A/N: Anyo! Thank you for those who left reviews! I love you guys for still reading the story. It's been almost a year since Faith ended, and we are still under the spell. Amazing, right? Please leave reviews!
I'm back with a new chapter. I know the break was too long... Sorry. I will try to update more regularly from now on, but can't promise how often. Without further delay...
There was something special about making love in the quiet of the sleeping village. The rhythm of life aligned with natural order – waking up at sunrise, going to bed after sunset. No electricity meant the darkness hovering over the little houses and warm candlelight casting long and mysterious shadows offering the kind of atmosphere conducive for the most intimate of the times.
Anxious Eun Soo waited for her husband to seek her out, preparing for the nightfall as it would bring the closeness they usually did not have a chance to give each other when the village was awake.
Something happened to Eun Soo since they had arrived to Goryeo. She became almost shy around her husband when it came to being together. She did not understand how this change came about, but she felt more vulnerable and more insecure, no matter how much she tried to convince herself nothing altered between them.
Choi Young was still as loving and affectionate as she was toward him, but the carefree excitement and the hunger they used to have for each other slowly transformed into something less intense and more comfortable, but no less beautiful or powerful. Maybe, they were going through what most married couples experienced – a change of pace. They did not make love daily any more and the moments when they longed for each other feverishly became sparser.
There was one question on the tip of her tongue that she did not dare to ask. She could not ask that of him, not yet.
Are we coming back? When are we returning? When are we going home?
"Would you like to have a baby?" Asked Choi Young after making the bed and lying down next to Eun Soo, who got under the covers first. She wished she could see his face, his eyes. She wished to look deeply inside of him to find what had prompted such an inquiry tonight, not the day before and not a week ago.
From the first time they made love in a conventional meaning of the expression, Eun Soo made a conscious decision not to bother with birth control. It was an unusual course of action for a modern woman, who was also a doctor.
However, it felt intrusive or wrong to play with the fates and try to control what was happening between them. She was not worried even once about getting pregnant, or consciously tried to time their intimacy to her less fertile periods. She was just happy to be with him, to love him and to be loved back. It felt indisputably right from the first time and it was the one thing in her life she never had any reservations about it.
"Do you want us to have children?" She asked cautiously turning toward him. A flicker of the candle reflected golden specs in his dark eyes, his face close enough for them to share breaths.
"A child. We are meant to have a child. I was foretold."
"Now? You want to try here?" She wondered a bit surprised.
"I have been thinking about it a lot lately. We have been... together many times already and since you are not pregnant... I just began to worry. Do you think there is something wrong with me?"
Eun Soo felt anxiety trickle inside her belly, the thought has not occurred to her, but as a doctor she immediately thought of many possible causes. Choi Young was healthy and as far as she knew she was healthy as well, however, without proper tests...
"I'm sure you are fine, Young-ah," she kissed him on the cheek. "I'm sure it is stress..." He waited for her to say something else, the golden specs dancing in his eyes turning translucent amber, making her realize how important it was for her to speak with prudence. Her strong warrior was bearing his hopes and fears, exposed and trusting her to be wise and sensitive about such delicate topic.
She tried to sound as if her only concern was of practical nature. "And also we have to time it properly. I don't know if the thirteenth century is the best time, I would rather give birth in a well equipped hospital with an epidural."
Choi Young could not argue with that. Hospital was a safe and sterile place. Only he still did not know how long he was supposed to stay in the past.
"How long do you want to wait?" he inquired softly, holding his breath.
He remembered the lifelike image that Mr. Kim showed him inside that sparkling ball – he was there with Eun Soo and a baby, dressed in Goryeo clothing. It was not possible, yet he knew it was his family, his child born in the past, however, that past became his present now. Why would they dress in such garments in Seoul? Was it a trick that Mr. Kim used to lure him toward his own self-serving objective?
He was afraid to tell Eun Soo, remembering about the timeline contamination and the danger of affecting the outcome; still that baby in her arms was so precious and he wanted to hold that child close to his heart, to kiss that little face and stare at the wonder filled newborn eyes of their creation.
"Then we can't any more... regular way?" he stumbled finding himself getting reticent, this discussion proven uncomfortable.
Eun Soo sighed. She returned to her original position, hiding under the blanket, her eyes peering into the dark ceiling, which she only imagined showed its exposed wooden beams and the slant of the roof above.
She felt defeated. And hurt.
He knew they were supposed to have a child, but never told her anything till now.
Why is he in such a hurry? Giving birth without proper medical care was daunting and quite scary.
She could die.
The baby could die.
And what would it mean if she vanished in the past? Forgotten, or never to be born in the future? What of her own parents, who had already lost a son at the prime of his youth, and now their daughter may never come back.
"Imja, I hear your thoughts," his voice materialized just before his lips brushed her ear softly. "I mean I could practically sense them. We are as one, always."
His words continued caressing her, although his intention was clearly reassurance, it made her crave more of his hot breath on her. Eun Soo turned, her lips hot and mouth burning with a kiss she was about to place on him when his hand snaked beneath her and he pulled her roughly close before plunging his greedy lips onto her neck. She moaned loudly, her mouth parting and soon she felt his warm tongue enter it and chase her worrisome thoughts away into nothingness.
The temperature between the two of them was rising dangerously close to combustion, their KIs used to sharing and joining, easily their contact filled with myriad of beautiful sparks and tiny electrical shocks, dispersing little shudders of love and passion along the surface of the skin and penetrating deep into the boiling blood, rushing like white water through their veins. They did not require any more than that, but Eun Soo in her half aware state of blissful oblivion felt the fabric pushed aside and her undergarments leaving with brief coolness on the heated skin before Choi Young filled the empty spots with himself.
He swiftly entered her and she struggled to keep her eyes opened as she could feel his piercing gaze on her. "I want to try, please Imja, I want to hold our baby in my arms. You won't be harmed. You both will be fine, I promise. I will keep you alive and healthy," his plea resonated within her with each desperate thrust of his hips and opened up her body and her soul to accept that forbidden knowledge of the future he had just offered.
Choi Young did not seem to be able to stop, he made love to her for a very long time, exhausting her body to a point where she barely registered what was going on besides sweet waves of pleasure and tingling electricity as his KI pulsed through her with each of his new charges. Eun Soo climaxed not once, not twice, but five times that night. He held her gently in his arms allowing the last drops of his seed swim into her welcoming womb as the first rays of morning sun met the dying stars on the sky. The familiar glow they emanated kept their small room illuminated through the night and even now its echo contended with the faint peaches of sunrise.
Neither of them knew the passing of time, only the passing eternity through them and them moving along that cosmic river they had traversed before, floating and flowing, weightlessly, hopefully, fearlessly.
"If I conceive, I should not travel through the gate before the child is born. No telling what it might do to DNA..." she mumbled sleepily between the light kisses Choi Young was placing on her forehead and wiping off the dew of lovemaking sweat off her temples. "Shh, Imja, just sleep. We will do as you want." He confirmed without any idea of what that DNA thing meant.
. . .
Eun Soo's clumsiness was something of a second nature to her. But after she almost got hurt and was saved by that swift and good looking boy or rather young lad... she vowed to be careful. So, she bumped into a few people and carts here and there, as long as she was not ran over by a horse or a herd of any other large animals with hooves, she would be pleased with a new direction her life has taken.
She found herself whistling contently and when some women glanced at her with clear frowns of disapproval, she reminded herself that she was supposed to be a demure and low-key wife, as per strict instructions of her husband.
He warned her not to act like "herself". He actually said, "Don't act like yourself. You will draw too much unnecessary attention." And then he gave her a look - the kind a parent gives to a child who often causes trouble, the knowing look that it will occur again, nevertheless, the warning has to be issued. That kind of a look. Eun Soo snickered into her little fist and then quickly checked whether anybody noticed. Because that was acting like herself without a doubt.
She was not in danger of any strangers looking at her, since she was already on a dirt road, far from the marketplace. She rubbed her low back in slight discomfort. Walking for long in shoes without proper arch support proved to be somewhat exhausting, especially with the heavy purchases she had to carry. "What I would have given right now for a good pair of running shoes!"
She arrived at a house with a sign "Dr. Pak" above the gate. She could not read it, but she compared the symbols on the note from the herbalist to the wooden announcement.
"Here we go," she let out a sigh. Suddenly, she was nervous.