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When Miku told Hibiki she was pregnant, the first thing Hibiki did was drop into the nearest chair and burst into tears.
“Honestly,” Miku had said, smiling as she rubbing Hibiki’s back. “I thought I was the one who was supposed to get mood swings.”
“But we’re gonna be moms!” Hibiki sobbed into her hands, and Miku only smiled and rubbed her back a little more gently.
The next day, Hibiki came home laden down with a stack of books and magazines so high that Miku couldn’t even see her face behind them. She hurried to try and take some off the top of the stack, but Hibiki hurried past her.
“No, no, no! You don’t want to strain yourself! I’ve got it!”
“I’m barely six weeks,” Miku said, laughing. “What’s all this?”
“Research! For baby stuff!”
Hibiki dumped her haul onto the kitchen table, and began to sort it out.
“These are some catalogs for baby stuff Tsubasa found, and these are parenting books from Genjuro, and these are books about everything you should be doing while you’re pregnant that Maria recommended, and —”
“Are you even going to read all of these?” Miku said, unable to help but smile as she picked up one of the catalogs and flipped it open to a spread about bear-themed bedroom items.
“Of course!! I have to know what to do! Oh! And I also got this!”
Hibiki dug under the pile and pulled out a thick book with a pop. She held it out triumphantly.
“I found this myself!” she said, holding it out.
Miku took it when Hibiki pushed it towards her, turning it around. It was a thick vinyl photo album, decorated with pictures of daisies.
“We’re going to have to take pictures! Lots of pictures!” Hibiki said.
“I told you, I’m only six weeks,” Miku said, but her eyes prickled with little tears, and she couldn’t help but smile. “Were the daisies on purpose?”
Hibiki beamed at her, and Miku knew from that smile that she remembered it, too — that little flower that Hibiki had wound into the shape of a ring all those years ago, the proposal before she’d popped the real one years later. For a moment, Miku felt like she was seventeen again, her cheeks flushing bright pink as she tried to figure out if Hibiki was serious or not, Hibiki’s bright grin as she held out the flower ring and then took Miku’s hand and slid it on her finger. Miku touched her wedding ring, now, not as soft and gentle as that flower had been, but just as lovely.
“It’s perfect,” she said, smiling at Hibiki. “But again, Hibiki...I’m only six weeks along.”
Hibiki hugged her tight, and Miku closed her eyes and breathed in the presence of her.
“We should think about names!” Hibiki said suddenly one night, sitting up straight in bed.
Miku resisted the urge to put a pillow over her head, an irritable streak of exhaustion passing over her.
“Can we think about names in the morning?”
“Ah! Don’t worry, you sleep! I’m just going to write some ideas down!”
Hibiki slid out of bed, and returned a moment later with a pad of paper and a pencil. She mumbled to herself, and the skritch of the pencil eventually lulled Miku back to sleep, pressed up against the warmth of Hibiki’s side.
“Well? Did you come up with any ideas?” Miku asked the next morning, wincing at the smell of the eggs overcooking in the pan. Hibiki had shooed her back to the table and insisted that she was going to cook her breakfast. Hibiki was now poring over some sort of pregnancy cookbook while the eggs continued to sizzle. “Hibiki, the eggs.”
Hibiki jolted, and with a cry, quickly dumped the scrambled eggs onto a plate.
“Um, I’ll eat those!” she said, poking at the browned edges. “I’ll make you new ones!”
“I’m pregnant, not invalid,” Miku said, but she smiled. “I can cook, still.”
“But I want to take care of you!”
Miku wanted to say you already do, every day, just by smiling , but she kept the thought in her heart and only smiled with a shake of her head while Hibiki started a new pan of eggs. These ones turned out better, though the toast was a bit underdone. Miku ate every bit of it, anyway — she was starting to get a lot hungrier already.
“So? Did you come up with any names last night?” Miku asked.
“Yeah! You should look them over!”
Hibiki grabbed her notepad and pushed it over the table. Miku looked it over while Hibiki started in on her toast.
“Give me a pencil. I’m using executive action to say no to some of these.”
Hibiki spluttered.
“What?? But they’re great names!”
“I get where you’re coming from with some of them, but I’m still not naming our baby ‘Saint Germain.’”
“But it would be sweet! Saint Germain did a lot for us!”
“Nope. Denied.”
Hibiki grumbled into her toast as Miku crossed out almost half the names. Hibiki might feel one way about it, but Miku, for her part, wasn’t keen on naming their baby after anyone that Hibiki had once fought against, even if they had eventually come around. She scribbled extra hard through the name “Fine.”
“They’re all girl names,” Miku said, tilting her head as she reached the less former-villain-y names, which were all actually very cute names like Ayaka, and Hana, and Saika. “What if our baby’s a boy?”
“Mmm...I don’t know a lot of boy names,” Hibiki said, screwing up her face in thought. “And anyway, I really feel like she’s gonna be a girl!”
“I’m not even far enough along to have an ultrasound. There’s no way to know,” Miku said.
“Still! It feels right!”
Miku’s eyes ran down to the very end of the list, and she paused. She traced her finger over the final name. Hibiki swallowed the last of her eggs, then tilted her head, as though surprised at Miku’s sudden quiet.
“Kanade,” Miku said. “That would be a nice name.”
Hibiki smiled, and her whole face softened, a faint nostalgic look coming over her. It was such a nice smile that Miku just had to look at her for a minute, while Hibiki’s eyes seemed far away. Finally, though, Miku cleared her throat.
“You should ask Tsubasa first, though,” Miku said. “She might want to use the name for one of her kids.”
“Tsubasa and Maria haven’t decided if they are having kids,” Hibki said.
“Still. You should ask first.”
Tsubasa burst into tears over the phone, so loudly that Hibiki had to hold the phone away from her ear and Miku could hear it from the couch. Hibiki shot Miku a look, and Miku just smiled, shaking her head. Eventually, Maria came to the phone, and translated Tsubasa’s tears into “yes, she thinks that would be really great, she gives her blessing, and she’s extremely excited to be your kids’ honorary aunt.”
Miku circled the name Kanade on their list, with an asterisk to think of something else if they had a boy. As the weeks went on, though, neither of them added anything else to the list.
“Do we need to pick godparents?” Hibiki asked one night, shooting straight up in bed.
By this point, sleep was hard to come by for Miku, so she resisted the urge to throw her pillow at Hibiki. Rolling over sounded like a terrible thing to do right now, anyway.
“We aren’t Christian,” she pointed out, words slurred with exhaustion.
“Is it a religious thing? I thought it was a legal thing. I think we should pick Tsubasa and Maria — or gosh, Chris-chan too, we should pick Chris-chan. She’d probably get all blushy if we asked! What does a godparent do, anyway?”
“We don’t need to pick godparents,” Miku said again, and pushed her face into her pillow.
“I’m going to text Chris and ask her.”
Miku groaned.
“She’s going to get mad at you.”
Chris did, in fact, get mad, as Miku heard over the phone the next morning.
“Texting at....god knows how early in the morning...asking dumb questions...don’t know how...she puts up with you sometimes!”
Hibiki looked chagrined when she finally put the phone down, smiling awkwardly.
“I should stop thinking of ideas while I’m tired,” Hibiki said.
Miku bit back a laugh, and reached over the kitchen table to hold her hand.
“You can think of them,” she said. “But maybe save doing them until after you’ve slept on them.”
Miku felt the first kick while she was sitting next to Hibiki, only half watching the action movie Genjuro had lent them. She gasped, dropping her hands to her stomach.
“Hibiki — Hibiki!”
She didn’t wait for Hibiki to ask what. She grabbed Hibiki’s hand and pulled it against her stomach. Hibiki’s mouth opened to ask, and then, like a miracle, another kick just as her hand laid against it. Her eyes widened.
“Oh my gosh,” she gasped.
She laid her ear gently against Miku’s stomach, listening. Her head was warm, and Miku carded her fingers through Hibiki’s hair gently. Her hair was so soft, like a cat’s.
“There’s really a baby in there,” Hibiki said, awestruck.
“Did you think it was a watermelon?” Miku laughed.
“No, I just mean — it suddenly feels so real!!”
Hibiki laid one hand against Miku, still listening for any sign of another kick. None came. But Hibiki didn’t move, and Miku didn’t ask her to.
After a few moments, the action movie still playing sounds of explosions in the background, Hibiki started singing gently. Her voice was so soft, so sweet. It wasn’t the same kind of song she saved for the battlefield, the kind that welled up within her from the power of the Symphogear — but it was something Miku knew was from deep within her heart anyway. The song wrapped around them like a warm, soft blanket, and Miku closed her eyes, letting Hibiki’s voice wash over her. She imagined that the child growing within her grew still, as though listening carefully to the sound of her mother’s voice. It was a song of welcoming, and of joy and happiness at the little life that was about to join them, and Miku saved it in her heart, something that couldn’t be recorded in their little photo album.
“What will our kid even call us?” Hibiki asked once, as she stirred soup. She’d been getting much better at cooking, lately. Nothing had been burned in a few weeks, which Miku appreciated, because standing in the kitchen for long hours was starting to be extremely uncomfortable.
“What do you mean?” Miku asked, cupping her hot mug of tea and letting the steam wash over her, hoping it might still the nausea.
“I mean, we’re both moms, right? So won’t it be confusing if our kid calls us both mom?”
Miku pursed her lips, humming.
“I think we could probably figure it out,” she said. “But...we could go by different versions of the word ‘mom’?”
“Like, ‘mama’, and ‘mother’, and ‘mommy’?” Hibiki said. She tasted the soup, made a face, and reached for the salt. “I think I just like ‘mom’.”
“I could be ‘mama’ then,” Miku said, and despite the twisting in her stomach from the nausea, she smiled, imagining hearing that sound come out of their child’s lips for the first time. “Though, I think that’s easier for a child to say, so she’ll probably say mama before she says mom.”
“Oh, is this the part where I’m supposed to be jealous our kid says your name first?” Hibiki said, laughing. She turned and poured ladles of soup into bowls, and brought them over to the table. “I guess I could be dad, too, if I wanted. We can make it up, right?”
“You could,” Miku agreed, smiling. “We get to decided how we want to do things.”
It was just a week after the baby shower — and two weeks early — when Miku was waiting in the lobby of S.O.N.G. with Aoi and Sakuya for Hibiki to finish a debriefing, when she suddenly felt something release. She gasped, pressing her hands to her stomach, and Aoi stopped in the middle of her sentence, eyes widening.
“Oh,” Miku gasped. “I think she’s coming.”
Sakuya went to get Hibiki, and Aoi started to lead Miku towards one of S.O.N.G.’s medical wings, assuring her over and over that they had doctors on site who could do this kind of thing, and there wasn’t time to get her to their planned hospital when they were already in the submarine. Miku didn’t care, she just kept looking over her shoulder for Hibiki.
Be here be here be here be here —
And then, she was there. Hibiki burst down the hallway at full tilt. She scooped Miku into her arms as though she weighed nothing at all and full on bolted down the hallway while Miku automatically threw her arms around Hibiki’s neck and clung on.
She could still feel the warmth of Hibiki’s arms around her as she held tight to Hibiki’s hand, as pain washed through her and the doctor gently encouraged her to push. Hibiki didn’t flinch no matter how tightly Miku squeezed, cupping both hands around hers and kissing her fingers when Miku cried out. Hibiki looked white as a sheet, but she smiled anyway, she smiled when Miku looked at her, when Miku squeezed her hand so tight Miku thought she might break Hibiki’s fingers.
Hibiki sang to her, gently, her song a lifesaver in an ocean of contractions and pain even through the painkillers. Miku felt hot, felt dizzy, she felt like time wasn’t even passing — but Hibiki’s song was solid. Hibiki’s voice kept her there. Hibiki’s hand was warm as the sun in her hand, and her song was its rays, keeping her steady.
And then — the cry. The loud, bawling sound finally echoing around the room, as Miku’s body sank into the bed, spent.
Energy flooded back into her, though, when the doctor handed her baby to her. Immediately she was sitting up, cupping the tiny body in her arms and holding it close.
“It’s a girl,” the doctor said, smiling. “Congratulations, you two.”
Oh, oh, oh...she was so small . Miku gently cupped her hand against her face, staring down at every line of her round, wrinkly expression. Her tiny nose, her tiny hands.
“I told you,” Hibiki said. “I told you.”
“Shush,” Miku said, but she was smiling too big to care, overcome with the awe that this — this life — this had been within her all this time, and now she was holding her.
Miku stared down wonderingly at their baby’s tiny face, at her tiny hands curling up and releasing. She looked up to Hibiki. Hibiki was practically shaking. There were tears in the corners of her eyes, and she had both her hands pressed to her mouth, eyes fixed on their baby. Their baby .
“Do you want to hold her?” Miku asked, smiling.
“Oh my god what if I drop her,” Hibiki said, throwing back her hands. “W-what if I squish her! I don’t know how to hold a baby —”
“Shh. You can do it. You want to hold her, right?”
“Oh my god yes I do I really really do.”
Miku smiled, and gently passed her to Hibiki. She adjusted Hibiki’s arms slightly to support her head, but Hibiki cradled her with such tenderness and care that she didn’t need to do much. Hibiki stared down at her, mouth open wide.
Then she burst into tears. They were silent tears, her shoulders shaking barely, as though afraid that moving too much would jostle the baby, but the tears rolled down her cheeks so heavily that it was like she’d sprung a leak.
“Oh my god,” she sobbed. “We’re moms. Miku, we’re moms. We have a baby. We’re moms now.”
“We are moms now,” Miku said, and she felt tears coming on herself, looking at the image of Hibiki holding their child. It was another image that the album wouldn’t be able to capture, but Miku saved it anyway, folding it up tight in her heart — every breath, every sensation, every feeling she had in this moment. She would remember it forever.
Hibiki sniffled loudly, trying to get herself back into control. Then, her throat still tight with tears, she sang. She rocked their child — their Kanade — back and forth gently in her arms, and she sang her a song to welcome her. Miku leaned back on the pillows and closed her eyes. She let the song wash over her for just a moment, saving this, too, in the album of her heart. Then she, too, opened her mouth, and sang.
Their voices, soft and gentle, wrapped around each other, weaving a soft blanket over them. Cradling their child close with their voices.
There would be no telling what would happen tomorrow. But today, Hibiki was here. She was at her side, singing, her song one of gentleness rather than one of battle. Today, Miku was here, and she was happy. Their child was here.
Today, they were together. And today would never leave Miku’s heart.
The song they started today would continue, and continue, far beyond, into that world that even the gods could not know.