Chapter Text
A fire burned merrily in the hearth as Anya dozed on the plush carpet. She had set up a mini blanket fort on the hotel room floor with the help of her father. Twilight and Yor sat on the sofa nearby, sipping hot cocoa and resting after a long day skiing the Swiss Alps. The large windows of their room afforded them a breathtaking view of the snow-covered mountain range, where the most adventurous skiers were still braving the more difficult slopes as the sun sank halfway past the horizon.
“Is your ankle alright?” Twilight asked as she lay her head on his shoulder.
“Just a little sore,” she admitted. This had been her first time trying to ski, and even though her husband was a good teacher, she had struggled to follow his instructions in real time. Failing to cross her skis the way he’d recommended, she had zoomed down the hill at breakneck speed and hit an unexpected jump. Anya had sworn her mother looked like a circus acrobat spinning through the air before she had landed hard on her feet. As usual, her assassin skills had saved her from serious injury, but now her left ankle was feeling the impact from that particularly jarring landing.
“Here, let me.” Her husband drew her foot into his lap and rotated it gently before beginning to massage the sole. She sighed in relaxation and lay back on the cushions, closing her eyes to savor the moment.
They were halfway through their long meandering vacation around the world. In the past six months, Yor had seen more amazing sights, heard more foreign languages, and sampled more delicious cuisines than she had ever dreamed she would experience in her lifetime. She had never traveled outside of Ostania before meeting her husband. He was an excellent tour guide and planner, pouring all his effort into making this extended trip the most incredible, enlightening time of her and Anya’s lives. Privately she was glad that this gave him something to do to occupy his brilliant mind. Now that he had retired from espionage, she didn’t want him to regret his decision out of boredom, or fall into guilt over “wasting” his talents and training.
She hadn’t thought it was possible for her to fall in love with him more than she already had, but over the past year and a half as he’d come out of the lowest point in his life with the help of therapy, medication, and the love of their family, she found herself more drawn to him than ever. The man underneath all his names and masks had fully emerged into the daylight and remained there, free, after he’d been caged for decades. Since childhood, in her estimation. This was the man she had glimpsed in small, fleeting moments of vulnerability when their fake marriage had teetered on the edge of becoming a real one, before all their lies had been revealed. The man who’d begged for her forgiveness, who’d vowed to love her as long as he lived, who’d gone into the torture chamber for her. The man who was startlingly funny with his biting quips and deadpan sarcasm, who teased Anya and constructed fun pretend games for them to play using his unparalleled mimicry skills, who anticipated her every need and looked into her eyes with such devotion that it took her breath away.
“Thank you,” Yor said when he finished massaging her foot. Her ankle was still tender, but the muscles around it felt a lot better.
“We still have a bit of time before dinner. And before Anya wakes up. What would you like to do?”
She kissed him lightly, and her lips curved into a mischievous smile. “Surprise me.”
His eyes glinted at the playful challenge, and he slid his arms under her thighs and back to lift her up off the couch. She muffled a squeal at the sudden movement as he carried her into the bedroom, his feet not making a sound on the carpet.
As he lay her down on the bed, he put a finger to his lips, even though the door was closed. This was how they handled intimacy on their globetrotting trip, since most hotels they stayed in had only one bedroom and Anya was always underfoot. They’d become experts at having brief, silent trysts while still satisfying each other. This time would be no different. At least they were confident Anya wouldn’t wake for a while, given how exhausted she was from skiing all day.
Since they’d left their shadow careers behind, they’d also gradually begun to shed the harrowing body memories and fight-or-flight triggers that came with them. When they’d first become intimate in their marriage, Yor had been completely inexperienced, and Twilight had carried the weight of too many experiences he hadn’t wanted. At times it had been a difficult journey to navigate each other’s desires and boundaries, especially her husband’s. She had quickly learned what tended to bring his guilt to the surface, and how complicated his mindset toward sex had become after years of using his body as a weapon against unsuspecting targets. He almost always shunted aside his own pleasure in favor of hers, eager to do anything to please her for as long as possible, as if believing he didn’t deserve to feel good.
Slowly, through both actions and honest conversations, they’d worked through some of his viscerally negative reactions and self-disgust. While there were still some boundaries he didn’t want her to cross, he’d loosened up a fair amount, and no longer protested when she focused on his pleasure. It helped when she did it in a position where she appeared dominant. Now, she commanded him to stay still as she stripped off his clothes and pushed him to lay back on the bed. He covered his eyes with the back of his hand as she took her time working him into a feverish state. Outside of a few breathy moans and a low hum in her throat, they both managed to remain quiet.
“Yor…” he whispered, his hand carding through her hair. “Come up here.”
She took off the rest of her clothes and climbed up the bed to kiss him deeply, lying on top of him as he drew the blanket over their bodies in the chill air. The warm slide of union was intimately familiar to them by now, yet still felt so new and enticing every time, like the renewal of a promise. Through the silence, they spoke with their eyes and hands and heated movements, growing faster and more frantic as they strove toward that invisible flashpoint together, half a competition, half a dance.
Not long after, sated and flushed with pleasure, she lay against his chest and listened to the tattoo of his heartbeat as it slowed to its regular, comforting pace.
“Yor,” he whispered again. “How did I ever find someone like you?”
“I ask the same thing of myself all the time,” she said, nuzzling against his neck. They couldn’t stay like this for long in case Anya woke up, but they could afford a few more minutes before they had to clean themselves up. She treasured these moments in the afterglow, when they affirmed each other with soft words and slow caresses.
Today, though, Twilight fell silent, merely drawing circles around her abdomen as he appeared to be in deep thought.
“Back in Berlint,” he began after a while, “we talked about having more children one day.”
Her heart skipped a beat. The topic had been on her mind quite frequently as of late, but she hadn’t voiced her thoughts, waiting for a clear signal that he was ready to discuss it.
“Yes,” she said simply, prompting him to continue.
“How do you feel about it now?”
She could always count on her husband to play his cards close to his chest while trying to elicit her needs and wants out of her first.
“I still want to. I meant what I said back then, that I would love to have children with you. And I already know you’ll continue to be a wonderful father.”
He smiled gently and held her close. “And you’re already the best mother in the world. I’m relieved to hear you still want kids. I do too. But is there anything that makes you hesitate?”
She hadn’t expected that question, thinking they’d simply jump to figuring out timing. But it made sense. Her husband always considered every contingency and risk, especially when it came to her wellbeing.
“Well…” She thought for a moment. “The usual things. I raised Yuri and now I’m helping raise Anya, but they were both walking and talking when I started. Having a baby will be very different, and from all the things I’ve heard, we’ll be tired and sleepless for a long time. We’ll have to somehow keep giving Anya the attention she needs while taking care of the baby at the same time. And…before that…I guess…I wonder if I can even get pregnant.”
Her voice grew small near the end. Yor had never heard of a Garden assassin bearing children. With all the strenuous training she’d put her body through, especially for poison tolerance, and the stab wounds she’d sustained to the abdomen in her earlier years, she wasn’t sure she could carry a child to term. And since Garden operatives were discouraged from getting medical care, even routine care, from civilian doctors, she had never gotten a professional assessment to confirm or dispel her doubts. She’d avoided thinking about these questions too much, but now as she tried to face them head-on, her heart faltered.
“I think it would hurt a lot if I tried and…couldn’t do it. If I lost our baby,” she confessed.
Twilight squeezed her hand and kissed her forehead. “It wouldn’t be your fault at all. I know it would hurt, as it hurts for all women. But I wouldn’t want you to blame yourself if it happened. Maybe when we get back to Westalis, we could go to a doctor and see if there is any real risk. It could be that you’re perfectly fine. In any case, miscarriages happen to many women regardless of how healthy they are. It’s never their fault.”
She kissed his jaw and burrowed her face against his neck. “Thank you, my love. It seems like we’re agreed on the timing. We should wait until we’re back home before we start trying. We have time. We’re both still young, even if you act like an old man with all your worrying and grumbling.”
“Hey,” he said with a mock frown. “I’ve loosened up a lot.”
“That you have,” she agreed with a teasing smile. “You only act like an old man sometimes.”
“I’ll show you old,” he warned, and began to tickle her mercilessly until she nearly fell off the bed.
“Anya!” she managed to gasp in a low whisper. “She could wake up!”
He relented and let her run off to the bathroom to clean herself up. Looking at her disheveled hair and rosy cheeks in the mirror, she couldn’t help but smile at herself. At how happy and grateful she felt, and how it showed on her face and lightened her steps and boosted her confidence. She loved being Twilight’s wife and Anya’s mother. Now she allowed a new, tentative hope to take root in her heart, the hope that she could be a mother again, to a child born from her own body.