WHO: Melpomene and Alan WHEN: Late Tuesday night WHERE: Mt Sinai Hospital WHAT/WARNINGS: :(
With promises to return in the morning (or the afternoon - for those sisters for whom the night was still young) the Muses and Apollo left, one by one. "Is Alan still here?" she asked Calliope before she could leave. "Can you send him in? I'll sleep soon, but... I need to see him."
The wooziness from the anesthetic was still tugging at the edges of her consciousness, as was the deep pull of physical and emotional exhaustion underneath it. With the bed still folded up, Melpomene was leaning all her weight back into the pile of pillows behind her. Her body felt like a wreck, washed up on shore. But asleep on her chest was her boy, tiny fat fists balled on her collarbones, her hand covering his back so he was still as surrounded by her as he could be.
She turned her head as Alan stepped back in, and felt her tired heart lift. Bone weary, she smiled at him, a sleepy and sad and complicated smile, and lifted her other hand toward him, unable to move any further to reach him. The staff left her with strict instructions not to try and walk yet, and she couldn’t bear the idea that he’d linger back, out of her reach.
He was going, she knew that. He’d only promised to stay till the baby was born, and she couldn’t hope that out of nowhere he’d changed his mind. But she wasn’t going to say goodbye until the very end, and for now, she reached for him.
“Come and see him,” she said, voice as heavy and sleepy as her eyelids, heart like a storm surge at sea. “See how far he’s come since the night we met.”
It had been a series of nerve wracking hours for Alan, waiting for Melpomene to come out of surgery and to be ready to see him.
He wanted to leave. There was a very strong part of him that wanted to just leave before it was all over and not have to do this next part where he would have to leave after seeing her. He came over towards Melpomene, but he didn’t take her offered hand. He had to try not to. But he did tilt his head and smile at the baby in her arms. “He’s so sleepy,” Alan said, taking in the size of him. The son of a war god: of course he was going to be big.
Alan's reluctance to take her hand hurt, and Melpomene was just as reluctant to withdraw her hand from the contact it was seeking, but she was so tired. Her arm dropped to lie beside her on the bed, still outstretched toward him. "It's hard work, entering the world," she said, her body feeling all the effects of that work.
"His name is Telos," she continued, her thumb gently stroking his back, but her eyes on Alan. "I want… I want one of his names to be Dale, though. Alan… I never would have got through this without you." She need not have told him, she knew, but names were important, and she wanted (greedily, selfishly, longingly) Alan's blessing for this one.
As she’d been speaking, Alan had dragged one of the chairs over closer to the bedside and he looked up at her in surprise. He took her hand then, because he couldn’t stop himself, giving it a small squeeze.
“Telos,” Alan said with an approving nod. “I like that. Dale might be a bit dull for such a child of gods.” He lifted her hand, thinking to kiss it, but stopped himself before he did. He was so bad at all of this, so bad at being in love and being loved and yet not being allowed to have that thing.
"There's nothing dull about it," she said, voice like a promise, whole body bursting into life as he took her hand. "There's nothing dull about you, about how I feel about you, about anything we had, Alan."
“That’s true,” he told her, but sounded deeply sad about it more than anything else. “You did really good,” he added, reaching out to very lightly touch Telos’ hand, all cute and scrunched up. “It’s hard to become, but even harder to be the one who brings forth creation.”
"No creation is easy," she agreed, his sadness worming its way through the same channels as hers, carving out shapes in her heart. But he'd sat beside her, and that gave her a tiny bit of hope. Hope that he would stay just a little bit longer at her side, holding her hand. "'It's hard to become', I like that. You always did know how to put a feeling like this into words."
Alan wished his only skill was not in putting things into pretty words. Pretty words could not sew shut such a wound as this. Pretty words would do nothing but let them bleed out together all with a song on their lips. As much as Alan was somewhat tempted by that idea, to lose himself forever in the arms of Melpomene, he had other things he needed to be. It was hard to become, and hard to resist what the heart wanted, even when the spirit knew right from wrong.
He looked down at Melpomene’s hand in his, brushing his thumb across it tenderly. When he looked up at her, there was tired resignation in his voice. “I have to go now, Melpomene.”
Melpomene closed her eyes, and for a long moment didn't (couldn't) open them, knowing the world she opened them on wasn't the world she wanted. "I know," she said, her voice raspy, worn, cracked. "I know you do. I wish… there was a world just for us. With no… no one else." Even saying no Apollo was hard, too hard - it wasn't honest, she didn't know how she would exist without Apollo, and Alan deserved honesty. Alan deserved the truth and, shit, even though she'd loved him so deeply, there were still things she'd kept from him, weren't there?
Perhaps if they'd had more time. If there'd been no other gods around, if she hadn't already been pregnant when they met, if…
There was no point in this wishing. It changed nothing! Time couldn't be reversed - it was an arrow, and choices, once loosed from their bow, flew forward, unstoppable, unless they buried themselves fatally in their destination.
She still wished there was a place in which she could be with him. "I love you, Alan-a-Dale," she croaked hopelessly.
Alan wanted to tell her that he wished for that too, but he wasn’t sure he did. To live in a world without his brothers, his true family? No, Alan didn’t want that world. What were either of them without the people they reflected off of?
He did kiss her hand then, bringing it up to his lips and letting himself linger against it for two long breaths. Then he released it and tried to ignore the blurry vision, one tear escaping down his cheek. “I love you too,” he promised her, because at least that much was true.
Maybe it wasn't the birth that was going to kill her. Maybe it was this that started bleeding her out. Melpomene's breath hitched and she pulled her hand out of his and curled it round the back of his neck, pulling him closer and kissing the tear off his cheek.
She wanted to say something else, do something else, but every word in every language she'd ever spoken dammed up in her throat.
Maybe there were no words. Maybe it was appropriate that the final taste of him on her lips was his tears.
Alan had his eyes squeezed shut as she held him close and he let them remain like that for a few moments before it became far too much to handle. He drew back, untangling them for the very last time, and knew that he had to get out of there. He had to get out of there and away from her, because the more seconds that ticked by the worse it all felt. So after straightening he nodded quickly, as though that said something else, and then stood up with a certainty he didn’t feel.
The door was only a few long paces away and when he reached it, he couldn’t help but look back at her. He wanted to say sorry, but it was the ‘sorry’ where no one was really to blame. It was a ‘sorry’ that would echo and bounce off them both and maybe leave even more wounds.
So instead he gave her the saddest of smiles and then walked away from the room.
Alan’s only goal was to get out of the hospital, to get out and get away and find somewhere to be completely alone, and brokenhearted.