Later that evening, Edward finds himself alone with his thoughts while Strange's laboratory notebook that he had tried to read to distract himself lies on his chest, abandoned. The pool house is now quite chilly and filled with memories of baby Kristen. She's the only one there to keep him company that night. He lies on the part of the wicker sofa that he hadn't destroyed - but unfortunately it is closest to the window that he had broken in his rage last night and the cold keeps seeping in. He doubts that there can ever be enough towels in here to keep him warm tonight. He's under quite a thick mound of them already. But NO, he is not going back to the main house even though Oswald had extra rooms. Not while she was still there.

And now that there is no future with Kristen - or any other child of his and Lee's - the future they could have had is the only thing he thinks about. Bitterly.

Pieces of that "fevered dream," as had Lee called it, keep coming back to him - chasing him like a relentless wind down the coast of that beach - or a riptide trying to pull him out of reality.

The little girl with the dark hair. Daddy's little girl. Lee doctoring her and mothering her at at the same time. His sick little girl. Just like Kristen. Just like him. Why did this fantasy future plague him so much?

Lee . . . the mother of his child.

Edward's heart aches at the thought and he takes off his glasses, bringing his arm up to cover his eyes. Even the rims of his eyelids hurt as he shuts them tightly.

In Lee, he had seen the opposite of his mother. Lee cared for sick children - she didn't abandon them - in fact she had gone out of her way to FIND the ones that no one else cared for in The Narrows and did her best to nurse them back to health. No matter what Lee had told him about her reason for being there - for it being some kind of penance for her involvement in the release of the Tetch virus - he didn't buy it. This compulsion to care for others is an integral part of her good side. No matter how attracted he is to her darkness, this is the part of her that has held his heart captive for so long.

But now that she didn't want to be a mother - now that she had gone to such extreme measures in order to prevent it - now that that part of her was absolutely GONE - did he even love her anymore?

Edward isn't sure. In the blink of an eye, with an irrevocable snap decision, she had utterly destroyed them.

He had promised to never leave her side, but why should he stay? Is there anything left to salvage? Does he even want to try?

He falls asleep fitfully on that white wicker sofa, out in the cold of the pool house, alone, with far too much weighing on his mind.

TBC

This story continues in Exile because it is FAR from over . . . (I just had to split into two stories because it's WAAAY too long and this is a good stopping point)