#aaaaangst

Yeah, they are the MC of my original Story, Ceres with her canon love interest Thisseas.

Twenty-seven years now since Rhoe Galathynius kissed Evalin Ashryver goodbye and boarded the silver and brown bus that whisked him away, first to an army camp and then across an ocean, his only bridge of connection to the woman he loved the few letters he had time to dash off and slip into the post before the mail carrier left. 

Twenty-seven years now since the attack that abruptly ended his final letter. 

Rhoe Galathynius died without ever knowing that Evalin had been pregnant when he left. She found out days before the attack, guarded the secret closely in her heart and wrote it down in her journal and in her letter, black ink licking across ivory pages, so much life and love and laughter contained in a few simple words. 

To the right of the photograph--that letter, encased in its own frame, the clear glass revealing all of Evalin’s hopes and fears, all the emotions of a war wife. She’d barely been married three months before Rhoe got the draft notice, barely three months overflowing with joy and passion to hide that ever- lurking knowledge that he could be called away at any moment. Three months of proudly displaying the matching gold bands on their left hands before Rhoe slipped the band from his finger, knelt down before her, and pressed the ring into her hand. 

“Keep it safe for me, my Fireheart.” 

~

Evalin still wore that ring on a simple chain around her neck. Growing up, Aelin remembered asking why Mama had a ring on her necklace, and she remembered the way her mother’s voice caught when she whispered that it was Dad’s ring. 

That soft hitch in Evalin’s voice was the only outward sign of grief she’d ever shown her daughter, even as Aelin grew into a woman and fully understood her father’s death. Even still, Evalin never cried in front of her daughter, not even when Aelin turned eighteen and looked into the box of carefully preserved letters and mementos, almost able to hear her father’s voice for the first time. 

“‘Keep it safe for me, my Fireheart,’” Evalin whispered that night as she held Aelin close to her, closing her eyes against the sudden swell of memories. “Keep it safe for me.” 

Though her eyes had shone with unshed tears, Evalin still hadn’t cried on the day of Aelin’s wedding when she slipped into her daughter’s changing room and removed the chain from around her neck, settling herself into a chair at Aelin’s side. Aelin grasped her mother’s hand, willing herself to keep from crying and ruining her makeup as Evalin pressed the golden band into her daughter’s free hand. 

“Your father told me to keep it safe, Fireheart, and now I’m telling you the same.” Evalin unclasped the chain, sliding the ring free. “He would want you to have it.” 

“Mama,” Aelin whispered, the word something she hadn’t called her mother for years,  turning Rhoe’s wedding band over in her hands. 

“We’re so proud of you, Fireheart.” Evalin kissed her daughter’s forehead. “So proud.” 

And when Aelin placed her father’s ring onto Rowan’s finger, claiming him as her husband, the bright burning joy of that moment could almost drown out the pins and insignias and medals and marks of honor adorning the fine navy fabric of his jacket. The sheer overwhelming happiness filling her heart and mind and soul and body could almost blot out the rigid stance of her new husband’s posture, years of military training having drilled that posture into his bones. 

Just like her mother, she fell in love with a military man knowing he could at any time be called away to duty. 

And he had been. 

When they were dating, Rowan had knocked on Aelin’s door at the crack of dawn one foggy November morning, his standard-issue duffel bag at his feet and a storm of emotions seething in his face. 

“I’ve been called up, Fireheart.” 

She hadn’t said anything, just pulled him by the collar into her apartment and clung to him like her buoy in a writhing ocean, burying her face into his broad chest and inhaling the familiar, comforting scent of pine and mountain breezes that so calmed her heart. He’d wrapped her into his arms, tucking his face against her hair, whispering promise after promise into the messy blonde strands. 

“Come home to me,” she breathed, fisting her hands in his jacket. “Come home.” 

“Always,” he swore. 

That time, he had. 

~

Aelin remembered the strangled cry of relief and love and worry she’d released when Rowan texted her from New York, saying simply that he was back and when his flight would be landing at their local airport. She still remembered the way she gasped with all the emotions she couldn’t yet let loose when he walked through the doors, his pine-green eyes immediately latching onto her, the way her legs took on a mind of their own and brought her sprinting to him, the way he dropped his duffel and caught her and held her as close as physically possible. 

So many tears shed that day, and all of them were of pure joy. 

Eight months after they were married, Aelin came home from work to find Rowan sitting on the sofa twisting the wedding band around and around his tattooed finger, an opened envelope on the coffee table next to him, the military insignia stamped onto the paper blaring out the damning message. 

Duty. 

“I don’t want to leave you,” he whispered softly, voice broken into a thousand thousand shards as she held him, his head tucked into the crook of her neck, his broad, honed body draped over hers, her fingers carding through his short-cropped hair. 

“I know,” she breathed. “I know.” 

Both of them were crying that evening, that night, curling into each other’s bodies in a tangle of limbs and skin and unspoken promises, the faint tang of steel and sweat in the air seeming like every kind of foreboding omen. Aelin’s eyes glittered with an ocean of tears when she awoke with the dawn light, stealing one precious moment of looking at her husband relaxed in his sleep, one last moment to cherish in her heart until he came home to her. 

For he would come home. She would hear nothing else. 

She stood strong and tall by his side at the airbase, hand laced with his until the call for boarding came and he had to leave. 

“I love you,” she whispered. “Come home to me.” 

“I promise.” Rowan kissed her wedding band. “I love you, Fireheart.” Softly, tenderly, he slipped the wedding band from his finger, cupping her hand with his and placing the ring into her hands. 

Aelin swallowed her sob as she wrapped her fingers around the warm gold band, the warmth of her husband’s hand lingering in the precious metal. 

“Keep it safe for me, my Fireheart.” 

She broke at that, wrapping her arms around him and holding so tight his breath went short, her tears dripping into his jacket. Her kiss was desperate, longing, filled with a million things she couldn’t find the words to say. 

“You’re coming back to me,” she gasped fiercely as she let him go, their linked hands the only point of contact. “You are.” 

“I promise.” 

And then Rowan’s hand fell from hers as he walked away, keeping his eyes locked on hers until the distance became too great. 

~

Nine weeks later, she fainted in her office. 

Elide Lochan, her dear friend since childhood and her coworker at the publishing firm, heard her collapse and came running into her office, reviving her and whisking her off to urgent care, where the nurse hooked her up to an IV drip, took a few samples, and came back bearing the news that nearly made Aelin faint again. 

She was pregnant. 

She asked the doctor for an extra set of ultrasound photos at her first scan appointment, tucking the little black-and-white images of the fourteen-week baby inside of her into the next letter she sent to Rowan. 

His voice in their next phone call was broken for a far different reason than it had been when he left for this deployment. 

“Are you serious?” 

“Yes.” She sniffled, wishing and wishing she could be sharing this news face to face. “I’m pregnant, Rowan.” 

“Gods,” he breathed, a muffled sob echoing faintly from his end of the call. “Gods, we’re having a baby.” 

“Come home to us,” Aelin whispered when the call ended. 

His promise that time was even more fervent than ever. 

~

Six months of sharing ultrasounds and photos of her growing bump and brief phone calls whenever he was allowed time to call home passed so quickly, and before either of them knew it, Rowan was once again on the phone, this time with very good news. 

He’d be home in ten days, his tour of duty over. 

The baby kicked as Aelin gasped, tears springing to her eyes for a hundred different reasons. She rubbed her free hand atop her bump, soothing the baby. “That’s right, my little love, Dad’s going to be here so soon. You’d better wait until he gets here, I need to have his hand to shatter.” 

Rowan’s soft, raspy chuckle was a sound that Aelin wished she could bottle up and keep forever. 

Because a week after that call, his CO was the one on the other end of the line. 

She didn’t remember collapsing on the kitchen floor after hanging up the phone, torrents of shock and grief and confusion and terror washing over her. She didn’t remember reaching shakily for the phone again when a searing blaze of pain speared through her lower body, didn’t remember calling her mother or the ambulance that arrived moments later or the tension and terror of that long blurry hazy night first in the ambulance and then in the hospital. 

She remembered how Alanna wailed when she came into the world, the tiny baby girl’s lungs screaming out her arrival as if she, too, somehow knew what triggered her mother’s labor. 

We must inform you that Captain Rowan Whitethorn is missing in action. 

Aelin cradled her baby girl in a dazed state of shock, murmuring softly to her daughter and letting herself be grounded in the simple act of learning to nurse. Alanna calmed so quickly once she was fed, her little green eyes blinking sleepily up at her mother. 

She looked so much like Rowan. 

Lana grew so quickly, the tiny bundle of blankets she’d been at the hospital soon giving way to soft baby clothes and blankets and a beautiful crocheted hawk that Evalin had made for the baby. Every night that Lana’s cries drew Aelin out of slumber to feed and soothe her daughter made her wish for Rowan, made her wish that her beloved husband were there to see their daughter’s firsts. 

But for all her efforts and searches and trips to the base to meet with the commander--nothing. 

Silence. 

~

Lana took her first bites of food, said her first words, grew her first teeth, took her first wobbling steps, had her first birthday without Rowan there to see any of it. Aelin took pictures of it all, writing down the things she couldn’t capture on a camera, building a book of Lana’s first months and years for Rowan. If and when he ever returned. 

Every time the small girl woke herself up crying, Aelin wished Rowan were there. 

Sometimes, she just held her daughter and cried with her, whispering that it was okay, that Mama was okay, that it was all okay, until Lana calmed down and slept in her mother’s arms, her breathing steady against Aelin’s skin. 

Sometimes, she sat in the rocking chair and rocked and told her daughter stories of her father, building a picture of the strong, kind, loyal, steadfast man who loved her even when she was just a set of pictures of her growing self inside Aelin’s womb. Sometimes, she told Lana all about the way they met, that night in the crowded, dimly lit bar when Aelin in her “slight tipsiness” stumbled into Rowan hunched atop his stool at the end of the bar, nursing a beer and wearing a frightening scowl. Gods, how she wished he was there to laugh his dry, deep laugh and whisper to their precious little daughter that Mama was totally lying, that she was more than a little tipsy, that he’d been captivated by her since the moment he met her in that dingy dive bar. 

Sometimes, she danced slowly around Lana’s sage-green and dove-grey room, holding her daughter against her shoulder and hiding her silent tears as her daughter grew from a little baby she could cradle in her arms to a toddler whose sleepy head slumped against her mother’s shoulder. 

Always, she lingered for as long as possible, overcome by the yearning for Rowan that she thought she’d been able to control. 

Always, her hand went to the ring hanging from a cord around her neck, fingers tracing over the smooth golden band as if she could still feel his warmth emanating from it. 

Keep it safe for me, my Fireheart. 

Gods damn it all to hell, he’d promised to come back. 

~

Another photo hung next to the print of Rhoe and Evalin in Evalin’s house, one of Rowan and Aelin’s wedding portraits. In the image, Rowan beamed down at Aelin and she up at him, her head canted up to meet his gaze, the early evening sun washing over the scene and gilding the young couple in a bath of soft, golden light. In the image, their hands were linked, the golden band gleaming on Rowan’s finger like it gleamed on Rhoe’s hand in his and Evalin’s photograph. Aelin’s throat tightened every time she ran her finger along the smooth silver frame of that portrait, tracing the edge of her and Rowan’s all-too-brief happiness before the choking reality that he was still MIA crashed back down over her. 

Lana loved seeing the pictures, her big green eyes widening when Aelin held her up to see. Indeed, one of her first words had been “Dada,” spoken not long after her first birthday when Aelin was over at her mother’s house. 

Hearing those syllables in her daughter’s sweet little voice ripped the scab clean off the wound in Aelin’s fragile heart. 

~

Only a handful of weeks away from her second birthday, Lana had taken to running all around the house and yard and nearly stopping Aelin’s heart when she turned around and her daughter had run off to another room. Mother and daughter were upstairs folding the laundry--well, Aelin was folding, Lana was playing with a couple of washcloths and talking away in toddler babble. 

Four knocks thudded against the front door. 

Lana dropped her washcloths. “Door!” she exclaimed, running out of the bedroom and down the hallway. 

Aelin caught her before she could try and scoot down the stairs. “Uh-uh, lovey, Mama has to help you go downstairs, remember?” 

“I big!” Lana pouted, wriggling a little in Aelin’s hold as they descended the stairs. “Down Mama! Dow’!” 

“All right,” Aelin laughed, releasing her daughter. 

Lana ran to the door and reached up for the lock, straining, her little arms still just unable to reach it. She pouted and clung to her mother’s leg. “Wanna open.” 

“Of course,” Aelin smiled. “Here, help Mama open the door, lovey.” 

One small hand and one larger hand turned the doorknob, swinging the front door open to find--

“Fireheart.” 

Aelin’s legs wavered and she grabbed the doorframe to keep herself upright, the whirling maelstrom of emotions she’d shoved and locked away when she grew despairing of ever hearing news of Rowan bursting free from its prison and crashing over her. 

For there was her husband standing in the doorway, his hair overgrown, his body haggard, his clothes not properly fitting, a fine pale scar slashing across his forehead and through his left eyebrow, his worn old duffel bag in his hand and all the oceans’ worth of tears spilling over in his eyes. 

“Rowan,” Aelin choked out, somehow finding the strength to stand and reach out and touch his solid, stable frame and pull him into the house, sobbing, two years of pent-up strain at last relieved. 

“Aelin,” Rowan breathed, dropping the bag in his hand and carefully pulling her into his arms, staring in shock and wonder at her and at Lana, who was in her mother’s arms. 

It was their daughter who broke the silence. 

“Dada?”

Rowan heaved a strangled sob, nodding, reaching out so tenderly, so hesitantly, to touch his daughter’s soft cheek. “Hi, my little one.” 

“Dada,” Lana repeated, reaching out to him. 

Aelin nodded, her sob a half-laugh, and carefully shifted Lana into Rowan’s arms. 

The little girl stared into her father’s face, patting her small hand on his cheek, along the tattoos flicking up the side of his neck and onto his cheekbone. “Dada daw-in’s.” 

“Yeah,” he whispered, “Dada’s got drawings, Lana.”

He looked over to Aelin, unabashedly crying, holding Lana so gently, like he was afraid she might vanish if he so much as moved in the wrong direction. 

“We love you,” she murmured, taking one hesitant step closer to him, almost like she, too, was half-worried she would blink and wake up and realize that it had all been a dream. 

Rowan closed the gap, pulling his wife into his embrace, his whole family--his whole life--united at last in his arms. His shoulders quaked with the force of his sobs as he buried his face into Aelin’s hair, hiding his tears from his daughter. When he could speak again, he heaved a deep, shuddering breath and touched the cord around her neck, tracing the way it disappeared into the neckline of her shirt. 

She tugged it free, revealing his wedding band--Rhoe’s wedding band--hanging from the cord, glinting in the electric light. 

“I…I kept this for you while you were…away,” Aelin whispered, sliding the ring off of the cord. 

Rowan’s throat bobbed. “It’s been two years.” 

“I know.” An entire ocean--an entire world of grief and sadness and terror and fear and loneliness packed into those two simple words. “I know, Rowan.” Reaching down to his tattooed hand, she quietly, gently lifted his hand up, tracing her thumb over the scarred skin of his knuckles, the rough calluses on his palm, the intricate inked characters of his tattoo, some newer than others. “I love you, Rowan Whitethorn Galathynius.” 

“I love you, Aelin Whitethorn Galathynius,” he croaked, eyes and heart overflowing as his wife slipped his wedding band back onto his finger and softly kissed the gold, her lips caressing his skin. 

Still perched in her father’s embrace, Lana clapped her little hands, babbling a stream of toddler talk of which they could only make out Mama Dada yay! “Tiss!” she squealed. “Tiss, tiss!” 

Rowan blinked. “What?” 

Lana wriggled and squirmed, so he set her down and followed her as she tugged him out to the hallway. Down to where another of Rowan and Aelin’s wedding portraits hung. 

In this one, they were kissing. 

“Tiss Mama!” she declared, beaming. 

Aelin’s soft laughter echoed through the hallway. “Is that what Dada and Mama need to do, lovey?” 

“Ya!” Lana nodded enthusiastically. “Mama Dada tiss!” 

“Can’t say no to her, can we?” Rowan murmured, sliding his arms around his wife. 

“Of course not.” Aelin ran her fingertips along his face, tracing over the new scar, her touch delicate, uncertain, yet so so familiar. 

He slipped one hand into her hair, gingerly tilting her head up. “To whatever end, my Fireheart,” he breathed. 

And he kissed her slowly, tenderly, reveling in the astonishing reality of holding his wife in his arms again after two long years apart

~

A new photo hung next to the carefully preserved photograph of Rhoe and Evalin, this one framed in polished chestnut, the wood not yet bearing the grooves of many years of hands running along its surface, the glass protecting Rowan and Aelin and Lana’s beaming faces. It was their first family portrait since Rowan returned home, the first glimpse of the three of them reunited and beyond content to bask in each other’s embrace. Rowan’s soft, fond smile brought joy to his whole pose, his bright green eyes melting as he looked to Aelin, who had Lana in her arms, the little girl beaming at her parents. 

There was so much happiness contained in that photo, so many months and years of quietly stifled grieving giving way to unfiltered elation. So many promises whispered in the darkest hours of the night when Rowan jolted out of troubled dreams and Aelin just held him, promising that he would never leave her again, that he would never have to leave her again. So many promises to remain at each other’s sides through it all, complete with Aelin’s fiery promise to damn the whole world to hell if it ever tried to take Rowan from her again.

If only she could have truly made that promise. 

~

Alanna Whitethorn Galathynius turned away to wipe her eyes with a tissue she’d tucked into her sleeve, not needing her first appearance to reveal the bottomless chasm of grief that cleaved her in two, and exhaled deeply, squaring her shoulders as she turned back around. Her dress, dark charcoal grey material soft against her skin, matched the thick blanket of clouds obscuring the sun, matched the patchy drip of cold raindrops that spattered on the grass, the dirt, the gravel paths, the stones, matched the thick choking sobs clotted in her throat, matched the solemn emptiness that pervaded the cemetery and the mausoleum.  

Shaking, she reached out and touched the stone in front of her, her fingertips gliding over the smooth surface, tracing unsteadily over the letters engraved into the marble. 

Whitethorn

To Whatever End

The rain beat steadily down now, fat wet drops pouring over Lana’s umbrella, the wind pushing raindrops past that small protection and into her dress, her skin, her hair, mingling with her tears as she closed the umbrella and tipped her face up to the sky and traced the letters on the mausoleum stone over and over and over again. 

“I’m keeping it safe for you,” she whispered, her other hand twisting the simple golden band dangling from a fine golden chain around her neck. Rhoe’s ring. Rowan’s ring. 

Both of them gone now, the wedding band the only thing they left behind.

“I'm keeping it safe. I promise.”

~~~

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