the outer world — even to her. He carries his worries as his own burden, keeping them tucked away so that she might not suspect that he was anything but happy at the prospect of them having more children. And he was, of course. Because it made her happy, and he had long ago come to the understanding that he would do anything to make her happy. Anything at all that would chase the sadness out of her seagreen eyes, anything at all to make sure he was never the reason they might cloud with sorrow.
It will be a long while before he forgives himself for today, for thinking he could be gone for a few hours.
He is almost back to where he had left her, in their own secluded area of Tephra, when he hears her voice. He can nearly taste the panic in her cry, the sound of it turning his blood to ice as he rushes forward, the dread in his chest threatening to weigh him down like an anchor.
When he sees her there, with two small (and they’re so, incredibly small – even he can recognize that) forms curled near her, not even he can hide the worry that that darkens like a storm-cloud across his face. “Wonder,” he cannot say her name above a whisper around the fear in his throat, but it doesn’t matter because he is already burying his mouth against the top of her head, and trailing it down her cheek. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left, I didn’t think–” He cuts himself off, because it’s unlike him to talk so much but also because there is nothing he can say to possibly make up for this. The guilt that has taken up root in his chest spreads like a web, because he knows this could have been a far different scene; unbidden, the memory of Choke’s birth and stumbling across his dead mother infiltrates his mind, and he clenches his jaw until he his afraid the bones of it might crack.
With his nose still touching her he finally looks closer to the two littles girls nestled into their mother’s side. The one looks so much like Wonder, with her red and white skin and ocean-green eyes, and when he gently touches her forehead he thinks he can feel where antlers will someday push through the skin.
But then, there is the other little girl. She is so small and still he is certain that she cannot be alive, but if he stares long enough he thinks he can see her impossibly small rib cage quivering in an almost useless attempt to breathe. He almost does not even notice the strange way she glistens, or how smooth she feels when he tentatively touches her forehead, too. All he knows is that she is fragile and helpless, and she is theirs, and that he cannot let anything happen to her. “Thorn,” is all he says at first, before looking at Wonder and continuing, “Maybe Thorn can help heal her.”
— and I'll make you remember my face —
@[thorn] if you still wanted to join <3