The Keepers' Evil: The Shattered Star

Whether you love me or you break me, I belong to you

Exhaustion could be kind, when it was caused by reasons that one did not mind. Celeste had been awake for eighteen hours, but that fact with those numbers seemed to easily fall to the wayside, entirely out of mind, when she looked down at the baby that had settled in her arms. She rocked him slowly, so gently, and hoped that he may find rest as his mother was, but he seemed intent on watching her, on the sun that peaked through the glass windows and doors that they stood before as he snuggled contently into the blankets that she had wrapped him in.

"You should sleep, hm? The world will still be here tomorrow." Celeste smoothed her fingers carefully over the dark strands of his hair that rested atop his soft skin, a smile always close when his eyes followed her as she swayed and hushed him as though she had done so a thousand times before. Her whisper was responded to with a small gurgle that seemed to make her physically feel her heart within her chest, partly in a way of a strong affection for the perfect being in her arms, other parts in a sort of squeeze to it that was uncomfortable.

She had taken him so that she could watch the sunrise in the open windows, the glass reflective of the gently warm beams that soaked her hair into fine gold, but she had missed all of the sun's slow rise watching him. Gabriel had too missed it when he had followed her silently to the room of clear windows, because his eyes had been as fixated on her as the sun's hands had been to smooth over her.

He stayed silent for a while too long, noticing how the baby seemed to just fit in her arms, his tiny body gently relying on the soothed beat of her heart to keep him calm, how she rocked and coddled him like she had done this so many times before, how she smiled and watched over him with a nagging longing in her mind.

Perhaps it was his own newfound need for the one day that she thought of, maybe it was the one day that he was certain to give her, it could have even just been that he loved the thought of the one day, but Gabriel was certain that he had never looked at her this way before, it was like a new emotion, a new way to see her, had been brought with this new life. She was softer, if she could be at all, her smile as gentle as this baby's hands and feet. Her laughter was hushed and quiet, and Gabriel understood what falling in love all over again was like when he listened to it.

He saw her hair and saw only silk worth more than the gold coins in his vault, he saw glimpses of her eyes that widened to hold this baby's and he saw oceans that glistened as the mirror of the sun, he saw her and fuck did he adore her so.

"You should sleep, Celeste. It's been a long day, and you've been up for so long." Gabriel did not move, he let her body turn to find him in her own time, which he knew would always be immediately. She was slow in how she moved, almost swaying discreetly in her steps, but when she did see him, when she let her eyes find his instead of the baby's, her smile grew only wider.

Gabriel approached as slow as her pace was, and it did feel noticeably slowly, just like how the world felt in that moment where the danger was low and the love was so high. When he had finally reached her after hours apart, walls and worries distancing them, his hands slid from her elbows that curved to hold the child in a safe hold to her spine that had begun to droop into his touch to prove how tired she truly was.

If Gabriel was to wish to a star, he would have to simply pray to her and be the vessel to make all of her dreams come true so that his did too. As he held her in this in between of the sun and the dark, the sun spitting hot speckles over their cheeks but the shadows of the house scratching their nails into the heated vulnerabilities, he was happy, happy to think of what would one day be, but too what was here and right now between them and behind them.