A/N: Blablabla
WHIPPED CREAM
This year, Peter spends his birthday alone.
There are people around him, people who once upon a time celebrated such events with cakes and silly hats and...'early-morning celebrations'. But the kind of loneliness he feels is one that resides in your bones even when you're surrounded.
He tries not to care, well too aware of the fact that a birthday is the very last thing any of them could care about, these days. What hurts at that instant isn't the loneliness, but the recurring thoughts of his previous birthdays, especially the last one. It had happened only a few months before the Purge.
He remembers walking into the kitchen despite being forbidden to do so, and finding his girls elbows deep into whipped cream –especially Etta.
Olivia was nicely decorated as well, but it was mostly because she had been attempting to stop their daughter from repeatedly plunging her small hands into the bowl and eating handfuls of cream; Etta had been having too much fun showing her mother she would not be tamed so easily. He remembers Olivia's disapproving look when she had noticed him, but instead of scowling him for walking in the kitchen, she had said what she often said, her face spattered with whipped cream:
"How did your mother survive you?"
She hadn't, actually, but he knew what she meant. He had joined her at the kitchen table as she gave up trying to control Henrietta, who dove right back into the bowl.
"For one thing, she never tried to bake with me. Way too hazardous," he had told her with a smug smile, leaning down to kiss some cream off Olivia's nose, being intentionally slow.
Soon, he had felt small –and undoubtedly very sticky- fingers tug at his shirt, and he had looked down at his daughter, whose face was more whipped cream than anything else.
"It's so yummy daddy!" she had exclaimed with that enthusiastic voice that was so her; he had used his index finger to wipe some cream off her cheek, before licking it off.
"It sure is, Princess," he had agreed with a wink, while Olivia dropped her forehead against his shoulder and sighed in defeat, mumbling something about the two of them always teaming up against her.
He barely catches a glimpse of his wife, today.
It's not enough for him to notice yet again just how thin she's getting, but it is enough to make the relentless and throbbing ache of loss more acute. Walter barely looks at him either, having been shut down too many times by his heartbroken, guilt-stricken son.
Above everything else, what hurts the most is the thought of his baby girl, long gone now. Because spending his birthday alone isn't the problem.
Spending another day without his family is.