A/N: An alternate ending.

30 Kisses #22: cradle.

You are holding a baby in the crook of your arms when I peer through the window to look at you.

Your body is positioned to the side, so you don't see me standing outside. Your hips lean to the right, propped against a crib; your arms swings side to side slowly, elbows jutting outwards, as you rock the tiny human; your neck protrudes out, extending diagonally from your spine, to allow you to observe the baby's face.

Your posture is all sharp edges and lines, but you've never looked so comfortably curved: your once angular bones, protruding from what little fat you had, are concealed in a healthy amount of flesh now; your once bone-tight corset is loosened, no doubt to make a post-pregnancy waistline more durable. The extra weight does not give you the appearance of plumpness. Instead, it gives you one you never had: of salubrity, of vibrancy. Of life.

Your body is clothed in some ridiculous contraption of a million laces and frills and pleats, the sort of ridiculous contraptions you always admired when we walked together in the marketplace but could not afford. Your skin is no longer abnormally pale, with purple trophies of sleepless nights under your gaze, but glowing, gently tanned by the sunshine; your eyes do not sit hollow in their sockets, but gleam in the refracted light from the window's glass, alive and awake; your hair is a mess as ever atop your head, but at least it is clean now, and at least you've stopped dying it that awful artificial carnelian and allowed it to return to its natural burgundy.

Your lips are cantering in a string of syllables, some combination of nursery rhymes and chatter that I can't make out, and it takes me a moment to realize I should not be able to make out what you are saying, for you are speaking in baby-talk. That is one thing that has not changed about you, one thing that I remember well: your inability to close your mouth even when you were, quite literally, spewing gibberish.

You are joined by a man I have never seen before. Your mouth smiles when you see him approach and he leans towards you, over the baby, to press a kiss over your lips, concealing your smile from the world and from the man you do not know is watching through your window.

My hand fists around the object inside my pocket.

Your mouth is still smiling when he pulls away from you. The kiss has stamped a matching smile upon his lips. You say something to him and his smile widens as he nods. Brushing your lips over the baby's forehead, you place it inside the cradle, swaddling the little body with too many blankets for such a mildly sunny day, with too much love.

Your elbow is touched by the man. You grin at him and allow him to guide you out of the room, leaving nothing for me to see through the glass but the crib. My eyes fix upon the panes and my hand tightens inside my pocket. This is the moment I have waited for: the moment in which I will not be seen as I sneak into your home, in which I will do what I should have – what I was too disgustingly weak to do – one year ago.

The moment in which I will murder you.

You tried to convince me we could still have a life together, even if I was not alive, even if my life lay strewn behind me in a heap of beggar clothes and blood as a visceral reminder of how you had destroyed me. Even as I danced you towards death.

You fled the bakehouse after my hands could not throw you inside the flaming portal to hell.

You did not think me able to murder you. You did not think that I could kill you, not when you had given me everything: a place to store my victims, a place and the means to live, food, comfort, understanding, affection, trust . . .

But you also took away everything.

And my hands are capable now.

I seize the latch of the window and slowly, silently push it open. I hoist myself through and land noiselessly upon the ground, my eyes upon the door, my pocket burning as I step towards it to pursue you –

Then my eyes fall to the cradle. My mouth smiles as a new idea seizes hold.

I will destroy your life just as you destroyed mine. I will destroy your life without ever laying a finger upon your filthy skin again.

I stalk towards the crib. The baby is asleep.

Your baby. Your life that you put into another body and foolishly believed would remain unharmed.

My hand descends into my pocket, closes around my razor, and lifts it up, letting it breathe the world's air.

The blade snicks open with a swipe of my thumb. Mouth smiling, nostrils flaring to inhale the precious scent of victory, dead heart pulsating, I raise my arm above my head.

Your baby opens its eyes.

Your baby. Your baby's eyes. Your life that I am about to destroy gazing up at me. Your baby.

But those eyes are mine . . .

I drop the razor.

I reel backwards. I climb out of the window and close it behind me, as slowly and soundlessly as I entered. I walk away from the window, from my razor on your floor, from your home, from your healthy body and smiling mouth. From our baby's eyes.

My shoes squish through the sand with each step I take, the waves roaring in my ears, the perfume of salt and pain suffocating in my nostrils. You fulfilled your dream of living by the sea.

I used to believe that I was the dream. I used to believe that it wasn't the seaside cottage and blue briny that really mattered, just who was there to see and appreciate it alongside you – to see and appreciate you. I didn't care one way or the other what you dreamed, of course . . . but I still thought that the dream was me.

Now I know that's untrue. Now I know that the sea was the dream all along, that you needed someone to see and appreciate it alongside you – but that it did not matter who it was, so long as they could see further than from behind their window.

I fist my hands in my pockets: I cannot destroy you for being able to live. I cannot destroy you for simply being able to do what I never could.

So I am walking away from you.

You appear like a phantom before me, sudden and with no announcement.

Except there could never be any replica, ghost or otherwise, of you.

You rise from behind a mound of craggy rocks beside the shore, your comfortable curves aligning as you straighten your spine, tall and firm as a soldier marching to his victory – or to his death.

My feet halt upon the sand.

Your ridiculous excuse for a dress and your hair blow in the breeze as you approach. Your steps are too dawdling to be called a march, but too firm and syncopated to be called a meander. Your mouth is not smiling, but lies straight across your face, firm, purposeful.

You do not cease your walk until you stand before me, our bodies almost touching. Your head is tilted up and your breath falls softly on my chin. Your eyes anchored to mine. You may not have seen me through the window, but you knew I was here all along.

You always knew I would be here.

I open my mouth but you lay a finger over my lips, shaking your head, you who revels in motion and speech mutely telling the silent and dead man to not speak. There must be some irony to this, but I do not find anything amusing at the moment.

I close my lips but your finger remains resting upon them, your eyes resting upon my face. Slowly, your fingertip traces the outline of my mouth, across my cheek, about my jawline, down and around my neck in a silent and bloodless imitation of my blade.

Suddenly, your entire hand joins your single pointer finger at my neck, clasped about my throat, your eyes scalding with fire. Blood rushes to my head in instinctual panic and my hand jumps for my pocket – but my razor still lies upon the floor of your seaside home – I am utterly defenseless against you –

But maybe I always was.

My fingers untense, the pounding in my head calms, and I relax into your strangulation hold.

Perhaps this is better. Perhaps this is how we were always meant to end.

After all, there is no point keeping a dead man among the living.

Then you shoot up onto your tiptoes and crush my mouth against yours. Your left hand seizes my waist, pulling me flush against your body; your other hand remains at my throat, fingers caressing the bare skin of my neck as intimately as if we were in bed, alone together, just like we used to be.

Yours is not a hold of strangulation, but of security.

You are not murdering me, but keeping me alive.

Your kiss ends as instantly as it began: you jerk away from me without warning. Your face is impassive, your eyes neutral; the only betrayal of our kiss is your mouth, swollen and flushed crimson.

Then you leave me, running away as fast as you possibly can in the opposite direction, towards your seaside cottage and your husband and our baby.

I could run after you and catch you easily without exertion. I remain where I am.

Your dream might still be me, but we both know you can never obtain what you desire most. So this will have to be enough.

My pocket is heavy and warm with a familiar weight. Curious, I slide my hand inside the fold of fabric. My mouth smiles as your figure disappears into the horizon:

You returned to me my razor.

A/N: Reviews are love.