It was a simple enough question he posed. But those three words were enough to knock her off kilter, enough to scatter her carefully won composure. The uneven line of her jaw hardened as she clenched her teeth, and lime green eyes glinted with a steely light as she looked at him now. She hadn't known what he would say; she hadn't even had certain expectations formed in her mind. But the further questioning just set something off inside of her, like a ticking bomb. “You were there for some of it, if you recall,” she said, a thread of venomous steel in her words. They had shared together in that act of creation, but it had been her carrying the weight of the loss until that moment. How did he expect her to respond? “But I'll give you the blow by blow recap if you really need it.” Her words were acerbic and her tone was acidic.
What did he mean, what had happened? She didn't want to cycle backward through memory. She wanted to forge a way forward; she wanted to get out of the here and now, and go further into the future where this did not hurt so much or so deeply. The simple truth was that she had lost a child, children - she couldn't be certain if they had been many or few. It had been too soon in her pregnancy to judge that. But the fact of the matter was that there had been life inside her, dependent on her, and she had failed in safeguarding that gift. It was a bitter failure to swallow twice in one lifetime.
There was anger, so much anger welling up inside of her. She didn't know who to direct at it. None of this was Jefferson's fault, and she knew that. In fact, if he hadn't found her when he had, she might have slipped away for good. Still, she couldn't handle her situation; she had woken up changed, a stranger in unrecognizable skin with an unrecognizable face.
Geneva looked away from him now, her eyes settling on an unremarkable spot on the wall. Her voice settled, the edge of anger dying down to leave her voice flat again. “When you left to stay in AniWaya, I had begun to feel a little strange, a little off and too emotional. I went to confer with Naniko a few days into your stay, and she confirmed that I was pregnant.” Was. No longer did she house budding life inside of her. She felt an emptiness below her heart, where she should still be carrying that life, an emptiness that echoed that new chasm in her heart.
She looked back at him again, her features unreadable now. They didn't soften as she looked at him, not exactly. But some of the hard edge was gone and replaced by something distorted and twisted by sadness and self directed rage. “I didn't know how to tell you, once you were back. I didn't know what you'd think - we never talked about it. And I was thinking of Addison, and how you loved her. And I was just so sick of being afraid, of what you'd think, of if I'd fail in this again...Of every damn thing that ever kept me from doing what I wanted...and I fell.”