Alternate Realities

This is the End (prompt response)

Prompt (Tumblr ask): "Our eyes meet. I stare him down with a harsh unyielding glare. This is the final straw. After a few moments, he looks down, almost as if he's ashamed. Like that's even possible. 'I'm sorry,' he manages to murmur. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean. I swear, I never meant-' 'Stop. You aren't sorry.' He looks at me, silently asking what I could possibly mean. 'Actions speak louder than words," I continue. 'You apologize, but you never change. This is the last time.' And with that, I stalk away."

Response:

I've had rough days in the past four years. I've walked until my toes couldn't lift off the ground. I'd worn through the souls of three pairs of shoes. I once road a horse for three days only stopping because it needed rest. I have ached and fainted from fatigue. I am the most prepared new mother that has ever given birth to a baby in Piedmont.

She cried, I came. She fussed, I checked. She needed and I gave her everything I could. I hurt in places I didn't know I had nerve endings, but none of it stopped me from being who she needed when she needed it. I will never fail this little girl.
The hospital only had so many rooms and staff to go around. There were far worse injuries than a post partum woman and a healthy infant. When they started to hint at my leaving, I was ready to go. The day of pacing from her bassinet to my bed and back again didn't prepare me for the acrobatic maneuvers in putting on pants. My stomach is loose and wobbly neither the washboards I had developed over years of war nor the plump belly-shelf I'd grown to expect. The way the elastic tugged at me felt like pressing bruises. Wrangling my swollen and sore breasts into a bra took almost superhuman patience as the nurse brought one, then two others, than a third that finally fit, for the most part.

I walked in small half-steps to her bassinet, Ruth Barrow's hand pressed gently on Clara's chest, rocking her swaddled body back and forth while she hummed. Ruth was a determined and practical woman, maybe the only other person I could imagine helping me raise Clara. I had my eye out for that inevitable need, but that was weeks away. At that moment, I just needed to carry my baby to a room we would, for what ever time we could, call home.

She arched her back when I pulled her up and but she settled with my arm beneath her spine. I had never held a baby before her. I had never trusted myself to know how and the unnatural idea gave me anxious shivers. The first time she was laid into my arms, I thought those nerves would flit away with sudden confidence, but I'm still careful, cautious, and concerned that she'll wriggle out of my arms. I wonder if being a mother will ever feel natural or if it will always feel a little like a mask, a game, a challenge.

Ruth opens the door and collects the bag of items that I'm taking home: pads for the blood, blankets for the baby, and the clothes I wore when I arrived in labor. Each half step out the door and into the hallway pulsed a pain through my core. My vertebrae wobbled into my organs with each swaying motion. My abdomen tightens weak muscles to counter the strain. My legs didn't want to move fast enough to balance me against gravity. Every motion exhausted my body a little more until I didn't know what kept me upright and I feared falling. Ruth's arm on my back was meant to be a rudder, but I used it like a foundation for each move.

A cough from the end of the hallway stopped me in my awkward stumble. The colonel, his hands held a hat between them, his balding head tipped to shine in the lights. My father approached carefully, quietly, with deference to my unease. He looked humble like the farmer he used to be. He looked nervous; ashamed, if that's even possible. Him being there, in the hospital, being in a chair in the hallway for days - according to the nurses- it was the final straw.

"I'm sorry," he manages to murmur, his shuffle bringing him slowly closer. "I'm sorry, I never meant—"

"Stop. You aren't sorry. I've been in there for days. I screamed for you. I wanted you. And you never came. It's always the Guard first. It's always about retribution and vengeance and violence. I needed my family to be with me. I wanted my father there for me, for my daughter. And you didn't even come into the room when it was done. You apologize, but you never change. This is the last time. Your family is completely dead."

I managed to hold my tears in until the door. Strong and resolute until it was just me and Ruth and Clara. Clara Barrow would only ever be a Barrow. There would be no more Farley's in our line.