heaven
and i've been chasing angels all my life
heaven, amber run
...
In that split second, when she knows but Owen doesn't, she can't even try and hide the relief that washes over her.
It's a relief she didn't know she'd feel, but it's everywhere, drowning out everything else, making her numb.
And then, suddenly, wrapped in Owen's embrace, feeling his disappointment with every beat of his heart, she's in the past, a ghost treading in the footsteps of her old self, an onlooker in her memories.
They are vivid, sharp like glass, and they make her insides burn with an ache for something so long gone and past and done.
She shrugs Owen's arms away from her, feeling like she's suffocating, like someone has their hands around her throat and are slowly choking the life out of her. She can't breathe, she can't breathe-
'We can try again,' Owen's saying, but she's tuning out.
She mutters something in reply and stands, leaving him and fleeing to the bathroom.
She rests her hands on the basin, gasping for air to fill her screaming lungs.
She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, staring back at her; wild, vacant eyes filled with abject terror.
She should not be this terrified. She said yes to Owen, she thought she was ready for this.
But though time may have lessened her loss, it hits her again now, twice as violent, driving the air out of her chest.
'Amelia?' Owen asks, knocking on the wood, confusion lacing his words.
'I'll be out in a minute,' she splutters, turning the faucet and watching the water bubbling out. She's surprised words actually spilled from her tongue, the state she's in.
'Okay,' he says, warily, and she nearly laughs, despite it all, because she knows Owen thinks she's upset because she's not pregnant, when really she's screaming inside because with every beat of her traitor heart, she knows she's not.
She remembers what she told April earlier, the half-story, explained to Owen so recently with tears on the pillow and fear that he'd see her differently.
She remembers too the words, unspoken, that died before they could pass her lips. Because she wanted to tell April, because April of all people would understand.
Except April moved on, and she can't.
The faucet burbles away and she wonders if she can ever face Owen again. She knows he wants kids, knows it drove him and Cristina apart, knows she said yes to him.
She can't take that away from him.
And yet, when the pregnancy test was negative, she didn't feel the disappointment she knows Owen believes her to, she felt relief. All consuming, numbing relief.
Because she can't lose another child. She can't.
...
When she was a teenager, she never wanted kids. She'd always tell anyone who'd listen that she didn't want them.
And the subtext only her family would pick up was that she didn't want children so there would never be the chance what happened to her would ever happen to her child. But everyone else thought she was a selfish bitch who didn't want to sacrifice her hedonistic lifestyle for a child.
And then, after she'd OD and got clean the first time, she started entertaining the possibility. The idea of a child's love appealed to her - someone who loved her, flaws and all. And then when she fell off the wagon, when drugs, when booze, became her way out yet again, that idea flew out of the window.
And then Ryan. And her son. And everything flew out the window.
...
She didn't think. Never for a second did she think she wouldn't be strong enough for this. Never did she think she'd be left, shaking, tears rolling down her cheeks at the mere idea of being pregnant once again.
She's freaking strong, she told Derek that once. Derek, her dead brother, who joined the list of those who haunted her too.
But she's not sure she's strong enough for this.
Because all she can see in her mind's eye is her little boy, a little boy who had no future.
What if it happens again? What if she's doomed to go through that again and again and again? What if that's her punishment for all the mistakes she's made?
Owen knocks on the door again.
'Amelia?'
'Yeah,' she replies, her voice remarkably strong as her hands continue to shake.
She turns the faucet off.
'You okay in there?'
She wants to laugh; of course she's not okay. But instead she leans back, rests against the cool door.
'I'm fine, Owen,' she says.
She feels him fumbling on the other side of the wood.
'You sure?'
'Yeah.'
She wants him to leave her alone, but it's not his fault. None of this is his fault. It's all on her.
She thought she was ready, but she's not.