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She takes the silver on the road that night, and brings it to the house, along with whatever she can salvage from their belongings that were thrown from the truck (she can’t find the little frog, though, lost in the debris). She peeks in on her son before heading to bed, reassured by the constant rise and fall of his little chest, calm in his sleep. She puts herself to bed and doesn’t sleep, wracked by sobs that she tries to keep silent, her head buried in the pillow where they’d slept, and it bothers her how much she relishes his scent on the fabric, closing her eyes as she breathes the memory of him in.
Sometimes, when Cid is half asleep and barely conscious, he’ll ask her where Joe’s gone. “Away, baby,” she whispers to him, running her fingers through his soft hair. “He went away.”
She keeps his leather jacket – as a memento of him, she supposes – but when the little positive sign appears on three different tests, she realizes that she doesn’t need a memento to remember him by. She’ll remember him forever.
Cid is so excited about the prospect of a baby. Sara is terrified. Her son gets angry so easily, scared so often – how long will it take before a newborn’s cries in the middle of the night make him upset? How much time will go by before that TK gene inside of him goes haywire, the furniture and the house going crazy around them?
How long will it take for one of her children to hurt the other?
She can’t do anything about it, though; not now, not ever. So she takes Cid into the yard every day, testing him with different scenarios to get him more acquainted with chaos, hoping beyond hope that that will be enough.
Some nights, when the winter winds beat heavily on her shutters and a chill has settled into her bones, she dreams of that blue-eyed stranger, her hands reaching out across the bed, searching for something (someone) who just isn’t there.
“What should we name her, baby?” she asks Cid softly, her son nestled in beside her on the hospital bed. She traces her finger along her daughter’s ear, memorizing every little detail about her.
Cid looks up to her, and smiles. “Josephine,” he tells her confidently. “We can call her Jo.”
She nods at him in agreement, not trusting herself to speak through her tears.
She was absolutely, totally, and completely wrong about Cid.
She used to flinch every time the baby cried, afraid that this would be the time it all went wrong, when her little boy’s eyes would darken and the wind would pick up, blowing them all to oblivion. She used to wonder, in the beginning, if it would have been better to give Jo up, to keep her safe – but in the end she knew she never could (her daughter had his hair and the shape of his eyes, and she fell in love the moment she laid eyes on her).
So she prepares herself for the inevitable. Which never, ever comes.
Cid plays with his baby sister so patiently, so kindly that it makes her heart skip a beat to see him so devoted, so loving. His ‘spells’ become more infrequent, less random. He becomes more capable of controlling his feelings, of controlling his reactions. He teaches his sister about their TK powers and how to manage them, and she can’t help but swell with pride at his growth over these past years. And as her children grow up, she sees them become the people she’s always hoped they would be: good and righteous, honorable and kind.
You saved my son twice, she thinks in the dark of her bedroom, looking at the leather jacket she always keeps on the back of her chair. You gave your life for him, and you gave him Josephine.
“Thank you,” she whispers aloud, before squeezing her eyes shut and falling into sleep, dreaming of a field drenched in sunshine, her bare feet on the grass, and a figure striding out of the crops, his face split by a wide smile, slowly walking towards her.