The Heartwood oh, adi, don't you know you're still number one?

He held her for a moment, and the black bear wilted like a flower in winter in his embrace. Aditya was the only one who saw her like this, who could return her to this state! But he pulled away and she remembered that she was not a flower, but a creature with a fiercely beating heart.

"I don't need someone else," she snipped. "And I don't need better because I do not wait for you because I need you."

She had been telling him this for years.

"I just see you in them," she said, her voice thick. "Even before they know you. I see you in them, and I see Sunny and Dawn in them, and Mirza, and Daddy — " Her tears returned, though she wiped them away with a slash of her paw. Even so, her next words came out watery: "And now they will be different."

And it was stupid to be so upset about this! She would love these children. Of course she would.

"What if they're ugly?" she demanded, because fuck she hated crying, and she hated that he could make her, even if it was only by being someone she could be vulnerable around.