It's a shorty, folks! But, I like it, even if it's a little more sentimental than what I normally write. I've been feeling very touchy-feely recently. Anywhos...

Disclaimer: I don't own THG. Or the soundtrack. Especially not the song that the title came from. Guess in your reviews?

commence

XxXxXxX

She doesn't fancy herself a singer, but sometimes, when Bay is screaming non-stop, and Cato somehow manages to sleep through it (damn him), she'll start humming, adding in the lyrics once she's not having to almost yell. It never fails to quiet the baby, who will fall silent immediately and gaze up at her mother with wide, trusting eyes.

She sings her a song she somewhat remembers from her childhood, before her mother became cold, and the parts that she's hazy on, she makes up. It's not as if her daughter can tell the difference, really.

And for all the times she feels like a failure, for all the times that she thinks Bay would be better off without her as a mother, these moments make up for it. Because Cato can make their daughter laugh and grin whenever he likes, but she's the only one that can get her to stop screaming at…she glances at a clock on the wall - two-fourteen in the morning.

There's something rather gratifying in knowing that her daughter wants her, and her alone, because Cato has tried to calm her before, and her wails will just increase in volume, until she rolls out of bed and shuffles in, bleary from the twenty minutes of sleep she has gotten, and Cato shifts Bay over to her and goes back to bed. It's gratifying, but exhausting.

She hums another line and Bay reaches out a pudgy hand towards her mother's face.

"…I know, I've seen it before… A brighter day is coming my way, and tomorrow will be kinder…"

XxXxXxX

She's on her fourth lap around the apartment, Clove still wailing in her arms. She sent Forte to a motel four hours ago, a decision she regrets, but he has work tomorrow, and she doesn't and she really doesn't want him to die in some factory accident because he passed out from sleep deprivation. But now, as Clove squirms in her arms, face red from exertion, and screams, she wishes he was here.

He's always been better at the whole parenting thing, always more confident in his abilities as a father, way more confident in her abilities as a mother than she ever will be. He's been the one to comfort their daughter when she's screaming, been the one to change diapers and put her to sleep and bathe her. It's not that she doesn't love her daughter, god, does she love her, she just…no good at this.

She sometimes thinks that, if it weren't for the fact that, at the moment, she is Clove's only source of food, she could easily just disappear, and no one would notice the difference.

Occasionally, she considers the possibility. Get Clove weaned quickly and just…be done with it all.

But then her daughter will turn her big, brown eyes on her, so dark you'd think they were black if you didn't look close enough, and that place in her heart that feels empty sometimes will overflow, and she'll remember that the dark haired girl had no choice in the matter of leaving or not.

So, tonight, as she starts her fifth circuit of the apartment, she begins to sing. She has never attempted this before. Yes, occasionally, one could catch her humming as she washed dishes or graded papers, and once Forte was sick and pouted enough to wear her down and she sang for him, something he's been trying to get her to repeat ever since, but she's never sung for her daughter before.

Clove quiets slightly on the second verse, and as she sings, "Brighter days are coming my way, and tomorrow will be kinder," she falls silent.

"You like my singing, little bug?" It's a stupid nickname; one that she started using when she was pregnant, when she got sick of referring to the baby as an it, but it's stuck, now.

Clove tracks her mother's face with her wide eyes, with those crazy dark lashes, and she swears that she's, like, a better version of herself. She traces her daughter's little rosebud lips and sings some more.

XxXxXxX

One mother sings one song, and one song alone, and only in the early hours when she's so sleep deprived that she can't even remember her own name and her daughter just keeps screaming.

Another will cycle through various songs that she's heard in her lifetime, sometimes when her children need to get to sleep, sometimes when her children need comfort, but the one she goes back to, the one that she will always, without fail, fall back on, is the same, never changing. She likes to think that that is how her children will remember her.

fin

So, I hope you thoroughly enjoyed, and I hope you shall be kind enough to leave a review, por favor?