lacuna, n

He passes an alley on his way home, and strings of fairy lights are draped from one roof to the other all down the alley to form a canopy of dancing lights. He slows, taking in the lights, and his mouth twists in a half-smile. He remembers seeing lights strewn like this once, years since, and he remembers watching gold flecks of light and their shadows dancing on her golden hair and her golden smile and her golden dress. He remembers the way she would throw her head back and laugh, how her whole body would shake with laughter. If he closes his eyes, he thinks he'll be able to remember the music and how she felt swaying in his arms.

He gives himself a mental shake and walks on, the sky lightening behind him in purples and pinks and faded blues. He remembers the desire in her eyes before she would kiss him, and the split second of hesitance in them before he would kiss her. He recalls her myriad of glares with a chuckle, and running through his mental inventory of her death stares takes him all the way home.

It's been a long time since he thought of her glares, but not too long since he last thought of her. In recent months, he's thought about her, a lot. He puts the bottle of the milk in the fridge and folds the paper bag neatly, cracks two eggs in the pan, puts bread in the toaster. Mostly, he's thought about the things she taught him over the years, and the things he's taught the people he loves and the things he wants to teach the people he loves.

The eggs sizzle and he watches them carefully to make sure the edges don't burn.

He's learnt that you teach some things without meaning to, and you can't ever take them back. He wonders if she knows this. He remembers the first time his wife had yelled I can't do this anymore! and how he'd frozen up in response. Until that moment, he hadn't realised he'd learned that lesson from her, hadn't realised that he'd associated that with people– her– leaving.

Later, his wife had told him that he'd grabbed her wrist, tight enough to bruise, and stared at her with a panicked desperation in his unseeing eyes. He never told her what he was seeing: the first time she had yelled that at him and sent back divorce papers, and the second time she had whispered that to him while lying in SHIELD's med bay in hospital scrubs, and how she had packed a bag in the dead of night, limped out of base, and never looked back. No, he never told his wife that. There were some things she didn't need to hear and didn't need to know that he still remembered.

She never said that phrase again, though.

The toaster dings and he fishes them out, grabbing jam from the fridge and setting it on the counter. He lifts the eggs onto plates, giving himself a mental high-five when neither of the yolks break.

He's learned from Bobbi, oh, he's learned. And the lesson he's been revisiting the past few weeks is the one where she taught him that loving someone didn't mean they wouldn't ever leave you. That loving someone was not necessarily the same as staying. That maybe, people had different definitions of love, and that meant that each I love you between two people– them– might not have ever meant the same thing.

Little legs toddle into the kitchen and a little hand tugs on his pant leg. He turns with a smile, hoisting the toddler in his arms. "Mornin', sweetheart." He eases the little thumb out of the little mouth and mimes a balancing act with the plates and the baby. The baby giggles, her first teeth showing, and his heart melts and aches at the same time.

He sets the plates down on the table and sits the baby in his lap, running a gentle hand through her curls, watching the way she smiled and laughed and looked at him. She was blonde, but the platinum of her mother, not Bob; she had a shy, sweet smile, not Bob's confident grin; and when she laughed, it was a quiet giggle and with a soul-piercing stare, with her mother's brown eyes, not Bob's blue.

He presses a kiss to her forehead, eyes drifting shut. She wasn't theirs, and she would never be, and some part of him still ached and longed for what could have been. He forces that part back into its box in a dark corner of his mind and makes a mental note to reinforce it with steel and not to open it, next time. He opens his eyes, and the baby is staring at him with large, trusting, brown eyes.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees the woman he married– and loves, he knows he does. He does. (He ignores the voice that says there are different kinds of love.)– draw her robe together and lean in the doorway watching them, but he holds his baby's gaze solemnly and whispers.

"I love you sweetheart, and I won't ever leave you."

A/n:
lacuna, n
An unfilled space; a gap

Based on the tumblr prompt: "things you said with a baby in your arms".

Title is a word prompt from Jules3033.

I came up with this prompt, and when I did, I imagined it would be something sweet, or cute, or funny. Every time I saw this on my to-do list, I thought it would be, too. …Life never really quite happens the way you imagine it, does it?