A/N: Warnings for a miscarriage in this chapter. It is in the summary, but just in case anyone missed that…

And a huge thank you to Rosawyn and the others at the Rlt for helping with this chapter.

Missing an Angel's Heart
Chapter 4

They got the confirmation during the eight week. The foetal heart hadn't formed, and though there was quite a bit of medical jargon involved, what mattered was their little baby would never form, or be born.

Things became quite cold then, though the summer continued on. Kanade still placed the bell of her stethoscope on her stomach and closed her eyes and ignored the rest of the world for the gargle that was her stomach. Sometimes, she could even fool herself into thinking she could hear a heartbeat then as well.

Even after she saw that little red smear that was all they could call a body, she'd try to listen for a heartbeat she knew she wouldn't hear soon, if again. And though things moved around them in a different flow: no need now to worry about easier access to the hospital or lining up a midwife and someone to help her around the house in the weeks after birth while her husband worked. No need to worry about what colour they should paint one of the rooms they'd set aside long ago for a child – because when they'd had the house built from scratch, they'd envisioned it filled with laughing, healthy children.

She was in the hospital for a few days when she bled and then came back home, listless and weak. Her husband stayed the first few days, but the silence weighed as much on his soul as it did on hers. And they'd loved it so much before. But the suggestion to move was made half-heartedly. Things would start moving again. Grow warmer – ironically into the autumn or winter. They may have their country home filled with children yet.

But there was a question that begged to be answered. Did they want more children now, that they'd lost their first one so early? The one they'd banked all their hopes and dreams upon – or Kanade had at least. Her husband hoped more strongly for another chance, because there was that unfulfilled dream of a long life with a family and her.

Maybe that helped him. Or maybe it was because he hadn't been the one carrying that child. But he went back to work after a few weeks, once he was sure Kanade would be okay by herself. But that didn't stop him from worrying, or her from spending the days while he worked the same as she had while he'd been at home.

He'd hoped she had just needed some time to herself, that he'd been suffocating her. But she didn't say anything, nor did she comment on all the other suggestions he offered: vacation, visits from friends, a chance to try again –

Though a few tears had slipped down her cheeks when he'd said that, and he'd immediately apologised and fled. 'I don't think I can,' she said to him afterwards, over the dinner table that had, over the weeks, seemed to grow so much bigger and emptier.

He accepted that and handed her her medication. What other choice did he have?

But he couldn't stand the thought, and that feeling became stronger the more time passed. Kanade didn't seem to fully recover. Though she seemed to try and throw herself into her life again she barely moved, and the garden began to die with the autumn. The house got dustier and duller as well, as though it was far too big – and yet her husband would watch and know that the effort she put in would have had the house sparkling before.

They would have had her eyes sparkling before as well, but it had been months since he'd seen that. He rang for the doctor from work one afternoon: almost like a whim of despair. And then he hung up his phone and cried at his desk – the first time he'd cried since the day the hope for his unborn child had died.

He was lucky he was at work, and that the people who shared his office with him were kind and supportive and good friends of his and knew of his tale. They knew not to say "things would be okay" or offer meaningless condolences that had already been offered before. They were just shoulders to lean on, just like he was a shoulder for Kanade, when the two of them would sit on the porch side by side at night, staring up at the stars and closer than they lay together in bed.

Still, they couldn't change what he knew waited for him when he went back home. They could only support, and offer what help they could. There was a half-hearted threat thrown somewhere about, and he could chuckle at it. Though he knew there were many a man who'd do just what he'd been threatened not to.

But he couldn't imagine blaming Kanade, or leaving her. Not for their unborn child dying. Not for her own impending death. None of those things were her fault – and none of those were his either. He couldn't control death, or protect them from it.

'Hey,' one of his workmates asked suddenly. 'Do you believe in God?'

He considered that. 'I believe in dreams,' he answered. And he did: his dream, Kanade's dream – and there was no reason both of those dreams couldn't still be fulfilled. Though that day his heart burned a little too bright and he pushed too far.

Kanade surprised him: she screamed and cried and kicked him out of the room to sit in the dark and think how his wife was dying with both their dreams.

But his words, his feelings…they still made it through, and Kanade wrestled with it. Her mind still clung to that dark despair, but part of her now filled with desperation – her husband's desperation, and her own as well. That dream was still there, and now she had only months left to see it. There was no more time for doubts and hesitations.

And she was all over her husband the next day, apologising and pleading and begging – and he held her firmly and checked that she knew what she wanted, what to do.

Time had suddenly started to accelerate, tearing the carpet from their feet.

But it didn't happen. By the time Kanade could no longer walk the length of their house and the specialist expressed his desire to have Kanade closer to the hospital, nothing had come. And it seemed like nothing would come, because even walking across the room made her tired and breathless now.

And that just made the blanket of despair grow, because now that she had thrown herself into her dream again, it was slipping away faster than ever. She was thin and frail and that and her husband's strength was all she had to lean on anymore.

And she knew she had whittled away so much at that. Several times she apologised to him. He accepted it without ever a word of blame and held her close, her ear against his chest like she so much loved to be held.

But at his desk, when she wasn't and couldn't be there and he could let his shoulders slump forward, he thought and reasoned and searched for something that could change things yet. And then someone at work suggested something: hesitantly, as though she wasn't sure that was what he wanted, but he jumped on the idea and brought it to the doctors, and to Kanade.

By that point, she slept most of the day and all the acceptance she gave was a feathery "okay". But that was enough, and even though it meant that, between the costs for surrogacy and the palliation, their beautiful countryside house was gone, it was worth it.

Or it would be worth it, he hoped. And he was sure Kanade hoped as well, in the dreams she drifted for longer in. And if that hope, that fulfilment, could give her strength, then that would be even better…

But he thought, by that point, that he'd accepted he'd never get to raise a child with his wife. He just hoped, now, that she'd last long enough to see him or her. A child that she couldn't give birth to, but would still be a part of her.