A father. A young father. Still a teenager all things considered. Holding his child close to his chest. A child. Small. So unbelievably small. Soft. So terrifyingly soft. Warm. So beautifully warm. He holds the child in his arms so carefully, so close.
The baby is swaddled in blankets. The baby is his. He'll be there for the child. He swears it. He was not able to be there before. Not for anyone. He was trapped in unspeakable ways. He was trapped in the constant pressing misery of entrapment and suffocating humid heat. And yet the unspeakable becomes speakable, does it not, when we have looked at it enough. When we have had the time to become accustomed to it.
But that doesn't decrease the casual, pressing, all-encompassing horror. The misery that pours like rain all around.
He holds the child, and for once he doesn't feel storm-swept. In his heart something warm and glowing like candle fire blooms and grows, as he rocks the child and walks back and forth, back and forth, through the small enclosed walls of the space which unlike almost everything else is his.
He is a father. He is meant to be a father. And this sweet darling baby will deliver him from the horrors of his past just as he will guard with his own life the child's future. In the sweet face of the baby he sees hope. Hope for his people. Hope for his land. He sees vulnerability. He sees fragility. He sees ethereal glory.
But wars are raging on. The man with the steel eyes and the storms in his veins is fighting the man with sharp eyes and biting rage. And he has to go. He realizes this in melancholy that cannot be described. Realizes that even the smallest victory will be denied him.
I have to leave you, little one he says as his Hope cracks apart inside him. Because he was a fool to think that there was hope. His life was never his own and still would not be. This child would have to grow up far from him. Away from him. Without a father. With only their tired, overworked, scared mother to offer them guidance and support.
He weeps at the thought of leaving his baby. And of letting down the mother who had so much faith in him. But he must. It's the only way to protect them all. The world is always cruel. It's never anything else.
So he sets the child down and disappears from the small enclosed walls that he had allowed to feel like home.
He wonders if the child will resent him. For leaving them when the other fathers stayed. He knows that the child will grow up scared and soft in a world too dangerous and hard for them. He longs to hear their voice one day. Longs to hear what they will say to him.
He leaves the baby to the winds and goes back to the lands of war and shadow. Goes back to being a being of shadow and mist and invisibility. Because his life is not his own. And it's the only way to protect everyone.
He doesn't realize that he is still a child himself. That his soft sweetness is a drink of cool water in a grating desert. But he hopes the mother can provide his baby all the love they need.
He was never meant to be saved.
