Guten abend, Guten nacht.

Failure.

-third pov-

Rain tapped on the windows skittishly, the grey sky pouring down over the city. A long sigh escaped Ima, as she sunk her head further down into her hands witness the moment of her breath. After a moment, she adjusted herself, the wooden chair creaking as she did. For what felt like ages, she sat in a silent daze, her hand poised with the own she was holding as if she was about to write. Her eyes were glazed over with a film of exhaustion and a hopeless sort of stress. Her leg began to bounce softly and she looked away, setting the pen down. Where could she begin? She didn't even know who he was, so who was she to write to. Furthermore, she wasn't on speaking team with any of the possible options, for one reason or another. So to write them all asking for them to come get some test, it was unreasonable. Besides, there was a reason she wasn't with any of them already, how would a baby change that if not for worse. Her weary eyes shifted from the blank parchment to the hand painted clock on the wall. Her eyes fixated on the bright reds and greens, the two doves painted and carved into the wood, surrounded by leaves and flowers in the same folk painting style. She just wanted to be a good mother. But it seemed like everything was working against her. I'm an abrupt motion, she got up, slightly slamming the pen against the desk. What good would it do anyways, if she managed to find him through awkward networking? If she hypothetically for him to cooperate with the tests and whatever the doctors needed, then what? It's not like he would change and suddenly want to be apart of her life, he'd just disappear again. But this time, with the weight of knowing about romy. For months she had been wracking her brain for some way to find the father of her daughter, but came up dry time and time again. She had hated two men for some time around conception back to back, but they didn't work out, and in her broken hearted drinking spree, she knew she has at least three drunken hookups with people who were acquaintances at best. She wasn't proud of this fact, but it was the truth nonetheless. She knew she had to put her shame behind her and do what was best for romy, moving on from her mistakes. Because despite not being planned, romy was loved. Ima would have liked to wait until she found a husband and got married and settled financially and physically before having romy, but, it seems that was simply not in the cards. So, she made do. Romy has just come early, much...early. Ima looked out the window. Crossing her arms tightly and feeling the cold from the glass. Water poured down the glass, making the vision out of it wavy with water. She felt like a failure. Her eldest sister, Inga, had moved out, and gotten a job now in Stuttgart, and a townhouse apartment all to herself. Felix had gone on already and married a beautiful blonde woman and had a fair haired little boy, living in their nice city home. And Käthe had found a husband and had three children already, on top of that, she even lived on a quaint farm with new family. But ima was left at the family home with her parents, giving life to a child whose father she didn't know. With no job, and no husband, she had no other choice than to stay at home. But she couldn't go get a job, nor while she has a child and nobody to mother her. She wanted to be her mother. Not her off screen financial support. Her parents, though worried about her and romys situation, we're understanding, and we're more than willing to let ima stay there so long as she tried to help her and her daughter out. Ima was forever grateful for their kindness and support, but she was also plagued with guilt, and a feeling that she was a burden to her parents. She was 25, and even her younger siblings had their own lives by now. Her parents never said anything, but she could see the look of what was almost pity in their eyes as they looked at her. She noticed how they has a sense of relief when they saw the other three children of theirs doing well in life. Like, "im glad at least it's only one of them that failed". Or at least that's how ima took it. Ima just wished she could sink into the shadows, melting away into the darkness and fading altogether with the next mornings light.