Guilt

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Aeryn sat rigidly in the aged, grounded, transport pod, trying to think, trying to feel. Her arms were wrapped around her belly, swollen with her third child. Second, some detached part of her corrected. No, third.

She just kept hearing John’s high, childish voice, calling “Mum! Mum! Look! Look how that one is gliding!” as he chased across the fields, trying to get her to look at the birds he was following, wondering at their flight.

She’d given him an indulgent glance, and called, “Yes, I see it!” and then gone back to her work with the harvest. And then she’d heard a panicked scream, and then silence, and she’d dropped everything and run across the meadow at full tilt, heedless of her pregnancy, screaming his name, but knowing somehow that he was already gone. Gone in an instant.

Cerric and their firstborn, Rhys, had arrived at the partially- covered remains of a well just after she did, had stopped her from climbing down after him without any rope or any way to get out again except by clawing her way back up with her fingers…. So she’d knelt at the top, numbly pulling back rotted edges where the ancient covering had failed under John’s slight weight, while her husband and son retrieved the body of her beautiful dark-haired child, just ten cycles old, and lost to her forever as his namesake was.

They’d brought him home, laid his small body out on his bed, and then Aeryn had turned and walked out the door. After twenty cycles with her, Cerric knew better than to follow; she trusted him to stay behind and try to comfort Rhys.

Her feet had led her here, to this one last piece of her past. She sat, and she brooded, and the only thing she could think was that this was all her fault.

The baby kicked her then, hard, and she seized on the distraction. “Hey there,” she said to the child in her womb. “What’s the matter? Have I been sitting in one position too long?” As if it understood her, the baby stretched out an elbow, or maybe a foot. Aeryn took the hint and stood up, stretching her back.

She ducked around the jungle growth of the plant that Zhaan had given her before she left Moya. It had spread out for cycles, and she supposed she should have cleaned it out of the pod long ago, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

She sat down on a bench, changing position, and said to the baby, “There, is that better?” When there were no further protests, she continued quietly, “You’ll never know your brother. I’m sorry.”

Tears formed in her eyes, but she continued, talking to the child whose presence gave her comfort. “I wasn’t born to be a mother, you know,” she told him. “I was born to be a soldier. But one day I met a man who told me that I could be more. And I believed him, I don’t know why. His name was John.”

She stared around the pod.

“And then, I ended up here, and I met your father, and it seemed like the thing to do, to have a life. And so I married him.” She smiled faintly. It wasn’t so bad. She and Cerric were comfortable together, at least.

“Your father wanted babies. And I give him so little else, how could I refuse him? But I was terrified, when I was carrying Rhys, I had no idea how to be a mother to him, if I could love him….” She smiled a little, remembering how frightened she had been, how she had let Cerric name him, and even care for him, at first.

She wrapped her arms around her child again. “It took me a little while,” she whispered to the baby she carried, “but of course I fell in love. Rhys is a wonderful boy, he’s growing into a wonderful man. You’ll love him as much as John does. Did.” She brooded again, miserable.

Falling in love with her firstborn had changed her life, and her next pregnancy had been much easier, emotionally. “The second time, with John, I knew already that I loved him, just like I love you,” she said, stroking her belly. “And when he was born, when I saw him, it just came out. ‘John. His name is John.’”

And when she’d looked up at Cerric’s face, she’d seen the surprise there, and the hurt, but he was so pleased that she’d loved this child from the start that he’d never said anything about it, and he’d never taken it out on his son.

She sighed. “I’m sorry you’ll never know your brother,” she said again. “And that he’ll never get to know you. He was so excited when we told him you were coming.” It meant he was no longer the baby in the family, and he couldn’t wait to play the teacher to a little one.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” she sniffled. “I’ve never even told your father.” She paused a minute and collected her thoughts. “Your brother John was a lot like the man I knew. He was curious, and fearless. He loved the stars, and he was obsessed with flight.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “That’s how he died, chasing flight….”

She couldn’t go on, and she sat, staring into the distance, with tears running down her cheeks, once again seeing the laughing boy running confidently through fallow fields, trying to understand how the birds flew.

She remembered his first steps, unsteady but triumphant, from her outstretched arms to Cerric’s. She could see again the tiny child who followed Rhys everywhere, from the first day he could crawl. He had such a smile….

Aeryn squeezed her eyes tightly shut, thinking about how proud she’d secretly been at the tantrum John had thrown, when he was not quite four cycles old and she’d taken Rhys with her on a rare trip in her transport pod, and not him. Because, like his mother, and like the man whose name he shared, her second son had been born to fly.

Cerric hadn’t been happy when she took John into space, a present for his seventh birthday. He didn’t think she should encourage the boy’s interest in something he could never have. But John had been so thrilled…and it had pleased her to see something of her lost past in him.

Over the years, they’d caught him more than once jumping off the roof and out of trees, for the sheer sensation of “flying” through the air. They’d counted themselves lucky he hadn’t broken any bones. But today their luck had run out, in a stupid accident.

And she would have given anything to see the light of curiosity in his eyes, one more time.

Aeryn continued to sit, frozen in her grief. She didn’t move, even when she heard footfalls on the steps to the pod. She’d left it open, hadn’t locked herself in the way she usually did.

The footsteps continued, echoing off the pod’s metallic floor. It was Cerric, of course. She didn’t look at him, even when he stopped in front of her. He stood there as the microts stretched, and she thought he would leave. But then he crouched down, bringing his face to her level.

Aeryn looked at him then, and saw her grief mirrored on his face, in his eyes. He’d lost a son today, too. She snuffled in the snot dripping from her nose, took a breath and blurted, “I’m sorry! It’s all my fault!” Not surprisingly, he misunderstood.

“You couldn’t have known,” Cerric said forcefully, still not daring to touch her. “None of us knew it was there. And he couldn’t have seen it, it was covered up with rotten wood.”

“If he did see it, at the last microt,” she sniffled, “he probably tried to jump across to the other side.”

Cerric nodded, smiling through his pain. “Yes. He would have tried. He had so much of you in him.”

If that was meant to comfort, it didn’t. They remained there for a while, Aeryn sitting, her husband crouched in front of her, his hands clasped on his knees. Aeryn finally turned her gaze to him again and said, “Why did you come here?”

Cerric said softly, “Because you shouldn’t be alone. No mother should ever have to bury her child.”

Her heart went out to him, and she reached her hand out to touch his face. “No father either,” she whispered.

Cerric closed his eyes at her touch, opened them again when she spoke. Moved, she patted the bench next to her, and he got up from his crouch and sat down, automatically laying his hand on her belly briefly, greeting his child.

Aeryn grabbed his hand, holding it against her and the child. “You have to name this baby,” she announced urgently.

Cerric blinked, caught completely off guard. “What?”

“This is my fault for naming him John,” she said. “We lost him because I named him John.”

Cerric looked at her, puzzled. “What are you talking about, Aeryn? What does his name have to do with….this?”

“I didn’t think. I named him after the one thing, the one thing, from my life before that I couldn’t bear to lose.” She looked away and then back at Cerric. “He was *perfect.* And the fates took him away from me again.”

“It doesn’t work like that—“ he started, but she cut him off.

“And they took him from you, too, and I’m so sorry.” This time she burst into sobs, and Cerric pulled her into his arms. For the first time in their life together, she let him comfort her. She buried her face in his chest and sobbed, letting him stroke her hair and tell her over and over through his own tears that it wasn’t her fault.

But Aeryn knew that it was. She had dared the fates, and they had punished not only her, but Cerric, for her presumption.

After a while she stopped sobbing. There was no comfort to be gained by dwelling in the past, and the baby was kicking her again. Taking a deep breath, she sat up and reached again and caressed her husband’s cheek. “Come on,” she said with a slight sniff. “Let’s go home. Rhys shouldn’t be alone either.”

Cerric nodded, and the two of them stood up together. As they headed out of the pod, Aeryn thought she might be able to learn to live with the guilt. But she wondered how she was going to live with the hole in her heart that used to be filled by a beautiful dark-haired boy named John.


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aeryncrichton

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Author's Afterword, Guilt

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