"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
all i want is to flip a switch before something breaks that cannot be fixed
He is drawn as he always is back to the place they first met - his place, until she had somehow made it theirs. He doesn’t quite understand how she managed such a feat, but he guesses it almost certainly has something to do with those sad eyes and that cornflower skin, and, most notably, the way her stomach had begun to swell with child. His, she had promised.
The idea of being a father fills him with constant wonder and fear, leaves him breathless and nauseous because of all creatures, he should not be in charge of raising a child. He is not a good man like his father, was never able to learn to keep the dark of his shadows from infecting the goodness in his heart. He lets it rot him, lets it fester from within until he is filled and teeming with it. Furious and broken and violent.
He knows he will try to be better for this child, just as he knows he will inevitably fail.
But it will be okay, because she is so much better than he is.
Where he is hard and jagged, she is gentle, all her broken edges as soft as the shade of her eyes and the way her skin is the same blue as flower petals. Where he will teach cruelty, she will almost certainly teach compassion. Love. She believes in it too completely not to.
He cannot help but wonder how long she will let him know their child, how long before she can see how easily his dark will infect a young heart. A day, more? Or will she leave before he ever knows what life they made, secret herself someplace far away from him. He is distracted as he wanders onto their beach, and it is the stink of blood and another scent he does not recognize that finally rips him from his troubled reverie.
His ears pin, disappearing into the tangle of his mane as his golden eyes sharpen to take in his surroundings. Fury ambushes him, and for the briefest second when he finds Rapture down and quiet, he thinks she must be dead. Taken from him. He snarls, and the sound makes a small shape lift its head beside the blue mare, utterly stealing his breath away. “Rapture?” His voice is oddly quiet as he creeps closer to the tangle of bodies, feeling that organ in his chest seizing with stunned disbelief.
The boy is the single most perfect thing he’s ever seen in his entire wretched life. His boy. He takes another step closer, though not close enough to reach out and touch either one, feeling like a monster intruding on a moment of heaven. “Are you well, Rapture?” He asks softly, tearing his gaze from the tiny boy, sightless and so terrifying vulnerable, who snuggles sleepily back in against his mother's side. He is surprised by the feeling of pride that swells in him as he takes her in again, closing the distance to brush his lips over her damp brow. “You did well.”
She would have been shocked to know he believed her better than him. She does not believe it. Would never dare to. In her heart, she knows, without doubt, that there is something terribly wrong with her. Something that withers the edges of her soul, breaking pieces away with subtle surety. One day she doubts she would even recognize herself.
And maybe that is what makes her the way she is. What presses her into such a small, nondescript box until only mild and meek are left. Until she is unrecognizable as a member of her own family. Until even her mother’s disappointment and her father’s zealousness failed to stir her. (Somewhere in the very darkest recesses of her mind, she knows it is her twin’s death that had snapped that final thread, but it is easier not to acknowledge it.)
Now, on this quiet and mist-strewn beach, she has only one purpose left in life (once it had been Levi, but his fury still shames her). The sharp pains in her stomach remind her all too fervently of that. She knows he is coming, and it is for him she now breathes. Though a small, shameful corner of her heart still hopes his father would prove to be more than the foolish fantasy of a broken heart, she had seen too much of the distant distaste in his dark gaze to believe it.
For a while, time loses meaning. She drifts in a sea of pain, almost relishing it in a masochistic sort of way. No more than she deserves. Until, whether moments or hours later, her son slips onto the sand. Sides damp and breathes short, she allows herself only a moment before struggling into a sternal position. She shifts uncomfortably, moving until she can reach the boy, lips moving instinctively over his struggling form as she ensures he can draw his first breaths.
Until the sounds of another nearby stirs alarm in her breast. Pressing close, she frantically grasps at an ill-used ability as she attempts to erase them from sight. But when she recognizes Illum’s form, she abruptly deflates in relief, whatever hold she’d managed on his vision releasing along with it.
For a long moment, she simply stares up at him, blue eyes unblinking as she attempts to unravel the tangle his arrival had stirred within her. She can only stare as he gazes at their son with a wonder that surprises her. It isn’t until his lips brush against her forehead that her reverie is broken. With a brief, nearly inaudible hum of alarm, she swiftly returns her attention to the colt curling against her side. But as her lips move somewhat mindless across his drying fluff, she realizes Illum had asked her a question.
“Yes, I am… we are well,” she replies with desperate belatedness.
i’m just trying to find myself through someone else’s eyes
He is small and oblivious as he wakes in a world too bright for him to see a single thing. But he has never known anything more than the lingering dark that lives beyond his sleeping lids, so this does not startle him. It will be once day draws to a close and the dark of night creeps in to kiss his skin, and suddenly things take shape in beyond he never knew existed, that he will feel uncertainty for the first time.
For now though he is only himself, only impossibly small and dark like his father, etched with the pale eggshell blue of his mother. He is small gossamer white wings that hang sleepily at either side of him, wings that make his father’s face soften with a pride Lumos will not learn the shape of until dark when it will be made even softer beneath the silver haze of starlight. He is legs, and they feel long and strange as he tries to push up and rise on them, swaying and falling a handful of times into mom who is soft and warm and always there to catch him.
He bleats, and the sound is something so impossibly fragile and sweet that the man he doesn’t know standing beside him takes a step closer to touch his skin. This is strange because it is new, but it does not scare him, and when he is finally able to stay on his feet they carry him towards those soft, cold lips. He bleats again, curious and asking things he himself does not understand the language of, but it seems he does not have to know because suddenly he is against a chest and cradled there softly by wings that come up to hold him.
all i want is to flip a switch before something breaks that cannot be fixed
His chest is a knot of every incredulous thought as his attention strays from Rapture to the little boy struggling to his feet beside her. It seems entirely impossible that something this perfect could be any part of him, something so small and so fragile. Had he ever been like that? Had Ilka and Shahrizai looked down at him like they would take on the entire world to keep him safe, to protect him from all the inevitabilities that eventually found him anyway? He thinks they must have, if even someone like him can feel this way.
He steps closer to brush his lips of frost over the child, so careful not to knock him sideways now that he seems to finally have his legs somewhat steady beneath him. The sensation makes the boy turn to face him, and he feels a pang of worry when those sightless blue eyes float right past him. Illum inches closer, inhaling sharply against a foreign feeling of fear that wells inside him, threatening to overtake him for just a second. The blue is hardly a blue at all, so pale that it seems almost clear, almost crystalline.
His gaze jerks to Rapture, his dark gold eyes full of question and an uncertainty that few others will have ever seen on his face. “Is he-?” He doesn’t finish the question though because the boy makes a sound that at once holds Illum on a tether, pulling him forward until he has him cradled safely against the strange dichotomy of warmth and frost of his chest. His wings fall to enclose him in a cocoon of black and mottled white, his mouth wandering down the crest of his neck and over his shoulders, pausing with a mixture of pride and arrogance over those delicate gossamer wings.
“He looks like me.” It is neither question nor statement as he lifts his gaze to Rapture again, clearly pleased by this realization. “He is very handsome.” Arrogance, but it comes with a smile so uncharacteristic for the way it alights even in his eyes, unguarded in this moment they share. “Have you picked a name for him?”
As he struggles to his feet, Rapture cannot seem to help the way she touches him, steadying him until he finds his balance. She does not attempt to find her own feet until he is wrapped in the embrace of his father. Her heart squeezes inside her chest at the sight, and she swiftly blinks back the tears that come.
Ducking her head, she focuses instead on rising to her own feet. Exhaustion weighs heavily, but concern for her son weighs far heavier. Her pale blue form, slim even before, shows too clearly the signs of her own neglect when she finally manages to stumble to her feet. Her ribs ripple with each movement she makes, hips and shoulder blades too sharp against her skin. She had forced herself to eat for the life that grew inside her, but it clearly had not been enough.
It had been easier, in the beginning, but the last few weeks had been terribly unkind. And she had felt, too deeply, that she had been deserving of such suffering even as her heart weighed heavier the closer she came to giving birth. (She can’t help but believe that perhaps if she had been better - more attentive and giving, more faithful - she might have been worthy of the same in return.)
But now, she has him. Her son. And that would be enough. It had to be enough.
She doesn’t try to fathom the question he had so abruptly cut off. Doesn’t have the energy to. But when he comments in awe on the similarity of their appearance, Rapture does peer up at him. He is as handsome as he claims (as handsome as their son). She doesn’t even try to deny it. “Yes he is,” she whispers softly before dropping her gaze to where he curls against his father’s chest. When he asks about a name, she does pause. It hadn’t seemed right to choose a name without consulting him. After a moment of silence, she replies hesitantly, “I… was waiting.”
