(Part I) -2036-
{Peter's P.O.V}
Twenty one years later he tells his daughter this story, in the back of a different, dimly lit train while she's seated beside him, a bench away from her grandfather, her fingers, playing with the pendent she holds in the same place he once did.
"What happened to her?" she asks, as she leans her elbows on her knees, matching the slack of his posture, "My mom. Is she-?"
She doesn't say the word, but the life of it lingers, a thick suffocation in the air of silent cononation, a death-grip of suggestion that sucks the light side of this reunion to some distant place.
Inside the congestion, she patiently, carefully waits, her eyes big under the white-yellow fluorescence, a curious, argent blue delicately lined with the sadness of possibility, a hurt of the same green that to him, he saw a day ago, in another beautiful gaze, in another tragic time.
All he can do is curve his mouth, a small break of the somber pose he feels on his face, the pain of memory too great an ache, that if he didn't crack through it, it'd entomb him completely.
More so than it has been the past twenty minutes.
He'd taken in Etta's cheekbones, her whisper-gold hair, the curve of her chin that he'd lined, years ago, with tiny, damp raspberries as fits of giggles betrayed her resistance.
In front of him, begging that he know her, was the angelic little girl he'd given up. Twenty four, and grown, she was just as beautiful as he'd known she would be.
And at first, it'd stunned him, his body, frozen in realization, in miraculous unbelief, then shaking with joy as he hugged her to him, smelling still, somehow, of strawberries and baby powder, the nasal-factory memory he'd committed forever to his bank of grand moments.
Then his heart choked, in constricted torment, as he'd called her his baby, hearing, in the back of his mind, her mother's same words when she'd rock her to sleep, mark her face with wet kisses.
This torture he feels, this difficult grasp of reality, is the impact of two life loves, a pain that pulls under his skin.
Both ends of his emotional spectrum tying knots in his chest, ping-ponging sound resolve, breaking his lungs, till he thinks they could shatter.
And as she stares at him, waiting, the lines of her brow crinkle, raise, the same crease of question he tries not to picture on another woman he held close.
Because he can't talk, not yet, he reaches out, smooths the line with his thumb, imagining for a moment, that he's comforting again, his four year old's sadness, his little girl's nightmare.
Always, she'll be his baby girl. His little Bullet.
And as she leans into his palm, absorbing the soft touch, he almost feels like breaking, but fights it instead, knows he has to be strong because this is his stolen-away universe, his re-discovered lost world.
"I don't know, sweetheart." he finally says, as his thumb moves to the soft skin of her cheek, and he swallows, his throat already dry from recollection, "I just...lost her. I lost them both."
His breath labors, as again, he chastises himself, another plummet of his guilt that drops his chest, hollows it out.
"And I'll never forgive myself for letting it happen."
