Notes: Continuing this because the original story always had more to it and seven years ago I didn't know how to write it down. (Also upped the rating to mature because sexytime will be happening in the future.)

CHAPTER TWO
A Fairy Tale

She was pregnant.

She couldn't be.

But she was.

So soon, she thought. We were being so careful, she insisted, her mind turning over dates and moments before her eyes turned wide. Oh. Oh my, maybe not as careful as she initially thought. There was that one time against the door that they were just a bit too eager and impatient and she practically had her clothes torn off, and it was just that one time and yet -

Now here she was.

Piper stood up from the seat of the porcelain toilet, took a couple of deep breaths and smoothed her face with her hands. She stared at the face in the mirror, she still looked young, and shook her fingers loose as if she were drying nail polish. A skinny face and a skinny body. Piper's blue hair, once worn short and spiked up with generous handfuls of hair gel, was now long and customarily done in a high ponytail.

The symptoms were there. The sharpened sense of smell, the odd taste of food, the slight nauseous feeling that did not just occur in the mornings, despite common talk. The feverish opinion of always being a few degrees higher in body temperature than what was normal. The missed periods – she counted and checked the calender.

Now she knew with certainty that she was indeed, pregnant. What a heavy word. Piper lifted the hem of her tunic and touched her flat stomach with awe. Her skin felt so warm. A terrible feeling of maternal protectiveness rose up in her – it was almost a fierce anger – and the universe just expanded a little bit more.

Straightening her spine, Piper inhaled deeply and felt her world shift. The woman had always planned for babies in her life, but her meticulous scheduling didn't work for her now. The nervousness grew and branched off into twin blossoms of terror and excitement. Brushing off her pants for no reason other than distraction, she steeled herself and opened the bathroom door.

Ace took the news well. He held her tightly as she tried to explain why she was pregnant – and how they were careless – and now -

He shushed her and told her there was nothing to be sorry for, and that night he showed her just how much he loved her.

A few months passed, then a few weeks more, then the dream ended in a rush of blood. She was alone, working in a cold laboratory putting in a few late hours when she started cramping. Sharp, quick stabs to her body, so fast she doubled over in pain in confusion. Holding onto her the small swell of her belly with one hand she grasped for the nearest thing beside her. Her fingers knocked over a metal stool before latching onto the edge of a research table. Piper panicked at the flood between her lets, the blood staining her trousers black, and smelled iron and terror in the air.

That was the first time she miscarried.

Now, several years later, they took a toll on her. The life-giving plasma that would not stay in her body stole a little bit more of her every time she tried to carry to term. And they tried hard – too hard the physicians told them. If they kept at it Piper's body would give out, depleted of nourishment. They needed time - recover they said, take a rest. Let medicine advance a little more in a couple of years. Take Piper on a vacation. Perhaps they needed to seriously consider other options, one that didn't require a living womb.

They said maybe they should adopt, their wary eyes turned towards the tall man sitting in the chair opposite them. He judged them silently as they spoke, intimidated them with his red eyes when they could not deliver. It was a pathetic hope anyways. As if anyone was going to sign parental rights over to the Dark Ace.

That's what everyone still called him. The Dark Ace. They couldn't forget.

Piper stayed behind in the office, noting the collection of medical texts behind the oversized leather chair and the mounted diplomas on the walls. She had seen so many of these specialists and she was tired. Her body exhausted, her mind dying.

"Doctor," she started.

The physician turned to her, a sympathetic look on her face. This woman could relate, she had felt the loss too. The Storm Hawk chewed on her bottom lip, turned around nervously to make sure Ace hadn't returned from the washroom before they departed for home. Piper had large orange eyes set in a lovely brown face. Those eyes stared at her now. There were ghosts in those irises.

"What do I need to do?" she asked.

"You'd need magic to work a miracle."

He was not going to give up. The specialists, the medical professionals who relied on the science Piper believed in, had given up. Well, not he. Ace had enough of this bullshit and he was going to banish this sadness from his house with everything he possessed. Their last medical appointment resulted in another crying bout.

Piper told him what the doctor said to her.

He told her they would not be seeing that doctor again. In fact, he told himself, they would not be seeing any Atmosian doctor again. If they needed a miracle, then he was going to find one. She could not give up, she was not a quitter, and they were going to get through this.

Hopelessness and desperation were excellent motivators, turned inwards they became anger. The Cyclonian held onto that anger while he watched his wife settle into an uneasy sleep.

He reached into himself and touched the dark half that slumbered.

While Piper carried on with life, filling the holes in her body with research and Sky Knight missions, he worked to find a miracle. She amazed him, finding the strength to wake up and put on a lab coat and kiss him good morning. Sometimes she returned to bed after a couple of days wearing her a Storm Hawk uniform, her badge polished and bright.

Ace was a resourceful man. He knew how to save things and build up interest before needing to use them. He used fear as the former champion of Cyclonia to get information. He used money and intimidation to get into seedy dive bars where Talon sympathizers brooded and told them not to say a word to the Upside. They obeyed. He paid well for leads that led to houses where miracles happened. He wore a cloak to hide his hair and a mask to hide his face and spoke to them.

He rode in the night on his disguised skimmer to find a miracle worker of his own.

Over and over again, he heard a long-forgotten name. Lenore. In the basements of secret pharmacists he heard them whisper her name in hesitation. The Witch of the Wastelands. The madwoman. She was the one people wanted. And Cyclonians didn't go to her, she came to you. She appeared when you needed her the most, and she made dreams come true.

Ace did not like where this was headed, but he had seen a child walk again when she should have been bedridden for the rest of her natural life. He had shared tea with a blind man who could speak again after losing his tongue as a prisoner of war. The supposed evidence was before his eyes, but it made his stomach turn.

Mad Lenore.

He knew her as Queen Lenore. Birth mother of Master Cyclonis.

The most unnerving story involved a pair of twins. They had asked for their older sister to return to them, and she did. Ace asked patronizingly how that could be considered a miracle. There was nothing remarkable about this house, the sitting room they welcomed him in had its walls plastered with a nauseating amount of family photographs. One of the twins shuddered and buried his face in his hands.

"She fell off a cliff. She didn't see the edge and we were playing tag somewhere where we shouldn't have. We ran down the hill as fast as we could – had to take long way and there was her body on the beach. She – she was – we buried her.

We didn't know how to tell our parents so we said someone must have taken her. They believed us, I think. The town turned up for the search and when we could, we stole away from the crowd. When we returned to the beach she was gone. We must have dug up that entire beach twice. More. There was nothing. No footprints."

Ace knew when people were lying to him, or at least giving him half-truths but he didn't interrupt the young man (he looked one or two years older than Piper) and let him ramble on.

"My twin sister started getting messages from birds. This was after a few months now. Sometimes we would do stuff, like walk past her favourite dress shop in town, and a stranger would give us a present that reminded us of her. It was really creepy.

The witch told us to go back to that beach and she led us to a cave nearby. She asked us what we wanted and if we would be willing to pay her price. She promised to protect us.

She said we had to go to Terra Cyclonia. We were terrified because our parents uprooted our family to this place when we were just babies. Our older sis used to tell us stories about that place, she loved it there. We've never been back there. Not many people know we're Cyclonian-born, it helped growing up here.

We're telling you because you're one of us. You wouldn't be here asking us about her if you weren't.

There was a fountain we needed to find on our own, a natural spring of water that met certain requirements. We travelled for several weeks, learning more about the land than we ever thought we would. It was hard but we found the spring and brought it a flagon back to the witch. She told us we could go home.

When we returned our parents were worried sick – we weren't allowed to tell them where we had gone, you see - but they had good news. Some Sky Knight found her in a forest, sleeping."

At this point in the story the young man had to stop. He started shaking and actually looked like he was about to cry. His twin patted him on the back and stared at Ace with warning.

"There's always a price, you know. The price you don't know about. Our sister, she was the golden child. She kept this family together. The Sky Knight couldn't wake her up from her sleep so our parents went with him to that forest to see if they could wake her up or bring her body to a doctor. They crashed their vehicles and died. The Knight lived and my sister woke up.

It's like a fairy tale, the real ones. The Sky Knight married our sister and we have her back, and she's happy and doesn't remember anything about dying. But my brother and I – we're guilty."

"We lied," her sibling added. "We lied."

Ace pulled the cloak up over his head as soon as he was out the front door. He thanked the twins for their hospitality and asked where was the best place a man could eat for a decent price here. They gave him directions to a sandwich shop and told him to get the one with three different types of cheese before closing the door. After doing a perimeter check around the property to make sure no one was trailing him, he mounted his vehicle and drove off.

He stopped by the town square, made a purchase from the recommended deli and found a secluded tree to park his vehicle; leaned against the trunk while he had lunch. The somber expression he wore was out of place with the lovely spring air. The tree above him sprouted green and healthy buds that promised beauty when they would eventually bloom.

No more, he decided. He had everything he needed to know about this witch, Lenore.

He was just brushing the crumbs off his tunic and pants when a little girl with beautiful black hair appeared in the side street that led to the hidden garden. She laughed when she saw him, ran over to him like he was a friend and stopped with purpose when she neared his vehicle.

The child cooed at the something she held in her palms. Something hard tugged at his ribcage. His lips turned up to echo the flash of a smile she gave him. Barely more than a baby. She approached him unafraid, and Ace couldn't bear to walk away from her.

"Hi!" she said brightly, her voice was so young.

"Hi," he answered with a breathless voice.

"I have a present for you! The lady give me this. She said I give this to you 'cause you lost it and she's old so - so I help her." She spoke with the slightly hurried rush recognizable in children still learning how to form sentences. "And it's okay 'cause she gave me a toy too."

"Oh. Thank you."

"Want it back?"

"Yes," Ace gulped down the tightness in his throat. "Yes. I mean - please."

With all the gentleness of a dove, she tiptoed over to him and Ace stretched out his arms so she wouldn't have to go far. The thing was warm from the heat of her palms, and soft and very, very delicate. He held a tiny speckled egg in his hands.

"You have to be very, very careful," she warned him with all the seriousness she could muster, authoritative even in her diminutive stature. "Don't lose it again."

He shook his head. "I won't."

And he was rewarded with a beaming smile.

"Robin!" A male voice cried out anxiously from the main streets. "Robin, where are you?"

"Daddy!" the girl shouted back, tossing back her black hair. She laughed like this was all a game, waved goodbye to Ace, and then her little feet carried her away. "Daddy! I'm right here!"