Chapter Text
Eve’s first only daughter is born while her sister-in-law is still in mourning.
Still in mourning, as though there’d been any break in time between finding out that Agatha’s daughter was stillborn and her own labor, as though the shock of hearing that Agatha is in the hospital cradling a breathless baby in her arms hadn’t stolen so much of Eve’s own breath that her own daughter decided she needed to break out into the world, as though Eve didn’t hold a living Rowena in her arms just as a dead Lillian Rose was taken from Agatha’s.
There is no way to apologize for this, to apologize for the heart pain mingling with the heart joy mingling with the empathy that Eve cannot drive from her mind – what it would feel like, in this moment, to have gotten to this point and hear no cries, feel no little hand reaching out as fingers brush through her hair, see no eyes so clear and blue before they squeeze shut again – no way to cut out the ache she feels for Agatha from the joy she feels for herself.
She glances up a few hours later and catches a shadow of herself staring through the window with her spouse’s arms wrapped around her waist, a ghostly shell of herself when she had already always been so thin and so pale.
Death warmed over, her mama used to call her when she wore clothes too dark in the wrong tint of black, but she’s never looked like that.
They’d meant to be the godparents for each other’s children – Eve and Christopher the godparents to Lily, Agatha and Cian the godparents to Rowena. Eve had almost bullied Agatha into it; sure, sure, the Harkness-Masters weren’t religious in the slightest and didn’t particularly care about baptizing their child or anything that went along with that, but wouldn’t it be fun for both babies to have their ceremony at the same time? To have both sets of parents doubling as godparents? Wouldn’t it just be cute?
Agatha had given Cian a look, one eyebrow raising, questioning, testing their feelings as her hand rested gentle on her belly, and Cian had placed their hand over Agatha’s, eyes focusing only on their growing child, and smiled. Why not? they’d said. We could use a little guidance.
Back then, Agatha had just rolled her eyes.
In the four months since Rowena was born, Agatha hadn’t contacted them. Eve reached out – Christopher reached out – but Eve knew well enough that whatever pain Christopher felt wasn’t the same that she did. Couldn’t possibly be the same. (Later, when she knows better, Eve feels bad for this assumption. It doesn’t matter whether Claire carried their daughter or not; she felt the same pangs of anguish that Eve did. Gender does not matter here.)
Eve finally told her husband to hold off. Let Agatha have her time to mourn. To process. Cian would make sure she ate, would make sure she was as healthy as she could possibly be, given the circumstances.
It wasn’t their first fight, nor was it their biggest, but it sank deep into the pit of Eve’s heart – that constant, constant, constant ripping ache – to see Christopher’s fear for his sister tumble over and over and over again when they should have only been overjoyed at the arrival of their newest youngest child, should only have been overjoyed at the tiniest niece they would ever see.
Joy and pain intertwined.
(Brendan was six. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t go see Aunty Ata’s new baby.
How do you explain to a child that some babies are born dead?
How do you take the artwork he scribbles in bright rainbow colors to make his aunt feel better, how do you make sure that she sees them when she doesn’t seem to want anything to do with you?)
In the days leading up to the ceremony, Eve spends more time than she wants biting her thumbnail, pacing back and forth (when she can get Rowena to sleep, that is), and debating whether she should just call the whole thing off. Postpone it, at least, until Agatha and Cian….
Christopher rubs her back, comforting her as much as he can, and suggests that they will do what they can, whatever she thinks is best. They can name Ro’s godparents later. They can do everything later. They can—
Agatha stands small and smaller outside of the thick wooden cathedral doors. She’s taller than Eve by multiple inches, and at the top of the stairs to the door, she should be even taller, should look down on Eve with the full weight of her rightness and her pain, but the latter crumples her. The last time Eve saw her, she was still swollen with the weight of her stillborn child; now she’s shrunken with it, all angles and sharp edges and haunted eyes that meet Eve’s briefly and then sweep away, fall to the child cradled in her arms, and then avert entirely.
Cian wraps their arms around Agatha’s waist and draws her to them. She shrinks smaller against their chest as they brush their fingers through their hair.
You didn’t— Eve swallows the words down, and her gaze, too, drops. Her voice lessens the same as Agatha has. You didn’t have to come.
We’re her godparents, aren’t we? Of course, we came, dear.
Agatha should be snapping. There should be bitterness in her voice. She should be mad at her. Even if she isn’t mad, she should be so much more than this. Eve has only ever known the ballerina with ambition too big to keep her feet on the ground, her desires so loud they bent the world to her need, even after the fall, even after—
She hadn’t sounded like this then. Defeated. Broken.
Eve cradles Ro against her chest and steps up to them. She opens her mouth, closes it, considers, and then tries again. Do you want to hold her?
When Agatha turns, her eyes are rimmed with red. No tears. Just that blood red. She glances down to Rowena, and her lips tremble until she bites down on the lower one to keep it still. Gentle, gentle, gentle, she reaches out, brushes her fingers through Ro’s short, soft hair. She doesn’t say anything at first, just shakes her head, and then finally lets out a choked, Can’t, before turning back to Cian’s chest and clinging to them.
It shouldn’t hurt. Eve understands, after all, so it shouldn’t…it shouldn’t hurt.
Somehow, it still does.
Rowena cries.
The other babies – and there are always other babies at these things – cry.
Agatha cries.
Eve barely catches it because Agatha spends so much time curled up against Cian, who keeps their arm around her shoulders. They’re dressed nicely, Agatha in one of her ballet promotional interview dresses that might be a little too short, but not compared to one of the other mothers a few babies down, and Cian in well-tailored pants and a nice, crisp white button-up with black suspenders with a white streak down the middle of each strap. If everything had gone well, they would be drawing attention to themselves – they both would be – the Harkness-Masters and the Valentines – because Eve is very well aware that she and Christopher are a surprisingly attractive couple (she believes that is fully on Christopher and his easy charisma, but he has always assured her that is fully her and that he would be nothing without her by his side (something sneaky and cruel within her says this isn’t so, says that if he would be nothing without her, he would never have left her in the first place, but what does that matter? He’s here now. That’s what matters)) – they would have drawn eyes, these two attractive couples, and their twin babies would have been the only ones beautiful enough to tear people’s eyes away from them—
But things hadn’t gone well, and their eyes are rightfully drawn to the woman clinging to the spouse with the protective hold, who presses a kiss atop the crown of her head when she cannot stop crying.
It isn’t like Agatha sobs. There’s no sound to what she does, unlike the babies surrounding them. Just constant tears and red-rimmed eyes and the drawn face of a woman who is overwhelmed but forcing herself to be somewhere she really doesn’t want to be, really shouldn’t be.
Cian holds Rowena, briefly, when Agatha asks to be excused (bathroom, tissue paper, her nose turning a shinier red than her eyes). They tuck one of her curls around their finger, and she grabs at their hand. They smile at her – the softest smile Eve has ever seen from them directed at anyone other than Agatha – and kiss her forehead so gently before they leave.
And she’s certain – absolutely certain – she catches tears at the corner of their eyes, too.
It is almost a year to the date – just past it, actually – when Agatha says, in the softest voice, We’re not trying again.
It’s the quietest sort of admittance of defeat.
Not that there aren’t other routes or other avenues to potentially have a child – adoption, foster care, all sorts of things – but….
But—
Agatha lays it out then, the sheer impossibility of what they were trying to do, the sliver of a chance that Lily clung to in the first place – that Agatha’s disorder held much longer complications than she could ever have guessed when she’d first chosen to not eat, that she was still being punished for something she’d thought she was finished with.
(She says this, but the lavender shirt she wears with the semi-transparent flowing sleeves has the low cut back of a leotard. When she explains, Agatha turns away, focusing on the dishes in her hands, focusing on the unraveling rag as she scrubs away uneaten morsels that stick to the porcelain as though desperate to serve their purpose, and Eve catches the thin white scars sharp and jagged across her sister-in-law’s skin, the angles of her shoulder blades bending briefly to relieve the discomfort they still cause.)
I can’t do it again, Agatha says, finally, her head not lifting, her hands stilling. I can’t. Even if…. She takes in a sharp breath. I wouldn’t make it. I wouldn’t—
Eve places a hand on her shuddering back, just over the longest scar stretching a slash across her spine, and says, gentle as ever, I wouldn’t either.
It is another seven months before Cian mentions they are looking for a surrogate.
Another month passes before Eve says soft, washing dishes with Agatha after yet another one of their monthly family dinners, that if they want, she will carry their child for them.
In the ninth month, they accept.