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It’s late at night and Jodi can’t sleep.
It’s to be expected, even if it’s annoying. She’s exhausted beyond belief, tiredness clinging to every bone in her body, the echoes and remnants of pain still haunting her memory. Plus, there’s a slight bump in the bed— as cheap as the hospital can get them, Jodi supposes— that she’d already complained about earlier.
Neither can Kent, it seems, from where he’s sitting in the armchair beside her bed. He’s restless, but he always has been— even before they were married— but this time it’s for a different reason. Resting an elbow on the side of the chair, he leans forward to peer into the hospital bassinet.
“My son,” Kent says, his voice hoarse with emotion, gruff but gentle. The way he was, and the way he loved. His voice was quiet, trying not to disturb Jodi. He assumes she’s asleep.
(She doesn’t speak up to tell him otherwise. Some moments are better left untouched.)
Kent sits, quietly, for a few more moments, seemingly basking in the otherworldly reality that he was a father. Jodi knew that it shocked him to no end— that the small wriggling being that sputtered and gargled and clung to his fingers with its own impossibly small ones— was his. It shocked her, too, but when something has been incubating in your body for ten months you learn to eventually accept that it was real.
Kent, for how rough and calloused his hands are, reaches for his son with a soft, gentle touch. And it was simply…beautiful. Jodi knew no other way to describe it. He was simply beautiful.
"Look outside at the stars," he says to the baby, still babbling incoherently. "Do you see them? They're shining for you, Samson. The stars are saying goodbye to their brightest so he can come and live with me and your mother…the world couldn't be luckier to have you."
Oh, this is love. Her heart almost hurts with the weight of it. This is love, the finger Kent trails down the side of their baby’s face, the openness in his gaze, the bandages wrapped around his hand.
(It would be a good story, Jodi thinks humorously, for some dinner in the future. Crushed his fingers, she’d laugh to their baby boy, almost took them clean off. Kent refused to let go, because of course he did.)
Samson quiets down, seemingly enraptured by Kent’s tone. Of course he is. The man is like a storyteller, the way his words build themselves into tales. “Can you see them waving at you? They’re saying hello. They’re saying goodbye. They’re waiting for you. The world is yours,” Kent whispers, one last time. The stars twinkle outside. Jodi thinks, now, she can fall asleep easy.
Years later, Kent returns to the hospital. The same white walls greet him with shining eyes, and the bed still has the same bump that presses incessantly on Jodi’s back. She complains about it— for old times’ sake, of course— but she smiles all the same. Beautifully bright, he thinks. A star in her own right.
This time the armchair is taken by someone else. Sam curls up, his limbs almost too long— gangly and lean, like Kent had been at his age— asleep, his eyes scrunched the same way his mother’s do. Kent himself stands by the window, watching the sky. Sixteen years without their brightest star, he thinks, and twenty more without their biggest.
A movement in the peripheral of his vision brings Kent’s attention to the hospital bassinet, which is— his heart swells at the thought— occupied once again. Vincent waves his clenched fists around as he lets out a loud wail, kicking out. Louder than his brother had been, which he hadn’t thought was possible.
“Sh— shh, it’s okay,” Kent says quietly, scooping the boy up in his arms, gently rocking him back and forth. “Hey, little guy. It’s okay, Vincent.”
Unconvinced, Vincent wails a little louder, wriggling around in his arms, and Kent winces and glances back towards his sleeping wife and son. They haven’t woken up, he notes.
“I know, I know,” he murmurs gently. Moving towards the window, he gently shifts Vincent around in his grasp until the baby has a view of the outside, too, and closes his eyes. “It’s hard, isn’t it? It must be so cold down here after spending so long up in the sky. I’m sorry, little one. The stars mourn your loss…I hope you grow to like it here, too. Like Sam did.”
He opens his eyes again when he realises that the baby in his arms has stopped fussing. Vincent blinks wide-eyed at him, reaching up with a chubby hand to touch his face, and Kent’s heart skips when he blinks and suddenly he’s back here, sixteen years earlier.
Kent’s attention— so sharpened by his years of service— cuts quickly to the armchair as soon as he senses movement. Sam, stretching out and yawning, smiles at them both.
“Do you think,” he says, his voice thick with drowsiness, “that the stars lost another, tonight?”
He— in surprise— turns to Jodi, who smiles tiredly, her head back on the pillow, cheeks pale but happier than ever. “Sorry, love. I told him. He deserves to know what his wonderful father thinks of him.”
And, oh, this is love. This is wholehearted devotion. Kent has lived so much of his life by the orders of another, yelling and screaming and loud, harsh words, but this…this is different.
“They did,” he smiles, pressing a kiss to Jodi’s forehead, then Sam’s, and finally Vincent’s. He won’t be here for much longer, he knows— his duty is to his country, even if his loyalty lays with his love— but for now he has nowhere else to be. He blinks, and for a moment, this moment feels exactly like it did sixteen years ago: Vincent’s chubby little fingers grasp at his own, Sam yawns and leans on his shoulder, and Jodi smiles at him with beautiful eyes, and he whispers: “My stars.”
The sky blinks above him, knowing their loss. His family sleeps beside him, and the world glows a little brighter.