Chapter Text
May 5th, 1998
The house is still.
Not quiet —never quiet, not with a baby in it— but still. Still like the air gets once the fire has died. Still like grief settles in the corners and the coats and the furniture. As if waiting for something.
The baby whimpers softly in his crib, and the clock on the mantle ticks as if to remind her that time hasn’t stopped, no matter how much she wishes it had. But everything feels weighted, as though the walls are holding their breath. As though the floorboards are afraid to creak too loudly, in case they disturb the precarious illusion of stability that cloaks everything in the house.
Andromeda sits on the edge of a bed that isn’t hers, wearing a coat that isn’t hers, in a house that no longer feels quite hers anymore. Her eyes are fixed on the windowsill. There’s dust there. She noticed it yesterday and she notices it again today. She still can’t find the energy to clean it.
There’s another sound behind her again—a tiny sob instead of a whimper this time— but she doesn’t turn. She knows she should. Her grandson. The reason she has not yet collapsed completely. The weight and proof that they were real, that they were alive, that they were hers.
She wraps the coat tighter around herself. It still smells faintly of lavender and ash. Still smells of Dora. She hasn’t washed it. She tells herself that she will, later. When she has the energy to dust the windowsills and she doesn’t feel the sudden urge to cry whenever she sees her grandson’s tiny face or even thinks of his name. When it doesn’t feel like washing her clothes will take her essence away.
“Still here,” she whispers. It’s unclear whether she means herself or the coat.
Or the pain.
The fire in the hearth has long since gone out, leaving only ash and the memory of warmth. Andromeda doesn’t bother to rekindle it. The baby’s sobs become impossible to ignore any further, and for all that it hurts her, Andromeda rises from the worn armchair that had once been her husband’s favorite to go towards the crib. She picks the boy up with experienced hands. He likes to be held the same way as Dora did, and it somehow comforts and enrages her at the same time.
Grief has no use for logic, Ted had told her once.
“Still here,” she murmurs again, not knowing if she means the child, or Dora, Ted, or herself.
She rocks him gently, and he settles easy. So unlike her Dora in that way. A true hellion of a child, she had been, from her very first breath to the last time Andromeda got to see her. The boy took after his namesake in this, she supposed.
Ted had always had a quietness about him. Not stillness —never stillness, not with boyish energy that had stayed with him all throughout his adulthood. But he carried a kind of calm in his presence, a quiet steadiness that made people trust him even when they shouldn’t. It had been the thing that first drew her to him, so long ago, even if it had frightened her at first. She’d grown up surrounded by thunderous voices and sharp tempers; quiet, to her, had always meant coldness, danger. Silence used to be a punishment in her childhood home, not a sanctuary. Ted had changed that.
Her eyes burn. She doesn’t cry.
She wants to scream.
Ted never raised his voice. Not once, not when he was angry or frustrated, not even when she had — especially in the early days, when everything was new and uncertain and heavy with guilt. Even in the worst moments, even when she deserved to be yelled at, he had always reached for kindness first. Not weakness — never weakness, not with his unwavering courage and spine of steel. But he had made gentleness into something fierce.
The baby makes a soft noise, barely more than a breath. His tiny fists curl around the fabric of her sleeve. There’s something about the weight of him against her chest — so new, so alive — that pulls something open inside her, something raw and searing and impossible to name.
Andromeda closes her eyes.
She sinks her nose into his hair. He smells like milk and lavender.
She sways without realizing. A tune escapes her lips. Nothing real. Just something she hums now. Maybe it’s the same one Ted used to sing to Dora. She doesn’t remember starting.
The baby sighs.
She stares at the floor. At nothing.
Her eyes burn, but she doesn’t cry.
Her chest aches.
She breathes through her nose.
Doesn’t cry.
Doesn’t cry.
The baby shifts. His hand still grabs her sleeve. Tiny fingers, tight grip. Instinct. Life. She doesn’t look at his face. Can’t. Not right now. Too much of Dora there. Or Ted. She doesn’t want to know which.
She kisses his head. That, at least, she can still do.
Back to the armchair. The old one. Ted’s favorite. She sits with the baby. He’s already half-asleep again.
The coat slips. Smell again. Lavender and ash. She pulls it back over her shoulder.
She doesn’t cry.
Tomorrow she might wash the coat.
Tomorrow she might dust the windowsill.
Tomorrow she might light the fire.
Not today.
Today, she holds the baby.
Today, she breathes.
Today, she is still here.