Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy VI

Hello! Aaaand I'm done again. Yeah, I know. I know. I'm cruel. Sorry, I'm doing 5 fics simultaneously right now! But still, I'm sorry it's been such a short run of updates...

Enjoy!

021. Born

When they were twenty-three and twenty, respectively, their eldest son was born.

Strago had died almost a decade ago, at this point, and in their small family, a new addition was welcomed happily. Well, after a while.

The pair had married two years ago - when Relm was but eighteen - and Shadow hated every second of it. He yelled for a long time to Gau, then Relm (who shouted just as much back), and even to Cyan. He reasoned that she was too young, she didn't know what she was doing, Gau was taking advantage of her and that she was going to end up being manipulated by a bunch of 'stuck up nobles'. It didn't take a genius to see that Relm, a girl who had helped save the world at twelve and three quarters (because the quarters matter just as much as the full years at that age), was none of the above. It didn't take a genius to see that Shadow, the man who in a different life had lost his fiancee before they made it to the altar, was just nervous.

Relm still married Gau and dragged her dad down the aisle, no matter how much he sulked.

So when their son was born just two years later, he was born to be the Prince of Doma, the first man in either Relm or Gau's families to be destined for greatness. To not have to drag their way upwards and break their bones as they did so. And Shadow did, eventually, come round to it all. When he held the baby, with blue hair and teal eyes, so much like his father with just as much strength and life, Relm actually thought she saw him smile. It was a strange sight, and one she couldn't bear to see for long. She took the baby back in her arms and nursed him herself.

Gau and Relm were lucky, she thought, for Cyan to still be alive as they had their two other children and raised them as carefully as they could. They had a daughter - strawberry blonde with red eyes that pierced you so deeply with that same penetrating gaze Gau had.

And then younger son, how much Shadow had changed when he held the baby, all blonde hair and hazel eyes, looking just like Relm had done when she was born. Relm actually saw the shadow of Clyde hiding under the mask and the strained eyes. It almost hurt to look at, seeing her father becoming the man that she had detested for so long. The man who'd ripped up her childhood.

She just sat in the large bed and looked away, out of the windows and over the green fields of Doma.

Doma had been rebuilt before Relm even moved there, and by the time their eldest son was three, even more expansion work had been finished. The castle seemed grander, and the town extended itself into a city. It could almost rival the Figaronian Kingdom, now. Relm often sat and overlooked the city with her daughter, but two years old, and as she grew up and Relm grew older, they admired the city together. They painted together, mother and daughter, ever so slightly different in looks but vastly different in destiny.

Sometimes she told Gau how she would look at their children and wonder how it was that their lives were going to be oh so different from theirs. That they would live in a safe world all their lives, they knew who their parents were and could see them every day, that they wouldn't have to spend some of their lives hiding their talents and gifts. Gau could appreciate her better than anyone else when it came to her worries. He too felt the lingering fear of the oppressive sky they'd once seen when they looked up as children, and marvelled at how that same sky was so different for their daughter and their sons. He even indulged himself to think that raising his children to be so happy was perhaps the one thing he'd been put on this world for. That - and for being the other half of Relm, moulded as they were by the calamities they'd shared. As they got older, of course they discovered more and more sticking points they might fight over. Lust faded out and love settled into a pattern. But neither one of them regretted their decisions - not their young marriage or their haste to children. They knew each other better than anyone else in the world - and neither would have it any other way; not for better or for worse.

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