If only Lissa's excitement was contagious, then the others in the room could possibly share in it, but because she was too excited for something that she was only watching, there was no way that anyone else would get even half as excited as her. Frederick would have been more inclined to be thrilled for the moment if the situation as a whole had been a prettier one, but because he was being glared at every few seconds, his presence being thoroughly hated, he couldn't find it in him to get excited. As for Maribelle, she was beginning to really regret her decision to go through the birthing process completely unmedicated, and any excitement she might have had about getting to finally meet her child was being pushed aside thanks to all the pain she was experiencing.

It got to the point where she was nearly begging everyone who was present, most especially her midwife, to give her something to take the edge off of her suffering. The midwife, a sweet old lady who didn't do much more than smile and mumble things to herself, pulled out a piece of paper that she handed to Maribelle, who thought she was being given a list of possible things she could take. "This…is just a copy of the contract we drafted when we set this home birth thing up," she said after reading over the text, all of which was written in her own handwriting. "Are you really telling me that I can't even have a little bit of something just to make it stop hurting so bad?"

The old lady's smile grew a bit and she shook her head, taking the contract back amidst Maribelle's almost deafening screams at the denial. "You didn't think this one through very well, did you?" Lissa's voice was shaking, as she was trying not to laugh at what her friend had brought upon herself. "I could have told you a million times that this was going to hurt, but no, you had to go and sign a contract saying you can't have anything to help you at all!"

"I figured that your pain came from the complications that came with trying to give birth to a child much larger than your body could handle," Maribelle admitted, fully realizing that she'd made a big mistake in assuming anything. "It never once hit me, until mere moments ago, that the act of childbirth itself is a very painful thing!"

"Maribelle, you're so stupid sometimes." Giving into her laughter, Lissa went to reach out to her friend to playfully shake her, but thought better of it due to her current situation, so instead she shook Frederick's shoulder instead. "Isn't she stupid? Come on, tell her she's stupid for doing this."

"I'm not going to flat-out insult the woman who's actively giving birth to our illegitimate child," he replied, brushing Lissa's hand off of him with ease. "I'm already sitting in here on borrowed time. Who's to say that she wouldn't kick me out if I were to say anything even remotely insulting about her in her presence?"

Putting a finger to her lips while mid-giggle, Lissa shrugged. "I don't think anyone can exactly say she wouldn't do that, but there's me here to say that she's not allowed to. You're going to be here when that baby's born, and I'm not letting her change my mind. He's just as much your child as he is hers, which means—"

"Can you shut up about that, Lissa?" Cutting her friend off with a forceful yell, it seemed at first as if Maribelle was speaking while experiencing a contraction, but when one coursed through her body moments later and she legitimately screamed in pain then, it was clear that her yelling was done out of her own anger. She made this clear when she was done with the pain for a moment, slightly panting as she explained herself. "I get it, I was dumb to think that he wasn't allowed to be here, but I didn't exactly think he would want to be here. I figured he had enough of seeing me in a vulnerable position the night we made this happen that he would gladly skip out on seeing me like this."

"Ignoring the part where you make this sound like it's the result of me taking advantage of you, which we both know is far from the truth, why would I ever want to skip out on being present for the birth of my son?" Frederick, not looking anywhere near Maribelle's direction in case she was continuing to glare at him, gave a long sigh as she shook his head at how badly she had misjudged his intentions. "Although his existence is not something that I can say I am proud of, the fact remains that we created him and therefore he is equal parts our child to love and raise."

"That doesn't mean you'd want to be here, you dumbass!" Once again yelling, Maribelle was beginning to sit up from where she'd been laying on her side, ready to start getting more intense with her argument. "I honestly thought you'd want nothing to do with any of this difficult stuff, only strolling in when the hard work was done and demanding that I hand over my baby so that you can take him home to your daughter as a plaything!"

He could hear her moving around, so he turned to face her right as she was starting to stand up on shaking legs. "Er, shouldn't you stay laying down?" he asked her, getting an eyeroll as a response. "Whatever, I'm sure that your decisions here in regards to your position will have no effect on the overall birthing process. I do want to clear up this misunderstanding that you seem to have about my intentions regarding our child, though."

"This might be a good time to do that," Lissa told the two of them, looking between them as Maribelle took shaky steps closer to where Frederick was sitting. "I mean, just going to put this out there, but once that baby's born, you guys aren't going to want to be fighting about him. You're going to want to be taking care of him. Kind of hard to do that when you're constantly arguing with one another."

"Then let me get right to it. I am not planning on taking him and raising him myself. While Sumia and I would love to get to spend as much time with him as possible while he is young, we understand that he has a mother who loves him very much and will do what's right for him." Still watching her come ever closer, he sighed again. "If that means that, after today, the next time I get to see him is years from now, when he's grown and under the impression that his father abandoned him, I will accept it because it's what was deemed best."

"I'm not going to keep him away from you, like you're going to keep him from me!" Her voice was beginning to grow hoarse with her yelling, and she was loud enough that if anyone were wondering if she was being murdered, they'd have justifiable proof to give any calls to authorities. "I've carried my precious little baby within me for nine long months and I know that the moment he's not in me, you're going to take him because you're the better parent here! You're going to fight me every step, reminding me and everyone around me that you're the married one, that you're the responsible one, that you can reasonably raise a baby and that I can't!"

"Maribelle, listen to what you're saying, and then compare it to what I've been telling you! I have no intentions of taking him away from you, unless you approve of it." She was right in front of him now, and Frederick could see the anger boiling just under the surface of Maribelle's face as he spoke. "First and foremost, he is rightfully your child and you are allowed to keep him and raise him as you see fit. I do not want to ruin your parenting experience, and so you can do as you wish with him. As long as someday I get to spend time with my child, I'm fine with whatever decisions you make."

She drew in a short breath, wincing as she did; he completely expected her to continue with her yelling once she'd collected herself, but it was quite the opposite, as she was now trying her hardest to calmly speak to him. "So you're telling me that you're just going to leave him in my care and trust that I'm, for instance, not going to hurt him if he gets on my nerves or reminds me too much of you? Because that's a mighty brave thing for you to do, when you've got so many people outside of here who really love my baby already."

"As a family, we've discussed this extensively, and while it hurts to say that we are fine with letting you raise him how you want, it's the honest truth. Cynthia would love to get the chance to play with her baby brother a time or two, and Sumia is more than fine with taking care of a son that isn't actually hers, but…" It was now Frederick's turn to take a breath, trying to keep himself from choking up at what he was saying. "We understand that you're the one who's been hurt most by the terrible decision that night, and we want you to get what you deserve out of it—that is, raising the child you've sacrificed so much to have."

Opening her mouth to give a rebuttal to his point, Maribelle couldn't find the words she needed to say anything close to what she felt like telling him. Her mind was racing, trying to make sense of the fact that she'd never once considered him actually being okay with relinquishing all parental rights to her. She had expected him to take her child at the first chance he got and never give him back, but it seemed that instead, he was expecting her to keep a hand on the child at all times. "I…want to raise him. That's what I have to do. Need to do. He's my baby and I…won't just give him up. But you really do want to be there for him too, don't you?" she asked, watching him slowly nod at her. "I never thought about us actually, like, sharing him. It's always been one or the other, not both. Never both."

"Aw, you two have gotten somewhere in this arguing thing!" Lissa cheered from next to them, putting her hands to her cheeks in her excitement. "It sounds so great to hear you starting to get things all settled in regards to how you're going to raise baby Brady, after all this time!"

Neither of them really paid attention to the "Although you really should have discussed this before now" that was tacked on to the end in a muttered whisper, because another contraction had started and Maribelle was too focused on trying to not fall flat on her face thanks to the pain. When she did eventually succumb to the pain and lost her balance, she completely expected to find herself laying on the ground, but strong, masculine hands caught her just in time, and she instead found herself having to thank Frederick from keeping her from falling. He didn't say anything to her aside from reminding her that he had said she shouldn't have gotten up, a reminder she wasn't excited to hear. "But the pain honestly isn't as bad if I'm not laying down," she said, after the worst had subsided and she was back to her feet. "It's much, much more bearable when I'm up like this."

"Yes, but who in their right mind would give birth to a child while standing?" Still holding her to keep her steady, Frederick started nudging her back in the direction of her makeshift bed there in the living room of her apartment. "And, more importantly, would you really want to be responsible for absolute removal of whatever mess ended up on the floor in here? I may not have been through this process myself, quite obviously, but I have witnessed it before, and it's not exactly the cleanest of events."

"Okay, okay, I'll lay back down. But if this birth thing doesn't happen here soon, I'm getting back up so I'm not suffering as much." Once again taking her slow steps, Maribelle went back to her bed and got in it, laying on her side once more so that she could look at her two companions and sigh at them. "Seriously, who was the bright one to convince me that this was the best idea in the world? No medication to deal with anything, nothing to speed things up, everything has to go perfectly…"

"Pretty sure it was your decision somewhere way before you had a reason to not like hospitals," Lissa answered, knowing that her friend wasn't going to like the answer she gave. "Like, I'm almost certain from the moment you started talking about birth plans, you were like 'at home, wherever that is, and as natural as possible' just because you love hurting yourself. And, I remember this, you didn't want to hear a word of me saying that it was going to be long and painful and probably the worst experience of your life."

"That's because I thought you were speaking of what you had gone through, not of what every woman goes through! Forgive me for thinking that you weren't being representative of multiple experiences!" Squeezing her eyes shut as she could feel every little nerve firing off in pain throughout her body, she gave a low whine that quickly turned into something more high pitched. "I've made a horrible mistake here, deciding to go about this in this manner. Oh gods, please let this go by quickly and not much more painfully!"

No matter how badly she might have wanted things to go quickly, there was no guaranteeing it would happen, and her suffering lasted through the afternoon and into the evening, things slowly getting worse and more intense every hour. By the time night was upon them, she was exhausted from the pain and the two people there with her were growing tired of hearing her complains and groans of pain. There was nothing they could do but deal with it, though, as if anyone so much as stepped outside the room for even a minute, Maribelle would instantly assume they were abandoning her and try to chase them down, something that no one wanted her doing. The one upside to her occasional position changes and movements was that it seemed to be having some positive effect on the pace of her labor, to the point that after one instance of getting up to chase Lissa down after she'd left to update her family on what was happening, the midwife gave a mumbled message that it was just about time to get to the pushing and actual birthing part of the day.

For all the complaining about how much pain she was in just due to the contractions, Maribelle wasn't expecting things to possibly be able to get worse for her. She'd already cried so many times over the course of the day, screaming out about how much she hated what she'd gotten herself into, that she figured that the easy part was upon her. That was definitely not the case in the slightest, as she found out the first time she was directed to push in conjunction with the next contraction to overtake her, and the resulting pain was enough to get her to cry for the following ten minutes. During that time, she was comforted by the people she was surrounded with, one of whom was being very supportive and the other of whom was just trying to remind her that she had to get through this somehow.

"You know," she choked out, tears actively streaming down her face from the pain, "I'm well aware I have no choice but to get through this. Perhaps next time you do this to a woman, they'll have found a way to make the man suffer as well."

Frederick shook his head at what she was saying, offering her his hand to take hold of. "I'm afraid the only ways they have to make a man suffer during childbirth are through having to listen to the woman curse his name and existence, and through the use of squeezing their hand until it breaks. It would be quite all right with me if you chose to do both of those in this very moment."

"I'll keep that offer in mind," was her response, as she took hold of his hand and gave it a firm squeeze to see if he reacted; all he did was narrow his eyes at her slightly while she loosened her grip. "Hey, at least you're willing to give me something to hold onto here. Might help this process go by a bit quicker."

"You can have my hand too, then!" Offering her own hand to her friend, Lissa smiled when it was taken hold of, but her smile faced into an expression of pain when she was squeezed the exact same way Frederick had been. "Okay, ow, maybe that's going to end up being a bad idea, but oh well. Gotta help my friend in whatever way I can!"

With the support of the two fresh in mind, Maribelle made it through a few rounds of pushing, all while squeezing the life out of her companions' hands in the process. When she took another few minutes to collect herself, the midwife very quietly said that the very top of the baby's head was coming into view, and that it wouldn't be much longer before everything was over. The news was appreciated, but it wasn't much consolation as it meant that there was still work to be done in the process. Yet, after being denied being able to see what the midwife meant as "coming into view", Maribelle had a bit of an idea that she suggested without thinking about the consequences: "Why don't you go watch from here on out, Frederick? I'm sure you'd love to someday tell our child you actually watched his birth."

"I'm quite fine with watching from my current position," he replied, swallowing down hard. "The mere thought of watching the process at any other angle doesn't sit right with me. Thank you for the offer, but I'm respectfully declining it." Her reaction was to grip his hand as hard as she could, him wincing as she did. "Why are you so insistent that I watch? There is no need for it."

"I was just trying to be polite. You know, let you see the end result of what you did to me first and all that." Once again letting her grip on his hand loosen, Maribelle took in a deep breath, knowing that her next contraction was upon her. "But if you don't want to see it, that's perfectly fine, I'll make sure he knows you backed out of watching like a little bitch."

He swallowed down again, before pulling his hand away from hers. "I'm not entirely sure why you're so insistent on me watching from a different position, but I'm not going to deny you your strangest request in this moment." As he took the few steps to get down to the end of her bed, looking uncomfortable with every passing moment, she forced a grin in his direction before beginning to push once more. This created the result of him looking and seeing much more than just the top of the baby's head, and he genuinely turned pale at the sight. "Er, well, that is one child I'm watching being born. May I please not have to watch from this angle? I don't think I can stand watching this for very long…"

"Maybe you should listen to him, Maribelle. He kinda looks like he's going to pass out from the sight." Lissa, speaking in a high squeal due to how hard her hand was being squeezed, hoped that her friend would at least consider her words, but she was too wrapped up in making Frederick suffer to listen to reason. This was made all the worse when the midwife held up one finger and said that it should only take one more strong push to get the baby out, and so Maribelle was focusing more on attaining that goal than anyone else's comfort.

The issue was, one more strong push turned into another thirty minutes of weaker ones, as her body was exhausted to the point that she couldn't exert the energy needed to do what had been asked of her. This meant that, through all that time, the poor guy was forced to watch the child slowly, slowly make his way into the world, a process that he gladly would have skipped watching in such a way had he been given the choice.

The first wail of the child was a beautiful sound to everyone who was present; at the noise, Frederick stumbled backwards a bit, taken by surprise that he was actually hearing what he was, while Lissa clapped her free hand against the one still being held by Maribelle, excited for her friend in such a happy time of her life. Maribelle herself stayed quiet, tired from everything she had just gone through, but once the initial shock dissipated she started crying, blubbering something or other about how she couldn't believe what had happened.

Moments later, after the cord was cut and a very rough cleaning of the still-wailing child was completed, the midwife placed him directly on his mother's chest, his tiny face in the direction of hers. Although she was crying herself, she could see that he was calming down just being where he was, and by the time her tears had tried, he was completely quiet, taking in small breaths compared to her deep ones. "H-he's…perfect," she whispered, moving her hand to rest on his back. "My precious little Brady. Happy birthday, little guy."

"He sure is a 'little' guy, oh my gosh!" Not able to contain her excitement, Lissa was squealing a bit too close to the newborn, causing him to start whining again for a few moments, calming down once more when he felt his mother's hand stroking his back gently. "I didn't mean to cause him to cry," she apologized, before trying to explain what she'd meant with her initial statement. "I didn't know that he was going to be such a small baby, Maribelle. I mean, I totally didn't think he was going to be anything close to Owain's size, but I also didn't think he was going to be so small…"

"He's not small, he's perfect," corrected Maribelle, her voice still no more than a whisper. "Simply the best child, to allow me to be the best mother possible."

Walking back to be by her side, Frederick seemed to be in a continued state of surprise at everything that had happened, which involved him getting a good look at the child currently resting on her chest. "He certainly seems like he'll be an easy one to raise. Of course, that's how most children seem when they're this small, but I believe that he will truly be a good child." Reaching out to the boy, he didn't hesitate even slightly to actually place his hand on his arm, smiling as he did. "Even though the circumstances weren't the greatest, I must say I'm honored to be this child's father."

"Aw, you two are going to do this parenting thing so well, I think! I just hope that your combined love of little Brady here is enough to keep you two focused on doing what's best for him, forever and always!" Once again forgetting to check her volume, Lissa didn't wake the child again, but she did get hushed by both of the parents. "Oops, sorry again! I'm just so excited for you guys that he's finally here and he's perfect and everything went just fine in the end, after all the bad things that happened to get us here."

"Let's focus on the good things and not the bad ones, shall we? I want to remember this moment as a glorious one, not one filled with bad recollections." Maribelle leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on the top of Brady's head, which was covered in the finest, softest light hair that she'd ever touched in her life. "Let's just focus on my Brady being here with us, finally, and nothing else." There wasn't much else that anyone could focus on at that moment, and so Maribelle was to get her way on the matter.


The act of knocking at the door was a lot more terrifying than Maribelle had expected it would be, but the fact that it was closed to begin with worried her. She'd been told she should just be able to walk right in without worrying about announcing her presence, yet there she was, having to knock to let everyone inside know she was there. Her hand was shaking quite a bit as she steeled herself for knocking, but after one forceful hit someone inside the room opened the door, propping it open just wide enough for her to push her stroller inside it without any hassle.

Inside the classroom, a group of intimidated students stared at her, questioning her presence quite openly. "I heard she's the teacher's side woman," one student loudly said, earning himself a few rebuttals from other students trying to explain the situation as they had heard of it. "No way, guys, she's totally his side woman. He showed us his wife, remember?"

"Silence, class. We will get to who she is and why she is here later in the period." Silencing the students with his firm voice and no-nonsense attitude, Frederick went from looking at the group over to Maribelle, and then from her to the sleeping child in the stroller she had with her. "Asleep? You brought him over here for him to be asleep? How am I supposed to hold him if picking him up will make him cry?"

"I guess you're not supposed to," she replied, jostling the stroller a bit in hopes that the motion would cause the child to wake up. "Which sucks, because it's been a couple weeks since he last spent any time with you, and he needs to remember how much you love him."

Crouching down to get a better view of the child, Frederick reached in to run his thumb over the baby's cheek, smiling as he did. "It's not my love I'm afraid of him forgetting and you know this. He'll always remember that I love him, but that's not even what has me upset right now. I was just hoping that I could hold him up in front of the class and put the rumors about his existence to rest, but there are always other days to do that. Today, they can believe that he's our illegitimate love child, and tomorrow they can learn that he's a parenting experience like none other."

"I'm glad that you're taking this whole thing in stride and making a teaching experience of it." Smiling, Maribelle also looked down at the child in the stroller, making a mental note of how much he'd changed in the past few days, let alone the last few weeks and the several months since he'd been born. "He's probably the most interesting first-day icebreaker I could have brought for you, and he had to be asleep for it."

"Now you're beginning to see my side of things here." Standing back up, Frederick turned his attention back to his class for a quick second, explaining that he would have loved to have shown them the baby but he wouldn't be able to, before speaking to Maribelle once more. "We do need to discuss the next time I can spend some time with him at some point. Now that school is back in session the free time I have is once again limited, so we'll have to get creative with what we do. But now's not the time to talk about this. If you don't mind, could you stay around the school until lunch so that we could talk then?"

She nodded, beginning to turn the stroller around to head out of the classroom. "You've got it. I've got the perfect place to spend time while I wait, so no worries on me minding." As she wheeled the stroller through the door, the chatter amongst the students started up once more, still flinging accusations that she was a side woman in a relationship, but she ignored their words as she knew Frederick would set them straight when he got the chance. "I can't believe those silly kids in there would talk bad about me when you were in there with me," she said down to the baby in the stroller, who was still peacefully sleeping. "They need to be told the truth about you and how you came to be, but not the actual truth, of course. That's a story that's meant to be kept private."

The hallways were empty, all the students in class for the first time that semester, and walking through them while pushing the stroller was an odd experience for Maribelle. She had so many memories of this school, of all the time she'd spent as a student causing trouble and having fun while still being an exceptional member of the school community, making it feel weird to her that she was just walking around in the middle of classes with a baby with her. As she looked around at the walls that she vividly remembered always being covered with posters made by students, now ones that were bare and waiting for new outbursts of creativity, she heard small babbles coming from in front of her. She peeked over the top of the stroller to see Brady looking around a lot like she had been, making soft noises to himself as he saw different shapes and colors.

"Oh Brady, you were supposed to wake up when we were visiting your father. I mean, there's no taking back the fact that you weren't awake then, but you could have seen him and he would have been so happy." At the sound of her voice, the boy broke into a toothless grin, giggling and waving his arms around. She could feel herself melting at the sight of her son being so adorable, but the middle of the hallway during classes was no place to be admiring his cuteness. As quickly as she could, without looking like she was in a panic, she pushed the stroller down to the office area of the school, then down another hallway just far enough to find a closed door that was already covered in little crayon drawings.

Without knocking, she opened the door, before turning around so that she entered the room backwards, pulling the stroller in with her. "Gods, Maribelle, this room isn't big enough for that thing," Lissa said, watching what her friend was doing. "You're going to have to get him out and fold it up, just in case someone else tries to come in here while you're here." She paused, thinking really hard about what was happening, and then asked, "Wait, why are you here, anyway? It's the first day of school!"

"I've heard from a few individuals that it's tradition for teachers' children to be brought in on the first day of school, so I figured I'd do Frederick a favor and bring his son in to see him." Working on getting Brady out of the stroller, something the boy was resisting simply because he didn't want to be held, Maribelle gave Lissa a slightly exasperated look. "And then this little boy decided he was going to be asleep for every moment we were in his father's classroom, but he woke up once we were headed down here. So much for my act of kindness being appreciated."

"I'm sure he appreciated even getting to see the little guy. But that doesn't answer why you're here, with me, in my office. That just says why you came to the school." Lissa waited for an answer to come, but Maribelle became distracted with trying to get a small hand untangled from her hair, as Brady had decided he was just going to grab her hair and pull it in his attempt to not be moved. Once she had him freed from her hair and out of the stroller, him whimpering as if he was going to start bawling, Maribelle explained that she was waiting to talk to Frederick at lunch and needed somewhere to wait for lunch to come. "Oh, that's like two hours from now. Are you sure you want to just sit in here with me?"

"It would go over better than walking home and walking back, so yes," Maribelle replied, bouncing her baby on her lap to try and keep him from getting any closer to crying. "And since it seems we're going to be here for the next couple hours, mind folding my stroller for me? I would do it, but," she looked down at how both her arms were currently occupied, "I'm holding my dearest and I don't want to set him aside."

Lissa laughed, standing up from her chair to start unfolding the stroller as she'd been asked. "I totally understand, don't worry. I wouldn't want you to set him down in here, not when…" Her voice trailed off as she looked around the small room slightly confused. "Um, when Owain's running around in here, is what I was going to say, but I don't actually know where he's hiding. He was sitting and coloring earlier, and now he's not." She got the stroller to its smallest state rather quickly and put it in the corner of the room, after which she started checking everywhere for where her child might have gotten off to. "I don't know how he could disappear like this! That door has opened once today since we got here, and that's when you came in, Maribelle. He didn't get out then, I don't think."

"Mama, right here!" Owain's voice called out from under one of the chairs against the wall. Placing a hand over her heart and sighing, Lissa ordered him to come out from his hiding spot, which he did, revealing that he had what looked like three bare lollipop sticks in one hand, with a fourth sticking out of his mouth.

"Owain, you naughty boy, I said you could eat one of those, not all of them!" The little boy laughed, offering his mom the bare sticks but not the one in his mouth. She took them, noting just how damp they still were, and frowned down at him. "I gave you those because you were a good boy today at the assembly, and now you're being naughty. Wait until I tell your daddy that you did this!"

His green eyes going wide, Owain shook his head rapidly and took the fourth stick from his mouth, some candy still hanging on to the other side. "No mama, pwease not tell!" he begged her. "Pwease not!"

"I'm so glad that my child won't ever break the rules like yours does," Maribelle said while watching the exchange between mother and child before her. "No, Brady will be raised to fear what comes after breaking rules and misbehaving, and therefore he'll be a perfect child in every way." She bounced her baby a bit more, him starting to fall asleep at the motion.

It was then, while she was talking, that Owain noticed that the other kid was even there, and he bolted from the confrontation with his mother to instead shove his candy up into Brady's face. "Baby Brady! Want candy?" he asked, not waiting for any answer before pushing the lollipop into the baby's mouth. It startled the boy back awake, and the strange object in his mouth was enough to make him cry, distressing Owain as he hadn't meant to hurt the other boy. "No, pwease not cry! Baby Brady pwease not!"

"How dare you push that into his mouth! No wonder he's crying, he's far too little to be having candies like that one!" Trying not to scold a child that wasn't hers, Maribelle ripped the stick out of Owain's hand, pulled the candy from her son's mouth, and tossed it straight in the trash next to Lissa's desk. "Now you apologize to Brady right now for upsetting him. I cannot believe you thought such a thing was a good idea!" Owain quietly gave an apology, going back to his normal spot against the wall to sit and pass the time while his mother went back to sitting at her desk and Maribelle tried her hardest to get her son to stop crying in as little time as possible. Once he got started, however, it was hard to calm him down in a timely manner, and he was crying far too hard for her simple bouncing trick to work.

However, her alternative idea earned her a scream from Lissa, as her friend made a quick movement to put a "please knock" sign up on her door. "Maribelle, you can't just decide you're going to start feeding the boy in here without warning me! What if a student tried to come in here right now? They'd be treated to, well, not really a sight, but you know how people in that age group can be!"

"I had no other options but this one," she replied, rolling her eyes at her friend's overreaction to her choosing to start feeding her child there in the office. "I wasn't going to let him cry, and the only way to get him calm after he's really upset is to let him latch on and eat for a little bit. No one's going to try coming in here while I'm 'indecent' anyway, so was the freak-out there necessary?"

"It was, because what if someone needs to come in? Now they know they need to knock before entering. That's all I freaked out about." Lissa sighed, sitting down once again. "But you're right, who's even going to be coming in here on the first day of school?"

She knew who would come in, and she knew exactly when they would, so when there was a knock at the door a couple minutes later, she was able to give Maribelle an "I told you so" look before opening the door to let the person in. "Okay, what's goin' on in here that requires the sign bein' up?" Vaike asked as he stepped inside the office, his question being answered the moment he looked at Maribelle and what she was doing. "Ah, right, that would definitely be the kind 'a thing that needs knockin' beforehand."

"Enough about her. How about you talk about your day so far instead, because I'm super curious as to how it's going." Lissa looked at her husband, smiling as she did. "Is it as bad as you were thinking it was going to be? You don't look too tired from dealing with everyone."

"It's only the first day. Introductions and whatnot. Ain't any game playin' yet." Leaning up against the wall, Vaike took a deep breath before continuing on talking. "I remember that first year teachin' here, how hard it was to get the kids to all participate at the same time. Ended up with lots 'a the underachievers sittin' out while everyone else played. Gonna miss havin' smaller classes, but what can the Vaike do 'bout it? Nothin', that's what."

"Well, you have fun with those introductions and all that stuff, and I'm sure you'll make having big classes work. You did that first year." Her smile got a bit bigger, especially when he bent down to give her a quick kiss. "I believe in you and what you can do with your classes and all the kids in them!"

He thanked her for her assuring words and was just about to leave when a small voice came from under the chairs once more, Owain having gone back to his hiding spot. "Love you, daddy," the little boy said, pushing a piece of paper out from where he was. "Lots and lots!"

"Is he down there drawin' pictures again?" Vaike completely bent down to pick up the paper, finding that it wasn't just a picture, but rather a note written entirely in scribbles that had a crude drawing of three stick people at the bottom. "Looks like he is," he said, holding the paper tight to his core while he stood back up. "Love ya, li'l guy. Gonna go frame this one in the gym somewhere. It's a real keeper."

The boy erupted into giggles under the chairs, not sure of how to respond to what his dad had just said to him. "You say that about every picture he draws. That kid's got a real creative streak in him, and I'm glad that he likes drawing for us, but eventually we're going to run out of room to keep his pictures." Lissa would have kept talking, but Vaike seemed like he was needing to get out of the room. She looked at the clock, then to him, and nodded, understanding why he felt he needed to go. "Get to that class. I'll talk to you at lunch!" He kissed her one more time before leaving the office, making sure the door was closed tightly behind him as he left. "Oh man, I can just see how stressed he is over this class situation," she remarked upon his exit. "Normally he's got some weird suggestion for how he can make his classes work better, but now he's accepting that he can't do a thing…"

"I don't mean to intrude on anything, but shouldn't there be two teachers in his position?" Maribelle was thinking back to all the interactions she'd had with whom she'd been told was the other gym teacher at the school. "Unless Chrom got smart and fired that wretched woman, in which case, why didn't he hire a replacement?"

Lissa tugged at one of her pigtails, trying to think up a good way to answer Maribelle's question. "Well, um, you see, she still works here, but she can't exactly work right now, if that makes any sense? Even though she totally wanted to come back and work for a little bit, but Chrom thought that was a bad idea and told her she couldn't." Seeing her best friend's blank stare in her direction, Lissa let go of her hair and explained it in the straightest manner she possibly could: "Somewhere in the craziness that was the month before my wedding, I guess there was some more drunken sleeping that happened at one of those parties, or maybe it was there were drunken promises made that were fulfilled later? I don't actually know the details on that part, but what I do know is that you weren't the only member of the wedding party that was pregnant."

What that meant hit Maribelle slowly, but once she got the message, she couldn't help but chuckle. "Naturally, the woman who led to my whole situation gets into one herself. I can't say I'm not shocked in the slightest at this turn of events."

"I wish I could say I'm not shocked either, but I honestly was when I found out. I didn't realize that Sully was actually into guys, so it was kind of like a crazy revelation for me to learn that she is very much into one particular guy. Of course, the fact that they were all drinking like fools probably didn't help her judgment." Lissa stopped speaking at the sound of her friend laughing, raising her eyebrows in Maribelle's direction. "Okay, what's so funny right now?"

"At your wedding, I had found someone in an uncomfortable position that you and I have both known very well at times in our lives, and I didn't think much beyond not recognizing their shoes. Had I known I would have seen that head of red hair and answered this for myself back then, I would have spied on her to no end!" Her laughter was turning more to cackles, which was startling the child she was still feeding, so Maribelle had to tone down her giddiness at this news. "It's so lovely when someone gets what's coming to them after they've screwed over someone else! Who's the unlucky man who has to put up with her?"

Looking towards the door, where someone had been knocking for most of what Maribelle had just said, Lissa frowned. "Um, actually, it's who's trying to get in here. You stop talking rude about someone who isn't that bad at all, so that he doesn't have to hear you saying such mean things about his ladyfriend."

"Oh, I'm sure he says them himself," Maribelle replied, before promising she wouldn't say anything rude. While Lissa went to open the door for their new visitor, Maribelle went ahead and made herself decent once more, her baby content and calm and, most importantly, not crying like he had been. "What a good child, easy to please with something to eat," she whispered down to Brady, who was looking up at her with heavy-lidded eyes, just about to fall back asleep. "You're too precious, my little one."

"I didn't know that there was already a gathering in here," the newcomer nervously said, as he stepped inside the office, clearly put off by Maribelle's presence. "I thought I could come spend my off-period talking a bit more about babies and what to expect with them, but I don't want to intrude on anything where I don't belong."

"You're always welcome in here, Stahl, even if Maribelle's here. Hey, it might actually work out better if you stay here with both of us, since we both can give you tips and stuff!" Giving Stahl a thumbs-up as he contemplated staying or going, Lissa shot her friend a quick glance before asking loudly, "That is correct, right Maribelle? You'll help the guy out, won't you?"

Maribelle gave a non-committal noise, before looking at the clock and seeing that barely half an hour had passed since she'd come into the office. She really didn't have a choice in the matter, she decided, and so she slowly nodded. "I'm sure I've learned a thing or two about raising a child that could prove itself useful in this situation."

"You ladies are awesome, I hope you know." Sighing in relief, Stahl took a seat in one of the chairs that Owain was hiding out under, causing the little boy to scream for a moment as he got himself out of his spot to find somewhere new to draw his pictures. "Sorry about that. I'll bring by some snacks or something later to make up for upsetting him, Lissa. Actually, I'll bring something by just for you letting me come in here and talk! That's fine, right?"

"You don't have to do anything if you don't want to," Lissa replied, giving Stahl a kind smile to hopefully help calm his nervous appearance. "Now let's start talking about all this. There's so many things I'm sure you're curious about…"

Listening to her friend talk about babies and everything that comes with them, Maribelle couldn't help but smile at some of the things that were being said. The part about a child being the most important thing in someone's life hit especially close to home—and although it was a bit ruined by Stahl asking if a child could possibly be more important than food, the comment lingered with Maribelle for quite a while. She'd wanted so badly, at one point or another, to consider herself the most important thing she knew, but the past six months of her life had taught her to think otherwise. Kissing the top of her baby's head, Maribelle knew that he was the sole object of her affections now, and that she could never love anything more than she loved him.

He was the best thing in her life, despite all the terrible things that had happened leading up to his birth, and nothing could ever take her love away from him.


A/N: and with that, the fic is finished! c: I hope everyone enjoyed it!