Title: Finding Happily Ever After
Genre: Romance (brief Angst)
Rating: T
Pairing: Yuuhi x Aya, past Touya x Aya
Spoilers: N/A
Summary: One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist.
Word Count: 445
Warnings: Drabble series
Disclaimer: Ceres: Celestial Legend is not mine. Summary is a quote by Philip Pullman.
A/N: Reminds me a little of the end of Absolute Boyfriend, which I guess is apropos.
It isn't sudden, when he dies. She's knows it's coming, they both do. He was mortal now, and had lived a full life in the four scant years they were together. It was more than he had expected himself to get anyway, and he told Aya as much. But still… no one wants to lose their husband and the father of their children.
Aki is only one, so he doesn't really understand about death and loss. He knows that Toya isn't around, but he has the memory of an infant still, so he soon starts to forget. But Mizu is four. She remembers her father, probably always will. She remembers bedtime stories and swimming lessons and piggy back rides. She understands that he is gone. But she doesn't understand death, so she constantly asks when he will be back, when daddy will be home. It's heartbreaking.
Aya holds back tears and forces a smile onto her face every time she tries to explain that he isn't. That he's gone somewhere very far away, where they can't visit. But where he is at peace and happy. She doesn't want Mizu's first memories of her mother to be of her sad and crying. So she tries to put on a brave front.
But she is still very young. Only twenty. And she has a four year old and a one year old on her hips and a dead husband and no skills. There are bills and school and chores and doctor's appointments. She's suddenly realizing how much she should have listened to Toya when he tried to teach her these things instead of only wanting to spend time together. She had refused to listen to reason, wanting only to make happy memories, wanting to not think of the future. And now the future was here and she wasn't ready for it.
Idly she watched Mizu dangle a toy at a laughing Aki. She had just enough money left for about a week of daycare; a week in which she had to find a job or it was going to become harder to make ends meet. Harder and harder until it was impossible.
She would just have to pray that everything worked out.