19 September 2012
Backdated. Hur, I got way behind. QQ


Word Count: 3748

Even months later, hospitals still set him on edge.

Paris didn’t think he’d ever feel any different, no matter how many times he walked through similar halls and no matter what might have necessitated a visit. The memories would always be there, lurking beneath the careful control he maintained over his life now, waiting for the next moment to strike, like a scar or a sore that would never fade, never leave him be.

He liked the superficial things about such a place no better that he had months ago when he’d first noticed them—how they looked too clean, how they felt too cold, how they smelled not of life or death but of nothing at all, as if the staff took great pains to hide all evidence of what took place there, leaving the air empty but for the cold and the tension that would never quite go away, mingled hope, and joy, and despair.

The maternity ward was more of the same, although the despair wasn’t quite so oppressive, existing still but muted beneath the positive emotions that seemed much more common there. Here hope and joy won out, leaving Paris feeling decidedly lost. Hospitals had always been dark, dreary places to him despite the brightness of the lights, so this happy energy he felt teeming on the floor seemed out of place, foreign when he was used to the exact opposite.

Even though he knew there were good experiences to be had in a hospital, that some people found a happy ending to their trials, his had seen nothing of the sort, and so he could not think favorably of being there no matter how hard he tried. And he did try, but no matter how straight he walked or how high he held his head or how determinedly he tried to swallow down his fear, he could not ignore the sense of unease that tickled up his spine and threatened to show in a tremble of the hand.

That his baby sister had been born nearly a month early in the same hospital where his father had taken his last breaths six months ago was such a contrast in fortunes that Paris could hardly believe it, and with some effort forced himself not to dwell on it. It would do him no good. The longer he thought of it, the more the memories threatened to take hold. He had made too much progress in the last two months to let this visit set him back again.

He shuffled down the hall with Momma Gallo in the lead. She’d been there long before he had arrived, almost as long as his mother had been there, and Paris suspected she’d been in the room during the birth—a luxury his mother hadn’t had the last time, he knew, with only her husband there with her and none of the rest of her family—but he hadn’t yet heard the details, nor was he sure he wanted to. Chris followed at his side with a comforting arm thrown around Paris’s shoulders, occasionally squeezing to remind Paris that he was there.

“Just wait until you see her!” Momma gushed the whole way. “She’s such a perfect little thing! Marissa says she looks just like you!”

Paris thought that was impossible since he was fairly familiar with which traits he’d gotten from his mother and which had come from his father, but he let Momma continue to prattle on because he knew she liked to, and he nodded and gave a strained smile when it seemed appropriate to do so.

The room Momma took them to was somehow more cozy than the room where his father had been prepared for surgery, though many of the elements were the same—they simply bore minor, but noticeable, differences. The walls were just as bland, with a couple of cheap landscapes in the place of medical posters, an attempt to make the room look homier, he was sure. The bed his mother sat up in was a bit wider, more an actual bed than a gurney, tilted up at the head to offer her more support as she reclined, and a television hung in the corner, but it was larger and more expensive, a flat screen instead of the old boxes that used to be common.

He saw his cousin Rhiannon in a chair by the window with a book, and Cal in a chair beside his mother’s bed, and those, too, looked more comfortable, upholstered in a dull, generic looking hospital green rather than hard, unforgiving plastic. There was a couch as well, along the wall opposite the door. Paris wondered if it might fold out for the father or another visitor—a mother or similarly close relative—who might want to stay the night with a new or returning parent.

Paris’s mother, when they entered, looked up at him with a wan smile. She was pale and more tired than he’d ever seen her, but her eyes were bright and her expression was jubilant instead of defeated and drawn.

She looked nothing like his father had. Tired as she was, she still looked very much alive.

That in itself was comforting.

“Baby,” she said when she saw him, holding one of her arms out for him.

Paris shuffled his way over to her and slipped out of Chris’s embrace to lean down and let his mother hug him. In return, he put his arms around her loosely, as if he were afraid she might break if he held onto her too tightly—though he wanted to very much.

“Are you okay?” he asked. He hoped his voice sounded even. He didn’t want her to know that he’d been afraid, pacing around the apartment since she’d been admitted hours ago, because he couldn’t bear to pace around the waiting room a second time.

“Of course I am,” she said, and when he pulled back her smile was wider. He could see her usual spirit in it. “Easier than when I had you,” she added.

She spared a look at Cal, and then at Momma Gallo, and Paris wondered if it was the company and the support that made things easier rather than any drug she might have had to ease the pain.

“Really?” he asked.

“Really,” she said, her eyes alight with a mirthful glimmer.

“Obviously you had to make a dramatic entrance,” Rhiannon said, her eyes glued to her book.

“Ha ha,” Paris replied. He tried his best not to sound or look amused, rolling his eyes while fighting a smile.

“Are you okay?” his mother returned. Even though he’d left the circle of her arm, she reached out to keep one of his hands in hers.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, don’t worry.”

She looked beyond him to Chris, whom Paris could feel close to his back. “Is he telling the truth?” she asked.

“He was okay,” Chris said. There was a smile in his voice. “I took care of it.”

His mother nodded and smiled again, wide and warm. “Thank you,” she said.

Paris forced another roll of his eyes.

A nudge against his back garnered his attention. Paris looked over his shoulder to see Chris nodding in the direction of a small pink gift bag Paris had been carrying with him.

“Oh,” Paris said, shifting nervously from foot to foot and extending the package toward his mother. “We bought her a present.”

He had another gift waiting, a necklace that had prompted his return to the store Chris had purchased his promise ring from, but he’d wanted to wait until his sister was actually born in order to get the stones right—emerald for his mother, amethyst for him, and now September sapphire for his sister.

Regardless of who this particular gift was actually for, his mother’s expression was cheerful as she took the bag from him, carefully opening it and riffling through the white tissue paper until she pulled out a pair of soft infant slippers that looked to have been modeled after ballet shoes, made of blush colored satin with ribbons to tie into bows across small baby feet. Her eyes looked wet when she held them in her hands, looking down on them with such a soft fondness that Paris felt momentarily uncomfortable about the fact that he’d nearly made his mother cry.

Her smile wobbled when she looked back up at him. She was making an obvious effort to keep her tears from falling.

“Baby, they’re perfect,” she said, and then, “You’ll teach her?”

Paris shrugged. “If you want,” he said, paused for a moment, and corrected himself, “If she wants. When she’s old enough.”

He voice sounded strained to the ear, not exactly forced but not quite natural either. Every few seconds his gaze would flick over to Cal sitting in a chair on the other side of his mother’s bed, with a bundle that was obviously a baby cradled comfortably in his arms. He looked too natural like that, as if he’d been doing it for years when it had only been a few hours at most. Cal’s posture was leisurely, his expression warm, his attention divided between his newborn daughter and those who shared the room with him.

Despite the many months Paris had had to get used to the idea of having a younger sibling, it hadn’t really sunk in yet—whether it was because of the oddity of it or because he hadn’t wanted it to become a natural compulsion to accept her, he had no idea—and he had to wonder if he would gradually get used to it now that she was here, or if it would never feel right to him. It had been an effort to find a gift for her, to make himself care enough about making it seem like it meant something to him. If anything, it felt more like an obligation. He went through the motions because it was what people expected.

The shoes had been Chris’s idea. The irony of Chris gently encouraging him to at least give his sister a chance was not lost on Paris, who saw Chris and Peter at each other’s throats so often it was more a surprise when they actually got along. Paris had no intention of admitting his failure to his mother, however, not when she looked so peaceful and happy in spite of her fatigue. He couldn’t bring himself to let her down.

It was just a baby, he kept reminding himself. He didn’t have to feed her, or change her, or play with her, or do anything with her if he didn’t want to. He simply had to tolerate her presence, accept that she was there, which he was almost sure he could do if Cal insisted upon keeping her to himself.

Let Cal take care of her. All the better for Paris.

“Don’t you want to see her?” Momma Gallo asked.

She looked as happy as his mother and Cal, and it wasn’t even her kid. But then Momma was like that, wasn’t she? She liked weddings and family and babies, and Paris didn’t have the heart to disappoint her when she watched him so expectantly.

“Yeah, sure, I guess,” he mumbled.

He let her usher him over, glancing behind himself to make sure Chris followed, to which Chris responded with a comforting smile, taking one of Paris’s hands in his own. Momma Gallo led them the short distance around the bed, coming to a stop by Cal’s chair and moving to the side to allow Paris into the spot with the best view.

When Cal carefully repositioned his arms, Paris looked down at his baby sister for the first time.

There wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about her. Her face was all that was visible through the blanket they had her swaddled in, small and red and completely ordinary as far as babies went, with unfocused blue eyes and a mouth that opened and shut on its own, her gums and tongue occasionally visible between parted lips. She made noises that to Paris sounded like a weird mix between a hiccup and a sigh but which he supposed was a “coo,” and every few moments the blanket would rustle with the random jerk of an arm or a leg she couldn’t yet control. He assumed—since the mood in the room was pleasant and happy instead of anything close to distress—that she had ten fingers and toes and everything else a completely healthy, completely whole newborn baby would have.

“She has hair,” he observed with only marginal interest.

“Not all babies are born bald,” his mother said. She sounded amused.

“But it’s dark,” Paris countered. He looked between his mother and Cal, both of whom had blonde hair.

For the space of a single second Paris’s heart jolted to a stop, and he had the insane idea that his sister was really his father’s daughter after all, that his mother had been lying to him the whole time and Cal was in on the ruse, pretending it was his as a favor and as soon as the game was up he would leave. But the thought was banished in an instant and Paris silently cursed his stupidity, because Cal looked every bit like the doting father, enraptured by the bundle in his arms as if he’d never seen anything like it, as if he could hardly believe it was real, and Paris’s mother’s response quickly dispelled any other suspicions he might have had to that effect.

“That’s common,” she said. “It’ll probably fall out, and when it grows back it’ll be a different color. Lighter, most likely.”

“Oh…”

After that, Paris didn’t know what else to say. Any compliments would probably end up sounding fake, and there weren’t any other observations he felt the need to make. He considered saying “congratulations” or “I’m glad you’re happy” or “she’s beautiful,” but he was a bit too worried that any of those choices would come out sounding empty to bother giving it a try.

Taking his hesitation to mean something else entirely, Cal asked, “Did you want to try holding her for a bit?”

Behind them, Rhiannon released a quiet, but still discernible, snort.

“Oh…” Paris said again, shifting in place awkwardly. “Uhh… no, it’s alright. You look pretty comfortable, so…”

“It’s fine,” Cal said. “Here, sit down.”

And he rose to his feet in a single motion, hampered only by his concern for his daughter. Cal moved aside to give Paris room to take his vacated seat, and though Paris was more than willing to stay rooted to the spot, Momma Gallo could always be depended upon to give encouragement. She took him by the shoulders and gently steered him over, exerting only the slightest pressure to ease him down into the chair.

“You’re so tense,” she said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just make sure you support her head. Hold your arms like this. Right, that’s it.”

Paris let her demonstrate and guide his arms into the proper position. As she did so, he stared up at Chris with a look of panic on his face. Chris, for his part, merely shrugged and smiled a lopsided smile, offering comfort and reassurance only in the hand that slipped into Paris’s hair. Seconds later, Cal returned to carefully set the baby into Paris’s arms.

His first instinct was to draw back, hold her away from him and beg someone else to take her—Chris, Momma Gallo, Cal, anyone. It wasn’t that he was afraid he might drop her that was the issue; it was that he didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do with her now that he had her. Babies weren’t completely foreign to him, but he had to admit his experience with them was rather limited. When he had been around them—babies in the neighborhood or some of Chris’s cousins’ kids—he did nothing but observe them, spare them a glance, smile, and then move on.

He liked kids, adored the excitable little ones and found plenty of amusement in the older ones, but babies were somewhat out of his comfort zone. Paris looked down at his little sister and he felt anxious, lost, and very, very confused.

But something else happened as he held her, and though he was a bit underwhelmed by her on a whole, unimpressed and still moderately resentful, the feeling that struck him then was decidedly overwhelming, and he felt a new sense of appreciation for the small person swaddled in her animal-printed blanket, blinking up at him blearily.

Paris certainly didn’t want one, not his own or anyone else’s, and he wasn’t overcome by any sort of love for her, or really any other emotion aside from curiosity and fear. If he felt any affection for her at all, it had yet to struggle its way through the many layers of his emotions to break through to the surface. She didn’t immediately bond with him and he didn’t immediately take to her. In fact, she started to fuss a few moments after Cal passed her to him. One of her arms jerked loose from the blanket. Her red face screwed up, her fingers curled and uncurled automatically, and the soft cooing noises she’d been making earlier shifted into high-pitched, squeaky wails.

Even so, Paris couldn’t take his eyes off of her, because he was suddenly struck by how absolutely normal this was.

Not normal in the sense that people fell in love, settled down, and started a family. Nothing at all like that. Paris wasn’t so sure he believed in all that stuff anyway. Marriage was a touchy subject for him on a good day; family wasn’t any different. If he thought about kids when he imagined the distant future, it wasn’t anything like this. Some people simply weren’t meant for all that. Some people were perfectly content to do without it, found peace and happiness and fulfillment in their lives in other ways. None of it—aside from love, which, now that he had it, he didn’t think he’d be able to do without—was a priority to Paris.

It was normal in the sense that it had absolutely nothing to do with the war. An argument could be made that most things in his life since he’d turned seventeen had been a direct result of the war ravaging the city. Even his relationship with Chris—as much as Paris wanted him, as much as he needed him—had in some ways been encouraged by it. One of the few events he could think of since he’d first become a senshi that had no connection to the war at all was the death of his father, which—as heartbreaking as it had been, and still was—was as natural, as normal as this.

This was life at its most basic. This was a sort of goodness he’d never experienced before. It wasn’t what life could destroy, but what it could create. This was as normal to the world as death had become to him. For every heartache, for every terrible situation, there were ones likes these to… not to make up for it, because Paris didn’t think anything could ever make up for all of the darkness in the world, but at least it served as something of a reminder that life didn’t always have to be that way.

It could be like this, soft and small and new, and completely and utterly innocent.

“What do you think?” his mother asked, and when Paris looked up at her he saw her smiling at them—the both of them—fondly. He remembered her looking at him like that when he’d been very small, and he suddenly felt very young again.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly, lowering his gaze back to his sister. “I guess she’s alright.”

“Not as bad as you thought?”

Paris wasn’t sure he’d be able to adequately articulate what he thought of his sister now, so he shrugged and said nothing.

“We still haven’t decided on a middle name,” his mother said.

It hadn’t seemed all that important to him before. A part of him still didn’t really think it mattered if she had a middle name or not, but he thought he could sort of understand the importance of it meaning something now if she did, because she meant something, even if he was still working out what that was.

She meant life. She meant a modicum of peace. She meant hope.

“Victoria,” Paris said. He was surprised by how confident his voice sounded, and he figured Chris must have been surprised, too, because the hand that had been sedately stroking Paris’s hair paused.

Glancing up, Paris noticed Cal’s confusion, his mother’s surprise, and Momma Gallo’s prideful smile, as if she’d known all along that it would come to this. Rhiannon looked up from her book, waiting for the verdict; Chris’s hand went from Paris’s hair to Paris’s arm and gave it a squeeze.

“Lilah Victoria,” Paris said.

His mother stared at him, marveled at him, seemed as if she were looking upon him again for the first time after a long separation, and maybe she was. Maybe this was the moment when everything got better, and they could finally put the past behind them completely. Eventually, the surprise in her face wore off and melted away, and she went back to looking at him with the sort of fondness he remembered from childhood, when she would read him stories or sing him songs or ask him to dance just for her.

And maybe she’d do all that with another kid now, but that was okay, because what he needed from her now was different than that, and she’d never hesitated to give it to him.

“Alright,” she agreed. “Lilah Victoria.”

“It’s beautiful!” Momma Gallo gushed.

“Perfect,” Cal agreed.

“Better than yours and mine,” Rhiannon added.

Chris didn’t say anything, but he kept his hand on Paris’s arm and leaned over to kiss the top of Paris’s head, only to rest his chin in that spot directly after.

Paris looked back down at Lilah and wasn’t as bothered by her fussing as he used to think he’d be.

This was, he thought, how they should try to win the war.

All they had to do was keep living.