A/N: *All fandoms and related elements belong to their respective owners, which don't include me.
A/N: **Wherein Myka is also Bianca, H.G. is also Gerri, and Nina is their daughter Christina.
A/N: ***Also posted in AO3, under the same author and same title
"Why don't you just talk to her?"
Gerri barely spares a glance at the intruder, and then returns her gaze to the Manhattan skyline, visible through the room's floor-to-ceiling glass wall. She delicately takes a sip of the wine she has been swirling in its glass, lets her tongue bathe in the taste of the red liquid, and enjoys its gentle burn as she daintily swallows. After a moment, she says, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
She hears an annoyed huff of breath, and within a second Gerri finds herself being not-so-gently gripped on her shoulders, forced to look into dark eyes very much like her own. She drawls, her British accent as pronounced as ever (and she really does prefer this accent more than the others), "Really, Christina, must you handle me like that?" She raises her glass mockingly. "Fortunately I have good reflexes, or this excellent wine would have been wasted on my carpet."
"Mother," says the woman, releasing her grip on Gerri with a soft shove, "Don't call me that. I told you like a million times, it's 'Nina' now."
Gerri rolls her eyes as she walks to the low table in the center of the room, setting down her glass after draining it of its content. "'Christina' is a perfectly good name."
"It is, but after a hundred years it kinda gets old. You must know, since 'Gerri' is what, your fourth, fifth, sixth, in as many decades?" Christina – Nina – hikes a brow in challenge, and the sight reminds Gerri of another woman, someone from her past, and with those memories come phantom beatings of her non-functioning heart that should have stopped long ago. "And your attempts at changing the subject won't work."
"My sixth in the past 72 years, thank you." Gerri shrugs unrepentantly, sits down on the couch with a grace only someone like them could possess, and stares up at her daughter. "What do you want me to do?"
Nina runs a hand through her curly hair, expressing her exasperation with her mother's stubbornness. At the gesture Gerri again feels stirrings of long-buried emotions, because Nina is not the only one who does that whenever exasperated with her.
"It is not a question of what I want you to do, because you and I both know the answer to that," Nina replies, sitting down beside Gerri with equal grace. "It is a question of what you want to do."
"What I want to do," Gerri begins, "is to board a plane to Romania early tomorrow and stay in my hometown for a couple of days. But since you have ripped my passport and ticket to shreds, I suppose that would be delayed for a while."
Her daughter doesn't even seem the least bit apologetic, knowing that Gerri could just very well acquire new ones in the blink of an eye. "I only ripped them because you were being so stubborn. And 'a couple of days?' Really?" Nina scoffs. "The last time you said that phrase you're gone for like, a decade. And I only heard from you every three weeks." Her eyes turn accusing. "For all I knew you could have pulled that off again."
"You do know that our species don't really have a very good sense of time, no?"
"I do, but that doesn't mean you get to run off like that. And you are so damn hard to track."
"Language, Christina."
"I'm not a child." Nina rolls her eyes at the reprimand. She adds, though she knows it'd be ignored, "And it's 'Nina.'"
She's right.
"You are my child, no matter how many centuries pass."
"See? You say that, but then you disappear on me all the time."
"That's hardly true. That's an exaggeration and you know it. I always return to you soon enough. And you know I'd be there for you if there's even the smallest hint of danger in the air."
"I don't want to be with you just during times of danger, Mother." Nina's eyes and voice turn soft. "I want things to be the way they were. Before everything."
Gerri knows what she means by 'before,' and she feels so, so helpless, with her daughter looking at her with eyes filled with all the sadness she herself feels.
Nina murmurs, and Gerri aches for her all the more, "You can't just always leave."
And Gerri also knows that though Nina does not say it, she means that one particular instance when she left with hardly even a word, and was gone for a long time. A decade, Christina said. And that is a really long time; it seemed that way, at least for Christina. Her inner clock is not as old and rusty as Gerri's, who'd been around for so many years that a year sometimes feels like just a single minute.
"Darling," Gerri placates for what feels like the thousandth time – they have had this conversation countless of times, in varying forms, some more aggressive and intense than the others, "you know why I did that."
"You were heart-broken."
Gerri winces at the blunt statement, but she could not bring herself to refute it. It was true, anyway. And no matter what she says to the contrary, it still is.
Even if she doesn't actually have a proper heart right now, one that pumps and sends blood through her system. She hasn't in a long, long time.
And despite her extensive vocabulary she cannot find the right words to respond to the statement, for the right words don't seem to exist at all, and so she just shrugs again.
What use are words for, anyway, if the smallest gestures speak volumes of what's inside her non-existent soul?
Nina sighs at her mother's silence. She recognizes the resignation in those eyes as dark as onyxes and she sees that look of self-loathing and hopelessness in their depths. She knows that her mother is lost in memories of times long past that she wishes she could take back, and Nina certainly shares the sentiment.
She wants her family in the way it used to be, herself and her mother and that woman, the three of them together, surrounded with love and laughter and endless wonder.
Her motivations might be selfish, because she honestly just wants to be happy again, but deep inside she knows that her mother needs it as much as she does. Maybe more so, because Gerri never looked the same way she did more than a hundred years ago. She had never looked as happy and content and satisfied as before.
Before the woman left.
Because after that, well…
Gerri, no matter how adamantly she claims otherwise, has been drowning in sorrow. Sorrow for the actions she had taken, for the events that had come to pass.
Actions and events that had been, because she thought she lost Nina forever.
So yes, maybe Nina feels guilty that she is the crux of their separation. Maybe she feels responsible for the loss of her mother's happiness. And maybe she feels compelled to mend the woman's damaged metaphorical heart.
She just wishes that Gerri would take some actions in mending it, too.
She stares at woman who's been her anchor for as long as she can remember, and she knows there is longing in there, for someone so near and yet so out of reach. "You could fix it, you know." Because Nina really believes that Gerri can.
But apparently Gerri does not. And she says so. "It's too late for that."
Nina shakes her head, exasperated and determined at the same time. "You've been alive for centuries, Mother. Surely you know that it's never too late for anything."
"What's broken should just remain broken sometimes."
"She wouldn't want that. Not for you."
Gerri smiles, but it does not reach her eyes. "I want that for myself."
"You know that's not true."
"I deserve it, Christina."
Nina reaches out and wraps her arms around her mother – her beautiful, intelligent, powerful but desolate, lonely, despondent mother – and murmurs, "You don't." Her voice is low as she calms, consoles, comforts. "You don't," she repeats, tightening her hold as Gerri melts into her, and she repeats it, over and over and over again, hoping for Gerri to believe it herself.
Because Gerri does not deserve a broken heart.
She never did.
She deserves happiness.
And so as she thinks that, with her mother in her arms, crying with tears that will never be shed, she silently vows.
Christina (Nina… whatever, she's going to change it soon enough, anyway) will do everything in her power for Gerri to attain that.
Everything.
