A sleepless night… (WoD)

Sleep eludes her.

 

Even after a long day of intricate, backbreaking work, a day spent welding, filing, smelting, calibrating, constructing, and insulating, the tiny woman known as Ma Albrecht was unable to close her eyes and rest. Dove grey eyes drift towards the clock on the bedside table. Two-thirty in the morning, and she was as awake now as she’d been twelve hours ago. There were too many thoughts flying loose in that little head of hers. Too many thoughts and too many memories.

 

A low snore emanates from the man sleeping with his stubbly cheek resting against her shoulder. Her eyes soften and she smiles as she looks down at him, her gaze traveling over the lines of his forehead and jaw, down the arc of his arm to the blunt, scarred fingers cupping her breast. Down across the pale expanse of her belly, slightly marred by the silvery lines left behind by the bearing of a half-dozen children, to the sharp angle of his hip pressed against hers and the heavy muscle of his thigh as it lies across her knees. He was still in damn good shape, for his age, his body still possessing the same blocky tenacity it had when they’d first met. The smile that graces her lips as she watches him sleep is proud. He hadn’t given in to the agents of Time; there was no surrender in the mind or heart of Marcus Albrecht. Old age could go to Hell.

 

A sigh escapes her as she shifts slightly under his comforting weight. How would she tell him? How was she going to tell this man that after a decade she was pregnant again, her body having its own agenda and planning a surrender of its own? It wasn’t that she thought he’d be angry, or disappointed; he loved all of his children, even the ones that were technically not ‘his’. She knew he’d be overjoyed. And worried. Worried that he wouldn’t live long enough to see them grown, married, with children of their own. Worried that he would leave her alone, with a family to raise and no one to provide for them and protect them.

 

Dawn Walker Albrecht was no fool. She was perfectly capable of providing for and protecting herself and her family. But Marcus took pride in his ability to contribute to the family and his strength as the head of the household. Age and infirmity secretly terrified him. So, being his wife and loving him deeply, she did everything she could to encourage him, build him, give him comfort. She even picked fights with him, bullied him, if necessary; he was her world, as much as her children were. How could she tell him without opening up the fears that he’d buried at the bottom of his heart?

 

It was with these concerns in the back of her mind that she’d had her lengthy conversation with Jeffery Sinclair. One slim finger drifts absently towards her mouth as she thinks. A strange man, Sinclair. One might imagine him to be exactly what the eye saw; a man without roots, without ties, blowing wherever the wind took him, into the arms of whoever happened to be there at the time. Not a care, not a worry, no thought for the future. His actions during the time he’d been in Avalon said the same. But she had to agree with her husband. That was a fucked-up young man, that one.

 

Dawn chews on one shapely fingernail as she recalls their discussion, the odd despair that had cropped up in his eyes and the stilted quality of his voice as he’d spoken of Avalon and what it had meant to him before he’d come. Of his disappointment in what he’d found when he’d gotten there. And the lie in his voice as he’d promised to ‘do his best’ to keep from hurting Sasha, her eldest daughter and the one named for her own mother, that poor tortured soul. She winces as she bites too deeply into the quick of her nail and sucks on it briefly to take away the sting. She didn’t want to see the heartbreak in her baby girl’s eyes again, the betrayal, the fear. She didn’t want to have to stand at another funeral knowing that her own had been responsible for the death of one who, while young and foolish, really didn’t deserve death. A good swift kick in the pants, maybe, but not death. Death was the last resort, a punishment for thieves and rapists. Not for a young man with little sense and a big mouth.

 

She’d never questioned Hawk about it, other than to establish that it had been a fair duel. The tiny woman snorts. Fair, indeed. Hawk was lightning fast and a damn good shot to boot, just like his father; that poor kid hadn’t had anywhere near a fighting chance to save his life even though all the rules had been followed and proper etiquette displayed. Dawn knew that if she doubted Hawk he would doubt himself so she never pursued it, never said a word again about two shots fired on a misty spring morning. Not as if Marcus would have stopped him; knowing him, he’d have been right there with him, probably as Hawk’s second. Men, she thinks, annoyed.

 

A hand tightens gently on her breast and releases as he lets it fall across her stomach. Looking down, she sees him smiling in his sleep, smiling as he shifts against her shoulder and rolls over, pressing his back against her side and hip. She rolls with him, flinging one arm over his ribs and tucking the other under her head, her belly warm against his back and her legs tangled in his. Dawn laughs silently to herself; it sometimes felt like she couldn’t tell where she left off and Marcus began, and sleeping alone was nigh impossible. This was what she’d tried to get Sinclair to understand. To believe in something, in someone, so much that to be away from them is to be half of yourself, your heart yearning to be one again, to be whole. Everyone needs that kind of faith, that kind of love.

 

How could she hope to help him? Sasha deserves better, she thinks as she settles her cheek against her husband. She deserves unconditional love and kindness, the same love and kindness that she gives. The girl thinks Sinclair is worth it.

 

Dawn kisses Marcus’ shoulder and sighs. She hopes he is.