***
“Don’t you feel her?” I asked Adam and James, who were taking turns feeling my belly, their expressions seemingly growing more grim each time their hands pressed down.
“Baby…” James started to say.
“No!” I snapped, “Do not tell me that I am imagining it. You are thinking that I’m traumatized and feeling things, and feeling what I want to feel, and I am not.”
“Think more quietly.” Adam hissed at James.
“Don’t yell at him!” I snapped at Adam, “He can’t help it that his mind is so loud! And you’re thinking the same thing, so don’t be a hypocrite. Where is Rachel?!”
“She’s coming.” James told me gently, “Baby, you need to lower your voice. We can’t attract any attention. If they come in here and find me, you know…”
“I am sorry.” I said, and I did lower my voice, though I wanted to continue speaking loudly and forcefully at them. I had tried to rationalize. I had tried to remain calm. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not convince them that the baby was still alive within me. They thought that I was still feeling her because I wanted to feel her. But like she was a ghost limb after the real one had been amputated, I could still feel her moving inside of me. I had been through a terrible trauma, gone from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. I had been elated to discover that somehow, my shattered womb was holding life. It was a miracle, the doctors had said. The pregnancy would be hard, but there was a chance she would make it, though they never told me exactly how high (or low) that chance was. Knowing she was there made me so happy, I could barely believe it. But then, I had immediately crashed down to a new low. Losing my baby to a bullet through the abdomen was far worse than losing her naturally would have been. To James and Adam, I was merely in a state of trauma-induced hysteria, and I use “hysteria” here willingly, as I am fully aware of the gendered connotation behind the term.
But if you are not aware of said connotation, know that it is a word coined by men to be used as a blanket diagnosis for any unpleasant emotion exhibited by a female, and it comes from the Greek word for “uterus.” Suffice it to say, my husband and my boyfriend were being sexist.
Except they were not. I wanted to view them as such because I was clinging to the hope that Grace was still clinging to life inside of me, and they were gently trying to prod me away from that belief, for my own good, they thought. But truthfully, there was quite a sizeable sliver of doubt inside of me. I had not felt her until my mother told me she was there, and my mother was certainly not the most reliable source for truthful information. To my knowledge, she still hated me, so I would not put it past her unconscious mind, which projected into my unconscious mind, to make me think my daughter was still alive, only so I could be disappointed later when she was not, all as a result of some very cruel, very late plot to finally have her ultimate revenge on me for killing Lucien.
I was so afraid that I truly was just feeling what I wanted to feel.
“Look.” I said, and I took one of James’s hands and one of Adam’s, “I know you both think I am losing my mind because of grief, or trauma, or whatever. But I’m not. Okay? I am rational. I am calm. I am only becoming irrational and not calm because of your disbelief. I am not manifesting some ghost child for my own benefit, or for either of yours. I know she is in there. I can feel her. Even when I’m not touching my stomach, I can feel her there, just like I could before. It is weak, because she’s slipping away, and that’s why I need to see Rachel.”
“Why Rachel?” James asked me gently.
“Because.” I said, “If I told you both, you would think I was crazy. But just so you are aware, if I would have told anyone that I was going to re-craft your shattered skull and re-grow the pieces of your brain that were missing, and resurrect you from the dead totally whole, everyone would have thought I was crazy then, too.” I told James, and then I looked at Adam, “You tell me all the time that my power can do anything.”
“It can, Brynna.” Adam replied, “Of course it can.”
In the corner of my eye, I could see James staring at him irritably. Apparently, they had some unspoken agreement that they were supposed to be leading me away from this notion that the baby was alive, and that somehow, Rachel could help me in preserving her life. Adam ignored him.
“Then, just let me do this.” I said, “Just trust that I am in my right state of mind, and I am going to do this.”
Adam squeezed my hand, and passed his other hand over the top of my head to brush my hair away from my face gently.
“Alright.” He said, “I trust you.”
“And I look like the world’s biggest asshole, because I’m the one who is still skeptical.” James snapped at him.
“No, you always look like that.” Adam replied quickly, and I sighed heavily, let go of their hands, and covered my face.
“I want to believe just as much as either of you that Grace is still alive, but sweetheart…” He grasped my hand and spoke very gently, “They said there is no function down there anymore. You heard them. There is no chance.”
“There was no chance before, either, James. I never told you, but there was never a chance before, and it happened. If she can come to be at all, then I can easily believe that she can cling to life even after I have nothing down there to hold her. If she can fight to be at all, she can fight against the odds. She is strong. She’s stronger than me, stronger than you, stronger than all of us. And she’s there. I promise. I just need you to trust me.”
Rachel came in, running, with Tony and Tom behind her. She threw herself at my bedside, tears in her eyes but not falling. She knew me so well; she knew how much I hated tears, how uncomfortable they made me, even when they were my own.
“Can I have a minute with them?” I asked Adam and James, who nodded, kissed my head, and left.
“How are you feeling, baby?” Tony asked me, and he began to pet my hair in the way that Adam had been, which I loved.
“I’m good. I’m alright.” I said, “Can you help me sit up?”
Very gently, but not so gently that they allowed me to believe that they thought I would break, Tony and Tom helped me up into a sitting position. I rested back against the pillows that Rachel had propped up for me, and for a second, we were all silent. Tony held my hand, Tom was sitting at the end of my bed with his hand on my leg, and Rachel was on my other side, grasping my hand and resting her head against my arm.
“I know they must have told you that I think the baby is still alive.” I finally said, “I am sure they both told you to gently try to tell me that that isn’t true.”
“They did.” Rachel replied, “But I won’t. You know I won’t. If you say she’s there, then she’s there.”
“Is it true, that there was…” Tony stopped, trying to think of a way to be delicate. Gently, I went into his mind to determine the question he was trying to ask.
“Yes.” I replied, “And it’s okay that you’re asking. There was not really anything there to begin with… Well, it was there, but the functions were all off. I had an infection after what happened with Michael that made a mess. So her being here is a miracle in and of itself. She’s still there, but she won’t be for long. There is nothing in me to hold her anymore. It’s there, but it’s damaged. It’s not working. She’s just hovering. Like a ghost. But she is there.”
“Brynna.” Tom said, even more gently than anyone had yet, “Sweetie… Is that possible?”
“Is any of this possible?” I asked him, “Six years ago, could we ever have imagined any of this? Another planet capable of supporting life, that not only supports life, but supports a whole other civilization, one that is more advanced than ours had been? Gifts of strength, of intelligence, of the power to manipulate the atmosphere in response to emotion? Any part of our evolution? This war? I don’t ask what’s possible anymore, because if there is one thing I have learned from this, it’s that anything is possible. Everything is possible.”
Rache
l sniffled, and I looked at her to find that she was crying. Her hand was still clasped around mine, and the physical contact allowed me to see into her mind. She was not crying because she thought I was deluded. She was crying because she knew that I was right, and because she knew why I had asked her to come there.
“Tell them.” I told her gently.
“She wants to give Grace to me.”
Tony and Tom were silent, looking at us both. Rachel and Tom had gotten their release papers, and with their release papers, they had been told that they would be marrying each other. Then, a few days later, I had gotten shot. Suffice it to say, it had been a rather rough week.
“But how?” Tony asked finally.
“I don’t know. I am just going to wing it, as they say. My instincts are telling me that I can do this. By the significantly smaller amount of trepidation that I feel, I can tell that this is going to be easier than when I brought James back from the dead. It is not going to come without its challenges, but I can do it. But before I do it, I want to be sure that it is what you both want.”
“Of course it’s what I want.” Rachel told me through her tears.
“Even though…” I started.
“Yes.” She said, “Even though Joe is gone. We wanted one so badly. But Brynn… I won’t be able to raise her without telling her about you. And about Adam, and James, and Penny…”
“You have to.” I told her, “Tom, you both have to. She can’t know, because they can’t know. If they find out who she is, they will take her away. Tyre will use her for his purposes, and I don’t know, nor do I want to know, what those purposes are. So she can’t know. And besides…” I grasped Rachel’s hands, “Chances are, she will never see me. She will never know me. I will die, or I will be here, and though we are immortal, the chances of our paths ever crossing will be slim.”
“When the war’s over…” Tom started to say, and tears were falling from his eyes now.
“The war is far from over.” I replied gently, “Of course, if I ever leave here, I will come looking, but by then, she will know you two as her parents, and I will do nothing to change that. Once she is yours, she is yours. I would give anything for there to be some other way, but if she stays inside of me for much longer, she will die, and if she is born and knows that I am her mother, and Adam is her father, somehow, it will get out. I have seen that. I have seen the consequences of her knowing. She can never know. You two have to promise me that you will never tell her.”
“Brynn…” Tom started to say.
“Promise me.”
They were silent, looking at each other first, and then at me.
“I promise.” Rachel said, finally, and Tom repeated her.
“Okay.”
“They are going to place you two in Shadow Village, and that is where Mrs. Rose is.” I said, and I grasped Tony’s hand. He already knew, because in our first year there, we had joined our minds and found his mother. He had cried then, when he had known she was safe, and he had cried because he could feel how terribly she missed him, and yet how strong she was to endure the pain of losing her son and her son-in-law, her only family.
“Mom wanted a grandbaby.” Tony told Tom.
“And she’ll have one.” Tom replied, and he wiped at his eyes as his tears multiplied.
“Exactly.” I replied, and the tears were coming into my eyes now, but I wiped them away. “The way I see this, it is a near-perfect scenario. You two will have a child, and Mrs. Rose will have her grand-child, and Tyre will think that she is yours. She will not be here, where she would be hunted. And because she was mine, and then she was yours, we will all be connected, even when we are so far apart.” The tears began to fall from my eyes now, “Right?”
Rachel nodded, crying harder as she laid her head down on my arm.
“I don’t want to leave you.” She cried, “You’re my best friend.”
“I know.” I said quietly, as my other hand came over to grasp hers. “I know.” I paused, realizing that I had never said that to her. I referred to her as a dear friend, and as my dearest friend, to other people, but never to her face. “I can’t believe I’ve never said it. But you’re my best friend, too.
She laid her head against my shoulder, and with our fingers entwined, I placed our hands over my belly.
“I feel her, too.” Rachel told me. “I can feel her there.”
“She can feel you, too.” I replied, “She knows. Keep your hand right there.”
A tangible life outside of the womb is a light so bright it blinds all those who are not supposed to look upon it. Tony, Tom, Rachel, and I stared into that hovering light as it twisted and re-shaped, forming incomprehensible images all while whispering words in a language we did not know, that no one knew. In the quiet noise, we heard her cries, her voice, her laugh, saw her smile before she had even formed. I saw a little red-headed girl running through a field, chasing other children, laughing and playing, her blue eyes glowing in the light of the moon. If that was a scene from our world, or a scene from whatever lays before and after, I did not know, but I saw her, and she was beautiful. Her eyes were alight with infinite promise, her mind roaming lands and seas far and wide, full of boundless purpose, her heart throbbing with the beats of eternity. Gently, she was passed from my hand to Rachel’s hand, and together, we placed Rachel’s hand on her belly, and as simple, and yet as complicated, as that, our daughter was safe again. She was strong again.
Tom and Tony placed their hands on Rachel’s stomach, and almost simultaneously, they placed their hands on mine. Perhaps they knew that my instinct was to touch my stomach, even though I was not ready to feel the emptiness there. I could feel lightness there, airiness, already, but I did not want to touch it so that I could feel and see the darkness left by her absence. So Tony and Tom held me there, so I would not have to hold me there.
Later, as we laid together on the cot, Rachel with her head on my chest, still crying, and Tony and Tom on my other side, also still crying, a Sight came to me, and told me that I would never see Rachel and Tom again. The tears falling from my eyes fell faster, and I wiped them away, but it was useless when Rachel whispered again that she didn’t want to leave me; I only cried harder.
“We will see each other again.” I told her, “All of us will see each other again. Our lives are longer than this war. It will end, and everything will go back to the way it was. And Gracie will be older then, and Penny will have aged again, and they will be best friends, just like us. In fact, Gracie is going to look just like you, and Penny will still look just like me, so they will be us in miniature, Rachel. And when she sees you, Tony, she will know how much her dad loves you, and she will love you as another father among her others. She will have two mothers, four fathers, and she will be the happiest little girl in the world. As it stands now, we are going to see the end of this, and in the end, when the world is alright again, we will be together again.”
“And we’ll be a family again.” Tom said.
“Yes.” I said, “We’ll be a family again.”
“You promise?” Tony asked me, and I could hear the emotion in his voice, and knew that he was crying silently.
I had always looked down upon lying, even when it was for the benefit of others. But that didn’t matter anymore. I nodded, tightened my grip around them, and let the last of my tears fall.
“Yes.” I said, “I promise.”