They liked to think they were brave enough to live in a world where they didn’t make excuses for themselves. The truth, no matter how much it hurt, was worth facing up to - a virtue on its own. Seelie’s might flinch at painful honesty, wrap themselves in their delusions and continue to laugh, but Willow had never been one of them. There was no comfort to be found in deceit. It could only ruin. She didn’t know what would hurt Cobalt more - that she hadn’t told him, or that she had no real reason why.
Adare had forbade her. So what? Some things triumphed loyalty to a King. Dedication to a court. Love for a soulmate. Hopes and dreams that had only been whispered at the peak of midnight. If they were willing to rebel against Adare on so many, too many some might say, things, then the spark should have been there for this too.
Perhaps it was fear. A cowardice that came from the idea of false hope - of raising the prospect of a child, of believing in a solution, only to have it torn away. Science was a marvel. Science could cure diseases and rid the human world of pain. But they were not humans. It wasn’t a judgement, but a fact. And thus far, the tests had failed. Adare might speak of promising results - but Knox had all but been declared an enemy. The progress would be wiped out.
Being this close to touching something and then having it ripped away was more painful than never having had it at all, wasn’t it?
Neither one could answer the other.
They flinched as Cobalt spoke, face to face with the raw tension that had bubbled up to the surface. It was just the two of them now. There was no more room to pretend, no more family members to be strong for. We have to, she thought, desperate and weeping, we cannot become the husband and wife who do not talk. Everyone knew that was the first step down the path to destruction. One day, you’d wake up to find your relationship in tatters, wondering where it had all gone wrong. “Please.”
This wasn’t just about yesterday’s mistake. This was about the promise of tomorrow. About the Holly Rebellion. This was not the right time to tell him, but maybe there would never be one.
“I’m sorry.” Children thought those two words could make everything better. If they ever had a child, Willow would make sure they knew it didn’t. “I should have told you. It wasn’t because I didn’t trust you, or because Adare asked me not to. It’s because…I was terrified. Because, we’ve wanted this - a child - for so long.” As her voice started to crack, Willow pulled herself together. “But we don’t speak about it, do we? We can’t admit to ourselves how much we want it, because we’d just be hurting each other. Because, for so long, we’ve been powerless, waiting for forces bigger than us to fall into place.” Breathless, they paused, letting their words soak in. “This program was hope. Half of me wanted to believe in it. The other half didn’t. It wanted to wait for evidence, for proof. Because I couldn’t imagine…what it would be like, to have a child - and then lose them all over again. Maybe I wanted to protect you from that. Maybe I was being selfish - and I wanted to protect myself. Maybe I just wanted to keep things the way they’ve always been with us…or turn back time.”
Seelies might flinch at unfettered honesty, but above even Seelie they were fey. Cobalt had promised Willow that he’d always share the most honest version of the truth with them, and he had genuinely believed that Willow had felt the same. They’d decided together that the truth was better than white lies, or had that been so long ago she’d forgotten? Had it been so long ago that he was remembering a different conversation entirely, was writing over a memory with fabricated dialogue from a talk he only wished they’d had?
It wasn’t the lie that hurt him so deeply, like a thorn worried deep into the cavern of his chest-- not a deadly wound, or even a threatening one, but an annoyance that was worrisome enough to warrant attention beyond distraction. It wasn’t even the content of the secret itself that bothered him. It was that this, this beyond all else, was a glaring indication that the faults in their marriage to which he’d been turning a blind eye for so long had risen from the foundation to the very rafters. He was losing his wife. He was losing his home, letting it slip from his loosened fingers. What happened to us, Willow?
When he found his tongue again, his voice was hoarse, rubbed raw by words unsaid. “How do you not know, ‘Lo? I keep my mouth shut because I know how much you want to have a baby and--” Stop. Slow down. Rewind. He sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes for a scant moment, hands balling into loose fists as he forced his broad shoulders to relax. “You aren’t the only one, Willow. I don’t talk to you about it because I don’t want to put my broken heart on your shoulders-- because I’m supposed to be helping yours, you know? But I want this too, Willow, and I’m tired of hiding it. You really think Onyx didn’t teach me how post on TTC blogs and check WebMD? I learned to use the internet for this, ‘Lo. There’s no thinking we’re having a child, there never has been, not for me-- there’s only been the loss. It isn’t stopping me from being hopeful. But we can’t turn time back to how things were before we realized that--”
That it wasn’t working. That those candle-lit late nights and the third round in the soft sun of the early morning weren’t bringing the gift they were supposed to, and the white-rimmed wide-eyed panic that had taken root when they realized the lacking stretched far beyond just them. Half a century. A third of their lives spent trying, spent wanting, and nothing-- nothing but this, the unspoken resentment between them. “I don’t know what you want me to do, Willow. How do I fix-- how can I fix--?”
