passerine by blujamas ((reupload))

chapter 5

He first held Tommy in a sunlit room.

He had come earlier than expected was such a small thing, so much smaller than his brother had been. The midwives had told them there was a chance they could lose him within the hour, and his wife had cradled the newborn against her chest, sobbing against his pale skin.

"My baby," she'd cried, "my little fighter. Be brave, Tommy, be strong."

But Tommy was so still in his mother's arms.

Philza had stood at her bedside, watching her coo and cry at a baby that did not stir. He had lived a million lives, and all its miseries combined could not compare to the pain of being a mourner at his son's birth-bed. And as the minutes churned on, heedless of the growing abyss inside his chest, he found that he could not even cry. It was a sadness too big for tears, a grief too infinite to measure.

And when his wife had offered the baby to him, to give him his chance at saying goodbye despite her own despair, Philza did something that he would never forgive himself for. He hesitated.

He looked at the silent bundle in her arms, dead before he could even live, and felt the fracture in his heart grow. This was the fate of humanity, eventually. It did not matter if Tommy lived to the next year, the next decade or the next breath, he would still one day die. Bitter and numb and hateful of the world, Philza wondered if it were better that Tommy died now, before Phil could grow to love him more. People mourned the beauty of a wilting rose, but an unblooming bud would give a quieter heartache.

But Tommy wasn't a flower. He was Tommy. He was Phil's son, and he loved him now as much as he could love him later, though later might never come. But his arms were made of stone. They would not rise, as much as he willed them to. If he held Tommy now, he knew he would never let go. He would follow his baby to his grave.

And then there he was, sneaking past the guards and the midwives, passing under a grieving god's notice. He climbed up into bed, smiling at his mother, apparently oblivious—or immune, as often starry-eyed children were—to the anguish that coated the very air of the room.

"Is this my brother?" Wilbur asked, leaning over the baby in his mother's arms. "May I hold him, mother?"

A lump formed in Phil's throat. He turned away before Wilbur could catch sight of his face, and when he turned back around, Wilbur had Tommy in the gentle crook of his arms. The sunlight slanted over them, and Phil wanted to remember them like that forever: his two beautiful sons, immortalized in gold. Wilbur's earth-brown curls hid his expression as he bent over the baby, murmuring something Phil almost didn't catch.

And the baby began to cry.

Wilbur pulled back, astonished, his face drawn in awe. "What is it?" he asked frantically. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No," Phil sobbed, falling to his knees before the three of them—his lovely, laughing wife, his kind, bewildered Wilbur, and his loud, shrieking Tommy. "You did everything right, my boy. You're perfect."

Now Wilbur held his brother—a baby no longer, but still so, so small—to his chest as they walked through the quiet, empty camp. Wilbur spoke the words he'd first spoken to his brother all those years before, over and over, like an enchantment or a prayer to bring him back to life once more.

"I will love you forever, I will love you forever, I will love you forever."

But this time, Tommy did not wake up.

And Philza was still made of stone.

He walked the ruins alone. Night had fallen, but the moon and stars were hidden by heavy clouds, cloaking the earth in darkness. The sky itself was in mourning.