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If I should ever have a child—whether rosy-cheeked and bouncy-curled or strong-jawed and long-lashed, whether bronze-skinned or pale; I've conjured so many images and permutations of what they could be that it all blurs together—I'd want them to know some things.
Vampire or dragon or somewhere in-between, snarky or guileless or sorrowful and sweet, I would love them. I'd want to protect them with all the force of a tsunami and the gentleness of a new dawn. I'd tease them about their music taste, maybe, and they'd squeal when Baz and I kissed, call us embarrassing. I'd scold them, but not too much, light enough for them to know I don't really mean it. I'd hold their hand so tightly they'd never once wonder…
When I was little I used to pretend that the train was taking me home to my parents, some opulent mansion on the moors where there would never be too little food, where no one would look at me like I was a fuse about to blow, where the only words I'd ever hear were words of love.
I don't know. It's… it was always so blurry past the smoke and the tears but I just kept hoping, year after year, that they'd come and hold me against their chest and whisper apologies and I would forgive them. Of course I would. I couldn't have guessed that my father was right there the whole time, that I'd begged and scraped for the man who couldn't be bothered. Nothing can make sense of it, not even Penny's practicality.
Baz keeps telling me I couldn't protect them from the world even if I still had every drop of my magic—my words, not his—that nothing I'd do could keep them from harm. I think he knows that more than anyone.
Maybe I'm not meant to be a dad and maybe fate will skip over us on purpose. I don't really mind precisely when the baby comes, if they do. It's just that I'm bursting with this aimless need to make them feel loved, to funnel all this extra affection into someone who might still have a chance to be saved from the childhood I had. I want everything in surplus for them, more than they'd know what to do with. I want them to know that even if we grew up in a cottage with pennies to spare, that no matter what happens, they'd never be hungry. And they'd never once question their capabilities unless to make them realize all the more that they're… chosen.
Baz hates that word. So do I, a little. But it's this niggling needle from which my life's been spun, a kind of unavoidable epicenter and I know that my child will always be trapped in its orbit. That the label of 'Chosen One's Child' will cling to them no matter what.
And I want them to know that it's not for them to carry anymore. Whatever world-changing asteroid hits the Will of Mages next, it's not their fault whether it's solved or not. They don't have to hold the lives of so many in their tiny hands.
It's why I sometimes think we shouldn't have children at all. I haven't really asked Baz beyond the hypothetical. It's just this cleansing thing I like to think about sometimes… how I would've done things differently for Baz and I. How I would pull this child to my chest and kiss the top of their head and breathe words of caring into their ear, teach them as well as learn for myself the balancing act of how much trust is too much, how pride can corrupt but also cultivate, how nobody's agenda is more important than their own.
I just don't think I could live with myself if I didn't put this all to words. Just in case there comes a day when our family expands, when Baz and I's arms are intertwined with this precious thing we brought beneath our wing, this beautiful creation we chose who'll never need to be more than who they are. I want it so badly it hurts sometimes.
I want the porch swings and the early-morning back-to-school hassle and the ordinary magic and I want to love like waking up, like breathing, like a cup spilling over.
Like tinder, igniting. A match inside our hearts.
The first thing I could really be good at, that I could hold without breaking.
Something that could be ours. The three (or more) of us together, with the life we create. Our right, for once, to decide.
Wouldn't it just be…
Isn't it sort of…
I don't know. I'll ask Baz in the morning and he'll know what I'm trying to say. And hopefully this someday child, this hope made manifest, will too.