Lauren and Tamsin hadn't had the easiest of romances. For one, their relationship had started out all but acerbic which had warped into a physical…thing they refused to name which often bordered on animalistic violence and during the first few months of their stolen moments, its wasn't usual for one or both of them to have cuts, bruises and torn clothing. It was more to their own surprise than anyone else's that their 'strictly physical' relationship had turned into a something serious with deep emotions attached to it. In fact, just how 'secret' their relationship was had been revealed the day they walked into the Dal hand in hand for the first time and Kenzi had made an incredulous noise in the back of her throat and dug in her pocket to shove a crumpled up wad of bills at Bo who looked pleased with herself. The only comment that had been made was a surly remark by Kenzi that if they had waited just three more days to go public, she would have won the pool (which promptly earned the lithe human gentle punch in the arm by the Valkyrie).
Most of the milestones in their relationship were quiet public acknowledgements. Even privately, they would dance around subjects until one of them brought it up seriously. Tamsin had more or less asked the human to marry her one morning when Lauren had awoken to find the Valkyrie's bright gaze trained intently on her, making her feel very self-aware. She wasn't worried, really, the Dark Fae had the same look on her face that she'd had the first time she actually said the words 'I love you' to her but a laugh bubbled in her chest and escaped before she could stop it when Tamsin said in a voice trying too hard to be nonchalant: "So, why don't we get married or something?"
Like everything else, Tamsin hadn't wanted to make a big deal out of it. It wasn't that she was embarrassed; she could be surprisingly possessive in public and highly enjoyed showing off that the doctor was hers when people were making eyes at her, she was just naturally very low key about certain things. Lauren hadn't had to press very hard to get her way with the wedding though, since the unification of the Dark and Light, making it legal in Fae terms was exceedingly simple and they spent more time trying to convince Bo and Kenzi that they weren't going to have the wedding at the clubhouse than they did signing Lauren's formal fealty to Tamsin (with the added clauses that she would still be doing work for the Fae, of course)
The conversation about children had started just as innocuously as the more or less marriage proposal Tamsin had delivered a year prior. Like the proposal, it had seemingly come unprompted. Lauren was carefully bandaging her wife up in their living room after the Valkyrie stubbornly refused to go to the med lab for the sole reason Bo and Dyson hadn't had to, never mind that neither of them had been stabbed in the back with a short sword and had a split lip. Lauren was gently scolding the Valkyrie for not sitting still while she was pulling thick sutures through the laceration in her back when Tamsin had blurted her statement quietly.
Lauren hummed in agreement at first, having not been particularly paying attention, but once she pulled the tiny curved needle through the skin on the Valkyrie's back, she'd looked up and asked the taller blonde to repeat herself. Tamsin rolled her eyes and made a move as if to gnaw her lower lip thoughtfully but winced when she reminded herself of the gash on it. "I said," she repeated more clearly. "That you'd make a good mom."
Lauren felt her face warm in spite of herself and she clipped the excess nylon away from the final stitch before applying a clean bandage, more to keep Tamsin from pulling at the loose nylon threads than to keep it clean and moved to the front of the Valkyrie to look at the swollen wound in her lip. "What are you trying to say?" the doctor prodded, pulling a cotton ball out of the medical kit on the table near where the Valkyrie was sitting.
"Just what I said." Tamsin sidestepped, true to form. She jerked her head slightly to one side in evasion as Lauren brought up the cotton ball, now soaked in alcohol near her lip. She hooked her ankles behind Lauren's knees and pulled the doctor forward, dropped her head to the shorter blonde's shoulder. "I just think it'd be, I dunno, cool or something to have little mini us' running around." Lauren had laughed not sure what to say, but Tamsin had murmured "I'm serious" in her ear before kissing her soundly past the pain in her lip.
And that had been the extent of the official conversation, really. The doctor had found out more about Valkyrie physiology in the following year than all of the Fae archives knew combined. Because Valkyrie's weren't really born or gestated in any type of conventional way due to their repeating lifecycles, they had decided Lauren would carry the baby. There were tons of different Fae types that were able to procreate via parents of the same gender, but it had taken nearly four months for Lauren to perfect a treatment that would work for them though after several initial treatments, she found that she stopped aging at a cellular level. Although she was still legally, socially and more or less biologically human, she did take comfort in the fact that not only would their child fit in with Fae society, but also she would be around more than long enough to see it grow into adulthood.
Eight months into all the research, treatment and commandeering of Fae medical labs, Lauren had become pregnant. It was an odd sensation, not just because of another life growing inside her, but a severely maternal switch seemed to be flipped inside Tamsin. Though the Valkyrie was certainly protective of people she loved and could undoubtedly could be described as caring, it was fairly comical the way she flittered about their house daily, fretting about things that might not be acceptable for babies (she had even taken to locking her liquor cabinet even though it was in a cabinet six feet from the floor), she asked Lauren endless questions about human pregnancies, read nearly every medical text Lauren had on pregnancies even when she couldn't understand it and while the doctor would be the first to admit that Tamsin had a nurturing side to her not many got to see, she took only a little guilt in allowing the Valkyrie to wait on her so heavily.
Even before Lauren started showing, she spent most nights drifting off to sleep with Tamsin gently telling what passed as bedtime stories to her to her abdomen (which generally consisted of a lot of battles and stories involving jötnar). After about eight months into her pregnancy, Lauren had woken suddenly with a horrible cramping sensation. Not particularly worried, she eased herself out of bed and started for the hall closet where they kept a heating pad stashed, turned it on and went back to bed only to be woken up several minutes later with a tightening cramping feeling that caused her to involuntarily let out a pained noise.
Tamsin bolted upright in an instant as if she hadn't been sleeping at all, a protective hand over Lauren's stomach and almost fearfully asking if her water had broke. The blonde doctor nearly laughed as her latest contraction died down and reassured her wife that while she was certain her water hadn't broken, they had better get to the hospital as soon as possible. The Valkyrie all but jumped out of bed, sprinting around their bedroom and grabbing clothes for Lauren to wear, helping her into them and easing her down the stairs to collect the overnight bag that had been by the door since Lauren had theorized the pregnancy probably wouldn't be as long as normal human gestation two months ago. Due to it being three in the morning, Tamsin made it to the hospital five minutes before her previous best time when she had insisted on making the run in Lauren's economic, but unfamiliar car.
The doctor wanted to compliment on the Valkyrie's ability to not only make it to the hospital, but get them through the door and state what they needed without yelling or cursing at anyone, but was too busy trying not to concentrate on the feeling of a baby inside her stretching itself out in all directions. Once they were set up in a room, Tamsin made the round of phone calls, having to be manhandled out of the room to do so as per enforcement of the no cellphone policy in the hospital rooms. She stayed in the waiting room just long enough to have a bleary sounding Kenzi repeat the message twice and promise to wake Bo and meet them back at their apartment before practically sprinting back into the delivery room.
If anyone asked Lauren later, she would tell them that it was the longest three hours of her life but if pressed for details, she could hardly remember anything except gripping Tamsin's hand and feeling like every blood vessel in her face was going to burst open. If anyone asked Tamsin, she would say it was the longest three hours of her life too, but she remembered hearing Lauren let loose strings of swears that she wasn't even aware the doctor knew existed and that she would be forever surprised that the death grip Lauren had had on her hand hadn't broken any bones. Both would agree that from the moment Charlotte Freyja Lewis' shrill cry pierced the air, that the newborn with her downy head full of blonde hair was the most beautiful thing either of them had ever seen.