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| Details |
| Author: | inkie |
| Summary: | The Fallons receive -- with shock and joy and trepidation -- some astonishing news. Later that night, they have an overdue conversation about the gift Siamus inherited in his bloodline, what actually constitutes a gift as opposed to a burden, and what his own children will inherit. Avrenne did not bring graph paper to the discussion but she does get Siamus to use his words. Specifically, 14,000 words, a normal amount. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Chain: Siarenne
It's Ery's four-month-old check up, seventeen weeks since her birth. She is now precisely fifteen pounds, a perfect doubling of her birth weight, and up to twenty-five inches, a bit on the long side but well within her growth projection, and the checkup with Dr. Alma and her quiet assistant Medea seeing the Lady Fallon and her daughter should have ended about twenty minutes ago as the rest of the numbers go. For some reason, however, it has not.
Although it is usual for the check ups to occur in Avrenne's bedroom, the door left half-open at an angle that suggests an interruption is allowed, but to exercise a level of restraint if it is not urgent, what is not usual is for Avrenne to be on the bed, laid out along it, with the physician and her assistant over her, and Ery placed in her increasingly too-small bassinet, rolled over onto her stomach as she makes annoyed grunts of protest at something happening that she is not a part of and cannot see.
Avrenne is dressed in one of her maternity style dresses of the late summer of last year, a dark peach satin and pleated lace with a high waisted cut that drapes down over her stomach to obscure the curve of it, a rounding that despite attempts to reduce it has persisted since Ery's birth, a softness to her unlike her ordinary angles. Her shoes have been left to the side of the bed, and her hands are folded over each other at her chest, as she watches Dr. Alma and her assistant with a composed polite expression hiding whatever actual thoughts she might have as the doctor sets her hands at Avrenne's stomach, prodding lightly, and speaking in a low murmur to Avrenne.
There is a light knock at the half-open door and then — without waiting for a reply, because the door is half-open and it's his wife's room — Vice Admiral Fallon steps in. He moves directly to the bassinet to pick the disgruntled baby up and swing her in the air before settling her against his shoulder. "How d'ye find her, then, Doctor?" he asks. There is a note of pride in his voice that says the question is semi-rhetorical: He knows how the doctor must have found her. The doctor has surely pronounced her The Best.
His gaze moves to Avrenne on the bed, and he smiles at her. Good job making The Best Baby, wife. Is it unusual for her to be on the bed when her doctor visits? Siamus doesn't know; these are Lady Mysteries.
Dr. Alma misinterprets Siamus' question, her focus on Avrenne rather than Ery, as she makes a reassuring sound, and pats Avrenne's knee possibly in proxy of Siamus, or possibly directed for the duchess herself. "I don't think there's anything to be terribly concerned or alarmed about, but the symptoms Her Grace mentions are unusual, if there is no underlying cause. I'd like Medea to do a check to be sure," she says as she rises up to let her assistant take her place at the bedside. "Medea, a full exam, please."
Avrenne does not smile, and there's a twitch around her eyes, a flicker, and she resettles her fingers together in a nervous flutter. "Of course," she says, cool and unperturbed. What symptoms has she mentioned to get her to this point? That wasn't on the expected agenda, was it?
Medea scoots into place, shrinking a little from her full height as she hunches near Avrenne like Medea suspects she might be doing something illegal and someone is going to call the guards any second now, moving a hand out to hover above Lady Fallon's abdomen, the Light glowing softly at first, and then brighter and brighter.
Siamus's smile drops away at once and he lays his other hand on Ery's back as though he suspects she needs additional bracing. She may not be the one who needs bracing. This is his Emotional Support Baby.
He moves closer to the bed, around the opposite side of it from Medea, and gazes down at Avrenne with worry etched on his forehead. "What symptoms, anamchara? Ye have symptoms?" The way he says it makes it sound a little like he believes symptoms to be a medical condition in and of themselves: Oh no, how did you catch symptoms?
Dr. Alma leans over to Medea, who starts whispering into the physician's ear as she moves her hand slowly along Avrenne like a tuning fork she's using to hear something in particular.
"A few slightly unexpected symptoms, mostly in severity," Avrenne admits to Siamus, turning her head to address him. "Tenderness of my chest that persists, some unusual fatigue, the additional size of my abdomen that won't reduce, and the discomfort of the stomach more than a few times now." This can be translated from Avrenne downplaying into: constant breast pain, severe exhaustion, inexplicable weight gain, and nausea bad enough to make her throw up. "I was told to expect some aspects of that nature, but they may be a little beyond the usual, as I am given to understand."
Medea whispers throughout Avrenne speaking, and the Light grows bright enough to double as a spotlight for a second before it fades out, and the assistant withdraws her hand. She seems to almost Fade out of existence as she slips around from the bed, aiming for the corner canopy to probably hide behind it like a curtain backstage.
Dr. Alma straightens, regarding Avrenne with a clinical eye, evaluating her information. "For postpartum, they are, yes," she agrees placidly, and gives the Fallons a warm, calm smile. "But not for being with child. Congratulations, Your Grace, Vice Admiral. Her Grace is expecting once more, between twelve and fifteen weeks based on the size of her and the babies." That's kind of a big range, but okay. Wait. Did she say babies, plural? "Medea is certain there are at least two other lives separate from the mother, of two babies, each one near the size of a small apple." Aaaaand we're back to fruit.
Siamus lifts his gaze from his wife to stare at Dr. Alma; concern changes to disconcertion. He looks for a moment like he's going to sit down where he is, which would be awkward because he is not standing near a chair and he would end up sitting on the floor. He catches himself.
"Ye — sorry, what? Expecting… ye don't mean again? A second?" The doctor did say babies-plural, two babies, but if Avrenne is pregnant again that would in fact be her second baby, so maybe the math is….
Siamus is, for once, struggling with some math.
He's not the only one. Avrenne hasn't even gotten to the math yet.
Dr. Alma nods at Siamus, as calmly and unperturbed as she was in an apron with Avrenne's blood on it from labor. "Yes, a second pregnancy," she confirms.
"I beg your pardon," Avrenne says, her voice tightly controlled. "How is that possible? I have not yet even resumed my cycle. I was told that I might not do so at all so long as Ery is still at the breast, up to a half year without a possibility of a cycle." And that, her math says, is an essential part of this process. Explain that, Dr. Alma.
"Breastfeeding is not 100% effective to prevent a pregnancy, and it requires a certain rhythm to be as effective as it can be. Stopping during the night, in particular, will often allow for your body to resume." Like, say, if someone was having difficulty with rest and decided to do fewer feedings at night so she could sleep more with her husband. Oops. "Sometimes it won't seem like it as postpartum can mask early onset symptoms, but you can be in your cycle before a bleed that can lead to conception, and you can get pregnant once more as early as three weeks after a birth," Dr. Alma explains.
"As early as three weeks," Avrenne repeats, her eyes flicking from her physician to Siamus, as she sets her hands over her belly. "Or four weeks." Yes, that is how math works. It is also when they resumed activities that could lead to this result. There's something about Avrenne's expression as she searches Siamus' face, a tension all around her eyes, and this is not the immediate glow of happiness that seizes her, and it might be unclear if its an emotion of shock that blocks it or if her social mask has caught it back, or if there is something else.
"Four weeks," says Siamus dazedly. He is still staring bewildered at Dr. Alma, but he plainly remembers that 'four weeks' figure; he definitely heard that somewhere. "Ye said… four weeks, and —" And what? His gaze moves past the doctor and he contemplates a point in space. "And then we — that was when —" He looks down blankly at Avrenne, searching. That was when? Right? That was when?
Avrenne nods at him in confirmation. That was when. It was After, and… her eyes search his back and forth.
And then abruptly his expression cracks and he is grinning. "Avrenne," he says. "My joy."
He laughs. He tips his head sideways to rest it against Ery's — Ery does not seem into this, by the way, she did not ask for anyone's head to be put on her and she thumps his shoulder futilely and squirms — and he laughs that boisterous, ambushed-by-delight laugh of his, except he can't seem to stop. He laughs until he is out of breath, eyes streaming, and he has to take three steps back and sag against the edge of Avrenne's desk to keep himself on his feet.
Whatever tension she was holding that wound her own joy up somewhere else gusts out of her at his laughter, and she travels through a series of hums, as she caresses the swell of her belly, and then at last gives in and laughs with him, her real one, warm and bright as a sweetly scorching summer day. His outlasts hers, as she contains hers back within, conscious of Dr. Alma in the room. (Technically so is Medea, but does Avrenne know this any longer? Unclear.)
"Avrenne," he says, his expression suffused with a wild radiance. "Babies. Tides a'mighty, mo chroí, my heart. That's three. Three. In two years. Lady Fallon, ye wonder." Avrenne is setting some kind of Babies World Record.
She smiles back at him, more controlled, but it's undeniably a lambent glow of a smile, and she hums another laugh deep in her chest. "I suppose this means we shall not need to revisit the contract at thirty-five," she says, and it's a little teasing, which surely can't be right, not with such a Serious Duchess. Ahem. "I will, however, have to adjust the five year plan to account for greater than expected efficiency." Careful, Avrenne, that kind of talk is what gets you into these Symptoms.
Siamus is grinning at her in a slightly demented fashion. He has lifted his head from Ery's, at least, but all does not appear forgiven as she has now latched onto his shoulder lamprey-style and is attempting to gum him savagely. "Babies," he repeats. "Twins." He turns his face toward Ery and murmurs to her, "Ye're a sister, my starfish. An eldest sister."
Ery the lamprey does not care. She's out for revenge.
Siamus straightens from the desk and moves over to settle carefully on the edge of Avrenne's bed, folding one leg beneath him so that he can turn to face her and Dr. Alma. He reaches out with his free hand to lay it lightly on Avrenne's belly, and looks up at the doctor. "How far — it would be three months, then. So ye said, aye?"
Dr. Alma makes an affirmative sound. "And I would estimate a due date around January 20th, based on what Medea can tell of the size. They have just started to uncurl their legs from their torso at this stage, which suggests they're more than twelve weeks past," she says. This is the good news, is her tone of voice. "However, with twins there is always an increased chance of early delivery." There's nothing alarming in her tone, but it does gentle further, and she reaches over to pat Avrenne on her knee in a way that is meant to be reassuring.
"I need to warn you both that there are some inherent risks of a pregnancy this close on the heels of another, and one of those is also premature labor and delivery that can be dangerous for both mother and babies. Your body has not had time to rest and recover, so you may find yourself feeling, as you have described, of being especially exhausted and hungry, and not feeling yourself or able to be as active as you were in your last pregnancy. There's an increased possibility of softer joints that could lead to injury. It is particularly important that you do not stress yourself, emotionally or physically, and we will need to keep a closer eye on you as you head into the last few months. You may need to go on bedrest if we note any abnormal bleeding or signs of labor." Dr. Alma lets that rest in the air for consideration.
Avrenne's smile has retreated, and she has one hand on her belly, and the other grasping for Siamus' over her. Her skin is warm to the touch, much warmer than it should be even for a pleasant summer day with the afternoon sunlight streaming into the room. "How likely is that to become necessary?" she asks into a pause, composed and confident.
"We will have to see how you're doing," Dr. Alma answers placidly. That's not very exact numbers of you, lady doctor.
Siamus's hand twitches once, ever-so-slightly, beneath Avrenne's, and some of the color has left his face, but his actual expression remains mild.
Ery seems to detect that something has shifted, though, because she stops attempting to maul her father gummily and lifts her head. "Ba," she says, and clasps her fists in front of her and frog-kicks to bounce up and down in his hold. Siamus is obliged to draw his hand from Avrenne's belly to put it on Ery's back, holding her steady.
To Dr. Alma, he says, "D'ye not have a likelihood of premature labor? A percentage? What's the range by which the labor might be premature, how early is possible? What are the odds that a premature labor will be dangerous to the mother?" Do numbers, lady doctor; are you some kind of scientist or not?
Dr. Alma sighs patiently. She has been Avrenne's doctor for almost a year. She's used to this by now.
"There are some general estimates of likelihood that I could give you, but they will not be specific to your wife," she tells him. Which is sort of how general statistics work, but okay. "Every woman is different, and there are a number of factors that I can't tell you how it would change those general larger numbers in the precision I know you would prefer, and I don't want to alarm you unduly, or give you a false sense of security on the other side of it. Her Grace's age, that it is twins, and how very close this pregnancy is: those are the risk factors. But her lifestyle, only her second pregnancy, and her first went long will factor into it. Those are very promising signs."
She addresses both of them as she continues. "If I had to make a suggestion to your benefit, Your Grace, I would recommend more rest and relaxation starting now, and to consider eating more, and more frequently, especially if you intend to continue nursing Ery yourself. There is no risk if you do, only that you will feel the drain. With twins it is not that each is half a pregnancy. They are each a full baby for your body to build, and that is where the stress comes from.
"The range of premature labor is that it could happen very early, as early as a month or two from now even past when we ordinarily say it is safe to assume a pregnancy will make it full term, and that is before the babies would be viable to survive outside the womb, even with gnomish advances. In those cases, if Your Grace does not have an immediate healer present, the odds that you would survive it are very low, I'm sorry to say. Even with a healer, it would be a painful and difficult experience. Unfortunately, even later and closer to safer labor, there is still a chance that there will be an abruption, severe bleeding, and this is very dangerous for the mother, as well as the babies. A healer being present within minutes will likely be the difference between survival and not," she says, and no matter how gently she says it, how comforting her hand is on Avrenne's knee, the sentiment is stark. "You have a personal priest on the grounds, yes?"
Avrenne reaches her hand back out to Siamus, and her hand is hot, but her face is calm, as clear as it has been through every turmoil the House has faced. "Yes, Brother Casker, he is generally within four minutes twenty seconds of a sustained sprint distance, with a two and a half minute variable of a deviation from the mean to account for someone needing to run closer to obtain the order to fetch him, and of him being already outside his residence on the grounds or in the house." These are her Emotional Security Numbers, thank you.
"We'll move him into the house," Siamus says. "And we'll hire a wet nurse for Ery." His manner has turned coolly intent, calculating; it suggests this is now a military campaign and he is assuming command. Twinwar 28. "What are the earliest signs of… difficulty that we should be alert for?" There is a slightly delicate pause and then he adds, "And what sorts of exertion are safe for her?"
You know, doctor. Can she… exert?
There's a twitch of Avrenne's hand at the unilateral decision for a wet nurse, but she says nothing, her face held still within the composed mask, and she does not contradict him in front of Dr. Alma.
"Exercise is good for you in pregnancy, as always," Dr. Alma says to Avrenne, and encompasses Siamus as she continues, "but activities that could cause significant strain to the body should be avoided: very heavy lifting, sprinting, horseback riding, fighting, contact sports, and heavy manual labor I know Her Grace does not engage in. I would say that all your usual activities are safe for you, and regular exercise will be helpful to maintain your health and circulation. I would say, however, from what you have related of your magical blow back that you should avoid any large amounts of magical use, anything that causes stress, or abrupt movement.
"The signs of difficulty are the same as they were before, only unfortunately more likely now to be seen: you need to be alert for any bleeding, of any amount, that a healer should immediately check on. Fever and sharp pains of the abdomen are another warning sign, sudden dizziness or mental confusion another. And of course, once the babies start moving, any unusual periods of lack of movement, and we will be keeping an eye on what is normal for the babies throughout." There's a routine cadence to her voice, things she says often, repeats frequently.
"I recall," Avrenne says.
Dr. Alma nods at Avrenne, looking back to Siamus for any further questions.
"How regularly should we be checking in with ye?" he asks. Yes, it's "we" now; we will be checking in.
"Ordinarily we would check in no more than once a month for the next two months, but we will come by to perform a routine exam every two weeks, just to be on the safe side to be alert to any small changes we might need to make in Her Grace's plan forward, but of course, if you notice anything unusual, please contact us immediately. Otherwise, the two weeks should suffice, and you shouldn't need to check in unless you have a question or concern, of which we are always available to answer as soon as possible. In two months, when we are closer, then we will be seeing Her Grace every week, then twice a week into the last month and a half. It will be a lot more frequent than last pregnancy," Dr. Alma says, unapologetically. She pats Avrenne's knee. "I am not worried, Your Grace. This is all just routine precautions. You could end up sailing through this as easily as your last."
Avrenne does not loosen her hold on Siamus hand as she gives a curt nod. Yes. Easy sailing. That's the Fallon way.
Siamus squeezes Avrenne's hand gently. Don't worry, baby, he's a good sailor.
"Thank ye, doctor," he says, and nods courteously to her. "We'll be in close contact." Do you want weekly Mission Briefings? Because this is how you get weekly Mission Briefings.
He looks down at Avrenne, squeezes her hand again, and smiles. "The doctor's not worried, Your Grace. Routine precautions."
Avrenne's temperature subsides with his comfort, dropping from hot to a low simmer, not entirely gone. "Yes," she agrees, and uses the opportunity to sit up, her chin held high and shoulders squared off, ready for battle. "Thank you, Doctor Alma. Your expertise is as appreciated as always."
Dr. Alma recognizes her cue, and she nods in a gentle bob of her head. "Congratulations, again, both of you. I recommend celebration of the happy news." She gestures to Medea — who is still there, and comes out from her hiding by the bed, possibly suddenly reappearing to some Fallons who had ceased to notice her. "Good afternoon, Your Grace, Vice Admiral." There's no curtsey from either of them, as Dr. Alma takes her leave with an easy going stride, Medea a silent drift after her.
Once they are out of the room, Avrenne blows out a breath, staring into the middle distance. "If we tell Cook now, she will have enough time to prepare something for a celebration for dinner," she says, just as information for a direction, her voice a little too tightly controlled.
Siamus lifts her hand to his lips and kisses it. He lets go of her, but only to ease Ery from his shoulder — which is noticeably wet, a dark patch of damp on his shirt, though Siamus himself seems not to have noticed — and set her on the bed. Tummy time, little flounder. He draws his other leg up and shifts over to Avrenne's side, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and laying his other hand on her belly again. "Twins," he says softly. "Tides be praised, but you're a wonder, pet."
He pulls her close and kisses the side of her head. "Do ye want a celebration tonight? I can go down to Cook straightaway. But we needn't, if ye want to keep the glad news between ourselves for today, and celebrate it properly tomorrow."
Ery has discovered her mother's foot and is grasping at her big toe, possibly with nefarious intent. Nef-Ery-ous intent.
Avrenne leans into Siamus, curling into him like a shelter from a strong wind. Her smile edges out from a shadow at Ery, and she deliberately playfully wiggles her toes at the baby. "If you do think to put my toe in your mouth, it is not clean, dearest. They have been in shoes all morning," she tells the four-month-old, who will surely take this information to make a wise, thoughtful decision.
And by this we mean she will immediately babble shriek back at Avrenne and stretch out to drag herself to put the toe into her gummy mouth. Or try at least, because Avrenne makes a motherly tsk, sound as soon as Ery's trajectory is confirmed, and she leans forward to lift Ery up, and reposition her farther up the bed, which does not thrill Ery, demonstrated by warning disgruntled noises and rocking on her arms in protest. There is nothing here to put in her mouth at all. Rude.
"Sooner would be better. The Children will know that Dr. Alma was here today, and if we tell them tomorrow, they will know we kept it from them. Finley and Isla will hate that especially," she says, a little distractedly. "I don't require anything elaborate."
"Then I'll let Cook know," Siamus agrees. He makes no immediate attempt to move, resting his face against her hair.
Abruptly he gives a strange little laugh. "Twins," he says again. "Four weeks after — pet, in just above a year, we've made three children."
One of those children makes a peevish sound and rolls over onto her back, against Avrenne's leg, and kicks her own out in an uncoordinated air jump, swinging her arms up and down like she can use this vigorous motion to propel herself in a direction, maybe back towards the forbidden toes. It does not work.
Avrenne settles back into Siamus, that strange break of her glamour that makes her seem suddenly tiny, an awareness of how much smaller than him she really is, her hand reaching to his over her belly. The heat of her skin has faded more, but not all the way. "I admit I hadn't realized it would be not advisable to have them so close together," she says, stroking her fingers over his hand with that precious light touch. "Although I also didn't think it would happen that soon. I thought a year, maybe longer, before we could even start hoping again. It's a blessing to have more, and I am happy, Siamus. I will do everything I can, and I know you will keep us safe. We will see their faces, our babies." It sounds a little bit more like faith than anything, but it's Avrenne's own personal faith, and she is holding onto it.
Siamus shifts, his arm tightening around her. He kisses the side of her head, and then is silent for a time. "I didn't think it either," he admits at last. "That it could happen so soon. I confess I know… less about that side of the business than I'd expected." He means the lady side. The pregnancy part.
He turns his hand over beneath hers and laces their fingers together, then watches their joined hands as he speaks. "I'm sorry, pet. I wouldn't chance you or our babies for the world. If I'd known… I should have been careful." He shakes his head, and then looks up at her. "Don't mistake me, I'm overjoyed for the babies." He lifts their hands to kiss the back of hers. "But if I'd known it would be a risk, I'd have been careful. I'd be just as overjoyed for them next year, or the year after. I'm a patient man."
The audience nods, straight-faced.
"But I do swear I'll keep ye safe, anamchara." His gaze is steady, intent. "You and the babies both. Ye know this means that I'll see ye rest, aye? Rest, and eat, and let me take care. For your own sake and theirs." He pauses and then the corner of his mouth twitches upward slightly, but he's deadpan when he adds, "And I must forbid ye from contact sports and heavy manual labor."
Avrenne makes an mm sound. "Priscilla is going to be terribly disappointed that I will not join her for boxing, and I suppose I shall have to hold off on reconstructing the rest of the gardens with my bare hands." These things that she was definitely going to do. She doesn't hold the deadpan, breaking into a bubbly laugh, little pops of champagne^.
She sobers before the laugh carries very far, and her eyes drop to Siamus' cravat to address it. "I will have Ery changed to the wet nurse at the eighth month," she declares. There's a pause, a hesitation, before she adds, reluctantly, like it's difficult for her to say it, "I would have rather that you consulted me privately first on the matter to hear my opinion on the decision, as it is my body and my health, as well as our daughter's well being. I know you mean it only out of concern, and wish for our best, but it is important to me to continue as far I might do so safely. I will rest and eat more to compensate. I have been trying to do less of both, out of concern that every time I went to my fitting with Mr. Latour I had increased yet again, and I mistook the reason. I will adjust accordingly."
Siamus studies her face, his expression sober, and then lifts their hands to kiss hers again. "Aye, then. I should have asked ye. It only struck me as a direct solution to the problem the doctor described, and I'm a man as likes a direct solution when I see one. But I will beg your pardon, and let ye answer for yourself next time." He squeezes her hand. "But it means I will see ye eating better and resting. And I still mean to move the priest into the house, to keep him closer by."
Her eyes lift back up to his, relief in them. "It's a reasonable precaution, and I agree entirely. I mean to take the rest of my physician's advice as it was given. I will limit my magic accordingly." Not that she uses it much on a regular basis as it is, but small parlor magics are not uncommon for her. There's a little tilt of her chin as her sweet smile blooms back to life, and she leans forward. "And I do mean to continue all my regular exertion and exercise." You know. Her usual. Oh, look, a bed.
Ery squawks in protest, either because she's following the conversation, or more likely, because she has become stuck in a partial roll back over to her stomach, like turtle on its shell, as she cannot roll over Avrenne's leg and the four-month-old has decided that this is the only direction she wants to go, and now there's something in her way. She bangs a chubby starfish hand on Avrenne's calf with a huffy warning half-cry.
"Here, now, starfish," Siamus says, brows drawn down. He lets go of Avrenne's hand to lean forward and lift the child up, swinging her over to his lap.
On the one hand, she is no longer a turtle on its back. On the other hand, she is now in Dad-jail again. She wriggles in outrage, kicking both feet. "BOH," she says, and then blows a raspberry.
Siamus pays no attention to this scathing monologue but wraps an arm around Ery like a seatbelt to contain her. To Avrenne he says solemnly, "Then I will endeavor to put the lady to all her usual exertions. The doctor did say exercise is good for ye."
Ery tries to slide down and out from below her father's arm, and then screws her face up and starts to roar. You guys are gross.
Avrenne makes a soothing ohhh at Ery like she has just lodged a formal complaint, and Avrenne is attempting to soothe this ruffling. "Yes, dearest, I understand. The delay was necessary," Avrenne tells the baby. She reaches up to her dress to begin undressing, although not for the reasons above involving healthy exercise, but to free a breast. "She was meant to have her post-check up teatime snack likely, oh, some half hour ago now. She has been patient, all things considered."
Ery is released from Dad-jail to be set to her teatime snack, which she takes angrily at first, batting a hand against Avrenne's chest twice before she settles in, grabbing hold of the edge of the partially open dress, soothed, her eyes already half-closing. You could almost believe the babe not a complete hellion when she's like this.
Avrenne's smile at Ery is a mother's beaming, the satisfied happiness evident in her expression, as she rocks very gently back and forth. What about Avrenne's teatime snack? She'll have it later.
Siamus looks on fondly for a moment. He lifts a hand to touch Ery's hair lightly with his fingertips, then leans in to kiss Avrenne's cheek. "I'll go and tell Cook to prepare the celebration," he says. He rests his hand briefly on her belly again and smiles, his gaze soft. "And perhaps I'll bring ye up something for your own teatime, aye?"
Any protest she might have made dies before it even starts to move her lips. She nods, still looking at Ery for a moment longer. "All right." She tilts her head back up to Siamus. "Thank you." It seems likely from her tone that it's for more than one thing, a larger encompassing expression, more than simple good manners.
He takes the opportunity of her tilted-up face to bend and brush a gentle kiss across her lips, and then he rises from the bed to pay visits to Cook and Casker John.
^From the champagne region of Lordaeron, a not too distant neighboring land to the Esprit ancestral lands, of course.
TIME PASSES
Sometime in the middle of the night, Siamus stirs restlessly in his bed. He opens his eyes on a swift, soft inhalation of stifled startlement or distress and turns his head at once to find Avrenne where she lies nestled alongside him. For a long moment he just gazes at her in the darkness, his expression blank, and then he reaches over and touches her hip lightly with just his fingertips: the merest whisper of contact, a careful effort not to disturb her.
After a moment he lifts his hand away, inhales again and closes his eyes.
He opens them two heartbeats later and draws stealthily, carefully away from her in the dark to rise silently from the bed. He pads over to his dressing room and vanishes within. No light comes on, but there is the soft creak of the wardrobe door and then a few moments later, the faint clink of glass.
The wardrobe door clicks as he eases it closed, the whiskey bottle replaced within, and then he moves in shadow, drink in hand, to go and stand at the west-facing window of the little room. He gazes out blindly.
When he leaves the bed, Avrenne first moves to curl up into herself, a smaller ball, her hands clutched tightly to her chest. For a while as Siamus gathers his emotional support whiskey to himself, she sleeps on.
But some oddity of absence must make her stir, reach out or attempt to snuggle closer, and find an empty bed in place of a person. There's a soft, groggy sound, and then a sleepy, husky voiced, "Siamus?" She's already sitting up, blinking into the darkness. "Siamus?" she asks again, more awake now already, although not alarmed.
Another moment of tired silence draws out, and then he says softly, "Aye, my star. I'm here." He tips the glass back for a swallow, turns and sets in on the bureau, and steps out again into the bedroom and toward the bed. "I didn't mean to trouble ye."
That gets her attention, the wording, as she shifts even more upright, although she doesn't bother to hold the bedding to herself, naked from the waist up, her hair spilling down her back. "Another nightmare?" She asks, reaching out a hand towards him in offer to return back to her, and to indeed, trouble her.
He does indeed return, and settles heavily on the bed's edge with his back to her. After a moment, though, he turns and slides back in alongside her. "No," he says, not looking at her even as he reaches for her hand. "Not a nightmare, I don't think."
He runs his thumb back and forth idly across the delicate ridge of her knuckles, studying her hand rather than her face. "Sometimes," he says finally. "Sometimes of late I wake and think ye won't be there."
She moves along the bed to be closer to him, until the smaller length of her is pressed against him, her other hand rising up to touch the edges of his hair. She doesn't turn on the lights with her magic, leaving them in the low light.
"Why would I not be here?" It's asked gently, and if she has any working hypothesis on why Siamus might fear it, she's holding those specifics to herself for the moment in favor of offering him the place to explain his thoughts on their own.
"I don't know," he says, and then knits his brow, still gazing down at her hand. "During the Nightmare," he says at last. "I told ye, I think. I dreamt — I dreamt that I woke up from… the rest of it, and it wasn't — ye weren't here. It was all… gone." He shakes his head at her hand, and for a moment his grip tightens, becomes almost painful. It seems to take him a moment to realize this and then he relents at once, resumes his soft thumb-tracery of her knuckles.
She takes no notice of the squeeze, perhaps inured to the sensation from her own self death grips of tension in her hands when stressed. "Yes, it was Alsbeth Grier in my place, if I recall correctly," she says. A mind like a ledger, Siamus. "As well as in the nightmare, I had bid you to not come back to me again. And that is how you knew it could not possibly be real, for it is something I would never say, never ask of you." She presses a kiss to his shoulder, because it's in easy reach.
"It would be reasonable," she tells him, "if you had some other concern after today, to think of what might happen, and after the difficult labor of Ery, of the worst that could happen. Even with a healer present, there is always a chance. And I have never died before."
"Stop," he says suddenly, viciously, turning on her. His gaze is fevered and furious — but the fury doesn't seem directed at her, because in the next moment he releases her hand to wrap his arms around her and gather her bruisingly against himself. "Stop," he says again, low-voiced and anguished. "It won't. I can't let it. And if I've put ye at such risk — I put it in the terms, I had ye sign to it, for my pride, and if I can't —"
He shakes his head — or at least, that might be what the gesture began as, but it turns into a convulsive, full-body shudder, and he tips his head to rest his cheek on her hair.
The sudden emotion surprises her, but not for long, and there's no hesitation in the way she returns the embrace, holding him as much as he holds her. She can't reach his hair, so she strokes along his back in proxy, precious light touches at a calming slowness.
"Siamus." She settles herself more perfectly into the shelter of him, small adjustments until it's more comfortable. Her voice is warm, and calm. "There is always some inherent risk in the matter of childbearing, and I have long been aware of it to factor into consideration. The contract, your terms, were entirely reasonable, and more importantly, fully in line with my own intentions and my own preferences, down to the number to begin with and a timeline of intentional quickness. If I had found any fault with your terms, your pride or no, I would have negotiated to those that suited me better." She is a business woman at heart, after all.
"You don't put me at risk. You keep me safe, Siamus. I am kept in such comfort, such ease, and with resources at my beck and call without worry or concern how I will pay for them. And thus I have the freedom to do as I wish, including try to bear as many children as I possibly can for as long as I am able, as was always my choice and my decision, made long before I ever met you, of my own reasons. And I have been happy to find a husband in such accord, even if…the reasons are different."
His hold on her relents, relaxes. After a moment, he lifts his head and draws himself up and away a little; he seems entirely calm, composed, as if the strange and stormy mood had been a figment. "Avrenne," he says. "I will give ye as many children as it pleases ye to have. There is nothing I love better in this world than our Ery, excepting yourself, and I will every day thank the tides that I got her on ye while I could."
Avrenne doesn't loosen her hold, even as her shoulders bend inwards. The warmth is gone from her voice, replaced by a desperate composure wrapped so tightly that it might be hurting. "Because she is a tidesage," she says, a confirmation. There's something about the way her hands, a touch warmer than they were a moment ago, grasp onto him, like she's afraid he's about to slip away from her then and there. A shaky thread of anxiety in her voice twists its way out of the composure. "Is one enough — is one, known, enough for what you need, or do you need…" The words die out and she doesn't seem able to resurrect the end of the sentence.
"She will have to be," he says. "If I've lost the Fallon —" His voice goes rusty and he pauses for a moment before continuing, composed once more. "I've lost the Fallon gift. Generations of it, and I was meant to be — but I wasn't, not after… everything wi'the family. With Stormwind and Theramore. I was — I never lived up to the full measure of my gift. I failed them, Avrenne.
"And I thought at least to pass the blood on, to keep the Fallon gift in trust at least, and then… I gave it away." A short, held-breath silence and then he says in a rush, almost defiantly, "And I'd do it again, every time. For what I made mine, here, I'd cast it away every time. For me alone, to lose it, to lose Her — that I can bear. I chose. But to know… to fail them all finally in this, as well —"
He exhales. "But I have Ery. And I have you. And I'll give ye a hundred more babies, I will, and I'll love every one till my heart breaks. I just can't help — I've cheated them of their inheritance, mo chroí. Our children. And I've cheated the Fallons again."
Avrenne's startle this time has her pull back, looking up at Siamus in the dark with such depth of lack of comprehension that it's visible in the lines of her, like he's started speaking in strange tongues, or possibly in another's voice entirely, and she has no understanding of what sorcery is afoot.
"You — what? No. No, you — " Her usual eloquence has fled her, and then, as prophesied in the ancient texts, agreed upon more than a year before, that despite their accord and their understanding, that someday it would likely come to pass that they would truly disagree. "I disagree. Wholeheartedly on several key points, that I — I need light." There's movement of her hand, a flick of her fingers, and several lamps burst into flame. It's barely real magic. She'll cut it out tomorrow. It barely seems to affect her at all, although the light shows that something like anger has seized her in the lines of her body, although the direction of the anger doesn't seem to be Siamus, not given that the way she looks at him once she can see him has a desperate love bared so fully she should just say the words out loud.
In the light, Siamus is revealed — despite the calm composure he had mostly managed to maintain while speaking — to look drawn and colorless, weary in some withering, soul-deep fashion. The look he returns her is bemused, as though she is in fact the one speaking in tongues.
He sits back, still regarding her with tired perplexity. "Light?" is what he manages to articulate, once a question can be formed.
She reaches up her hands to his face, brushing fingers across his cheekbones, up into his hair to smooth it back, as if he has something of a fever. "Well, in truth, I find myself wanting graph paper, a ledger, a pen, and possibly a board, but I'll make do with light to see you properly by," she admits.
She shakes her head at him slowly. "I don't know who it was that ever made you believe that the gift that you are was tied to a tidesage's power, but I hope to someday meet them. They will not enjoy that day, but some things are not forgivable, and honor demands a certain satisfaction." Is Avrenne going to duel Brother Mathis? Who knows. Maybe. It kind of sounds like she's going to duel Brother Mathis, and possibly Siamus' dead father.
"You have lived up to the fullest measure of the Fallon gift, the real one: simply being you, Siamus. Tides be praised, you are such a gift. You and I both know that power is not the most important thing a person can have. You only have to look at mages for example, that there is a way to seize more and more power at such an expense of honor, to take a gift of natural ability and twist it unrecognizably, that it doesn't matter what the power might have been in potential, it's been lost by the worthless person holding it. Not every tidesage is by nature a gift. They're only people, and some do not bear it well. It doesn't matter if someone passes that on, if what they pass on is the grasping claw of accumulating more power, and nothing at all of how it should be used.
"At every turn, every opportunity, you have never once chosen power for power's sake, only responsibility. You have done honor to every meaning of what should be the sacred bond between a man and everything you and Brother Eli have spoken of about the Tidemother. You have used your gift in a hundred ways that prove that you always understood more about what it meant, held it in reverence and duty, than what your family held as merely a way to continue holding other power by continuing a line.
"The inheritance that always mattered was never whether or not any child of yours was a tidesage. That's never been what makes you extraordinary, Siamus. Anyone of that particular lineage could be a tidesage by virtue of the gift and luck of birth, but there's only one man who has ever been Siamus Fallon, all that he would use his power for, all that he is, all that he represents. He is the gift of his family." She sets a hand on her belly, reaches for his hand with the other. "That's the gift I want. Just you. There's nothing more precious to me, nothing more worthwhile, than that these are your children. And if your family could not see it, then they're fools, no matter what blessings have been given them in trust, because they failed to see the greatest gifts they've had in you, and your sister, blinded by their chase of power."
Siamus sits very still through all of it, watching her with knit brows as though the words she’s speaking aloud make no sense, but he can perhaps divine her meaning by intent lip reading. When she sets her hand on her belly, his gaze drops to that point as well. He reaches with his free hand as if unconsciously and rests his fingertips there.
When she is finished speaking, there is a silence. Eventually he says — addressing her belly, now — "I never countenanced the way they treated Ta. I never did. And I'd never see a child of mine set down like that. I thought… when I was a child, I was meant to be a prodigy. I had this idea — I took this idea that I'd be enough for the both of us. That they couldn't… I would be enough, so they would let her be." He is silent a moment, then shakes his head tiredly. "A stupid notion, a child's. The more promise I showed, the more I cast Ta into shadow. She didn't want to be let be. She wanted to be… loved. I stole that from her. The first purpose I ever tried to set my gift to, and I only harmed my sister.
"I have loved my gift" — for a moment there is a jagged break of grief in his voice, and then it's smoothed over — "the joy and the purpose in it, and I can't tell ye how terrible the silence feels sometimes now. The way it… fills everything up, like suffocating. But I chose that. I did. Sometimes I think it might have been the first time I used it unselfishly.
"But I had meant to put it in the hands of those who'd use it better than I. I had meant to give them… the world that way, the world I knew. If I could. And my children didn't choose to be denied it. The way Ta never did either."
He gazes at her belly another moment in silence. At length he says quietly, "I worry I won't be enough for them."
"You're enough for me," she says back. "And I dare say the best father the Fallon line has offered in some time, doing them the greatest honor to the legacy the family should have. You are giving them the world, Siamus, a chance to know their heritage and their father's faith, and that is what has always been the most beautiful part, at least to me, who cannot see or hear that other world. Our children might not know the world you knew, any more than they will ever know the Lordaeron I knew, but what you are giving them is the father you never knew, and the father I never had. That is not a small or lesser gift."
Siamus looks up at her, but not at her; his gaze is troubled and inward. He takes his hand from her belly, though, and reaches for her hand. When he speaks, it is quietly, his tone distant.
“Ye say that my value — that I’m myself, that I’m Siamus Fallon. But I don’t know anymore who that is, Avrenne. I don’t know what it means. Siamus Fallon was a tidesage. It was the whole… shape of my life. It was the world as I knew it, and now it’s all… cut away. I don’t know the world anymore.
“I feel like an infant myself, mo chroí. You’re my guiding star, my anchor, and sometimes now I wake in the night and think ye won’t be there, and I’m adrift. And I don’t — I can’t tell ye that, Avrenne, I can’t….”
He takes a deep breath and lets go of her to lift his hand and try to press the lines from his brow, tiredly.
"And I wanted comforting after it happened, comforting for a choice I made, and now I've put ye at risk by it."
Her hand follows his to press more lightly along his brow, a touch cannot smooth the lines from it except possibly by the way she touches him. "Siamus," she says. "Dearest, you cannot take even the smallest of blame for that. I was already counting down the days. You cannot possibly imagine that I would have stayed out of your bed a night longer than I was required to, can you?" There's the barest touch of a tease in her voice. Think of the Sex Ledger, Siamus. Think of her daily routines when Siamus is home. "If it was going to happen so soon, it would have regardless, simply because it was Tuesday, and four weeks past, and I love you. That I wanted comfort myself that day was only another reason. Nothing gives me comfort the way you do, nowhere else do I feel as safe, with such respite, and I needed that as much as you did.
"I cannot know how difficult this must be for you to need to adapt to an entire new world, to have lost a sense you have always had, and to not be able to do that which you have done for nearly all of your life. I've never lost anything like that. But I do know with complete certainty that I haven't lost my husband, my Siamus. You're a man of action, and you've lost much of what you once could do, and so it must be terribly difficult to feel as though you have lost what options you have always had to take in action, but that is what has changed — your options. Not the mind behind it, not the man whose values define him. Your conscience and your honor are unaltered. You cannot influence the tides, or know the storms, or call the Mother to witness, but you still hold to every vow you have made. You still give of yourself to the Kingdom you have sworn to, serving it with all you have to offer. You still cherish and protect our people, our Fleet, our House.
"Siamus Fallon is a tidesage," she says, and the tense choice is obviously deliberate for a woman who chooses her words carefully. "And he has always been more than a tidesage. There has always been a man of inherent worth, of beliefs and values and intellect, and that man shaped the tidesage he has been, as much as being a tidesage shaped him."
"Ye will never lose your husband," he tells her with a sudden surge of vehemence, and catches her hand again to press it.
The moment fades, but he still grips her hand tightly. "I didn't mean to… trouble ye. It's still new, the way everything is… the way everything is, now, and I can't seem to get my legs. And to be a father is new on top of it, and it's two-thirds joy and one-third terror, and when I think that my whole purpose in it was… and I might have cheated them…." He shakes his head wearily. "It seems to me there are so many more ways a father can do wrong than right.
"The Admiral was a good man. He was a good man, and as fine an officer as there was, and — an imperfect father. I know that he was, I know Ta deserved better."
The blaze of anger in her eyes is there reflected briefly in her hand as she squeezes his in as fierce a grip as she can make. "You deserved better," she says with such force that it's nearly a shout, and she has to catch it back with an inner restraint to level her voice again. Her eyes drop down to his chest, as the heat fades slowly in her hands, but not completely. "You have borne the weight of his choices on your own shoulders since you were a child. The choice he made to bring you to war, and to measure the worth of his children by their power are not his only wrongs. And I have wondered if they would, in fact, cause me to lose my husband, if not the man. I would never leave you, but you do not hold me with a contract or a wedding ring." Her voice takes on that strange tone, the dissociation like she's talking more about someone else than herself.
"I have been uncertain if history might not repeat itself, that you would come to regret your choice of wife, the Wrong Lady Fallon, because you have believed so certainly in what was given to you as truth, that your whole purpose was to pass on the tidesage line, and that if you could no longer do so yourself, then what of a wife who never could on her own? If what you needed was another Fallon tidesage, and Ery had not been, and any child I bear was conceived after, then the only logical solution would be to have me step aside from my place, so that another of the lineage might take it, to give you what you are convinced you need to do, what your father left you of his legacy to prove the Fallon line running true through you." Ah, her question before of would one child as a tidesage be enough for him, and the fear in her hands the day of the Wave.
There is a swift, bewildered shock in his gaze; it quickly melts into pain. "Avrenne," he says. "Home of my heart. Could ye think I would? I vowed to ye — in the contract, I swore it — that there was only one reason I would set ye aside as wife, and it couldn't have been for my own failing. If it proved — if I should prove unequal to it, then the fault would be in me, and nothing ye should pay for. I knew already in marrying ye that ye couldn't conceive a sage on your own, that it would be down to whether I could sire one or no. And I married ye knowing it, because ye are my finest Lady Fallon, in all regards. Never think I could find fault in ye for that."
He kisses her hand, and then thinks better of it and lets go of her hand to thread his fingers into her hair; he leans to kiss her cheekbone, and then his lips find hers.
Avrenne meets his kiss with a desperate yearning, like it will give her an answer to a question she's been afraid to ask.
When he draws back, Siamus says, "I thought I'd found my lady, years ago. And I was badly wrong. I chose in haste, I let sentiment and other people's considerations guide my choice. And so this time I waited. I waited for a lady who would be what House Fallon — my House Fallon — needed, and I found one more perfect in all respects than I could have hoped. D'ye understand?
"At Theramore I saw all the plans I had laid for my life turn to ashes. And in my faith, or my… arrogance, I believed I could build over again. I believed in Stormwind I could simply show my worth and secure it all again. But I couldn't — make headway after all. Not wi' the Fallon name, not wi' the fleet, not for all I worked or won. It wasn't enough. I wasn't enough, on my own.
"But I was careful in the choice of my lady, in the choice of Lady Fallon, and once I had chosen her so well, all the rest of it was secured. If I am enough, now, if our House is and will be a power on the mainland, it is only because of you. Not because ye say I am enough, but because ye make it so. Whether a different Lady Fallon brought a sage's bloodline on her own or no — and it still wouldn't be the Fallon gift — she couldn't do half what ye have for myself or this House. There's no putting you aside, Avrenne, not for some Tirasian-born lady whose only qualification would be a thing I was meant to bring to the marriage myself. Ye brought me half a hundred other things to the advantage of my House. And to myself." He strokes his thumb across her cheek, still leaning toward her, his gaze fiercely intent. "Lady Fallon is the jewel of this house, the better part of it. I'd be a fool to trade her for anything."
For a moment, as he speaks, it seems perhaps she's found some center again, but something takes hold, a thread of trepidation, as she reaches up to hold her hand lightly against his. "So, then, there is nothing I could do for this, for you on this matter. 'It wouldn't be the Fallon gift,'" she repeats. "A gift that now lies in the hands of Ery, and her alone, if it should prove true that you cannot pass it along any further." She searches Siamus' eyes, looking for something in them. "Siamus, if that is true, then what becomes of Ery? Must she then bear the same weight, to think of herself as her whole purpose to pass it on, the sole bearer now responsible for the Fallon line, and that if she does not, then it is she who has failed?"
Siamus pales — but it is the swift, black-eyed pallor of fury. Avrenne saw this look once before, when Sintha asked him at Wintergarde whether he would take his own child to war. "Ery is — no. Ery is a child, our daughter, it's enough that she's been marked by the gift. It's all I wanted, to see it passed down so the children would —" He looks away, takes a deep breath.
"Avrenne," he says softly. "Her joy in it is so…." He shakes his head. After a moment, he admits, "We lost her bonnet. The other day. She and I. She gave it to the wind." There is the very slightest curl of a smile, involuntary, at one corner of his mouth. That's my girl, the smile says.
Avrenne does not seem concerned for the bonnet. That's what being rich will get you — endless bonnets to sacrifice to the wind
"Her purpose isn't… I never meant her to be burdened, my heart. Only the joy."
He looks back to Avrenne. "And no, mo ghrá. There is nothing ye could do for me in this. But it's not for a want in you. What ye do for me already is… everything else. More than ye know. I couldn't put this at your feet as well.".
"Why is it that it is enough for Ery to have the joy of the gift, but in you it has been a burden whose purpose you must fulfill? Do you not see how you are a better man and father than those before you for the conscience that tells you that you cannot place that upon her, as it was put upon you? Can you not see yourself in her mirror, the child that you were, as a gift in himself, not a promise owed to his family's line? You know it when you look at her, and when you think of our babies now," she says, moving her hand on her belly. "You are not less precious than they are, and you do not owe something more than they do to justify yourself in your worth."
Siamus stares at Avrenne as though, again, she is speaking some incomprehensible alien tongue. Apply reason? Come on, Avrenne, be reasonable. Don't forget that Siamus is not a child.
"It's not —" he protests, and then stops. He frowns. This makes sense in his head, okay? Why must you always use words with him? "Ery is not… the same," he attempts at last, unconvincingly.
Okay, then, Siamus. What's the math of that? "What is different? A Fallon tidesage, the first born of her House, possibly the only one that will be. What is different for her, but that her father stands in shield of her, a sea wall to hold back the burden, as his father did not for him?"
"She's a child," he says, sounding puzzled. "An infant. She's my —" He pauses. "A Fallon tidesage, first born of her House," he repeats softly, and his expression is suffused with a soft and stricken light. "Anamchara, she's my little heart. Do ye know it? She's my little heart, out in the world, and I couldn't bear —" He shakes his head.
Avrenne's eyes are gentle, and she moves her hand lightly across his forearm up to his shoulder, a stroking soft path to his hair, leaning into him. “I know, Siamus. I know." There's something inherently motherly about the way she soothes him, although it might help that she's doing it naked to avoid the full connotation. "What you must know, what I have learned through experience, is that children do not always take the lesson of what you tell them you expect of them. They take onto themselves the lesson of that which you expect of yourself.” Avrenne’s hand on her belly shifts to encircle her forearm, covering the fire scars. “Even if you would never ask it of them, they know the standard of which you hold yourself, and they see themselves in that reflection. You must try to let this go, Siamus, for Ery’s sake if not your own. She will look at you, and she will hear you, see it in you, and whether you mean it to be hers or not, it may be that in her love for you and wish to be like you, she will take the burden out of your grasp and onto herself, and you may have to watch her bear this as you have.”
"I couldn't," he tells her hoarsely. "I couldn't have her thinking… but how will I not be myself, Avrenne? This is how I know to be. It doesn't mean that I mean it for her. She's my child."
"Yes, she is a child, a baby. And what that means is that you have time." Avrenne's cure-all for arriving at a destination. "Time to find a way to put this one down. This burden is not what defines you. And if you do not know yourself without it, then we will learn it together. I am not going anywhere, Siamus. I will be here, by your side, no matter what comes. If you are unmoored, then I will be your anchor. If you cannot see your way, then I will be your star to guide you. If you look into the mirror and cannot see yourself as you have known to be, then look into my eyes instead, and see the man that I see."
"How shall I lean on ye more than I do?" he asks her. "Avrenne, I ask too much. Ye'll weary of a man so weak."
She moves closer to him. There isn't a whole lot of space left, but she closes more of the gap. "No, no, I won't. In no small part because I could never see you as 'weak.' I never have." And she's seen him literally too weak to hold a cup on his own. "I always see you as strong, my wonderful sea wall, but that is not the same as impervious. You can be wounded, you can be ill, you can be hurt, you can be frightened, you can be brought low, you can be lost in a world you no longer recognize, and I will not love you or want you less than I do when you are whole and well. You can put your faith in that. I would not have asked it of you to come back to me no matter what if I thought myself unable to love you with all that might entail, to see myself as blessed in every way.
"Lean on me. See how that I only love you more, as I always have with each passing day. If you need to hear from someone whose opinion and judgment you trust what worth you have beyond a Fallon tidesage, you know I will tell you." She offers him a soft, warm smile. "I have the ledgers for it."
Siamus blushes.
No ha ha that can't be right. It's probably a trick of the light in the room. Mage-lit lights are unreliable like that, they can make a man look like he is blushing, it is known. Siamus has the data somewhere. He probably left it in the coat that also has the data about how he has never been a child.
"Ah," he says. "The ledgers. Aye." He drops his gaze, smiling a little, awkward and boyish.
He reaches for her hand again without looking up at her face. "I don't like to lean, pet," he says quietly. "On anyone. It isn't… it doesn't feel right. I'm meant to take care, not to be a care. But ye see why I don't — I can't risk ye. Why I'd jump to a decision meant to ease ye, without asking ye first as I ought. I don't mean to overbear. But I… do rely on ye."
The way he says that last sounds a little bit like he would have preferred to say it in Old Tirasian. It sounds a little like that long-ago I feel something for ye.
The hand she takes his with is cooler than it has been since news of a high risk pregnancy. "I'm grateful for it, to be such to you is a privilege, not a burden. But it is not only you who relies upon me; I rely upon you, more than I have ever done with another person." She moves her hand from his hair down to their linked hands, a finger stroking a light, uncannily straight line across the back of his hand. "I think if one considers it in terms of lines. For others, we are the line of the base, and they are the ones that intersect, perpendicular, to rely upon and be taken care of, supported and held." She illustrates her point, drawing lines that come at her initial line, as if putting pressure on the first one, that breaks the trajectory of the lines, as if taking the force of something and halting it, a seawall of mathematical one-dimensional figures.
She did say she wanted graph paper.
"But you and I are not like this. Not you to me, and not I to you. For us, we are an angle." She draws another line along the back of his wrist, and then in a perfect peak of a 60 degree angle, another line that meets it, as if supporting it in equal measure as the other supports it back. "When I take care of you, it takes care of something inside me that wants to be that for you, that wants to hold you and support you, and know that when you are at your lowest, you will lean on me. But it does not halt me from doing the same to you, knowing that I need you, that my strength holds because of yours. It would destroy something in me to lose you, the rock of my lighthouse sunk, the seawall I depend upon ripped away. I cannot go back to a single line that I was before. I need this," she says, tapping the angle. "We are both stronger together, equal partners, sharing the weight of the meeting point there."
Siamus studies the invisible diagram in silence for a time. At last he looks up at her. He draws a breath, starts to speak, stops; he looks past her shoulder. Another silence. He opens his mouth, then closes it again. He knits his brow.
Oh, no. He is trying to words some more.
She looks up from her invisible diagram, and waits, that attentive listening to her. She is not always patient, but when it comes to this, she is.
"I want ye to rely on me, Avrenne," he says at last.
That… does not seem like it should have been difficult. It may have been that he meant to say something else and then swerved at the last moment. Chicken.
She considers it, waiting a little more, perhaps if there was something else, and when nothing is immediately forthcoming, she lets her fingers rest on his wrist. "You know, I could count on one hand the amount of people who know that my hands will grow hotter before they will burst into flame. Not even Morgauna knows anything of it. She's never felt it, and I have never told her. I try not to ever touch anyone when I am like that. Yours are the only hands I reach for purposefully when I am in such a state, my fear and my anger both, because I know you will steady me, and calm me, and all I must do is to set myself literally in your hands." She smiles at their linked hands.
"I cannot remember the last time I cried in front of someone, except for you. My father called tears 'a woman's weapon, her highest manipulation,' and I learned the lesson of that early. With you though, I know myself safe, and that all I need to do is go into your arms, and I am in my harbor where the storm can pass over me, and I do not need to be my own shelter.
"I have faith in you and trust in you, that you are always there. I don't only rely on you, I need you. Not only as a husband or a shared head of a House, but as a man, with whom I share my deepest of secrets and corners of my mind and heart. It terrifies me sometimes how deeply I need you, how much of the stability of my world relies upon knowing that you are there, but it also gives me such peace, because it's you. And I am safe in your care, always."
Siamus exhales. He reaches for her, to pull her against him and wrap her up fiercely, resting his cheek on her hair. "Aye," he says. "Yes." (Bilingual for emphasis.)
After a moment he says, in just above a rough whisper — in case of judgemental eavesdroppers maybe — "I want ye to need me. I need you. I don't… it's a strange thing. It's not easy." He reaches for one of her hands and tucks it between them, against his chest, over his heart. "I'm a loyal man. I keep my people. But I need you. Ye mustn't go."
She settles more comfortably into him, that odd smallness of the reality of her body not matching the force of her personality, a tiny curling into him. Cozy.
"You said once that there was only one power in the world that could stop you from coming back to me, and that is me, by my own order." She matches some of his volume, a quieter hush to her voice. "I think about it sometimes, if I could do the same. If you told me to go, to leave, if I would. I don't like to think of myself as someone who would force my presence on another, or that I have no pride at all to stay where I am not wanted. But I don't think I do have that pride, not with you. I don't think I could leave, not by any power, not even if you hated me, not even if you tried to banish me. I love you, and I need you, too much. There isn't something that could happen where I would leave you. Nothing can make me go," she admits into his chest, where it can hopefully be trapped there, and not known by anyone else.
"I never would," he tells her softly. "Baile mo chroí, I never could, I'd never ask it of ye." He strokes her hair. "Could ye truly think, my joy, my Lady Fallon, that I would set ye aside for another lady wife if I proved unequal to a charge set on me? I wrote a provision for three children at least, to better my chances. Nowhere did I write one that said if none of our children — if by any circumstance none was born wi'the gift, I'd see ye replaced.
"If I gave ye cause to think it, ever, if I've made ye to feel… I can only beg your pardon, Avrenne. I beg your pardon for giving ye even a moment's worry on it. I have only one Lady Fallon, and she's irreplaceable."
"No, it is not that you have seen it so, having thought yourself the one unable to fulfill his side, and not see the fault in me. When you wrote the provisions, it was under an assumption that there was at least a chance of a Fallon tidesage by a woman of Lordaeron. I had thought, to hear you speak of it after the Bargain you made, of what you needed most, that I might find a way to aid you yet, to serve as your partner if not your wife. There are no restrictions on my ability to end the marriage contract, none at all. I could step aside at any time, and leave you free to marry another, and I would have, for your sake. Whether or not there is a contract between us has no bearing on where I would stay. I would not leave you. House Esprit would not abandon House Fallon.
"But I had not realized that what you required would be already tied to the Fallon gift, and that there would be no ability to substitute another lineage into the line. Your fate was sealed the moment you married me, where it left you alone there to bargain your gift away," she says, and there's a shake to her shoulders that she forces to steady, her voice lower, calmer. "So it is me that you have, and I know that the privilege of being your wife is one I will always seek to hold, to earn the right of it, but there will be times I can do nothing at all, and hope that the rest can be enough."
Siamus draws back just enough that he can tip his chin down to gaze at her. "My fate was sealed the moment I married ye," he agrees, with a gentle warmth that makes those words sounds entirely different. He smooths her hair back from her temple. "And never forget that I — It feels unfair to put any of this… difficulty, my difficulty, on ye to bear, my joy, when it was my own choice that I made, aye? And I don't regret it. I'd never undo the choice, not for the reasons I made it, and I would make it again and again. It doesn't… make the strangeness of the world an easier thing to come to, or the… disappointments in myself lighter to bear. It wasn't a thing I had planned to do, considered and chosen. A decision had to be made, I made it, it was right. I wish I hadn't had to make it, but I can't and won't regret the choice I made."
He twines the ends of her hair around his fingers. "I chose Stormwind Fallon above Stormsong. Of course I did. I suppose I'd still hoped… there might someday be reconciliation between the two." He bends forward to rest his lips lightly against her hairline a moment. "To prove to them —" He falls silent, then shakes his head briefly, tiredly. "But it was my choice, and I don't want ye burdened by a moment of it."
There's enough of a tilt of her chin to move her head up, as she looks at him. "Is that what you want to see someday, the reconciliation of the family lines?" It's like he can practically see her scenting the blood of a House Goal, the gears in her mind already turning, the political diplomatic strategies being seeded for later. "If we can coax Kul Tiras back into the rightful fold of the Alliance, and communications were open once more, another reconciliation would be made possible, on a political and personal level."
He traces his fingertips lightly up and down her spine. "I don't know that I ever thought it in… a political way. Only that I would make something of myself, of my own House, that they would be proud of. Impressed by. 'The Admiral's son after all,' aye? That we'd be welcome. Just as I suppose I want — the Alliance welcome in Kul Tiras again."
She arches into the touch, the very beginning of the sense of a bow being strung. What? It's been hours since the last go. She could go again.
"Then someday they will see it, and know how far House Fallon has soared, what an extraordinary man leads the Stormwind Fallons," Avrenne says, and she is too diplomatic to make it sound like a threat, only a stated personal goal that she will see through.
"They will know," he tells her solemnly, "what extraordinary ladies the mainland might offer. None other so extraordinary as Lady Fallon, I am grieved to tell them." He puts his lips to the side of her throat, fingertips still lazily tracing her spine.
The sound she makes at the touch of his lips is part sigh and part encouraging moan. Her ability to hold a thoughtful conversation might be rapidly drifting into intellectual low tide. "Well, then I suppose it is for the best that we shall be able to tell them that the combination of the islands and the mainland has to offer the most extraordinary lady of them all, wielder of shells and caster of bonnets, Lady Ery Blanche Arielle Parrish Esprit Fallon, eldest daughter of House Fallon."
The kisses still for a moment and his lips curve in a smile against her skin, and then he laughs softly. "A prodigy as a sage and a hellion both. Ye should have seen her laugh to watch her bonnet fly."
"She gets that from me," she tells him, a playful tease weaving into a faux-solemn tone, tilting her neck to the side in invitation.
"She must," he agrees solemnly, "as I was a perfectly angelic child, an officer and gentleman from the cradle." He accepts her invitation to return his attention to her neck, his lips finding the warm thread of her pulse beneath golden-ivory skin. His fingertips have left her spine and are making their non-angelic, non-gentlemanly way elsewhere.
She rises up to better position herself into his lap, arching forward deliberately to slowly rock herself against him, and the sweet smile she wears would seem angelic, but he knows better. "There's still at least two more chances to see such angelic children, perfect gentlemen like their father," she teases, her hands closing slowly over his shoulders, the lights of the room dimming slowly into the soft inky darkness.
"Avrenne," he tells her, "I love you."
It's dark now, see? No one saw him say it.
She doesn't need to see him to see him, though.
"I love you." The way she leans into him, her hair spilling over her shoulder in a caress against his skin, is a suggestion to carry her down into the dark, to the cool sheets. "I'm here, anamchara."