Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I can’t trust my legs right now so I stay seated. I have never been more terrified in my life. Not during my days as a Helldiver in the mines, not when I clawed my way through the Institute and not even when I faced Aja and the Jackal. The Sovereign beside me is quiet. Legs crossed, hands folded in her lap, looking out over the garden like the sun might shift if she wills it.

“Mustang,” I begin, voice thick and uneven. I clear my throat. “I never thought I’d live long enough to…” I trail off as the gold of her eyes catches the light. Her head turns to look at me when I grab her hand.

I’ve given a lot of speeches in my lifetime. The Reaper is good at saying the right thing when the blood’s already spilled and all that’s left is to clean it up. For some reason, this one is harder.

“I used to think survival was enough. That if I lived long enough, if I outlasted the war, I would be content.”

Her fingers thread through mine.

“I told myself I was building something. Every death, every lie, every compromise. I stacked them like bricks. Made a tower out of them tall enough to see Eo’s dream from the top.” I pause, chest tight. I look down at our joined hands. Her hand tightens against my scarred knuckles.

“I don’t know how to be him,” I admit. “The man who doesn’t kill to build. The man who just lives. When I look at you… when I look at Pax…” My throat tightens again. I bite down against the swell of emotion. “I see what the world could be. I see why I keep swinging the slingBlade. I see the reason for all of it.”

Her eyes glisten. It’s not the Lionheart of war that stare back at me. Just the woman who once rode into battle next to me and still chooses to sit with me now.

“I missed my son’s first steps.” I whisper. “I missed his first words. I missed all of it because duty came first. I told myself that there’d always be time later.”

“You always come back.” She says, comforting me even now. As she always does.

I rise. My legs still shake but I let them. Let them carry the weight of this moment. I stand in front of her then slowly, deliberately sink down onto one knee.

“I’ve built too many things on death. Let me build this on hope..”

Her breath catches, nearly soundless, but I hear it like a battle cry in a silent room. There is no pretense in her gaze. No armor, no politics. This is the mother of my son. The pulse beneath every reason I’ve ever had to keep fighting.

My hand trembles as I take out the ring from my pocket. The wolf sigil of House Mars. The smaller side panels bear the emblem of the Institute, where they forged monsters and called it merit. Where I was born again in another man’s skin. I slide it from my palm and hold it out to her.

“Virginia au Augustus, you’ve commanded fleets, conquered an empire, carved peace from a war-torn solar system.” My voice cracks. “But I don’t want to marry a Sovereign. I want you. I want the girl who brought me back from the dead. The woman who thought I was mad and trusted me anyway. I want to wake up beside the mother of my child.”

I breathe in once, slowly. “Let me be yours.” Not as the Reaper. Not as a weapon. Just a man. Just a flawed and fumbling man that’s desperately, utterly in love.

Wind sighs through the garden, warm against my face. The world feels like it’s holding its breath. She takes her time with her thoughts before she finally exhales a half-laugh, half-sob and drops to her knees in front of me.

“Oh, Darrow.” Her hands cup my face. “You impossible man.”

It isn’t the urgent kiss of goodbye she gives me. Her delicate fingers curl around the ring that’s still poised between us. I feel her breath on my lips, feel the way her body folds into mine. She holds the ring like it’s something sacred.

In my other pocket, tucked away and warm against my leg, is the ring I bought. It cost more than any Red would’ve made in ten lifetimes. I know she’d wear a copper wire if I tied it on her finger with enough sincerity but I still wanted to give her something that said she deserved everything. Knowing she held the battered House Mars ring in her hands like it was a relic of devotion, I know I made the right choice.

Her forehead rests against mine when our lips finally part. I have my answer but the boy in me still wants to hear it from her.

It’s like she’s read my mind because then she whispers, “I’ll be your wife.”

My world realigns. I slide the ring onto her finger. It doesn’t fit quite right. Despite being bigger, it belongs.

The smirk I have fallen in love with appears. “I know about the other one.”

I blink. “What?”

“The ring in your other pocket.”

“I- how?”

She shakes her head, keeping that secret.

I reach into my pocket and pull out the tiny box: inside it is an elegant, priceless stone shaped like a rising sun. I commissioned it secretly and obsessed over the details. Sevro had rolled my red eyes with how much I wanted it to be perfect.

She takes it gently. Turns it in her fingers. Her eyes soften. “It’s beautiful,” she murmurs. “And completely ridiculous.”

My throat constricts again.

“I love it.”

I feel heat rise to my ears. I take the second ring and slide it onto the same ring finger on her left hand, lightly brushing the inside of her wrist. Her hand looks small in mine.

She leans forward until her brow rests against mine again. “We’ll still have to fight.”

“I know.”

“There’ll be more to lose.”

“I know.”

“We won’t get everything right.”

I smile. “I never did.”

She traces the scar under my eye.

“We’re going to be husband and wife.” She has a grin on now and I can see the young girl beneath all the responsibility.

”We’re getting married.” I repeat, pulling her into my arms where no one watches and nothing needs to be said. We stayed that way for a long time.

Chapter Text

The first thing I register when I wake up is the warmth. It’s not from the covers pulled up to my chest but the steady heat of the man at my back. It’s the aftermath of coming undone: Darrow’s arm secure over my waist. His dexterous fingers are curled as if he refuses to let go even in sleep.

For a moment, I stayed perfectly still and listen to his slow breathing. Then I lift his hand carefully, slide from the bed inch by inch. His brow twitches and his lips part slightly. He groans but doesn’t wake.

I wrap my robe and remember that this is the same man who once tore an empire apart. Now he’s promised to build something with me once more.

I think of Pax. Our legacy. Our future. Our son. Yet he won’t understand the gravity when I show him the rings.

I lift my hand as I step outside in the cold. One is old, scarred and battered. The other is hope turned into a jewel. They shouldn’t go together. And yet.. somehow, they do.

Who should I tell first?

The Golbin comes to mind. I don’t understand him as well as my fiancé. Darrow says Sevro will probably laugh so hard he cries then threaten him not to tell anyone. After dancing together at his wedding with Victra, -which now feels like ages ago- I know he’s as much of family to me as he has been for Darrow. He’ll be happy. He’ll be proud: not because it’s romantic but because we survived and his brother gets to be a husband now.

He’ll tell me I’m mad and then hug me until my ribs ache.

Behind me, I hear a shift in the blankets. Darrow is sitting up, sheet pooling low around his waist. He looks at me the way only he ever has.

‘I know my son. I’ve seen that gaze before. You are the one thing he’s certain of in a world that never stopped taking from him.’ His mother told me once.

His lips ghosts over the side of my neck once he closes the space between us. His strong arms slide around my waist from behind, pulling me gently against him.

I turn my head slightly, enough to see the corner of his smile. His eyes are still half-lidded. Hair an absolute mess. The scariest man in the solar system, looking like a boy who woke up to find his favorite thing missing.

Except I am no child’s toy. I am much more than that and now I am also going to be his wife.

He scoops me up off the floor without warning. “Rest,” he says, already carrying me back across to our bed with that seemingly unstoppable strength of his.

He lays me gently down onto the bed and climbs in beside me. Pulls the covers up with a quiet kind of tenderness only I can see he still had left in him. His hand finds mine under the blankets. Twines our fingers together then looks at the rings, pressing it to his lips.

Wordlessly, his fingers find the knot at my waist. He pulls at it slowly, deliberately until the robe slips open. He just wants the space between us gone. When he tugs me close, chest to chest, skin to skin, it’s like he’s anchoring himself there.

Darrow buries his face in my hair. Our legs tangle together. His thumb draws lazy circles on my hip. I breathe him in.

I am the place he comes home to.