Klaus can hear his daughter across the street, but he can't go to her.
Her absence paralyzes him in a way it never has before. There is no blood to spill, no revenge to be had, no action he can take to bring her back. (In a way, this is revenge on him .) She is not gone from him, simply out of his reach. Just beyond his fingertips.
Her voice haunts him. His acute hearing is so attuned to it; each time it echoes across Royal, he speeds to her room, only to find it empty. It's as if she's disembodied. A spirit.
He hears her laugh, and it chews into his ears like a mockery. A constant reminder that he cannot see her, cannot share in her joy.
When he hears her crying, his heart spasms in a way that's almost human. It yearns to fly out of his chest and join his daughter.
Had he known his time with her were so limited, he would have reveled in every second of those months with her, soaking up each sensation with the thirst of a dying man.
As it is, the memories serve to torment him. Her ghost aches in his arms. His palms itch, missing the weight of her that he'd become so accustomed to. The place where she rested her head against his shoulder burns in its emptiness. The phantom sensation of her small fingers wrapping around his large one draws on his strength like a poison.
He, the strongest creature on earth, brought to his knees by just the memory of his daughter.
Her first steps brought him such rapturous joy. She'd toddled with slow, halting steps, hands drawn up to balance herself. (She'd walked away from him, toward Freya's outstretched arms, but still.)
Her fragility brushes against his heart, featherlike and insistent at all times. She'd garnered a bruise on her forehead just from rolling over on the floor. She'd cried for a good five minutes after stepping on her own toe. How can he expect to live, knowing his daughter's delicate skin can so easily break, bruise? Bleed? How can he trust anyone to be as careful with her as he?
Sometimes he finds himself sitting on his floor, just inside the doorway to his balcony. Listening to her babble from the neighboring building. Imagining the expressions flitting across her soft, smooth face. Like she is telling a story with words only she understands.
He tries to cradle her voice in his hands, capture some essence of her sweet presence. It doesn't work.
It makes him want to curl up on the floor. Throw something. Break someone.
Hayley's words from the day of Hope's birth echo through the hollowness inside him often. I never knew I could love something so much. It feels awful. Like it might kill me.
Her absence might kill him now.
He'd loved nothing more than sitting with her, watching her, drinking in her every sound and movement. Her two-toothed smile stabbed through him every time she graced him with one.
Now Hayley alone can feel the pang of Hope's smile. Not him.
How old would she be before he got to hold her in his arms again? Would he even be able to hold her? Would she even want him to?
He misses everything about her, from her plaintive cries in the middle of the night to the soft, baby-smell of her when he rocked her back to sleep.
She used to pat her hands against his cheeks. She would reach for him from her crib and then squirm to be let down from his arms. She would rub at her face, keening in annoyance, when his unshaven cheek brushed against hers.
He chokes on those small moments.
He needs her. He needs her to shine into the black spots of him. He needs her warmth to flood through him, sing to him, deafen him. Wash out some of his own darkness.
He needs to be able to count her perfect fingers and toes, to press his lips to her forehead, to feel her tiny heart thrum under his hand. (Her heartbeat threads under his skin, giving him life. A mirror image of resuscitation.)
Last time she left him, she had been but a few hours old. Last time he had memorized every detail he could. The curves of her face, the melody of her newborn gurgle, the pattern of her sleeping breaths.
It was all he could do. As an infant, there hadn't been much of her to miss.
She's older now, just barely a year. He has gotten to know her—her habits, her moods, her likes, her dislikes. He knows who she is, not just what she means to him. He misses her. He misses the little monster. His littlest wolf.
She isn't gone. She isn't far. He can hear Hayley singing to her, reading to her. Soothing her cries at night, encouraging her ever-steadying steps.
But he can't feel her. He can't touch her. He can't be with her. He can only catch fleeting glimpses of her across the street in the apartment that he can't enter.
This is a different kind of suffering altogether.
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