#i will write some soft fic with a smol!centaur kev

[kariachi]

Me: I will write some chill centaur au fic with Eva about Kevin.

My Brain: Oh no, ‘chill’ ain’t happening

~

Kevin was a very precious child and Eva has Regrets.

~~

She may have been staring at the photo in her hand for more than a few minutes, going by the rumbling of her stomach. Not that she could be blamed for it- going through old pictures was always the sort’ve thing just asking to jam itself under your ribs. There was never truly escaping it.

This time she’d gotten herself caught on a picture of her son for what had to have been the millionth time since everything had gone to shit. It was of the two of them, only months before he’d vanished, playing in the summer sun. His fur had still been red-brown then, the last cycles of chick down clinging to all the places he had visible scutes now. He’d only been ten at the time, but already was clearly taller and vastly heavier than Eva herself. They used to get people assuming he was adopted, given she and Harvey’s sizes compared to his bulk.

He was smiling in the picture, a big sharp-toothed grin that shone like the sun just as much as Devin’s had, and that was probably what had stopped her short. There’d been plenty of smiles for her that last year, from him and Harvey both, but it was only with the painful twist of hindsight that she’d realized how few of them shone like this. How few were real, rather than just desperate attempts to hide the fact their household was a ticking timebomb from her.

Her baby, even now too young for any of the struggles he’d had to face, had hidden the downward spiral of Harvey’s behavior and his own wellbeing from her. Because even that young he blamed himself and wanted better for his loved ones. There wasn’t anything that cut through a mother’s heart like that, even for a shoddy one like her, and Eva knew full well she would carry the guilt of not realizing before it was too late with her to the grave.

Shaking herself from her half-stupor, she forced herself to her hooves. She stretched her legs, careful of her injured ankle, and went to dig up an empty picture frame. The photo was a good one, it deserved to be up.

And if it served as yet another of her million reminders of how much she had to make up for now she had Kevin back- if not hale or whole at least alive and free- well.

It certainly kept her pride in check.