the first night is easier than the second. it's the exhaustion, he thinks, the sheer weight of it all boring down to the bone that bows but refuses to break. and she's only five. talia sleeps through that night and kurt thinks:
my baby, my baby, when did she become so strong?
the second night, though, is the real test.
it's like she's been lit up from the inside, a firecracker instead of a little girl. she seems desperate to be good, to be seen as good, and not for her father. it's for some unseen entity that seems to have her convinced that if she isn't a perfect little girl she will be snuffed out like her mutti.
so she says please and thank you and she smiles sweetly and she refuses to cry and she refuses to sleep because she needs to make sure, make absolutely sure, that she can pass this unspoken test.
but it's not that easy. everyone speaks a language she barely understands and they all look at her sadly and she thinks it's her fault they are all so sad, why they don't smile like her uncles and aunts back home used to. it starts to eat at her and the firecracker is a dud.
nothing but smoke and slumped shoulders and a listless tail and then finally, late in the evening, a heaping, sobbing mess of a child. it scares her how much she is crying, like she doesn't understand how she can have that much inside herself to begin with.
and kurt holds her, sways with her in the dark, sings her german lullabies like her mutti, and thinks:
my baby, my baby, will this ever be easy again?
it's midnight by the time talia finally caves to the exhaustion. she sleeps in their new home, in their new bed, big enough for a whole circus of people but it's only her, curled up in the center under a pile of blankets.
it's the second night becoming the third day when kurt finds himself sitting at the table in the kitchen of that large mansion, staring blankly at a piece of somewhat burnt toast on a plate as if it has all the answers.
it's dark, he never really needs light to see and besides, everyone is asleep, right? his tail pushes the plate away. and then the light suddenly flicks on-
"ah- sorry, was i being too loud?" he squints at whoever flipped the lightswitch.
