Work Text:
There was a knock on the door, which prompted Mythril to yell “I’ve got it!” from the other room as Anne headed towards the entrance. She was slow going, hindered by her ever-growing belly, but quickened her step when she heard Mythril hiss: “it’s you!”
As she rounded the hallway, black spots started filling the periphery of her vision and the ground started to tilt, to the point she had to steady herself on the walls before she lost her balance. She blinked fast until her vision cleared, but the sight of a red-haired fairy with an equally red wing waiting at the entrance remained.
Said fairy’s careless smile grew wider when he caught sight of her, a bright gleam in his pastel green eyes. “Ah, miss silver sugar master. It has been a while, hasn’t it.”
“R-rafael fen Rafael,” Anne greeted back, swallowing thickly. “Why are you here?”
“Really, is that how you greet family?” Rafael drawled, sounding almost sarcastic in the way he pronounced ‘family’. “I expected a warmer welcome.”
“Who said you were welcome, you tomato-looking bastard!”
Rafael looked at Mythril with a placid expression on his face, almost out of place for someone who had just been insulted, but the tightness of his smile told Anne the offense had not gone unnoticed. She hurried over to the small fairy and picked him up, shielding him with her hands.
“You surprised me,” Anne explained to Rafael, hoping to distract him. “I wasn’t expecting your visit.”
“I wasn’t exactly planning on visiting either, but then I heard a most interesting rumor.” Rafael leaned over and Anne leaned back, trying to keep a certain distance from the fairy that had been such a dangerous foe. “Would you like to know?”
“W-what was it?”
“My dearest brother produced a spawn of his own. So I thought of coming over to meet the next addition to our little family.” He peered above her head, looking left and right, before facing her once more. “Albeit I don’t see any little one here. With the father, perhaps?”
Of course there was no little one! Did he not see her round stomach?
“The baby isn’t born yet!” Mythril piped up from between her fingers.
“My due date is still a few months away,” she clarified, lest Rafael got the wrong idea and decided to chase after his brother and non-existent niece/nephew.
She would have laughed at the puzzled expression that took its place on the fairy’s face as he blankly repeated the words ‘due date’, very much reminiscent of a puppy facing something new, if not for the fact that he was one of the most dangerous individuals in the world.
Though it had been a few years since she last saw him, and his interest in her had only extended as far as how much he could use her to get to Shall. Plus, even if he got handsy or violent, there was no way she or Mythril could take him on in a fight.
It was best to keep things civil.
“It’s when I’m expected to give birth,” she explained.
“… give birth?”
Anne put a hand on her belly, hoping he’d get the hint. “The baby has to come out, you know?”
Rafael blinked: a long, slow blink of someone whose brain just could not keep up with the situation. “Come out,” he repeated, sounding very much out of his element.
It seemed the surrealness of the conversation was too much for Mythril, who threw his arms in the air in an exasperated fashion. “Oh my god, are you real.”
“A-anyway, what you need to know is that human birth isn’t the same as fairy birth. Shall and I are expecting a child, but we still have to wait a few months before we can finally meet them.”
Rafael was quiet, expression unreadable as he seemed to consider her words.
“I see. In that case, I won’t inconvenience you any further.”
He bowed slightly at the waist, though as always, Rafael’s politeness always held more derision than genuine respect. He then straightened and walked away, making true on his words.
Anne watched him for a moment, Rafael’s glowing red hair and wing out of place against the gentle colors of the meadow before her house, more befitting of a painting or a work of stained glass than the mundane backdrop. He struck a lonely figure, seeming to belong nowhere.
She wasn’t sure whether it was that reflection or the hormones that made her do what she did next. She braced herself against the doorframe, took a deep breath and called: “Rafael fen Rafael! Since you’re here and you’re… family, would you like to come in?”
"Anne!" Mythril cried.
Rafael turned around and closed some of the distance between them before he answered, voice filled with an emotion she couldn’t name. “Are you sure this is wise?”
Anne ignored his taunt slash warning. “I need someone to help me move the sugar barrels so I can grind and refine some more. Usually I’d ask Shall, but since he isn’t here at the moment…”
Rafael smiled, and maybe it was the sun, but it looked a bit genuine.
Of course, he had to ruin it.
“Who am I to refuse such a welcome invitation.”
“She never said you were welcome,” Mythril grumbled only for her to hear.
Anne headed towards the kitchen, Rafael following behind her. She asked him to move some of the barrels full of silver sugar from outside to her little workstation and started grinding silver sugar. Meanwhile, Rafael leaned against the counter next to her, in the exact same spot Shall would often occupy, and it brought a slight smile to Anne’s face seeing the similarities between the two brothers, even if it was a coincidence.
“Could you hand me the sieve?”
“Expecting me to help with menial tasks: aren’t you perhaps mistaking me for my brother?” Rafael complained, though he did as she asked.
“Don’t be silly,” Anne told him as she started to sift the sugar. “I would have gotten it myself, but it’s a bit hard to move around with my stomach as it is.”
“Where your child is.”
“Hm-hmm.”
“And you mentioned there remained months before the birth?”
“Right. Human babies grow inside their mother’s stomach for around nine months before they’re ready to be born.”
Rafael remained quiet after that. From the corner of her eye, she saw him take a handful of the coarser silver sugar she had yet to sieve, moving his hand this way and that to better catch the light. He then let the sugar fall from his palm.
“That is quite the cumbersome process,” he said, quiet, still playing with the sugar.
“What, making silver sugar? Sure, it takes time, but if you know what you’re doing—”
“I meant human birth.”
Oh. Well, that made sense. Pregnancy was much more complicated compared to the way fairies could be born fully formed and fully mature from the gaze of any living creature.
“You’re not wrong,” Anne admitted. “But there are some highlights too!”
“Such as?”
Um, she wasn’t sure Rafael would take ‘seeing Shall talk to their unborn child every night’ or ‘getting visits from friends she hadn’t seen in a long time’ for an answer, nor did she think they were close enough for such intimate thoughts. She racked her brain for an appropriate response when her stomach twitched.
Ah, yes! She knew just what to do!
“Here, give me your hand!” She made a grabby motion, becoming more insistent when all Rafael did was look at her like she had grown a second head (which… she was? In a way? Just that the second head was inside her belly and belonged to her baby). “Come on, trust me!”
Rafael raised a brow but complied, dusting the specks of silver sugar before offering a hand. She tugged him closer before setting one of his hands on her stomach, keeping it in place when his first instinct was to pull away.
“Hm, I don’t quite know whether to say ‘how bold’ or ‘how rash of you’, allowing me so close.”
“Oh, I know you won’t do anything.”
“And how are you so sure?”
“Mm, call it a mother’s instincts,” Anne said, digging her nails in the flesh of his wrist as a warning. If Rafael wanted to learn why one simply did not threaten a child in front of their mother, then he’d find out the hard way.
Plus, if he had meant them any harm, then: 1) he would have done so when she first greeted him at the door, when her guard was down, and 2) why warn her in the first place.
Rafael snorted. “Only you would have the courage to—”
He stopped mid-sentence sharply, looking down at where his hand connected with her stomach. When the baby kicked again, Anne swore Rafael’s eyes were going to pop out of his head and couldn’t hold back a giggle at his expense.
“That’s one of the nice things about pregnancy! You get to feel the baby moving and kicking.”
As if to prove her point, the baby kicked a third time. Rafae remained quiet, hand now firmly pressed against her stomach and eyes trained on her mid-section, almost as if he was trying to predict where he would feel the baby next. Anne supposed that this level of focus was a good sign.
They both waited with bathed breath for the baby to move when a voice cut the silence, making her jump: “Take your hands. off. my. wife.”
Looking up, she found her husband standing a few feet away, eyes almost black with anger, sword pointed towards Rafael.
“Shall!” she exclaimed at the same time as Rafael murmured, “ah, Shall fen Shall.”
“Rafael fen Rafael,” Shall said in return, voice icy with fury. “Let go of Anne.”
It was only then that Anne realized what the scene might have looked like to her husband: there was his precious stone brother, whom he hadn’t seen in years and who’d used Anne in the past to blackmail and hurt him, with his hands pressed against the stomach of his pregnant wife.
It seemed Rafael had come to the same conclusion as her since he took his hands off, holding them in the air much like a criminal who had been caught. He smiled smugly, unabashed. “It’s good to see you again, Shall fen Shall. Though as always, you don’t look happy to see me.”
“What do you want?” Shall asked, straight to the point.
“Really, is that how you greet family?” Rafael said, a word-for-word repeat of how he had greeted her. “I can understand your wife since I did come unannounced, but I’m a bit saddened by your cold welcome.”
“What do you want.”
“Only to meet with your offspring.” Rafael glanced back at her. “Though it has come to my knowledge that I was a few months too early.”
Shall scowled. “Leave.”
“Since it seems my presence bothers you so, I shall not inconvenience you any further.”
It surprised Anne to hear Rafael follow Shall’s order without so much as an argument. Then again, the reasoning behind his visit was to meet their child and he had accomplished as much, even if it might not have been how he’d pictured it in his mind.
Rafael bowed at the waist, hand fisted near his heart, the picture of elegance and poise, yet somehow radiating nonchalance and ease despite being one wrong word or move away from experiencing Shall’s sword.
As he headed out under the careful watch of her husband, he said: “Goodbye, brother of mine, miss silver sugar master.”
“You should come back again in a few months to meet your niece or nephew!” Anne answered. “By the way, you can call me Anne. Or sister-in-law.”
“Anne!”
Rafael chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind. Farewell.”
And with that, he was gone.
Shall wasted no time in closing the distance between them, ungloving a hand to cup her face. The dark look and shadows on his face melted as he brushed a thumb on her cheek. “Are you unhurt?”
“Mm-hm.” She leaned against his palm. “We just spoke a bit and felt the baby kick, really.”
Shall knelt, his hand slipping from her face to her waist, and he pressed an ear against her belly. He then closed his eyes and sighed. She started playing with his hair, both to comfort him and to pass time.
“You know he’ll be back, right?”
“Unfortunately.”
She waited a moment, before saying: “Think he’ll freak out if I let him hold the baby?”
“Anne!”