"Come, now, Your Majesty. Do give us another push."

"I'll give you a push, alright!" At least, that's what we think she said. The latter half of the sentence was lost in a bone-shaking scream that could be felt throughout the kingdom.

The small collection of clerics exchange a nervous glance and take a pointed step back. Their queen, in her unbridled agony unfurls her wings for perhaps the fourth time this minute. ( It's terrifying, but it makes timing contractions that much easier. )

"Y'know, Star..." The king of Mewni, though immovable from his wife's side, looks a touch uneasy. There's very little color to him; he can't feel his fingers. "Maybe we should all just give you a min—"

"Don't you dare, Marco Diaz!" Star's vice-grip tightens a notch as she seethes with pain once more. She casts a warning glance at the clerics, who are warning her to just breathe. "They can go. Marco stays."

Marco exchanges a short, silent moment with Star before he turns to the medical entourage. "You heard the queen. If we need you, we'll call."

Much of the apprehension is drained from the room as they bow themselves out. It's not until the chamber doors thunder closed that Star lets out a pathetic whimper, and she collapses into Marco's arms. "This is the worst! Isn't there a way to speed this up?!"

I mean... yeah, there are, but Marco doesn't care to bring it up. He just holds Star for a moment; smooths her sweat-laced hair back off her forehead, and braces himself as another contraction causes Star to cripple his hand once again. "You're doing fine, Star. It's been hours... no giving up now."

In all the years he's known her, Marco has never seen Star quite like this. He's well acquainted with her desperation, her determination... he's seen her crumble under the weight of the world. When the chains of commanding had restricted the normal span of her lifetime, Star somehow pushed through. Not without scrapes and scars, mind you. But she made it. Somehow. Marco has never seen Star on the brink of giving up entirely. He understands what's in her eyes: he understands she's tired, and sore, and about ready to pass out. ( Though the strength of her grip betrays this. ) It's been months of excitement and anticipation, tempered with the fear of this moment. They knew it would be hard — Star especially. And Marco had done his best to quell her, to prime her for it, as he had always aspired to do as she ascended to claim her birthright.

The way she trembles is reminiscent of a Star he'd known once; a Star he'd always stood by, in all her idiosyncrasies.

"I just need a break, Marco! I just need a second..."

"We'll have plenty of seconds after we're done. We'll have a whole bunch of 'em when we're parents."

She looks up at him. Her eyes, though watery, are wide and waiting. "It's gonna be so awesome."

"It's gonna be amazing." Marco stoops to kiss her, rub her back; he feels her heart pounding mercilessly against her chest. "Stay strong. That kid's gonna know from the second he's born what a hardcore mom he has."

"Hey, Marco..?"

"Yeah?"

"Contraction."

Marco immediately reaches for Star's other hand. He finds her just in time; unprepared to have his fingers nearly broken, he grimaces as Star grits her teeth through a contraction that goes on, and on, and on.

"Star? Are you okay?"

She nods. Grins, though her cheeks are stained with tears, and her muscles are too weak to hold it for long. "Just a bunch of really little ones..." She winces again; her grip on Marco tightens, and she's chewing her lip so hard that the skin breaks. Marco lets her have these moments: he loves Star all the more for them. She wouldn't be half the queen she is if it weren't for these tiny, almost imperceptible beats in her ballad. She's always strong, he knows; but it's easier to be strong when she lets herself be weak, and real.

Marco presses his forehead to Star's; he lets the volume of his voice drop low enough so as to let this moment end with them, and only them, as it had begun. "Queen-face." Show them how strong you are. "Let's get this over and done with, huh?"

Star draws in a long, trembling breath. Though she's disheveled and pale, she draws in enough composure to even her features, and reign herself in. She turns towards the door; with an erratic boom of magic that even Marco feels, it swings open to reveal her clerics in the hall. "Come on! It's go-time."

They go for almost another hour. It's well into the night, and everyone is exhausted. The clerics give up on their motivational bedside manner in the steadily-building onslaught of Star's petulant Mewnian profanity. ( She's pretty fond of Earth swears, but points to Mewnian for creativity and sheer novelty of utterance. ) Marco chides her from time to time for the two or three words he catches; Star merely tells him to shove it, or does it for him with a hand over his mouth.

The second moon has almost fallen when, in a thunderstorm of screams and doubt, a shrill cry cuts through all others. Star collapses back into her pillow, her eyes tracing the filigree stars above the bed's canopy. Marco misses nothing: not the clerics' sighing in relief as this horror-show comes to an end, or their immediate dampening as they acquaint themselves with the first child born into the era of Star Butterfly.

"It's... a boy, Your Majesties."

Star comes down from the heavens, and cranes her neck to see. "We're done? That's it? We've got a boy?!"

Their screaming child is being cleaned and wrapped. He's giving the staff considerable trouble; he couldn't be any more like his mother already if he tried. Marco squeezes Star's hand, and leaves her side for the first time in eight hours. He excuses his way through the rabble, and reaches for his son. "Here, I got him."

Almost instantaneously, the child begins to simmer down. Marco dismisses the clerics with his heartfelt thanks; though they protest, he is veryinsistent that they leave. Because... this is it. This is the moment he meets his son. This is the moment his life changes forever. This is the moment where everything, past, present, and future, matters.

By his stars, he looks just like her. He's expressive and emotive and so aware. Marco feels awkward, balancing a living being in his arms; he trusts himself with puppies, and he helped Star deliver a warnicorn once... but this is so new.

"Marco?"

He looks up. Star has managed to sit upright, though not without a considerable amount of pain evident on her face. She smiles weakly; he returns the gesture with interest, and takes his son to meet his mother.

"Would you look at that, Star. You did it."

She's peering at their child like it's the single most perplexing problem she's ever been asked to solve. Star is understandably dazed and depleted, but holds such focus in her eyes that it's no wonder she's a powerhouse on the battlefield. Star reaches toward her son; she brushes the corner of the blanket from his face, and Marco tilts the baby toward her. "Oh my gosh."

"I know."

"Oh my gosh." Star's done her crying today, but it seems she's not done. She's at it again all at once, her eyes welling and spilling over before she can help herself. Star reaches for her child, and Marco eases him into her arms. "Marco, we have a son."

He knows what this means, of course. Marco hadn't stopped to think about it, and hadn't given it a world of consideration before this moment. He is perfectly aware of how Mewni's autocratic inheritance functions. He knows that his son will never take the crown. As Marco watches Star cradle their child to her chest, this all comes down on him like a tonne of bricks.

"... Are you... like, are you okay with this?"

Star looks to Marco as if he'd just read her back their wedding vows in Spanish. She looks to him, then to their son, and it's like every cloud behind her eyes has parted when she smiles. "Of course I'm okay. Just... have you seen him? Look at him, Marco. He's... he's ours." Star shifts a little, making space for Marco on the bed. He clambers in beside her so as to see what she sees. "He's ours." Again. With more force. "He doesn't ever have to worry about... queen lessons, or magic stuff, or St O's. He can go to school on Earth, and raise warnicorns, and ride them into the sunset, and —"

"Sounds like he's gonna cause all sorts of trouble."

Star laughs as she smooths back the tiny wisp of hair on her son's head. "Well, what did you expect, Marco? Like... he gets to do normal stuff... have a normal life."

"He's not an heir."

"Nope... just our kid."

Marco rests his head on top of Star's. He's mesmerized by this, by her — by him. It strikes him that they're parents now. That he'll have to up his safety game, and maybe convince Star to conjure a few new wards around the castle, until their son is ready to brave the world with a lance and an algebra textbook. Marco finds it profound, as he reflects on moments yet to come, how a child born under two moons will grow up knowing what it means to have a real childhood. And he's a real, honest-to-corn parent.