One shot turned into a multi fic.


The sun burnt amber orange in the sky, its jagged rays searing a path of destruction upon the infested Lima green. Will often jogged through the park, even as the seasons tumbled their way through Fall and Winter, but the Spring break had pounced upon the heat wave, swarms of children, over agitated parents claiming the green as their playground. Will decided to skip running that day and tuck behind the folds of crowds, settling in a serene hideaway that most locals hadn't yet discovered towards the back of budding flowerbeds.

His son danced around him, nature gathering in his expression. Harry explored with his innocent hands, listening intently to the breath of wind, his hands pasted with muddy experience.

Will sat up, discarding his t-shirt as his body thrust up to the sunlight. His eyes never left his son. Two years ago, he had searched, running his mind through music to somehow suppress the void she had left. His wife, he had looked through her too, transparently looked for amber or auburn, anything that would still alight his memory of her. But his son, Will began to the look through the visions his son saw through. The joys of firsts, first laughs, first words, first steps. Watching Harry make his first footprint on the world, Will erased his, and painted it again, a fresh canvas on Earth for him to relearn, and to move on.

Close the past to memory, but somehow it finds a crack.

...

An hour later, an exhausted Harry collapsed upon his father's lap. They had run with the ball none stop, laughing in the nature of being free. He loved holding his son as it grounded him, reminding him of the missed days of his youth, when his father, as hard as he had tried, spent time sobering his mother up than helping save the world.

It was still early on. With his sleeping son next to him, Will wrote. He had started in the fresh of his teenage years, his journal tucked neatly into his backpack as he wandered the hallways of McKinley, not knowing that ten, twenty years later, he would be retracing them. A pathway to his future. He wrote mostly poems, and music, but his pen inked the page with a story this time, telling of a young girl, not yet identifiable apart from her mane of red that stood tall on her crown. She was small, boxed in by where she came from, how she came and the trapped understanding of knowledge. Will didn't know where this story took abundance from, whether his own childhood had projected into this fictional girl. But he loved her, fictional or not. Unknowingly, his work rewrote a girl a second history, transforming a paper weight girl to life.

The sounds of laughter stilled Wills pen. Harry roused a little, his brown eyes still diluted with sleep. Through the heaviness of bushes, a little girl bound forward, her dress the colour of sunshine, her smile dedicated to the rise of dandelions that budded from the earth.

"Sophia! We do not run off, do we?" As the girl stopped in her tracks, his expression turned to distress. Emma.

"Emma?" She was shunned to silence, and Sophia fell to the ground, her young eyes craving curiosity as she split her time between the two of them.

She had changed, but in a mature way that gave off even more elegance before. Her hair had grown longer, that was the first thing he noticed. He remembered the way her hair fell like silk, draping down her back, covering the wake of pale skin that he could soon kiss. Her makeup was lined differently, almost none existent. He had told her once he preferred her whole skin naked, so he could watch the blush creep up on her, the blush that wrote on her body she loved him, made love to him. Her style certainly hadn't wavered, and he loved seeing her much more relaxed like this, curtains of yellow floating angelically through the small gush of air.

"Your back" Will exclaimed, as Emma hid behind the lies of deceit, clutching his daughter protectively in her arms. She was still shocked in silence, captive by her own mistakes. How she wished she had told him sooner, but it scared her to let him in to their lives. He's a father, a husband, what right did she have to snatch him away? She refused his love; cost her daughter the father she deserved.

She had cost him the daughter he so wanted with her.

"Actually, we moved back a short while ago". Another lie towards the truth.

"We?" Will looked perplexed but his eyes soon settled on Sophia, her gaping big eyes staring so blindly obvious to him. He looked back at Emma, his chest still bare to her and he understood.

"Mine?" He could barely talk, his voice vanishing to the earth as she nodded, painfully, regret running like the wild rivers down eroded banks. "How could you?"

The tears were like the blackness inside of him, still, but barely keeping him afloat. The pain brushed by him with its casual glance, as Emma crept forward with their little girl as an offering. Sophia hid in her mother's shoulder, obviously confused in a conflict between deceit and love. Now, only her magnificent red hair that curled round her shoulders was what he could see of his daughter.

"Can we please talk?" Her eyes begged as his head crammed sideways with torment and longing, both intertwined with memory.

He shortly breezed his answer, his gaze never faulting to leave hers.

...

Terri potted round the kitchen, not wanting to leave for work, clearly distressed by the woman she knew Will still loved sat on her couch. Silence hadn't left them, Wills eye only trained on the little girl who shyly played with his energetic son.

A call from the kitchen, and both Will and Harry's ear's pricked up. "I'm going to work now, sweetheart give mommy a kiss". The words felt uncomfortable, and left the young boy confused as his mother held out arms that normally didn't surface before work. It was a performance, an act, to shield her pain, to prove that she was just as good as Emma, just as loving and caring. "Sweetheart, come here".

Harry remained reluctant, transfixed on his half sister that sat before him. Will got up, scooping his son into his arms, blowing raspberries onto his stomach as the boy squirmed with delight. "Say bye bye to mommy Harry".

Placing his young arms around Terri's neck, his body still covered by Will's, Harry said goodbye, and Terri slipped out of the door, knowing full well that her small grasp she still had on her 'perfect family' was slipping further now.

...

"You lied". It was the truth, but it felt bitter against his tongue. They had put the children in bed together half an hour before, Emma prepared with Sophia's essentials in her bag. They had agreed this routine back in the park, to talk while the children slept. And then for Emma to slip into the night time when Terri got back, a sleeping Sophia bundled in the back of her car.

"You had a son on the way, a wife". Emma's heart bled, feeling week in contrast to Wills strong tone.

"I had a daughter too", he sat sadly still angry, and for the first time that evening, he looked at her.

Her eyes trailed the room, pictures of Harry, of Will and Harry, Terri and Will, a room made up of a life she could have destroyed. Will watched all her movements, noting the way she sighed, and sipped her tea, her dainty fingers curled round the cup she had brought him one year after he dropped his in the staffroom.

"Harry's beautiful" she whispered to her tea, her gaze never braving itself to look him straight in the eye.

He didn't say a word, her humility transcending.

"How's Terri?" she tried again. She wanted his forgiveness, but he sat so rigid, so firmly defiant to her attempts.

He glared up to her again, and he felt shivers when he should have felt excitement. He loved her, still, but it was too much. Something about being betrayed, being denied a child he hadn't known about, it killed him. It killed her, but in a different way. She had so wanted him, to feel her palm sweat as she gave birth to their daughter, to watch him cradle their baby in his arms with such excitement. Instead she was alone, surrounded by caving white walls that loomed against her as her daughter cried out, already sensing that something was not quite right.

He moved forward to where she sat, studying her body with his eyes. Her eyes closed as his breath washed over her, stinging her nostrils with the sense of utter betrayal.

"Open your eyes". She did as she was told, listening to the tic of the clock, as his silence proved too much. He had spent so long imagining seeing her again, so much time planning where he could touch her and hold her, running his tongue down her body, touching her pale, inviting flesh.

"Have you been with another man" he whispered, reaching his lips to her neck as she violently shook.

"Only you".

The warmth of her body, the bones of a bird, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. But beneath that, his pain multiplied.

"Have you imagined us together?"

She was silent, her body stone still as she faintly nodded. She was hot, so incredibly hot and she wanted to give herself to him again, like so often she had dreamed.

He kissed her neck, her collar bone that stuck out more. She was fragile, but his hands roughened against her, pulling at the white blouse she had changed into.

Her breasts, they heaved deliciously, larger than he remembered. He hands plucked at more buttons while her body hummed, heaving into the empty space between them.

"Do you remember how I sucked on them?" His fingers ran over her bra.

Emma's mouth slacked, her tongue lapping at her dry lips. "Yes"

"And how I used to touch you?" His fingers pressed roughly into her panties, her skirt covering his arm, their adultery.

She nodded in utter compliance and he felt guilty for what he was doing. But not so much he was willing to stop.

"Take off your blouse".

It was direct, but his voice softened, and he waited until she took it off, his eyes memorising her body like this, how the faded, red scar ran on her lower abdomen, the secret she couldn't hide.

She opened her eyes when she felt his tongue on her body, retracing the red mark. She was hungry, so needing of him that she let out a moan, her hips touching his open mouth. He felt hard, but he wouldn't allow her it, not yet. And it killed him to have her so close, and yet still he couldn't forgive.

"Will, God, kiss me".

Her hand tightened round his collar, "You want me to kiss you".

She was so desperate, so open, "God yes".

His lips hovered above her pink, desiring ones but before she had time to realize, he was off the couch and into the bedroom, leaving her half naked and utterly confused.

"Will?" Her blouse fell down her shoulders, and she looked as though she had been fucked. He stood over Harry's bed, and then glanced to Sophia sleeping soundly in his son's crib.

His head never turned, his grip on the crib tightening immensely. "You think I can kiss you now?"

"Will" she whimpered, her head falling in shame. Walking to him, she placed a hand to his shoulder and reluctantly, as much as he wanted her, he shrugged her off.

"Don't Emma."

Sophia stirred at the soft whimpers of her mom. Will gazed down at the little girl, sadness, regret.

"I want to be a part of her life Emma, you owe me that much".

He heard the door, but didn't bother to alert Emma who held Sophia to her bosom. The infant drifted off again.

"And what about me, do you not want me, or to see me?"

He did, so passionately, and his body twitched with the prospect that he could if he let himself.

"You should go".

Terri stood listening, hearing the emotion in the other woman's tone. Sophia was Will's, she had guessed, but the clarification shook her to silence.

Emma slipped from the bedroom to the longue, mascara masking her shock to see Terri stood there, while she stood half naked with this woman's husband's child.

Will was the one who now stood listening, his ears pressed tightly to the door, the tears mixing against the crib he had built.

"Let me take her for you".

Terri's heart expanded, as Emma reluctantly handed over Will's daughter to his wife. Emma, in front of Terri buttoned her top up, covering her scar with layers of lies and deceit.

Sophia didn't stir, her head falling softly to Terri's shoulder. Denying that their little girl was beautiful would have been a lie, and so Terri told Emma so, to which the redhead smiled regretfully.

"I'm sorry Terri". The room fell silent; all three adults conflicted with lies, love and want.

Terri handed Sophia back to Emma, "Come round tomorrow".

The wife placed a kiss to her husband's other child and then a kiss to the mother of his little girl.

"Sophia needs Will as much as Will needs you."