[Haven]

Nervous. 

Haven was fearless, bold, a bastion of strength and power. She was good, ferociously good, and she told herself she would never run from a battle again, after Eschaton. She would not hide or cower from any foe. Approaching every problem head on, teeth bared, was the only path she knew to take. No surrender. Bravery and honor. Duty. Mantras that she whispered silently in the core of herself whenever she was afraid. 

Right now she was nervous. 

Taking a deep breath, she approached the den, peering silently into the depths. The birds in the trees chirped warmly, the purple leaves from the trees billowed down in the autumn wind. The queen didn't feel like a powerful ruler, right now. It was just past dawn now, and the last flowers of summer had died. She wanted to meet with the elite before he began work, so she had risen early. 

"Trice?" She asked, her voice quieter than usual. 

I just spoke with the medics. You're going  to be a father. No, it wasn't soft enough. We need to talk about what the implications of our relationship is for the pack. He cared for her, didn't he, so why did any of this matter, why did any of the words matter. I don't know how to do this, I don't know how to be a mother, I don't know how to be in love. I don't know how to have family. No.  

"I need you for a moment."

[Cockatrice]

He feels older, these days. He’s not sure when it set in – the stiffness in his injured shoulder has been with him for some time, and the phantom ringing in his long-dead ear has been reduced to little more than background noise for half his life; neither add up to the weariness he senses creeping at the periphery of his consciousness – and Cockatrice contests the notion with as much stubborn defiance as he has any other inconvenience in his life. There are patrols to run each morning. There are recruits to check on – sentinels to train. Soon, he hopes, there will be pups again, the King’s or the kingdom’s, and Inaria will not feel as though it has aged alongside him. There is—

There is her. Cockatrice is not so foolish, for all that his suppsoed wisdom is drawn in his grizzled muzzle and watchful gaze, to not understand the purpose of fear. To think he has not felt it. With her, though – Elizabeth, even now, and Haven in more ways than a name could imply – Cockatrice has never thought to be afraid. He lifts his great head in the dark, and feels only the same reckless loyalty she has ever inspired, her golden scruff illuminated like a halo and the rendered the same gold as her eyes. If there is concern in his heart at her voice, her soft and unusual utterance of his name, it does not approach fear. He rises for her as he has each morning (before he knew her, hadn’t he risen for her? For Inaria, and so she who has become it—?), crouching in the dark, ready to shoulder the worst of her news with the same weathered perseverance as ever.

For her.

“Haven,” Cockatrice replies, voice rumbling and ever so softened by sleep, as he steps out from the den to greet her. “Of course.” It is a simple response, one made without question, but complicated by how he pauses in the new day’s sun. He has never been a creature of hesitance, but there is a thoughtful beat before he reaches forward to touch her, as though waiting for rebuke, or for confirmation. Whether Haven has come to him as Queen or as friend, in the brief moment where he touches the soft line of her cheek with his nose, she is something like his before she is her crown.  

[Haven]

The wind rustled past them, focused on its spiraling journey to its horizon, going in a hurry. The dawn light glittered through patches of shadow. There was a gnawing at the queen's stomach -  but that was to be expected, wasn't it? The great blackblood soldier rose, heavy and purposeful, out of the den to stand before her. Cockatrice towered over her but his manner was, had always been, that of her equal. The pair of them met eyes, and Cockatrice greeted her, lowering his face to hers in a simple but undemanding gesture of affection. Haven leaned ever so slightly into the touch, closing her eyes momentarily, tipping her head against his in the briefest of displays. Then she pulled away. 

The queen and the crown were in many ways inseparable, where one ended and the other began was difficult to explain, and Haven herself could not have pinpointed the divide. Inaria was the only purpose she had possessed for so long, it was a compass needle pointing true north, it was the only thing she had to love. But wasn't Cockatrice Inaria too? And them, the children, her children, they were Inarian if anyone ever had been. Inaria was its people and the people were the kingdom. There's no loving a nation without loving its people, she'd already learned that lesson the hard way. The word unspoken word 'family' sent shockwaves through her and unsettled long-buried wounds. 

Haven told herself this wasn't complicated, though even now before her lover's gaze she pinned back her ears pensively. This wasn't complicated. Feelings didn't have to be complicated to be strong, ferociously strong. Terrifying but nonetheless the simplest thing in the world. She would offer everything to Cockatrice, and if he did not want it, he would be free to go. She did not need him, she could go on without him if she had to. It would not change her decisions. She'd be queen. She'd be a warrior. Hesitantly her heart said that she'd do this too, she'd be a mother, even if she did not know how. 

"I have something to say." She answered him, squaring her stance and setting her jaw. She was nervous. Prepared for the world to crumble like the world does, prepared for pain to curl in all her silent spaces like pain does, prepared to carry this on her shoulders alone if need be. Like she did. "I'm pregnant."

She stood before him with the softest version of fear held gingerly in her teeth. How do we hold something so breakable? How do we carry something as heavy and oddly shaped and fragile as a family? You just have to. You just do it as best as you can and hope you don't fuck it up. And hopefully you don't have to do it alone. 

[Cockatrice]

What weight would he not bear for her?

Trice feels her in all the core of his bones and the cords of his muscles. He feels her in the ache in his shoulder, and the twinge in his long-gone ear. He feels her in the memory of Dragon beneath his paws – of that monster, pinned and snarling, her blood on his teeth and his final blow stayed – and he feels her in the wind in his heavy coat as he emerges into the dawning sun, the breeze smelling of the jacarandas even still. Whatever news Haven brings with her furrowed brow and her heavy countenance, Cockatrice prepares to weather it with a lift of his chin and a slow, patient blink of his green eyes, still clear despite his years. He is not eloquent. He is unable to articulate that twisting ache in his chest when he looks at her, nor process it entirely; he conflates duty with love, and in many ways, his displays of each are the same. Dedication. Loyalty. Protection. The things he can offer – and offer Haven before any other.

(He had not been bred, all those seasons ago, to understand a thing like love. In his quieter, more pensive moments, the guard thinks he can understand how failure must have burned in his sister so long ago, when success was all they had ever been taught to know, though he does not approach thinking of her as justified. Then, perhaps. Once, a very long time ago. Not since. Not now. Not again.

There are choices that cannot be unmade, and deeds which cannot be forgiven.)

And where another lover might speak – pregnant?, he might say, incredulous, or excited, or shocked – Cockatrice is silent. His head tips to one side just so, the barest hint of recognition, and in the set of her jaw and the squaring of her shoulders, he knows two things: they are his, and she would die for them. There is an unexpected dryness to his mouth, and though he is never a creature of many words, Trice usually has an inkling of how to reply. Here, his linear pragmatism is suddenly waylaid by each but, and each what if, and the sudden impossibility of being a father when he himself has little idea of what family has ever meant to mean, he who hates his sister and could not kill her, he who returned to a kingdom that had shunned him—

But they are his. And he would die for them.

“We’ll have to prepare,” then, is the practical answer, if said more quickly than he is used to speaking. “How long?” To hunt, to line the den, to come to terms with the little lives that even now quicken in Haven’s belly. Cockatrice lifts his great head to meet his Queen’s eyes, green on gold, and there is an instant where he is not only the soldier prepared to carry this out as any other task, or as any other order – where some curious softness in his eyes belies his stoicism. Where he doubts – and he tastes something like fear. “If you would have me,” Trice adds, wondering over his presumption, over being a guard and never a King – when he would give the world to simply lay at the mouth of her den each night and want for nothing else, when he is suddenly struck by how profoundly he does not want to be cast out from this, “—I would protect them either way.”

[Haven]

Inaria, Inaria, Inaria. It was in the Fringe Dires' blood, his black blood, and Haven had known for some time that she loved him. They are his, of course they are his, and of course she would die for them, and of course he would die for them. It was all as clear as the Inarian sky, the Inarian water. Of course. 

Had Haven not been a creature of resilient constitution her world would have been spinning at the sudden revelation: that they are a family, that she has a family again. That burden had for so many years only been a corpse, the golden queen had in her loss and fury carried it behind her with each step. But now, her family - it was something alive, something alive and fragile and powerful. She felt an ache in all her bones. This, another sacred duty to shoulder. But she didn't have to shoulder it alone. 

She breathed out, realizing then that she had been holding her breath. The monarch of swords, as vulnerable as she could physically bear. As vulnerable as she had been when the pair of them had met, her body mangled and her mind tortured. He'd seen her then and now. 

The Elite's words sent up billows of warm breath in the crisp air. "Soon." She answered him. There would be more visits to medics, more questions and answers. They could make plans and contingencies. Cockatrice was now and had always been a bastion, for Inaria and for her. Among Inarians, so very few could say that they had seen glimpses of the wolf beneath the crown, behind the army. Haven was easy to admire and difficult to love, for love requires being known. Inaria knew their queen from the shadows she cast, from her cries of war, from her laws and legacy. They knew her golden coat, her piercing gaze, the stiffness in her gait when it rained. They knew her bearing and burden, her dedication to them, her sacrifices and her failings. Cockatrice alone among them knew her name. 

"I would have you." She says quietly but firmly. Had he asked for a crown she would have denied him, but he did not ask for a crown. Had he asked for an army, she would have denied him, but he was not asking for an army. What he asked for, Haven did not know how to give, but she also did not know how to deny. "I would have you."