broken cradle, grishla, drabble
broken cradle, a grishla drabble. for selena, i've been plotting how to approach this for a while (and it's terrible but my mood is terrible sorry).
He doesn't see the signs because he looks through rose-colored medical glasses.
Carla drags her fingers through lustre-lost curls of sweaty, night-dark hair in an attempt to make something presentable of her appearance. So much weighs on her, but nothing weighs more than the emptiness of her womb and the heaviness of her arms and the green cusp of her son's eyes. Nothing threatens to drown her other than the possibility of a limitless world outside of the cage they call humanity's savior.
She loves Eren, but Grisha is blind, and she is tired.
But she smiles for him, she smiles when Eren cries and when he finally goes to sleep, and she smiles when Grisha comes home unexpectedly and slides into bed beside her.
And even though her heart is so heavy with the woes of the world, with the hope to give her son something better out of this meager experience of living, she is happy. And it is good, great that Grisha doesn't see this malevolent sadness that chokes down her throat like tar, because it is not an illness. (But maybe he should know, after all, he is her husband; Carla knows better, she knows she has always been strong and smooth as steel and those pliant smiles were for show.)
The world is a lot easier to forget when she falls asleep on Grisha's shoulder under the twilight, and for dream-seconds she can feel herself getting carried away; but then Eren cries, and then she remembers, and then she mourns.
Maybe, one day, she will talk to Grisha about it when Eren is older (when he has a fighting chance in the world). Because for now, everything is a blur of nighttime cuddles and cranky infancy.
