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Nathan had smiled when Nathaniel was born.
He had done that a lot more back then. Laughed, too. Mary had always loved his laugh. It was one of the things that had made her fall in love with him.
He had laughed when he had first been presented with Nathaniel, scooping him into his arms and swinging him up into the air.
“Nathaniel,” he had said with his sharp grin stretched wide across his face. Nathaniel, not yet used to the cruel and harsh world outside of his mother’s womb, had just scrunched up his already wrinkled face before he had let out a piercing shriek. Mary, exhausted and sore from the delivery, hadn’t been able to do much other than smile a little herself, thinking maybe this is what happiness feels like. “Wesninski Jr.”
Nathan didn’t laugh when their daughter was born. Didn’t smile either.
Christmas carols were softly drifting in from some other far off place in the ward, and the sparse decorations were twinkling just outside of Mary’s designated room. It distantly reminded Mary of home, even if the songs were all wrong, and the americans still had no sense of decorum even when it came to something as simple as tacky trinkets.
“Mr. Wesninski,” the nurse said, the only one who had stayed behind once the midwife, doctor and other nurses had left, careful with the tiny baby in her arms. She was a blooming young woman, with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes, and she smiled up at Nathan the way anyone who didn’t know that he could break them with a single blow would. “Your daughter.”
Nathan smiled at the young girl, because Nathan Wesninski wasn’t the Butcher of Baltimore. But he smiled the Butcher’s smile; a newly sharpened cleaver just waiting to cut.
He hadn’t been present for the delivery this time around. He had dredged up some polished lie for the head midwife, about how he couldn’t bear seeing his beloved wife in all that pain again, and how someone really had to look after poor little Nathaniel. The midwife, a stern and straightforward lady that Mary had immediately taken to, had just waved off his excuses and propelled him out of the room, not wanting him around for any longer than he had use.
He hadn’t been called back until both Mary and the baby had been cleaned up, but still much, much too soon for Mary’s liking.
He accepted the pink wrapped bundle from the nurse, because that was what a newly made father was supposed to do. His sharp edges fell away all at once though once his impassive gaze fell to inspect his sleeping daughter. Their daughter, sleeping serenely, with no concept of the vicious nature of the world she had just been born into, or the whispered promises of violence in the very fingers cradling her tiny head. He didn’t need his blades in order to hurt someone as fragile as their child.
But even without his smiles, or his infectious laughter, Nathan still looked every inch the role of doting husband and loving father. He always had. And his voice was deceptively sweet as he turned his ice shard eyes to pin down Mary on the other side of the room.
“Little Nathaniel was christened by me. It seems like it’s your turn now, my dear.”
“Miriam,” Mary said, meeting her husband’s cold gaze with steady eyes of her own. “Miriam Elise.”
The corner of Nathan’s mouth twitched, and if there was any word for the shadow of emotion flashing behind his eyes as he turned to look down at the little girl in his arms again, Mary would have called it contempt. “I guess that’s appropriate.”
Nathan just continued to stare down at the sleeping bundle at his arms, before he looked up at the endlessly smiling nurse again. “When can they leave?” he asked, his fingers tightening around Miriam’s head.
“Nathan,” Mary interjected before the nurse got the chance to answer. Pushing herself a little straighter up in her sea of pillows, ignoring every ache and protest in her sore and tired body, she smiled weakly and kept her voice placid. The perfect picture of an endearingly exasperated wife. “You know we have to stay. But you shouldn’t have to be stuck in a hospital with me and Miriam over the holidays. Nathaniel shouldn’t have to be stuck in a hospital over the holidays. Take him home and let him have a proper first Christmas.”
Nathaniel, who was just starting to get the hang of putting one foot in front of the other, and who had been hanging off of Lola’s arms out in the waiting room the last time Mary had seen him. Nathaniel, whose rapid development and growth Mary never quite managed to catch up with, and who would now have to compete over what little attention she could spare him with another infant. Little Nathaniel, already having to grow up to be a big brother.
The hope of Nathaniel getting a proper Christmas were as vain as Mary getting one what with her being surrounded by sterile sheets and overworked yanks.
But it wasn’t the holiday that mattered. What mattered was that Nathan couldn’t be at the hospital. And if sending Nathaniel with him was the only way of achieving that, then so be it. Even if she would have hell to pay for it once it was all said and done.
Nathan had as much stake in keeping their son alive as she had these days, anyway.
“She’s right, Mr. Wesninski,” the nurse said as she moved to grab Miriam from Nathan’s hold again. It was probably only to Mary’s trained eye that it was obvious that he momentarily hesitated with a schathing glance before acquiescing. “There’s no reason to worry, they both made it through the delivery without any unforeseen complications. But we really do need to keep an extra eye on little Miriam here for another day or two, and Mary needs the time to recover.”
Running her delicate thumb over Miriam’s pink cheek, she then smiled up at Nathan again with her pretty little smile. “But don’t you worry, we’ll have them both home with you in no time at all.”
“Take Nathaniel and go home,” Mary repeated, not being able to keep the edge out of her own smile. Unable to not think about manicured nails and the sneer that had followed Nathaniel’s first introduction into their household. “I’m sure Lola wouldn’t mind helping you.”
Nathan’s icy eyes were unreadable as he stared her down, but they had long since lost their bite on Mary. She just laid back against her pillows and met his hard stare.
He underestimated her if he honestly thought that she would abandon him now. They had been through too much together for either of them to give up on each other by now. Besides, Mary had promised him her heart. And what kind of Hatford was she if she didn’t keep her promises?
She knew her life had been signed to Nathan Wesninski long before she had married him. It was after all her blood that had been used as ink.
Mary didn’t know what was going on inside of Nathan’s head, she rarely did, but the corner of his mouth eventually quirked upward again, and it was a remnant of the smile she had first fallen in love with. He took his time walking across the room, taking a hold of her hand and kneeling down beside her once he reached her.
“Well, if you can’t recover in my presence,” he murmured before he raised her hand to his mouth and pressed a chaste kiss to the back of it. He traced the impression of his lips with his thumb as he looked up at her from under his long, fine eyelashes. “Rest well. My love.”
The crackle of bones were enough of a promise of just what Mary had waiting for her once she did return home.
Which they both knew she would. She wasn’t the wife of Nathan Wesninski for nothing.
He was quick to rise again after that, smiling his cutting smile in farewell of the nurse before swooping out of the room. The nurse just smiled her warm and cheerful smile in return as she watched him leave, before walking over to Mary to hand over Miriam again.
Waiting the few seconds that it took for Mary to readjust her grip on the pink bundle in order for Miriam’s head to fall properly into the crook of her elbow, Mary spoke before the nurse got the chance to open her mouth.
Not taking her eyes off of her sleeping daughter, who seemed to breathe just the tiniest bit steadier now that she was back on the familiar warmth of her mother, she said, “You need to sterilize me.”
Even from out of the corner of her eye, Mary would tell that the girl’s sunny smile immediately faltered, and that she stared at Mary with apparent shock. “What?”
“I can’t bear any more children.”
The girl opened and closed her mouth several times, before finally stammering out, “But- Mr. Wesninski-”
“He can’t know.”
Mary involuntarily hugged Miriam closer to her chest. That was one of the few truths in this life that she knew better than the fate of her own heart.
Mary had chosen her own fate. She had never tried deluding herself into thinking otherwise. She had known exactly what she had walked into the first time she had laid her eyes on Nathan Wesninski, and decided to hitch her wagon to his star.
She was Mary Hatford, after all. She wasn’t just an iron spine, she was steel through and through; her heart and veins and skin. No matter what the world threw at her, no matter how deep their blades cut, it would never be able to scar her.
The same could not be said of her children though. Not yet. They were too small and too weak to understand what it took to survive in this cruel and harsh world just yet.
And they hadn’t chosen this world, the way she had.
She had been foolish, thinking it to be an impossibility. By the time she had realized that she was indeed pregnant again, it had been too late. Nathan had known too. And one did not simply take one of the Butcher’s possessions away from him. Mary was more than intimately aware of that fact.
That didn’t mean that she hadn’t tried. But all her attempts had proven was that Miriam was one stubborn fetus.
Mary had tried every trick in the book. Everything short of the coathanger. That didn’t mean she hadn’t considered it. She had been aware of the risks. Not only to Miriam, should the attempt have failed and Mary would have been laden with a crippled baby instead. But also to herself.
Because once she started bleeding, there was no telling when she would stop.
She had actually been sitting with a coathanger in hand when the decision had finally been made. She had been inspecting the curved hook and wondered just how much pain she would have to endure, and if it would hurt more than Nathan’s grip on her hips, when she had suddenly realized that her decision wasn’t much of a decision at all.
Because that was when Nathaniel had cried out, having just woken up, alone and afraid in the dark of his nursery.
Even if Mary wasn’t scared of her own death, it still wasn’t an option. The instance of saving one of her children from this world wasn’t worth abandoning the other. She was a mother now after all, whether she liked it or not.
She would just have to find a way of saving them both instead.
But one step at a time.
Mary could take whatever this world had in store for her. She could take Nathan’s wrath. It was after all what she had signed up for when she had decided to marry him. Had decided to fall in love with him.
And she would find a way to hand over her endurance to her son and to her daughter. They were frail and weak now, but she would find a way to make them harden into iron and steel, if it so was the last thing she did in this world. She would find a way to make Nathaniel and Miriam survive.
But she couldn’t allow Nathan to force more of her defenseless children into this cruel, cruel world of theirs.
The nurse was quiet for so long that Mary eventually dared to look up at her again. She wished she hadn’t as soon as she did, because the girl’s look of shock had transformed into one of pity.
“Okay. Okay,” she said, reaching out, presumably to place a comforting hand on Mary, but luckily thinking better of it and awkwardly setting it beside her on the bed instead. “Do you need me to call someone?”
“No,” Mary said, clutching Miriam impossibly closer with a sudden spike of urgency flashing through her veins. “No, just- Just get rid of my uterus.”
“Okay, okay,” the girl repeated again, and she suddenly looked like she was calming an wild animal.
After a while, Mary supposed she probably was.
“I’ll go talk to the doctor right away. You’re still too weak to go through the procedure right now, but we’ll make preparations.” Kneeling down, in the exact same position that Nathan had been in just minutes before, she stubbornly sought out Mary’s gaze. And once Mary returned it, her previously sparkling eyes were steady and unwavering. “Just know that we’ll always be here to help, okay?”
Mary wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the entire situation. There was no one in the entire world that could help her once they’d ripped her treacherous womb out of her. She didn’t want any help after that, anyway.
As it was, she managed a terse nod in response, and the nurse smiled up at her. It wasn’t her usual, pretty smile though. It was something much more weary and exhausted.
Slowly rising again, she cast one last look down at Miriam, and her smile turned a little sweeter again. But catching Mary’s eye, she quickly nodded her farewell, and was then out of the room with a brisk step.
There was little for Mary to do except wait after that. Suddenly all alone, she was once again reminded of all the pains and aches of her body, and distantly wondered if the women blessed with epidurals had it any easier.
But that was no matter. This was the last delivery Mary would ever go through, and what was done was done.
Looking down at the bundle in her arms, she was surprised to find that Miriam was looking up at her. It was just a quick peak, just a flash of blue before heavy eyelids fell shut again and she nestled deeper into Mary’s chest.
Miriam was bound to look like Mary. Barely an hour old, and she already had the curve of her nose, the set of her chin, and Mary knew with a mother’s intuition from deep within her bones that she would get the low tilt of her cheekbones too. Her little tuft of hair was fair in a way that Nathaniel’s had never been, and she would grow the sandy strands of her mother rather than the coppers of her father.
Her eyes though. Her eyes were the dark and endless blue that Mary knew would pale into the same shade of her father and brother’s. The Wesninski eyes were always sharp and intelligent, and so were Miriam’s. But they also held an innocence that Mary knew would have to be ripped from her as soon as possible.
Mary’s son, as inconvenient as he may have been, still had a shot at a tolerable life as long as he lived up to this world’s expectations of him. Mary knew that her daughter wouldn’t be so lucky.
But her daughter was also a girl, and girls were the most lethal weapon in the human arsenal, if honed and wielded right. And Mary would make sure that her daughter was the sharpest this world had ever seen.
She had already failed in saving her. But she would make sure that she knew how to survive. How to become a woman of steel in order to walk through this harsh and cruel world of theirs without getting scarred.
And swallowing down anything that could have been called sentimentality, Mary carefully pressed her lips to her infant daughter's forehead.
“I’m sorry.”