Taking a cold bath for the umpteenth time that night, Cassian sat on the bed, drying his wet hair with a towel. When he was done, he placed the towel around his neck, and his Amber-brown eyes shifted to check the time on the wall clock.
It was already past 10pm, but Madeline hasn’t come to bed yet.
"Sigh... where is she?" He muttered, trying to remember if she told him anything about stepping out before he went to bathe, but since he was eager to confirm if she was alright, he stepped out of the room to go look for her.
Sauntering through the archway with both his hands in his pocket, his eyes searched for the woman who was making it difficult for him to fall asleep. Closing in on where the living room was located, Cassian could hear the cute giggling of a child, and when he peeked from a corner - on the couch, Madeline was seated with little Ethan who giggled contentedly at the rhyme song Madeline sang to him.
"One, two, three, four, five, once I caught a fish alive, six, seven, eight, nine, ten..."
"Then I let go again." Ethan completed it, earning an impressive smile from Madeline who gave him a high-five as his reward.
"Okay another one." Madeline uttered softly while using a rubber band to tie Ethan’s hair at the front. " A sailor went to sea, sea, sea, to see what he could see, see, see, but all that he could see, see, see..."
"Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea." Ethan completed with a cheerful grin as he stretched both his hands out wide to emphasize how big the deep blue sea is, and by then, Madeline had finished with his hair as she tied it into two ponytails, stretching it at the tip so it would look fuller.
"Good boy!" She clapped for him, "see? I’m done with your hair, do you like it?" She asked Ethan who raised his two small hands to touch the fluffy ponytail of his hair, and he nodded his head.
"You like it?"
He nodded again, shifting back, but Madeline caught both his legs as she pulled him forward, giving him the tickles in his abdomen that elicited a laugh from the child.
"Are you telling your big sister the truth?" She continued to give him the tickles, and he laughed while falling back on the couch, trying to stop Madeline from tickling him any further.
"Will you go to sleep? Do you promise to go to bed this time?"
"Yes." He answered in between his laugh, and Cassian who observed from a corner, didn’t even realize when he leaned his shoulder against the wall, watching them with a smile subconsciously forming on his lips.
When did they get here and little Ethan is already fond of her? There was a strange butterfly-flapping its wings feeling in his heart as he watched their lovely interaction, and he knew, with no doubt, that if they did end up together when all this is over, Madeline would make a good Mother to their future children.
The thought alone was making him realize how serious he wanted to build this relationship with Madeline, but the main question was, does she feel the same way about all of this? Just thinking about her rejection was starting to demotivate him on the idea of confessing his feelings to her.
As if she sensed someone’s lingering gaze on her, Madeline lifted her head to see who was standing there, but to her bafflement, no one was there. Unbeknownst to her, Cassian already knew his presence had been detected, and he immediately left the scene before she could catch sight of him.
Madeline still had her gaze fixed on the part where she sensed the familiar presence, but she was snapped back to her present situation when little Ethan got down from the couch and went to pick a small vase that had flowers growing on them, but from the flowers appearance, they didn’t look healthy at all.
"Is it yours?"
Ethan nodded before handing his vase flower to her. Madeline received it whilst staring at the condition of the flower that shared a similarity to a red rose - or maybe it is a red rose.
"Do you water your flowers?" She asked Ethan who only blinked like he had no idea about what she was talking about, and Madeline, taking notice of the child’s vacuous expression, gave his head a pat and placed the vase gently on the table.
"Do you know about this rhyme," Madeline began softly as she picked up a glass of water from the end table, "I dug a hole and planted a seed, covered it up with soil and pulled out all the weeds. Down comes the rain..."
Saying this, she added water to the soil-filled vase. "Down comes the rain, and out comes the sun, up grows my beautiful flower, oh! What fun."
She looked at Ethan who flashed a pleasant grin as he watched her deal with his almost dead flower. "What did my rhyme teach you?"
Ethan’s gaze instantly shifted from the flower to her, and in his big coffee-brown eyes, there was a flash of white glint, except the strange glint didn’t come from him, but it was a reflection from the thin scar on Madeline’s chest.
"You have to take care of your flower if you want to see it bloom." Madeline said to him before lifting his vase and dropping it at the sill of the window.
"By tomorrow, we’ll water it again, okay? And then your flower will be back to full health."
Ethan didn’t argue and nodded, but his eyes were still fixed on the thin pinkish scar on Madeline’s chest. The mesmerization in his eyes was one that Madeline remained oblivious to.
Holding his hand, Madeline took him straight to his room, letting the agile boy lead the way.
With no one in sight, the half-dead rose on a brown vase began to wither mystically, all the petals turning dry and from the roots, a tearing sign could be seen on the stems as it ripped the dead rose in two, and a newly fresh plant germinated quickly into a fresh, beautiful blooming rose, except this time, the color of the rose was a healthy white.