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It was a dreary day in mid-September when Sigrun knocked on Sephiran’s open office door. He glanced up, hesitating, one hand pressed to the quote he was typing into his paper, and cocked one eyebrow at her. “You look,” he said after a moment, “Like you have something on your mind.” Sigrun waited until he gestured her in to enter, and then she perched against the edge of his desk, toying with the end of her ponytail.
“A few months back Zel mentioned to me that you two were thinking of settling down if you got the tenure track offer.”
“I got the tenure track offer.” It had been rather expected—after all, Sephiran was something of a legend. Even if he wasn’t teaching a subject anything near the one he was a legend for. “Why, did you find a house?”
“No. But Tanith told me about this girl she saw today. She’s still an infant but...”
Sephiran closed his book so hard the spine cracked. Sigrun, used to his habits, did not jump—she just glared at him, impatient with his inappropriate behaviour. “No,” Sephiran said, rather than debate semantics. “No, absolutely not.”
“Why not?” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “If you’re finally settling down, you could adopt.”
“Do I look like I would be any sort of a fit parent to you?” Sigrun, had she been a less patient, loving woman, would have rolled her eyes at him. As it stood, she was far too mature.
“You would be a tremendous parent, if you did not sell yourself short.” He snorted and turned away from her. “She looks like Altina.”
He froze. Stayed very still. After a moment, there was a tremble in the sharp, supple line of his shoulders, and he closed his eyes for a moment. “Sigrun...”
“Please, Sephiran. At least talk to Zel about it.”
“Fine.”
Zelgius, predictably, loved the idea from the get-go. “We’re both not getting any younger,” he replied, over washing dishes while Sephiran finished packing his lunch for the following day. “We’re buying a house soon, and you’re getting tenure. Why not have kids? A kid? We should at least meet her, Sephiran.”
“Why do you all persist in insisting that I would be any kind of a fit parent for a child?” Sephiran’s temper finally snapped like a brittle reed. “She would grow up walking on eggshells and waiting for the day I snapped again. Should we force any child to wake up one morning and find her father trying to slit his wrists?” Zelgius, still washing plates, was quiet for a moment. He let Sephiran seethe, slamming the tupperware and then the fridge door shut in quick succession, before he continued.
“Sigrun has a point. I’d like to meet her.”
“Do whatever you want,” Sephiran snapped, and left to go to bed.
Zelgius scheduled the visit for the following week, far faster than most waiting periods would have been. It mostly only worked because Tanith had worked with him on previous cases, and was able to finagle her way through loopholes to get them in. Sephiran tried every excuse to get out of it, but in the end got dragged along anyway.
Crammed into the backseat of Tanith’s tiny economy car, his long bird legs folded almost to his chin, Sephiran was the baleful passenger in the backseat who kept glowering. Zelgius, long experienced with such bouts of black moods, ignored him. They talked about the girl—she had been an accidental birth to a mother who could not, for various reasons, keep the child, most of them professional. She had one other sibling, who had been adopted over twenty years before to similar reasons. Her mother had not named her; better, she had said, to let her future parents do so. She was now three months, and in need of a home.
“This is a bad idea,” Sephiran tried one last time, but Tanith just smiled.
“We’ll see about that.”
She was staying with a foster family, who greeted them warmly, and then they went to go see the girl. She was sleeping, and Sephiran paused over her crib, fingers wrapped around the wooden bedframe, as Zelgius pressed against his shoulder, silent and thoughtful.
He found, as he stared at her, that his hands were shaking—because she did look like Altina. The spitting image, in fact. Same dark hair. She would grow up almost alike. “We shouldn’t do this.” Zelgius pressed a hand to his shoulder. “I’m going to die and you’d be alone with her and—“
“That’s why we should do it,” he prompted, gently. “So I won’t be alone.”
They named her Sanaki. She was a quiet, intelligent newborn, who grew quickly once the adoption was finalised into a quiet, intelligent infant. She was not prone to outbursts of emotion; she was more neutral. More serious. Their lives readjusted around her, and as February came and the anniversary arrived, Sephiran found that he could not bring himself to linger overlong on it. He could not go visit the bridge again; could not go in the bathroom. She couldn’t be left alone.
He took the anniversary proper off of work, as he often did. This year, Zelgius awoke in the morning and pressed a broad palm to the back of his neck. “Do you want me to stay?” he asked, voice quiet. For a moment, Sephiran considered, and then, shook his head. “Are you sure? You’ll have to be with Sanaki.”
He had.
Forgotten.
“I’ll be fine,” he lied, waving away his husband. “You should go to work.” Zelgius looked like he did not believe it, but agreed and left anyway. Sephiran did not rise from bed until Sanaki began to cry, and he moved through the day in a haze, unable to bring himself to speak, fingers pressed to his throat. He ate nothing, but made lunch for their daughter, and lay her down for her nap.
As she settled in to sleep, her small pudgy fingers wrapped around his long ones, she trailed her fingertips over his wrists, her amber eyes bright as she watched him. It was the texture that seemed to please her; scar tissue layered over itself for now nigh on ten years. As she brushed it again, Sephiran bit his lip, remained silent.
When she fell asleep, he began to cry.
The noose was easy to tie.
He had done it before.
Zelgius kept no rope in the house; he had to repurpose shoelaces. A hanging plant in the kitchen was a good enough hook, he only hoped the laces would take his weight long enough before they snapped. It was late enough that Zelgius would return home before Sanaki would be left alone to be hungry or ill. It would be fine; he would be fine. She would be fine.
A rickety chair was his scaffold, the wall his only balance. The shoelaces weren’t long enough to stretch over his head so he had to tie them wrapped around his neck, chin tilted up and eyes on the ceiling, entirely from touch. Every breath was frightened and wheezy, with terror that he would get it wrong. That they might break, and he would just fall on his ass rather than swing, and swing, and swing again into darkness.
It was better he do it now. While she could still forget about him; pretend he had never come into her life. Before he lied to her and hurt her, before the time came again that he would crack under the stress and break down and she would be forced to watch and understand at what she looked. It was better that he not pass on his anguish and failures to the next generation. It was better that it die with him.
He was halway to stepping off his chair when Sanaki began to cry. It was not a short, small, post-nap cry. It was one of those anguished whimpers that began slowly as a wind-up, and soon reached a constant, siren-like wail. She kept going. She paused for breath. She continued. He held the shoelaces, four of them braided together, in one hand. He shuddered, closed his eyes. Lifted his foot.
She kept crying. Shrieking. Lost and alone and bereft; anguished and upset and he was not there. Her constants had been stripped from her, her world dissolving.
He got down off of the chair, threw away the noose, and went to go get her.
Zelgius found them like that, hours later. Sephiran had fallen asleep curled against her crib and awoke with a crick in his neck and a headache from where his skull had pressed against the wooden slats. Sanaki had curled in his arms, her soft, black-down hair mussed against his arm.
Zelgius awoke him with a gentle hand to his arm, and Sephiran stirred, looked up at the younger man. “Did you?” He asked, softly.
Sephiran’s silence was answer enough. Zelgius looked sad—disappointed, yes, hurt. But he said nothing, merely cupped the back of Sephiran’s neck and pulled him over so that Sephiran could pillow his face in Zelgius’ shoulder, hold onto his shirt. He cried, empty and raw, until Sanaki began to snuffle her way awake again, and then Zelgius pulled them all into his arms. Held them.
Later that night, after Sanaki had eaten, gone to bed, Zelgius sat holding Sephiran curled in his arms, nose pressed into the soft hairs at the nape of his neck, twined into a braid for sleep. He kissed the faint bruises that had been pressed into the too-soft pale skin of his neck, as easily bruised as over-ripe fruit, and held him like he would shatter.
Sephiran cried himself to sleep for the second time, and awoke in total darkness to Zelgius’ steady breathing. He was not asleep—when Sephiran stirred, his hands tightened around his waist, as if to keep him trapped on the bed, in his arms. He was safe there whether he liked it or not, and that was clearly Zelgius’ intention. For a time, he remained silent, thoughtful. He had promised—not this year. He had promised the same the year before, and like every other year, he had been wrong. He had given in and crumbled and stuttered and collapsed. And if Sanaki had not cried, had not pulled him back from the precipice, then he—
“I can’t stay for you both,” Sephiran whispered, his voice cracking. Zelgius made a quiet noise, and he felt his husband’s broad palms press over the skin at the base of his stomach. “I can’t just—keep promising to stay because you want me to. I want to go.” He wheezed. “I can’t do another year, Zelgius. What’s waiting for me?”
“You know nothing I tell you will be right,” Zelgius admitted, after a time. “I can’t decide for you to stay. My reasons won’t work for you.” Sephiran knew his reasons. Because Zelgius loved him. Because without him, he would be alone. Because he had a house, and a job, and a husband, and a daughter. Because he had a community that would miss him, because he still had time to rewrite his life after he’d lost all he’d worked for. Because it would be messy and inconvenient for Zelgius to clean up, because the insurance would be a nightmare. Because what if he failed, and everything he had earned crumbled back apart in his hands, or ended up worse than he had previously?
He knew.
And yet—
“Stay anyway,” Zelgius whispered. “Stay. Don’t you want to see her walk, and talk?”
“Yes,” Sephiran admitted, voice hoarse. “But—“
“Stay tomorrow,” Zelgius asked. Patient, gentle, forgiving as always. “And then we’ll see about the rest of it.”
“And if I can’t—“
“Then you can’t.” Zelgius’ smile against his shoulder was soft, reassuring. “I knew who and what you were when I asked you to stay the first time, Seph. It’s not changed now. All right?”
All right.