"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
His quiet rejection of her sits behind her ribs.
It remains stuck between her teeth. It is a constant ache, a biting reminder of the fact that despite the fact that he does not dismiss her, and despite the fact that they have a child together, he does not love her. He does not pull her close. He does not open up to her. He does not return the same love that blossoms in her chest like a toxic flower. It is poisonous and she knows that one day it will kill her but she cannot bring herself to pull it out, root and stem.
So she lets it blossom. She lets it flourish.
The vines of it wrap around her rib cage, dig thorns into her heart.
It steals her breath and she does nothing to displace it.
The only thing that gives her reprieve are the quiet moments with her daughter. The moments where she gets to learn about the newest viper. Where she can show her how to control the hunger and talk around your fangs and control the venom that drips on your tongue.
The way to be a predator.
Not be ashamed, but be controlled.
But when she wakes up this morning, Gospel is nowhere to be found. She does not hide behind the trees and is not nestled by her side. She is gone and Adna feels a growing pressure in her chest. She feels her throat close as she walks through their home. As she calls for her. As she searches through all of the usual spots where she would go to hide.
It is only when she is certain that she is not there that she feels the panic set in.
Adna does her best to breathe around it, to remain controlled, but when she finds Beth, there are tears in the corner of her eyes. “She-,” her breath hitches and she struggles to say it.
It is almost peaceful.
They do not demand much of him.
The child still hates him, despite her mother’s best efforts to teach her how to swallow down all of that vicious anger. He wonders if this is for the best or if the child should be allowed to purge all of it now, while she’s young. Maybe she shouldn’t bury it so that it can rise up and wrap its fury around her throat when she least expects it.
But he does not know how to parent and feels no overwhelming urge to try and tell Adna how to mother a child who is more like her than she is like him.
There is some delicate equilibrium. A balance so fragile that the idea of stepping out of line terrifies him, as if convinced that it might shatter. What good is a glass foundation, he wonders, but never lends a voice to.
He is not especially vigilant. Or even all that observant, really. But it would be hard not to notice the tears that gather heavy in her eyes. He blinks his surprise. She’s gone, she says, and something dark leaps up into his throat. It is not panic, necessarily, but some distant relative.
He drags in a long breath, considers all of the things that could have gone wrong. She is young, their daughter, certainly too young to strike out on her own. But he does not feed into her panic, refuses to further distress her. “Maybe she’s just gone to play with the other children. Or the playground, perhaps.” Unlikely, he knows, considering how much she despises the other children. But he says it in the hopes of smoothing the frayed edges of her nerves just enough.
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
There is a piece of her that considered not bringing this to him. That thought about hiding it. She has promised herself that she will not push him. That she will not ask more of him than he volunteers. For the last time, she would accept whatever he offered and whatever he was willing to give. She would not ask for his love or his involvement or his anything.
Nothing except his quiet presence.
She would handle this, raise their daughter, and ask him of nothing.
But she had not been able to stop herself from coming to him for this. For seeking out the only kind of stability she could find in the quiet of his eyes. She so quickly unravels and so quickly feels the edges of her threads fray and he doesn’t. He is the calm in the storm.
He is the same now.
She can feel it like a drug on her tongue. She can feel the way it stops herself from fluttering and coming undone and she clings to it. She presses his calm into her chest until she can breathe a little easier. Shaken, she presses her forehead into the width of his neck and breathes in deeply, trying to stabilize and not focus on all the fears that materialize around her.
“She didn’t like the playground,” she whispers. Her daughter is too independent and fierce and proud to truly love integrating with other children her age. Her breath is shaky but the longer that she stays there, pressed against him, she can feel her pulse start to stabilize.
“I don’t know where else she could have gone. I don’t know where to start looking even.”
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He has never been prone to panic.
Granted, as a solitary man of simple means, he has never had much reason to panic.
In regards to the inner-workings of places like this, he is ignorant. He has no knowledge of the systems or the castes or the fact that sometimes warring kingdoms pluck children out of creeks and forests and spirits them away so that they might demand a ransom for them. Even if he knew to consider this as an option, he would not have bought it – their daughter would not have gone without a fight. Their daughter would have gone screaming and spitting. They would have heard her.
Adna presses her face into his neck and he briefly closes his eyes, trying to imagine every possible nook or cranny their daughter could have pressed herself into. She didn’t like the playground, she says, though he already knows. He nods, careful not to disturb her.
He hears her drag in a breath and he thinks it progress. If he can keep her from unraveling – even if he provides her with nothing else – he will have achieved something. Still, his worry tightens like a fist around his throat and he casts a glance toward the horizon.
“There are only so many places she could be,” he murmurs. “You’ve done a good job raising her, Adna. I guarantee that, wherever she is, she is not in danger.”
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 does not understand the way that he can remain composed.
She doesn’t understand the way that his soul is so steadfast, regardless of whether it is in the face of her anger or her hurt or, now, her fear. It doesn’t matter what she throws at him because he can weather it all. He just stands quiet and still and she can feel the warmth of him radiating into her.
There’s a moment where she feels the space between his breaths.
She can hear him breathing and she presses a little closer.
“You’re right,” she says, feeling her pulse begin to steady slightly. She stays there for another moment and then breaks away from him. Her breathing more even, she takes a moment to study him and feels that wave of need to reach out and trace those curves of his face. She feels that need to feel the way that he feels like granite beneath her lips, the way that she has learned all of the ways he can soften.
But not now, she reminds herself. Not when she doesn’t know where their own daughter is.
“She’s smart and strong and she wouldn’t have gone far.”
Another swallow as she feels her head clear, her thoughts beginning to settle. Her serpentine eyes turn to the horizon, to the trees that lock around them. “Maybe she went to one of the surrounding kingdoms.”
There’s a pause and a muscle in her jaw jumps. “Do you think that she would have gone to Tephra?”
She had told her daughter of her grandparents and relatives in the volcanic land.
But she had never imagined that she would sneak out there without her.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
It almost makes him smile.
It is enough, at least, to make the corners of his mouth jump.
He has done this one thing right. He has instilled in her some sense of rationality. He has waged a war against her panic and he has come out victorious. It deserves some level acknowledgment, he thinks, because this is the only emotion of hers that he has ever been able to defeat.
He does not smile but he does turn and kiss her head. Because he is proud of her. Proud of the way she drags in a steadying breath and takes a step away from him. There is nothing demeaning in it, nothing condescending. It is innocent, the swelling in his breast when she rationalizes it for herself.
She is strong and smart and she would not have gone far. He is certain of the first two. Their daughter is fierce like her mother, cunning even. He does not know that she would not have struck out as far as her legs would carry her simply to prove a point, though. He lends no voice to this, though, merely nods.
Would she have gone to Tephra? He shakes his head, a reflex. He cannot imagine her trying to find the place on her own. Even less realistic is the idea that she might stop and ask strangers for directions. Adna had been certain their daughter would grow out of her hatred, shed it like a second skin, but she has held onto it so fiercely that he has seen it make her tremble.
“No, I don’t think so,” he mutters. “She only knows the way to the playground, so if she went anywhere it was probably in that direction.”
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 heart clenches in her chest at the way that it feels to have his lips against her. She feels a shiver race up her spine and she hopes that he cannot notice the way that he affects her; the way that even the barest of contact or the smallest way that he softens is nearly enough to undo her. So she stills and feels the breath as it hitches in her throat, her pulse spike and then steady beneath the calm of his presence.
She brings her gaze back from the horizon to him, study his face.
“You’re probably right,” she breathes and she can’t decide if it is relief or panic that she feels when she realizes that her youngest daughter has not sought out her extended family. On one hand, she would have at least been relieved to know that Gospel was walking into the embrace of her mother (for all of her misgivings about her family, she knew that Leliana and Vulgaris would fight to the last breath to protect their own). On the other hand, she is not ready to face Sabbath with Beth by her side.
Maybe she never would be.
She waves around the wave of anxiety that she experiences every time she considers the secret that she has been hiding, the one that blossoms beneath her skin like poison.
She brushes it away. She’ll deal with it later.
Instead she nods. “Then we should walk that way. Through Loess I guess.” The name is bitter on her tongue when she thinks about growing up there and then being run out and everything in between.
She bites it back.
“If we start now, we will have a few hours of daylight left.”
For a second, she startles, sage eyes widening. “I mean,” she had promised herself that she would never ask more of him than he offered and here she was assuming he would search with her. “Only if you have the time. I can just walk there.” She swallows. “I didn’t mean to just assume.”
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
They’ll go that way.
Through Loess.
It is not lost on him, the way edge of acid to the name, but he does not know how to broach the subject. And anyway, now is likely not the time to ask. Their daughter is missing and, while she is strong and smart and vicious and demanding, she is still a child and the temperatures have been hovering near freezing for days now. He wonders if they are impervious to the cold, his pair of vipers, but does not ask this either.
He glances toward the horizon again. Through the dense underbrush, he can see that the sun has begun its descent. They’ll have to hurry.
He nods, though abruptly gives pause when her expression changes. He blinks at her, swallows his surprise at the radical shift. She looks at him with wide eyes and the explanation for them slips a blade between his ribs. He swallows thickly around the vise tightening around his throat. It affects him deeply, of course, that she would think him too busy or too disinterested to help her go to the ends of the earth in search of their daughter.
Has his lack of panic, his rock steadiness, come off as apathy? He does not dwell on it. Drags in a small breath and fashions up a slanted smile – dim, foggy, but there all the same. “Of course I’m going to help you look for her, Adna.”
He feels no overwhelming need to provoke her, to turn this into a fight. He bites back whatever he’d thought to say about his qualifications as a father and kisses her head again. “Come on,” he whispers, and then turns in the direction of the meadow.
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 misses the way that his breath drags in or the way that his smile is not as bright as usual. She doesn’t see anything because the relief that floods through her is palpable. She feels it like a keen edge and then she feels it slip away until she is nearly dizzy with it. “Thank you,” she whispers when he presses a kiss to her head and she leans into him, angles her head so that she can kiss his neck. “Thank you so much.”
She bites back the need to tell him how much it means to her.
To explain that she never expects anyone to put her first.
That she only expects them to leave.
So she forces herself to step away again and then curl around, turning her fine head toward the south. It feels like a strange weight to be forcing herself forward, to walk down toward the kingdom that she had made a strange promise she would never visit again. She struggles to breathe around it but when she feels him stepping next to her, she finds that it is a little easier—that it’s just a little simpler.
For a moment, they are quiet as they move through the trees, her eyes constantly roving and looking for a sign of their fierce, green-eyed daughter. Her shoulder brushes against him and she fights against the shiver that runs through her every time—the way it always feels so foreign and new each time.
“I haven’t been back to Loess since Rupture and Bela were born,” she says it quietly, wondering if he can hear her. “Have you ever felt like some place is haunted by ghosts?” She frowns and drops her gaze but is careful to not slow her pace, no matter how much she doesn’t want to be moving forward.
“That’s ridiculous. I don’t know why I said that.”
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
Maybe it should relieve the ache, the way she thanks him.
But it serves only to compound it.
She had expected nothing of him and maybe this hurts more than anything else.
But he shoves it aside because this is not about him. This is about their viper of a daughter and her pride, her unwillingness to yield to the elements and her youth. He knows that, from this day forward, the only thing he will worry about is her inability to admit that she has any weakness at all. Her strange sense of invincibility – but hadn’t he thought himself invincible once? Perhaps she will grow out of it, fit herself into her pride rather than use it as armor.
Despite the reason for their searching, he feels no sense of unease as they move together through the forest. The silence does not suffocate or unsettle him. They are two parents moving with a sense of purpose, bound by a daughter and a love he is perhaps not ready or willing to acknowledge yet. They are not a viper and her prey.
He hears her. And maybe the wicked thing that rears its ugly head in the cavern of his chest tells him all he needs to know about how much he loves her. It is ugly, like jealousy and he immediately resents it, exhausts every effort to bury it.
Rupture and Bela. Gospel’s siblings. He considers her question awhile, long after she’s written it off as ridiculous. He squints through the fog that gathers around them. “I don’t think places are haunted by ghosts, I think we are.”
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
