I wrote a tiny thing

after finally seeing infinity war (yuuup so behind) 

He watches her sleep sometimes.

 

Only sometimes. A child’s sleep should be untroubled, as his was in the days before Titan fell. The days before his young mind could even imagine devastation. The days when all was well, and he was warm and soft and well-protected.

 

She doesn’t sleep like that. She never has. She tosses and turns and murmurs to herself in a language he hasn’t quite learned yet. One he is learning because she speaks it, and he wants to understand. 

 

She does not cry, not even in her dreams. She has always been strong, from that first moment she ran to him, fearless and wild, and asked Where is my mother? while the others trembled, and fled, and died.

 

She has always been brave. 

 

She settles, sometimes, for a moment. Her fluttering eyelids smooth and her grasping hands still and sometimes she almost smiles. It melts something in him when he sees it, and he does not speak but he feels the tears come. They fill his eyes but he dares not let them fall, for fear she will wake and see him weeping.

 

She will try to comfort him if she sees it. That melts him too. But she doesn’t owe him comfort, not when she’s dreaming of things he has done.

 

His followers call it salvation, pruning a planet of its overabundance so the rest may thrive. He calls it that too, sometimes. It would have saved Titan, had they done it in time.

 

But they have their fervor to hide in. They can call it cleansing and worship him for bringing it. He has no such illusions. He knows that he is killing, and he knows, staring at his daughter’s fitful sleep, that no life can be replaced.

 

So when she wakes, calling for a mother his own followers slew, he wraps a hand around her head and soothes her, but does not pretend. He is not her mother, though he loves her as a mother would, and is prouder of her than any other being could be. 

 

He will not lie. Not about where her dreams come from, or why they will not leave her. Not about what he does, or what he has done, or what he has left to do.

 

Not to the most precious life he spared.