Yeah, I know it's been a while since I've updated. In my defense I was out of the country for two weeks and I've had a lot of schoolwork to do. My exams are coming up soon, so I probably won't start writing Chapter 4 until they're done. If you've read A Mentor, A Brother, and a Lover you know who Tristan is, and if you haven't, he's an important character later on (he's also Gippal's cousin). I'm not sure what the focus of Chapter 4 is going to be yet, but it will definitely take place sometime during 978 AS. Reviews would be loved! I know you're out there, lurkers... Anyway, here's Chapter 3!

51st Day of Winter, 977 AS
Guadosalam

When Leia woke up on the morning of Liam's 3rd birthday she was perfectly content and happy—until she tried to get out of bed.

"Ow…" she muttered, putting a hand on her lower back and lying down again. "Stupid muscle spasm…". Ever since being injured in a Sin attack at the age of sixteen, Leia had been prone to occasional back problems. It had been worse when she was younger—she would get a muscle spasm and be laid up in bed for the rest of that day—but as time had passed from the injury they had become less intense, requiring no more then for somebody to give her a back rub to relieve the tension.

Thankfully, her favorite person to fill this role had come home last night, and had just walked in to the bedroom. "Your timing is impeccable," she said, propping herself up on one elbow as a fully-dressed Garen, hair still damp from his shower, came into the room.

Garen raised an eyebrow at her. "It is?"

"Mm-hm. My back hurts." She winced as another pain shot through her lower back. "I woke up with a muscle spasm. Think you can do something about it?"

Garen's eyes softened and he gave her a sweet half-smile, an expression that Leia always felt privileged and happy to see on his too-often serious face. "Sure thing," he said. "Turn over and I'll see what I can do."

Leia gladly complied, and let out a sigh of relief when Garen knelt on the bed next to her and started gently kneading her back. "I knew there was a reason I married you," she said with a giggle, her words slightly muffled into the pillow. "Nida's just as good at this, but I like you better. And Nida doesn't do it for me quite as often as he used to…"

Garen pressed his thumbs in between her shoulder blades. "He doesn't?"

"Nope." A thought suddenly occurred to Leia and she smirked. "I could make a comment about what Nida does these days, but I don't think I will." She could almost sense Garen making a face.

"Please," he said, in the tone of somebody getting mental images they didn't want. "Especially if it has anything to do with my sister." After a moment's silence he added, trying to sound off-hand, "She hasn't been spending the night with him, has she?" Leia could hear the undercurrent in his voice that spelled trouble for Nida if the answer was yes, and was glad that she didn't have to tell an outright lie.

"I don't make it my business to check up on him every night," she said, raising her eyebrows. "But with your dad always going back and forth to Djose or Luca and the rest of you guys being home less than half the time, I wouldn't be surprised if she's been able to come up here without you realizing it. Lucia certainly wouldn't care, and she's the only one who's almost always in Domremy." Garen said nothing, so Leia tactfully changed the subject.

"Is the birthday boy awake yet?"

"Yeah," said Garen, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "Squall and Seifer are too, but-" he broke off and they both listened as a door opened. "I think that's Siri."

Sure enough, the little girl poked her head around the door moments later, and upon seeing Garen she beamed and said "Daddy!", coming over to crawl onto the bed and into his lap.

"Hey there, angel," Garen said, smiling as he ruffled Siri's hair. "Did you know it's Liam's birthday today?"

"Uh-huh," said the toddler. "An' we get brownies, an' cake, an-" Siri's monologue was interrupted by the distant opening of the front door, followed by a familiar male voice.

"That's your Uncle Loran," Garen said, after listening for a moment. He looked down at Siri and said "Why don't you go say hi to him, and we'll be out there in a minute." Siri scrambled down off the bed and ran out of the room, and Leia looked over at Garen.

"She's a daddy's girl, you know," Leia said, and grinned at the half-pleased, half-self conscious expression on Garen's face.

"Go talk to your brother," Leia said eventually, reaching out to poke Garen with her foot. "I still need to shower and get dressed, but I'm sure you guys can handle the kids between the two of you."

Garen let out a snort as he moved to the bedroom door. "That depends. As long as Seifer and Squall don't get into the flour again then yeah, I think we can."

"That was your fault!" Leia called after him, but she was giggling at the memory. After a few moments she composed herself and got out of bed, reaching for her clothes and heading for the bathroom to start her morning.

An hour or so later, Leia was talking with Sera and Ellimere when somebody knocked on her front door. "I'll get it," Loran said quickly, getting up from his chair. "It's probably Dad and them…"

Loran was right—into the house came Lucia, Shaylie, Xu, Loric, and Garen's father, Zell. Shaylie was immediately dragged off to play by Siri, Liam, and Jaicen, and the adults were greeting Garen and Loran, but Lucia, Leia noticed, seemed vaguely unhappy.

"What's wrong?" Leia asked her sister-in-law a few minutes later, sitting down next to her on the couch and offering her a brownie.

Lucia accepted the brownie, her gaze unfocused and a disappointed expression on her face. "I had a miscarriage," she muttered eventually, sighing and taking an absent-minded bite out of the brownie. "Last week. I was about six or seven weeks along… I was actually going to tell you all today, but obviously…" she shrugged and sighed again, and Leia felt a pang of sympathy.

"I'm sorry," she said simply, putting an arm around Lucia's shoulders. "Did I ever tell you that I had a miscarriage when I was seventeen, a few months before I got pregnant with Anakin?"

"No, you didn't," Lucia said after a moment, sounding surprised. "When you were seventeen? You must have gotten pregnant as soon as you and Garen got married…"

"Pretty much," Leia said with a nod. "We had the wedding, Garen left for Bevelle about two weeks later, and I found out I was pregnant about a week after that. I miscarried when I was at the five-week mark." She tightened her arm around Lucia. "I've actually had ten pregnancies, you know… and there might have been an eleventh time when I was about twenty-five, and my period was almost two weeks late."

Lucia took another bite out of the brownie. "Really?" she asked quietly.

"Mm-hm. So the moral of the story is, don't get yourself too depressed. You've already got Shaylie, you're obviously quite capable of getting pregnant, and sometimes miscarriages just happen. And you're still young, you're only twenty-nine, so you've got nothing to worry about."

Lucia smiled slightly, a genuine smile. "Thanks," she said softly.

"Don't mention it."

At 1 in the afternoon, when the birthday party was well underway and Liam had just finished opening his presents, Leia heard another knock on the door. She opened it to find a familiar dark-haired young woman standing there, with her soon-to-be 3 year old son (he was a couple of months younger than Liam) clinging to her leg.

"Anima!" she exclaimed happily. "It's good to see you!" She bent down and smiled at the little blue-haired boy standing next to his mother. "Hey, Seymour, it's been a while since you've come to visit me." She stretched out her arms to the 2 year old, who smiled and detached himself from Anima, reaching up and allowing Leia to pick him up and settle him against her left side, where he promptly burrowed his head into her shoulder in a fit of shyness upon realizing how many other people were in the room.

"Can you stay long?" she asked. "We've got food-"

"No, I really can't," Anima replied apologetically. "Seymour was sick the other day and I was up most of the night taking care of him, so I need a nap. He can stay for a couple of hours though, if he wants. Oh, and Jyscal wanted to make sure this got to you for Liam's birthday." She handed over a small package wrapped in blue paper, which judging by the size and weight seemed to be a book.

"Thank you," Leia said with a smile, taking the book with her free hand. Bending her head so that she was speaking to Seymour she said "Hey, Seymour, you want to stay here for a while? We're having a party, it'll be fun..." She felt him nod against her shoulder and put him down, and after saying goodbye to Anima she turned around to find that Siri had grabbed him by the hand and was dragging him over to play with her.

Seymour being thus occupied, Leia looked around the room for Liam. "Hey, kiddo," she said, catching him by the back of his shirt collar as he ran by, chasing after Jaicen. "Sit down for a minute. You've got another present from Mommy's cousin."

After throwing the wrapping paper from all the presents away, Leia sat down next to Ellimere and Numair (they were in a relationship now, but had agreed to take it slowly), sipping on a drink as she looked around the room at all of the kids.

"Hey," Ellimere said suddenly, nudging Leia with her shoulder. "Look at Siri." Leia looked—Siri and Seymour were sitting side by side at the table, both coloring pictures, with a pile of crayons between them.

Leia smiled as she watched them. "Yeah, what about her?"

"She and Seymour are both holding their crayons in their left hand. You think she's left-handed?"

"Geez, you're right," said Leia, looking closer. "She might very well be." Leia suddenly chuckled. "Wouldn't that be funny—five out of my seven kids are right-handed, but my oldest and my youngest are both lefties."

Leia spent a few minutes trying to remember all the left-handed people that she knew (Anakin, Nida, Nicolai, Murtagh, and her late mother-in-law were the only ones she could think of for sure), and when she'd exhausted that topic her thoughts drifted to 2 year-old Seymour.

That poor little boy. He's in that big lonely Manor every day, Jyscal's only home about half the time, and the only friends he has are these kids-and he doesn't even get to see them that often. Though she didn't mention it very much, Leia couldn't help but worry about Seymour. He was like another one of her kids to her (the same as her niece and Ellimere and Sera's kids), and her maternal instinct to protect her children was even stronger with him. She could sense that the future was going to be difficult for the little heir to the Guado leadership, but also knew there was little she could do to shield him from it. All she could do was hope that he'd be strong enough to overcome the challenges that awaited him.

Bikanel Island—Same Day

Far away from Guadosalam, at the same time as Liam Kenobi's 3rd birthday party was taking place, a teenage Al Bhed girl was giving birth. 16 year-old Kyra had been in labor for almost 24 hours, and as it approached 4 in the afternoon her first child was finally about to be born. With her were a midwife and the midwife's assistant—her 18 year-old brother, parents, husband, and in-laws were waiting for news in the other room.

"Oui'na ymsucd drana... kuut kenm... zicd uha suna bicr huf... (you're almost there… good girl… just one more push now…)" the Midwife was trying to comfort her and calm her down, but Kyra was in too much pain and anxiety to notice or care. She screamed as the next contraction came, and with one last push her baby was delivered.

"Ed'c y puo! (It's a boy!)" the midwife exclaimed, and she and her assistant both broke out in wide smiles. Kyra followed the midwife with her eyes as the woman cut the cord and cleaned her newborn son, her worries and fear of the unknown suddenly replaced by overwhelming joy. For her first child, nothing could be better than a healthy boy—her husband and family would be proud of her, and her status in the community would skyrocket.

"Ra'c banvald (He's perfect)," the midwife said with a smile, placing Kyra's now clean and swaddled son in her arms. "Oui tet jano famm (You did very well)." As the midwife's assistant left the room to tell her family the good news, Kyra beamed as she looked down at her son—with hazel eyes and a short fuzz of pale blond hair, he already resembled his father.

A few minutes later the woman returned, with Kyra's husband right behind her.

"Yna oui ymnekrd? (Are you alright?)" he asked, putting an arm around Kyra's shoulders and kissing the top of her head.

"E's veha (I'm fine)," she said with a small smile. "Zicd denat (Just tired)." She looked down at the tiny bundle in her lap. "Tet oui taleta uh y hysa? (Did you decide on a name?)"

Kyra's husband looked down at their son, and after a moment, he nodded. "Tristan," he said, in a voice filled with pride and a surprising amount of tenderness. "Vun so pnudran (For my brother)."

Kyra nodded. "Ra'mm pa y kuut syh, mega ouin pnudran fyc (He'll be a good man, like your brother was)." She looked down at her son and in a softer voice, said "Ra'mm syga ic bnuit (He'll make us proud).

You're going to do great things, Tristan, she thought to herself. You're my little boy, my little warrior. And you'll live up to your name and your family. She looked down at Tristan, who blinked back at her, and smiled. You'll make us all proud, I know you will.