A/N: I don't really know if this constitutes as needed a trigger warning or not, but this fic does mention the murder of the women of Prentisstown. Nothing graphic, but it's in there.

When you don't think bout it too hard, raising a baby is a blessed thing.

But on days like this, it ain't. It's Cillian's turn to tend to the wheat while I take care of Todd, and if I'm being honest I almost wish I was out in the fields right now. Todd's been fussing all morning, crying and groaning but refusing to take his bottle, refusing to take a poo, refusing to let me go back to sleep.

If he was a little bit older his Noise would be clear enough for me to see the problem, but if he was a little bit older I wouldn't be having this problem in the first place, would I?

And so here I am, standing in the kitchen before the sun has even crested the horizon, rocking this baby boy and trying not to fall asleep on my feet.

"Shh shh," I say, tho he ain't making no sounds at the moment. He squirms fitfully in my arms, so much so that I begin to worry I'll drop him and have to sit down on a chair, bouncing him on my lap. It's been almost two months since Cillian and I have been raising Todd on our own, and truth be told I don't feel like I'm getting any better at this parenting thing.

His ma would have known what was wrong right away. My Noise turns gray at the thought of it, how full of life and love Abby was and how she always seemed to know exactly what he needed before he even had the chance to fuss. Mother's intuishun, she used to tell me with a cheeky grin, but from where I sit now, with an irritated, wriggling baby in my lap, it just feels like I ain't got no intuishun at all.

"Come on, Todd. Ain't you hungry?" I ask, holding his bottle out to him again, trying to force the nipple of the bottle in between his lips. He wails real loud at that, and I pull the bottle back, setting it down as far away from me as possible, like if Todd's within close proximity to it he'll blow up. And with the way his Noise is looking, that very well might be the case.

Infant Noise is the strangest thing. Everything is a little too bright, a little too big, like looking through a glass of water. There's no words in it yet, he's still too young for that, but other babies born in town are much older than him, and we've seen how they grow. How you can see their wants and their needs before they're even old enough to talk, before they can even understand words properly. Once a baby can properly understand the source of their discomfort, life seems to get a lot easier for parents.

When we first arrived onto New World, most of us settlers were at least in our 20s, if not older. Not an infant to be found. Obviously the shock of Noise drove half the planet insane (Cillian and I falling into the more unfortunate half, here in our cursed town), but Todd here, you see, he's never lived life without it. He's of the first generayshun of human babies that will have lived a life completely immersed in Noise.

Abby was always fascinated, reading Todd's infant Noise and being able to tell just by the blurry pictures in his thoughts when he needed a breast and when he needed a changing. She was a miracle worker, that woman.

My throat is clenching just at the thought of her, at how she was the best of us, better than all the men on this whole godforsaken planet, didn't need no Noise to be able to see it—

And how they treated her, how they looked at her and her silence like she was the evilest of evil—

And how she gave up her baby boy to us to try to escape—

And how the men attacked her before she could even make it to swamp—

My Noise is a wild thing now, howling at the horror of it all, and Todd's wailing again and ain't we just the picture of calm?

I breathe out loudly and try to quiet my thoughts, but with Todd crying and me seething it's a wonder someone hasn't come to tell us to shut up yet.

I hold him tightly and bounce and rock some more, trying to breathe and trying not to think of anything when in reality my own thoughts are crashing around us like the tide.

I am Bennison Moore, I think trying to tame my thoughts. I am a farmer. I am a man of Pretisstown. My Noise spikes a little, and Todd's cries get louder. I breathe out. I certainly ain't a father.

"You will be, in good time," Cillian says, coming in thru the back door. He's covered in sweat from trying to fix the plow again, his hair a bird's nest.

I look down at the wailing baby in my arms, Todd's Noise a kaleidoscope of colors. It's a wonder parents get any sleep at all around here.

"He's certainly up early," Cillian says. "Does he need a changing?"

I shake my head and open up my Noise for him, showing Cillian my hellish morning of trying to soothe the crying baby in my arms.

"I think he hates me," I say, sighing.

Cillian wipes his face off with a rag. "Well, if he hates you, he absolutely despises me."

I roll my eyes. "Not even."

"I'm telling the truth. Yesterday while it was my turn to take him, he bit me. Tried to take off half a finger, I swear it."

I roll my eyes again, but I smile, just a little. "He doesn't even have any teeth yet, Cillian."

He mock-scowls back. "That doesn't change the intent. No sir, this bugger here has it out for me. You, on the other hand," he says, looking in my eyes. "You, he definitely loves. You're too soft not to love."

My Noise turns a little pink at that. But it don't change how I'm feeling, not completely.

"Yer thinking about Abby," Cillian says.

"Yer reading too closely," I say.

Cillian tosses the rag into the sink, gripping the edges of it. His Noise is growing black as well, but I can see him trying to push back the darkness best as he can. "I know it don't seem like we made the right choice—"

It weren't like she left us with much of a choice at all—

But of course it weren't like the town left her with much of a choice neither. It was either run or die. Or in Abby's (and most of the women's) case, both.

"But this is what she asked for. She asked us to raise her boy and love him like she would. Even tho we don't really know what we're doing, she trusted us for a reason."

He looks at me then, the way Abby did on the day she gave us Todd. Like even when the world is falling apart around us, there's still hope that we can bring some light into it so long as we raise this baby boy right. The look that believes in me more than I believe in myself. It feels like a look I don't deserve, a responsibility I'm not ready for, but Cillian's Noise is already responding to mine with a Not true and with people surrounding you so full of belief in you, are they wrong or are you?

"Yer working yerself into a dread," Cillian says to me. That's one thing he's right about.

"I'm right about most things, actually," he says, and comes over to take Todd from my arms. "I'm right that yer going to be a great parent once you give yerself a little credit." He bounces Todd a little, which doesn't stop his fussing in the slightest. "We're doing the best we can, Ben. That's all his ma ever asked of us."

I nod, my Noise still filled with doubt, but I try to cover it with positive thoughts. Those have been a rarity in this town for many years, even more so in the horror of these last few months, and Cillian knows that, but he smiles a little at my attempt.

We're going to be better. There were many things we could've (should've) done in the past, but didn't, and that's a burden we'll have to carry for the rest of our lives. But this baby held between us is going to be everything we couldn't. We'll teach him to stand up for himself, to stand up for others. He'll be better than all of us, just like Abby was.

"That's the spirit," Cillian says, his smile climbing higher up his face. He hands Todd back to me and leans in to give me a kiss. I enjoy the feel of his mouth on mine for a second before my face scrunches up at the smell of him.

"You wreak of sweat and oil," I say. Cillian shakes his head and tuts at me as he goes back to the door.

"And you wreak of baby piss."

"What?" I squawk, looking down at Todd.

There's a wet spot growing at the bottom of Todd's cloth diaper. A wet spot that's seeping into my own shirt.

"Told you I'm right about most things," Cillian says smugly as he walks out the back door. I can hear him laughing as he goes.

I sigh loudly. Now that Todd has relieved himself he's calmed down considerably, but he's still gurgling unhappily as the wetness in his diaper begins to grow uncomfortable.

"I wish you woulda said something earlier," I say, searching the farmhouse for a clean diaper as Todd's Noise grows more and more restless. Not two minutes after he relieves himself and any minute he's gonna be crying again, I'm sure of it. The thought of it makes my head already start to ache. If only we could have spent more time with Abby, we might've known what she did to keep him so calm—

But wait—

Just there in the back of my mind—

A memory of Abby rises to the surface in my Noise. Abby in her farmhouse across the way from ours, just finished with tending the sheep for the day. She'd be tired from working in the fields and even more tired from having to do indoor chores after that, and with Todd fussing all the while she'd start singing to him—

Singing in the sweetest voice to her son, gentle enough to get him to listen—

And the baby's crying would fall away—

I look at Todd, writhing unhappily on the table as I fasten his clean diaper on him, and I wonder if my voice would have the same effect.

Now, I ain't no singer. Abby's voice was kind and soft, and mine is deep and rough and catches when I try to hold a note for more than a moment, but as Todd opens his little mouth to start another hour of wailing, I decide that it's worth it to take the chance, and I sing:

Early one morning, just as the sun was rising

I heard a maiden call from the valley below

As promised, my voice sounds clumsy and out of practice with singing, tripping over the notes and probably making a fool of myself if anyone around is close enough to hear—

But Todd—

Todd's Noise is already growing calmer.

For perhaps maybe the first time in my meager attempts at parenthood, my voice is soothing this child.

I'm smiling so wide that Todd's Noise begins to whine a bit since I've stopped. I start over again as I pick him back up, trying to force myself to remember the words, to remember when to stretch the notes and when to hold them close to me, trying to make my voice sound as nice as Abby's did when she would sing this to Todd what seems like a lifetime ago.

And so I sing, and as I sing to him I'm thinking. I'm thinking of Abby's smiling face as she held him and I'm thinking of the way Cillian sometimes sticks his tongue out at Todd and calls him a stinky monster in the kindest way and I'm thinking of Todd giggling as the sheep pass by the bedroom window and I'm thinking of the way it feels when Cillian tells me when can do it, we can raise Todd in this mess of the world and still have him turn out okay and I'm thinking of all the happiest thoughts I can, with all the warmth and love that can fit in my restless Noise—

Oh don't deceive me

Oh never leave me

And the little baby in my arms is fast asleep, Todd's eyes fluttering closed and his breath soft and even.

And maybe, just for a moment, parenthood becomes a blessed thing once more.

A/N: Someone needs to shake Patrick Ness for deciding to write this series in first person AND with an accent. Trying to keep this style consistent was a serious test of my patience.