Born of starlight and shadows

~Part thirty-seven: Carter~

He sighed, leaning against the edge of the building. The crisp sunlight seemed to taunt him with its warmth. Like an impossible promise, just out of reach.

Lately it seemed as though all of his thoughts were underscored by something dark.
Because they were. They were and he knew it.

Her promise rang in his ears and he sighed because he remembered what he had said he would do.

The weight of it seemed to crush him.

In fact the weight of everything -everything-he remembered and couldn't change seemed to freeze him where he stood.

Cold crept in his mind and he felt himself drifting from the present...away from all of his current problems and back, back into a different time when he had been a different person.

When he had truly had, for a moment, one shining moment, the life he had always wanted to hold, right there.

And then it was all ripped away the second he turned his head...

Before he knew what was happening he found himself inside a memory.

It was strangely foggy around the edges, but-

"Can you believe it?" Her voice rang out, clear through all of the years that had elapsed since he heard it.

Her hand rested on her stomach and she smiled.

She looked tired, but happy.

"I know," Carter said, "Soon we're going to be parents..."

He trailed off and shook his head in wonder.

"I can't wait to meet them both," his wife said.

"Me neither," Carter said happily, "You're going to make a great mother, Eve, dear."

"And you'll make a great father," Eve said fondly.

But of course it went all wrong.

He never could have seen it coming.

The light had shone in his life, and then, unseen, a shadow had crept over it.

Carter and Eve's twin children, a boy and a girl, were born, but Eve didn't survive.

Carter remembered both of his newborn children, each with dark hair like his wife.

When the girl's eyes opened Carter could see that they were blue.

Bright, bright blue.

But he didn't know then that they would stay that color, and he certainly didn't know that he would see them nearly fifteen years later in the last place he'd ever expect.

And what he didn't know was that he'd never see his son's eyes open.

Because just minutes after he was born, he was taken, taken away to a place where Carter could not follow, not for many years to come...

As for the girl, Carter was too heartbroken to care for her properly.

She was adopted soon after, but the name his wife had wanted to give her, Stella, stayed with her.

Since she looked so much like her mother, her middle name was Grace.

His mind flashed to a different scene, of a gravestone:

Evelyn Grace Johnson

1979-2005

Gone from this world but not gone from our hearts.

And that was how everything he'd slowly hoped for fell...

And how he ended up making a promise.

He couldn't remember when, exactly, time seemed to pass in a haze, but-