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They had told her at her first ultrasound that the pregnancy would be difficult.
Glynda assumed as much, of course. She hadn’t ever been around pregnant women besides occasionally passing one in the city, but it had been giving birth that killed her mother. To say a piece of her was terrified she would meet the same fate would be entirely honest, even if she would never, ever admit that to anyone.
Her doctor had insisted that her position as a huntress made things safer regardless of her family history of reproductive issues, and she had chosen to believe him. She possessed a powerful Aura, certainly strong enough to handle the bumps that a single baby could bring to her body.
Except that it wasn’t a single baby. It was three.
She was too smart a woman to, but Glynda did, in part, blame herself for that. If she hadn’t insisted on so many rounds, perhaps there would’ve been less chance of that happening.
There was nothing she could do about it now, though.
A sigh left her and she shifted, trying to get comfortable. The swell of her stomach was larger than she’d ever seen in anyone, something she attributed to the number of babies she was carrying. They had all told her that she would get bigger by the end and that it was a beautiful thing, but she didn’t feel beautiful.
She felt worried and tired. It was normal, they said. Her difficulty breathing, the aches and pains, the inability to sleep, it was all normal. There was nothing for her to worry about, because she lived in Atlas, with the best doctors at her exposal, and she was a huntress capable of dealing with discomfort.
That knowledge did nothing to make her feel better as she placed her open palm on her stomach. She could feel them, and she swallowed hard, trying to focus on it, just in case this was a memory that she needed to keep.
Glynda sensed when he entered the room as well as she could his frown. He had been trying so hard for them, for her, and she knew he felt as helpless as she did.
“Kicking again?”
“Just shifting this time,” she hummed, taking a deep breath. His big, rough hand cupped her cheek, and she blinked her eyes open to look at him. The tender gaze was enough to spring tears to her eyes; no amount of fighting would keep them from spilling over, so she allowed them to without struggle.
If he was blurry before, now it was worse, but she could still make out his sad smile as he leaned in to kiss her forehead.
“I know,” he whispered, sitting down on the bed that dipped underneath his weight. Her legs shifted forward to bump against his back, and he responded by moving his hand to rest on top of hers. “I promise, as soon as we’re able, I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
That’s fine and well, she thought, but I’m stuck on bed rest now . What could happen in a handful of months was irrelevant when she had to spend yet another few weeks restricted to the house, and particularly, to the upstairs. She had tried to go down them once, which was fine; it was the getting back up them that was her struggle.
Her nose twitched, the smell of oil threatening to turn her stomach. He must have noticed the look on her face, because he stood and retracted his hand as though he had been burned, obvious shame taking him over.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t think about the smell clinging to my uniform.”
That was alright. He never did.
She gestured up with her hand for him to go on and get changed, and he smiled again, this time lighter. In another time, something incredibly suggestive would’ve come out, but then, Glynda was the only one in the gutter as she watched him waddle to the far end of the room and strip down to the essentials. He shimmied out of his pants and bent over to grab them, and even despite how proud she was that he remembered to throw them in the laundry right after, she was focused too hard on his back, straining herself to see.
A deep groove there, meeting the metal, and another, a cluster of scratch marks scraping over the steel. It couldn’t be buffed out, although she was certain he had tried. They were small, subtle even, but she enjoyed seeing them. If she were less miserable, and less pregnant, she would’ve already jumped on him, but instead she laid still, ignorant of her own flushed cheeks.
“I bought Mistrali for dinner,” he said, out of nowhere, as he pulled up a pair of sweatpants and snapped them over his hips. When he turned back to her, he tilted his head, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. At her, no doubt, but she smiled at him and he went back to shuffling towards her until he was leaning down again for another kiss, this one on her lips, chaste and sweet.
“Noodles?”
He nodded at her question, leaving her to hum. That did sound good.
“When you go down to get it, could you bring my scroll?”
James raised only one eyebrow this time, his eyes slightly narrowed. “Why is it downstairs?”
Glynda huffed through her nose and pressed her face against the pillow, trying to hide. “I forgot it, and I don’t wish to speak any further on the subject.”
She heard him chuckle, and she threw a pillow in his direction to chase him out of the room. Cheeky bastard.