Caesaria

IX

Amelia was asleep at their daughter's bedside. It was well past midnight, and Carter couldn't stop thinking. Jittering. Worrying. Even as he stood there, vision blurring with his tears, he refused to. Everything was running circles in his head, every thought drowning the other out.

All he needed was the truth. Then, Carter would know. He would know exactly what that strange man had done to his daughter, fair or foul. He'd be able to thank him. Or, blame him. He could've killed the golden haired man today, right there on that pretty, mauve carpet, with the heel of his boot. Bashed his face in. Roasted him in the fireplace. But he needed a confession. As a chief, he knew this. But as a father, spirits, did he struggle with it. He knew he could've been innocent. But he wanted, needed someone to blame. It was the stupid, animal side of him, he knew. There was no logic in that need. But it hungered for that scapegoat, nevertheless.

Jackson had been hurt before. His only son had been stabbed, slashed, torn open, shot, tortured, and one time, flayed. Yes, Carter'd been angry then. Mindlessly, almost. And he'd had someone to blame for that, someone to rightfully punish. But when he'd seen his Lucy, lying under the furs, so still and pale, he'd thought she was a corpse... he would've dropped dead if Val, their doctor, hadn't rushed to explain that she lived.

Sons were one thing. A father sees the man within the boy from the time he can walk. Jackson could deal with the worst of hardships. He'd led war parties against ridiculous odds, and returned unscathed. He was going through his own kind of war right now, the guilty kind. And Carter knew his son would come back from that battle too.

But a daughter... a father always sees the babe she was. Even as a fierce woman, he sees her and remembers how tiny she was, how precious and defenceless. Lucy wasn't defenceless, far from it -- Carter trained her himself, harder than he'd trained Jackson -- but he still saw the little girl inside the woman she'd become. And to see his little girl, the newborn babe he'd promised to protect, nearly dead... he realized he'd forgotten how delicate life was.

Sons, brave and stupid, they make a man forget. Daughters, smart and careful, make a father remember.

Carter stood at the end of the bed, the chief's knuckles white around the bedpost. Lucy looked nothing like him. Of course not; Carter hadn't made her. He was brown-skinned, brown-eyed, black-haired. His son had inherited most of that, although he had had a different mother entirely. Lucy however, was pale as winter, with eyes a mossy green; how little she looked like her own mother was remarkable. Carter had never seen the man who'd fathered her, but he didn't have to; he knew who's face Amelia saw when she looked at their daughter.

But Lucy was still his baby, no matter the face she wore. She bore half her tattoos, and he was so proud of her for that. Like her, he'd had his first half completed young, younger than Jackson, in fact. Lucy was a year later than Carter had been -- he'd only been eighteen -- but he had been so proud. He only hoped to see her gain the rest, as his father had lived long enough to see his. Carter prayed for his daughter's health, his wife's cool nature to return, and for his son to forgive himself. He prayed that he would know what to do when the time came, that he would make the right choice. As a chief, as a father, as a man.

"You made it."

He turned. Amelia perked up in her chair. It was a dirty old thing, ugly, stained gold fabric from the lobby of the lodge. But she wasn't. No, Amelia was always a looker, even after all these days in seclusion, and all the horrors of her past. She was a woman of harsh beauty, with a hard, yet doe-eyed glare, thin red lips, and high, regal cheeks. Her pale skin was dusted with freckles, her frame willowy, her posture queenly. Her hair was a maddening mess of chestnut curls -- most called it brown, but he called it chestnut -- the messiness of which was her only mark upon Lucy. But there was a feral look to her this night. Like a she-wolf, presiding over her sick pup, ready to pounce at the slightest noise.