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Silas would like to say the rabbit is gone. That it’s just a part of him that he’s made peace with. Most days, that tends to be true. Time has healed some of the wounds the speakers inflicted on him. Yet, some wounds leave scars that while faded, are still present.
Sitting on the steps of his cottage, he watches his baby daughter standing on his wife’s feet, laughing as she’s piloted forward by her mother toward a patch of wild dandelions that’re growing nearby.
Daphne moves Emily gently, laughing as Emily babbles something Silas can’t quite make out. She leans down and bundles Emily into her arms, then takes Emily’s chubby little arm and uses it to wave at Silas.
“Babababa!” Emily babbles, grinning with a smile that shows that most of her baby teeth have come in.
Silas feels the exact moment the rabbit reemerges for a brief, horrible second. It’s when he looks into Emily’s eyes.
Silas sees her eyes, violet and full of life. They almost seem to sparkle when she giggles as Daphne boops her nose and sets her down near the dandelion patch.
What if they take her? There are other Speakers. They’re still out there, and they could come for you all over again, and this time, they’ll take her too.
The rabbit needs to shut the fuck up. It’s been years, and there’s been no sign of other speaker organizations being onto them.
Of course, there has always been the idea of taking them down. Silas still remembers conversations with Mary and Anges about it. He thinks of the image of Mary holding her ring in her hands, and her own violet eyes burning with righteous anger as she held what was left of Frances in her palm. It’s not like he ever knew Frances, and he couldn’t imagine loving someone to the degree Mary loved Frances, and watching as they were tortured, beaten down, and then, one day, they disappear, only for you to realize that the system you were trapped in cannibalized them to the bone, leaving you naught but their ghost.
Even now, with Frances being freed, there was still the fact that she was dead. Her spirit was free, but her body was long-gone. A body that’d undoubtedly been violated and mutilated by pathetic excuses for butchers who called themselves surgeons.
Watching Emily now, Silas feels bile rising in his throat at the idea of a Speaker making their way here, somehow. Of a Society forming in the nearest town over, where Silas set up his practice, where he and Daphne go to get food and newspapers and chat with locals who have no other reference than to see them as man and wife, and eventually, once he is fit enough to work again, daughter.
He thinks of a Speaker ruining that. Forcing him back into the role he’d clawed his way out of, then, turning to his violet-eyed daughter.
It would be one thing to get to him. He’d fight again. He’d have Daphne and Mary and Agnes. He’s been through hell and he won’t let himself be stuck with that rabbit going berserk in his chest, making him feel like prey because well, he was prey. Prey to a group of men who only saw him for his eyes and childrearing potential.
The rabbit being in his chest was a terrible feeling, and the only reason he felt it again in this moment was not because of his own fear, but for fear of another.
He never wants Emily to feel like he had. To be under the scrutiny of those men, to be seen as a thing waiting to be dissected and repackaged to fit their purposes. Silas wants Emily to be able to go out and smile without fear. To be whomever she decides herself to be, with the world at her fingertips.
If Emily stays a woman her whole life, Silas wants her to be able to marry who she likes, to be able to pursue higher education and dress however she chooses. He doesn’t want her eyes to doom her to a life of looking over her shoulder, wondering when she will be snatched off the streets, or followed home, or constantly harassed by men who think they own her.
Silas isn’t a woman. He never was. Yet, he knows that even without violet eyes, all those things can happen to his daughter. The eyes just attract Speakers. They’re beacons to those who crave power and control and they’ll endanger Emily more than being female presenting in this world already will.
It makes Silas alight with fear, and now, rage. The rabbit is gone now, merging with something more fiery. Maybe something like a phoenix.
There’s a fire burning in Silas’s chest as he watches Daphne blow on a dandelion, causing Emily to coo and laugh, reaching her pudgy hands up to try and catch the scattering seeds.
He won’t let this world beat Emily down. He doesn’t want his child to have to fight to exist. He wants things to be like they are now, where Emily can smile and laugh without a care. He never wants there to be a rabbit in her chest.
Emily’s eyes are beautiful. They illuminate the tufts of dark hair on her head (inherited from Daphne), and they’re as much a part of her as anything. Silas knew there was a chance of Emily’s eyes being violet.
Hell, Emily opened her eyes for the first time months ago. Maybe it was because the past several months have been all-consuming, with organizing his sick leave so that no one would suspect his pregnancy, childbirth, then bedrest, then getting into the rhythm of being at the beck-and-call of an infant. He hadn’t had time to worry.
Now, in this fleeting moment, Silas has the time, and he is finally realizing that he has a violet-eyed daughter.
Silas also, though, thinks of the fact that Emily is his and Daphne’s to protect. They took down one Speaker-led institution before. Granted, they didn’t do it alone–they had Mary and Isabella and Louise–but they did it nonetheless.
That was just when Silas had himself to fight for. Now, he has Emily, and if the Speakers lay a fucking hand on his daughter, he’d slice it off without hesitation. If the Speakers could wield surgical devices used to save as slaughterer’s tools, then he’d do the same. If it was to protect Emily, he’d do it in a heartbeat.
“Emily has something for you.”
Silas looks up, to see Daphne standing at the front of the steps. She’s holding Emily in her arms while grinning at Silas, then at Emily.
“Do you wanna give the flower to Papa?” Daphne pokes Emily’s cheek, causing the girl to giggle and wave her hands.
Silas sees, in Emily’s hand, one of the dandelions. It hasn’t been blown on, leaving it intact.
“She wants you to have a go,” Daphne explains, lowering Emily to Silas’s level. “We were making wishes, and Emily wouldn’t let me blow out the last one–so I guessed she wanted you to have it.”
“What’d you wish for?” Silas asks.
Daphne winks at him, her expression turning good-natured and sly. She tucks a tress of hair behind her ear. “If I told you, it wouldn’t come true. Besides, Emily swore me to secrecy. Didn’t you, Emily?”
Daphne gives Emily an exaggerated frown, and Emily babbles in response, already starting to smile at Daphne. After the first few months of absolute hell, Emily’s turned out to be such a happy baby. Daphne can’t even hold her frown for a few seconds, before she giggles and blows a raspberry into Emily’s cheek.
Emily shrieks with laughter, kicking out her feet and wrapping chubby arms around Daphne as she peppers their daughter’s cheek with exaggerated kisses.
Silas watches his wife and daughter, and can’t help the smile that forms on his face. He’s still smiling when Daphne goes, “Okay, okay, you wanna show Papa, I get it,” and sits down on the steps of the cottage next to Silas, and props Emily up on her lap so she faces Silas.
Emily gurgles and holds out the dandelion to Silas expectantly. She can’t quite form words yet, but she’s learning all the same. From a doctoral perspective, it’s fascinating to watch in real time. From a paternal perspective, it makes something in Silas’s chest constrict in a warm, all-consuming love.
Silas gingerly takes the dandelion from Emily, feeling the soft, unmarred skin of her pudgy hand as he does. It’s a hand that’s never known torture, has never known how it is to take lashing from a ruler or a whip. He takes the dandelion and looks at Emily, who grins expectantly with a smile that’s never known fear.
He meets Emily’s eyes, and sees a rare pair of violet eyes that have yet to learn hardship, to learn that there is a whole world out there that sees the eyes and the womb, and not the person.
Silas closes his eyes, and blows on the dandelion.
I wish that Emily will know nothing but happiness.
It’s a nigh-impossible wish. Silas knows this. Yet, he knows this fiery feeling in his chest will guide him. It’s not the rabbit. It’s not fear. It’s protection, it’s years of fear and anger, the rabbit and now the phoenix.
They’ve forged together in this form of protective resolve. Silas will protect his family. He’ll do everything within his power to make sure Emily’s violet eyes keep their shine, that her smile stays wide and blissful, that her hands remain soft and unscarred. He and Daphne can do it. They’ll fend off every fucking Speaker in the world if they have to.
He isn’t alone in this. He has Daphne, Mary, and Agnes and if the Speakers ever threaten the lives they’ve worked too hard to get, then they won’t go down again. Silas finally has a family and friends–and nothing will fucking break that up again.
Emily shoots up from Daphne’s lap and makes to stand up on two very wobbly feet in order to attempt to reach out for the floating dandelion seeds that came loose when Silas made his wish. She immediately starts to topple over.
Both Silas and Daphne’s hands move in unison, to catch and cradle Emily, who giggles, oblivious to being inches away from face planting on the wooden stairs.
Daphne looks at Silas and smiles fondly. There’s something knowing in the smile, something sharp, that makes Silas’s heart beat faster in his chest. Even now, Daphne knows him better than anyone else. She was the first to truly see him, and she’s never stopped seeing him.
Daphne tilts her head in a little nod, as Silas is the one to pick up Emily and sit her on his lap. The same resolve Silas felt is mirrored on Daphne’s face as she gives Silas’s hand a meaningful squeeze.
Silas holds Emily in his arms, and savors the sound of her heartbeat mingling with her laughter.
“Papa,” Emily burbles, barely audible, as she looks at Silas with a wide, mostly-toothy grin.
Silas feels himself mirroring the grin, despite everything. That resolve is strengthening, anger and fear being smelted into a determination to uphold his wish.
A desire to hold onto the joy he’s still learning to accept as his own, and to make sure Emily never has to doubt joy a day in her life.
Looking into Emily’s shining eyes, and letting her wrap her hand around his finger, Silas doesn’t sense the rabbit at all. It’s just love. Fear, anger, joy.
All of it, borne from love.