A/N: Remember Day's vision in "The Fire..."? Go reread if you don't. It's addressed here. ~ Mika
Between Chapters 1 and 2, "The Fire..."
Deimin "Day" Ghosten stroked Jakuelynn's face, gazing at her as she slept peacefully – something she rarely did. His mind and stomach turned over endlessly, the effect of his premonition forming a lump in his throat. He tried to control his emotions, but what he'd seen had devastated him.
I'm...going to be a father.
His eyes warmed with tears. He turned away, furiously scrubbing at his eyes, knowing it wouldn't do any good. He'd never told Nel, but he'd always wanted a family; to come home and have a woman, if not a wife, and a clutch of children waiting for him.
Sure, his deep-rooted desire was coming true –
– but I'm not going to see him grow up.
Deimin pressed his hands to his eyes, trying not to break down; trying being the crux of the operation. Unfortunately for him, that operation was failing.
His mother had warned him about the dangers that came with the genetic gift (or curse, depending on how one viewed it) she had passed on to him. He couldn't ask any of his older sisters if they had experienced similar visions; he had been the only Ghosten child to inherit clairvoyance from their mother. As Deimin lay on his back staring at the black ceiling above him, his mind began to formulate questions, questions he wanted to ask his mother next time he saw her – that is, if he was still alive the next time he saw her. Has she seen her own death? Does she know where my father is? Did she foresee all of this; having six children, the last being a son who would never know his father?
He suddenly realised something. Eraux, from what his mother had told him, had never known his own father, Deimin did not know his father and the son whom he and Jakuelynn had conceived together – assuming she was already pregnant, which Deimin had an inexplicably strong feeling that she was – would only know his father through what he was told by his mother too.
"Why our family?" he wondered out loud. "Three generations...Why...can't it just leave us alone?"
"Hnnnh?" murmured a sleepy voice next to him. "W'sup?"
"Nothing, honey," he soothed, reassuring. "Go back to sleep." I can't tell you even if I wanted, he silently added.
"Sure?"
"Sure as sure can be."
"H'kay." She sighed and settled down again. Fighting his ever-turning mind, Deimin decided not to worry about the visions, even though it crippled his heart to such intensity that sleep was not an option. Facing his common-law wife's back, he rested one arm around her waist and his head against her warm back, listening to every natural rhythm beating inside of her until sleep finally tugged him away as the sky outside began to lighten.