The pains start earlier than she's expected, on a brisk, cold day in early November.
They begin at dawn, with dull pangs in her back and belly, bothersome enough to prevent her from sleeping in, but still weak enough that she doesn't give them much thought.
By mid-morning, they are strong enough that they refuse to be ignored.
By noon, she is cursing in every language she knows—and saints, she has learned to curse in the army.
By mid-afternoon, she is crying for the mother she hardly remembers.
It draws on too long.
She loses track of time after a while—she loses track of mostly everything outside of her body, outside of the pain. She is even only vaguely aware of the people in the room beside her—the midwife, her apprentice, a Healer, and, at some point, Genya, maybe after she started crying out for her mother, maybe to provide emotional support.
(She asked about Aleksander, in the beginning, when things still made sense, and she was told that the General has been informed, but it's unbecoming for a man to be present at the birth. Even if she wanted to argue, the pain came again then, and she quickly forgot about it.)
It takes a terrible effort to pay attention to what she is being told, but she does her best, and walks when she is told to walk, and sits and breathes and pants and takes a sip of water, even though it makes her want to throw up.
And despite it all, she doesn't feel like getting closer to the end.
Through the haze of agony she can feel the mood in the room shift as the first lamps are being lit to battle the growing darkness outside.
The Healer's eyebrows knit together, the midwife shakes her head, and Genya whispers it's gonna be okay, it's gonna be okay, don't be afraid instead of you're doing great, you're almost there as she wipes her sweat-drenched forehead with a damp cloth.
Terror seizes her heart as their worry envelops her.
The actual act of giving birth is a gruesome, bloody business.
She is laying on the bed on her back, her shoulders propped up against pillows, face red and hair damp and tangled, one of her legs held by the apprentice, the other by Genya, as blood stains her thighs and soaks the sheets, and she is pushing when she is told to push, although it feels fruitless and the task ahead of her feels insurmountable and she feels weak and as if she was being split in two.
And yet after a while she can feel the head sliding down and stretching her, and it burns, and she hears herself scream, but then it just gets stuck there, not budging, no matter how she pushes.
This is wrong, she knows, so wrong , and the others must know this as well, because she sees the midwife and the Healer exchange a quick glance and a nod, and then a gleaming blade is passed to the midwife. She leans between Alina's legs, and then there is a moment of shearing pain as she cuts her, but she grits her teeth through it, and at the next push everything moves, the head emerging, and the midwife reaches in to free the shoulders, and the next moment the whole little body slips from within her.
Her child is born limp and silent.
It lies on its stomach between her legs on the blood-soaked sheets, unmoving, still connected to her by the cord. She pushes herself up to see it better, her whole body trembling with exhaustion and pain.
"No, no, no, no, please, no…" she chants, because this cannot be, because it feels like a punishment. She spent months being lost and in denial and avoiding thinking about what will happen after, and now that she is finally starting to accept it, now that she finally feels at home —she cannot lose the baby now.
What happens next could take a couple of moments or millions of years, she couldn't tell. The midwife starts rubbing the child's back with a warm towel, muttering something under her breath Alina cannot make out; then she is pushed away by the Healer, her eyebrows knitted together as she leans over the babe and puts her hands on it, her eyes closing as she calls on her powers, and then…
A cry.
A pathetic, pitiful, mewling cry, but a cry nonetheless, getting louder as the child starts twitching and trembling, dismayed by the utter indignation of being born.
Alina laughs and cries, and is only vaguely aware of Genya holding her and kissing her face, her cheeks damp with tears too, as she reaches for the child, her child, because she just needs to feel its warm weight against her chest. And the midwife moves right away, haphazardly wrapping the baby in the towel and placing it in Alina's reaching arms, and she crushes it to her breast, smearing blood on the bodice of her nightgown, but she doesn't care, because, thank the saints, her child is alive.
When she wakes—light-headed and sore and still exhausted—the room is empty and dark, with only a distant promise of dawn on the horizon outside of the window. Worry intertwining her thoughts, her gaze wanders, to the bassinet stood by the bed (a lovely thing, painted white with details done in gold leaf. It arrived three days after that night in front of his fireplace; he said it was just meant to be in her room), within arm's reach, and finds it empty.
"No, " she breathes, panic clutching at her throat ( Where is her baby?) as she tries to push herself up to a sitting position. "No… "
Her mind is racing, trying to remember. They let her hold the babe as the midwife massaged her stomach until the afterbirth came, but then she started bleeding again, her vision swimming, and then the baby was whisked from her arms, and then… She doesn't remember anything else.
She is just about to throw the covers off of herself when she hears his voice, a silken-like whisper, "It's okay, she's here."
She stops, freezes , then looks up—Aleksander is there, blended in the shadows, so artfully that she didn't even notice him at first, and there is a bundle in his arms, wrapped up in white, looking like a crescent moon hung upon a starless sky against his black kefta.
"Sasha ," his name a broken whisper on her lips.
"I have her right here, she is okay," he repeats as he slowly walks to her. "But you stay in bed. That's an order." Without letting go of the child—so small, so fragile in his big, strong arms, the head held securely in the crook of his elbow—he gently pushes her back with one hand, until she is lying down again, then tightens the covers around her, before sitting down on the edge of the bed. "She fared better than you did, all things considered. You lost a lot of blood, but the Healer says you'll be alright after a few days of rest," he tells her, his words ringing with something she hasn't heard before. The echoing remains of heart-breaking worry and devastation. "And she is fine," he adds, in a little firmer tone, just to reassure her. "A wet nurse was ordered for her, and she took to the breast right away. I was told it's a good sign."
His words finally register in her mind.
"She?" she whispers. "It's a girl?"
The sex of the child was something that didn't even cross her mind in the fraught moments after the birth—no-one announced it, and she wasn't in a state of mind to look for herself.
"A little girl," he nods and beams, a smile so joyful, so unburdened on his face it makes her heart ache. "A perfect little girl."
She wants to—no, needs to—see her, and cranes her neck, but from this vantage point all she can see is the velvety white folds of the blanket she is wrapped up in. "Let me—" she starts, hand rising slowly, weakly, to reach for the child.
"Wait a moment," he tells her as he takes her hand, presses a quick, warm kiss on the back of it, then lets it fall. The next moment he stands, walks to the other side of the bed, kicks off his shoes, and slides in next to her on the top of the covers, without losing grip on the baby for a moment. When they are lying hip to hip, he hooks his free arms around her shoulder and draws her to him, until her cheek is pillowed on his chest. This way, her face is barely inches from the slumbering child.
She lets out a long exhale, her heart overflowing.
All she can see is a perfect little face, a button nose and rosebud lips and barely-there lashes and tufts of dark hair, as fine as a spiderweb, peeking out from under the lace-edged cap. And there is a hand too, sticking out from the folds of the blanket, tiny and flawless. She runs a finger along the silken-smooth skin of it, and the baby grabs her finger in her sleep, her grip surprisingly strong.
Once upon a time she thought of Baghra as a once-beautiful woman, who had once given birth to a beautiful child. It's nigh-impossible to comprehend that that beautiful child is now there, as a beautiful man, caressing her hair, and that she has just bore him a beautiful child of his own.
A single teardrop slides down Alina's cheek.
"I know," is all Aleksander says, before she feels his lips on the top of her head.
"Do you mind that it's not a boy?" she asks in a small voice after a while.
In her mind, he must. Men always want a son for a firstborn, a little, nagging voice keeps saying in her mind. A son to carry on the family name, a son, a reflection of themselves. Even in the orphanage, it was the boys who were sometimes taken to new homes by new parents—by farmers, who needed another set of hands. Boys were strong, boys could bear the work. Boys were a gift.
And so what are girls? She once asked from Ana Kuya. A lovely burden, she answered.
He takes a moment to compose his answer, his brows furrowing. "Not at all." He sounds almost disbelieving, as if he didn't think she would ask him this. "Girls are good. Great." He pauses for a moment, his gaze soft and fierce at the same time. "Girls are safe."
Less of a threat, he means. To the tsar, to his power, to his reign. She shudders.
"I thought you wished for a boy." He did, after all, refer to the babe as a he on the few occasions they talked about him. Her.
He draws a careful finger along the cheek of the slumbering baby. "I wished for a healthy child. And now, she is here. I could not ask for more."
"I loved another," he says after a long while, just as her eyes are about to slip closed, her head on his shoulder and her hand on his stomach, lulled back to sleep by the beat of his heart and the warmth of his body. His voice rings strangely hollow. "It was before." Before the Fold, he means. "Her name was Luda. She was Grisha, too, a Healer. I knew she wouldn't live as long as me, but I was ready to spend a handful of decades with her. A century, if I was lucky. She died before the first strand of her hair could have turned grey."
"Oh, Sasha," she starts, but he doesn't seem to hear her.
"She fell with child. Three times. Or more, she just wouldn't tell me." The first sunrays of the morning fall on his face, still weak, still washed out; he never takes his gaze away from the babe. "But it never kept for more than a few weeks. The first time, I remember the first time, she was so happy about the prospect, and I picked her up, and twirled her around… She woke up in a puddle of her own blood in the middle of the night three weeks later. The next one lasted for five. The third four days.
"And there were other women too, over the centuries—they didn't matter, not at all, but I bedded them, and a few of them conceived, one in every decade or so, Grisha more often than Otkazat'sya, but they all lost the child, too. None of them carried it for more than three months." He blinks, as if to hold the unshed tears in bay. "They couldn't handle the darkness, I believe."
She swallows, her body threatening to break out in sobs; so many children lost before they could have taken their first breaths. "You didn't think she'd survive."
"No," he admits with a small shake of his head, a tear sliding down his cheek. "When Ivan first told me about the heartbeat, I was sure it wouldn't last. I honestly contemplated if waiting, if letting you rest before we set out for Os Alta was worth the delay, since the baby wouldn't keep anyway. But then the weeks went by, and the Healer kept reporting that she was going strong, and I almost started hoping. Then I thought that she must not be mine, that you gave yourself to your friend, or he forced himself upon you—"
"Mal would never—"
"I couldn't have known that. I couldn't have known what happened to you while you were away." She can see it on his face that it still pains him to think about those two months, maybe even more so than losing Luda. "But then I started hoping that she was his—she would be alright then, wouldn't she? And then I would lay awake in my bed during the night, asking myself if I could love another man's child as my own, or if you would even let me love another man's child as my own, because I desperately wanted to love your child."
"But then I told you she was yours," she breathes, seeking out his hand, the one curled around the babe, and slips her fingers between his.
"And then I was petrified again, because if she was mine, how could she survive?" He squeezes her hand. "So I kept my distance, not wanting to get attached. But then Genya ordered the new kefta, and you came into my rooms that night, and your nightgown just fell in the right way… I had never seen a woman's womb swell with my child before."
"That's why you kept asking if I was alright."
He nods. "And you said you were, and, saints, you were glowing, not with your sun, but something deeper, and you came to me —I knew it was time for me to take the next step."
She remembers. The chocolates. The note. Most Merciful Sankta, he wrote, begging for her forgiveness.
"And then you started to let me in, and I could see you grow and thrive, day by day, and when you let me feel her move… That was the moment I started to believe that everything could be alright."
"And now she is here."
"And now she is here," he echoes, dropping a kiss on her forehead. "And it's something I'll never be able to fully thank you for, solnyshka."
The sun is almost fully up, and she is about to fall asleep again, even though she knows she shouldn't; she should ask for breakfast, because she hasn't eaten in a day, and her breasts are starting feel uncomfortably full, so she knows she should try to nurse her daughter, but it's not something she dares to try alone, so she should ask for the midwife, or the wet nurse Aleksander mentioned, but… His shoulder is so comfortable, and the baby is so serene, and everything is just so perfect that she just wants to keep basking in the moment.
"Have you thought of a name?" he asks, breaking their companionable silence.
She blinks. "No." Up until three weeks ago, she didn't even allow herself to think of the little creature in her belly as an actual child, who would have a personality, likes and dislikes, who would smile and laugh and cry and throw tantrums, and who would need a name. No, of course she didn't think of one. "Do you want to call her Luda?" she asks softly.
He shakes his head right away. "No, I don't want her to be burdened by that. She deserves a name free of the sorrows of the past." His lips pull into a smile that almost looks mischievous. "But she needs one quickly, before what Genya called her sticks."
Curious, she raises her head a little, "Why, what did she call her?"
"Velikaya Knyazhna." Grand Princess. "She said she couldn't just refer to her as "her," and that she needed a title. And she is as close to a princess as the Grisha will ever get."
"Yeah," she scoffs. "This can't stick."
"It fits, though. She is a right little imperial highness," he tells her, his tone light, joking. "After she was fed and changed and dressed, and it was just the three of us left in the room, her in the bassinet—" (The way he says this makes her think he hasn't let the baby out of his sight ever since she was handed to him after the birth, and she loves him for it.) "—she started fussing, right away. I was afraid she'd wake you, but she wouldn't quiet—it was downright a demand, an order. She only settled when I held her. Then she fell asleep."
"She must have been terrified of being alone, of being lonely," she muses, and then thinks for a moment whether the fear of loneliness, of being alone, friendless, family-less, can seep into a person through the waters of the womb. Even if it can, she vows to make sure her daughter will never taste loneliness. "What about you? Have you thought of a name?"
He glances at her. "I don't know. Maybe."
"So you do have something on your mind. What?"
He looks at the babe again, his gaze soft, loving. "Nadyezhda. Nadya." Hope.
As if on cue, the baby slowly starts to wake as the sunlight at last falls on her face, little fist flexing, rosy mouth opening in a yawn.
"Nadya," Alina tries it out, tasting the name on her lips; she finds it she likes it. She reaches for her daughter, and lets her grab her finger, her dark, dark eyes opening, unfocused, blinking sleepily, but content. "Nadya, welcome to this new day."
A/N: And so this story ends here-thank you so much more the unbelievable amount of love you gave to this fic!
Now, I can tell you that there will be no Part IV-however, I might revisit and expand this AU in the future. I have some great ideas (at least I hope they're great), but they still need time to take proper form. I'm not promising anything, but you're allowed to pester me about it.
"Velikaya Knyazhna" was the title of Olga Nikolaevna Romanova, marking her as an imperial princess, somebody of higher rank than the other European princesses. Although the more precise translation is Grand Princess (as used in the story), in English usually "Grand Duchess" is used.
I chose the spelling "Nadya"-which is apparently a valid and existing variant-to distinguish her from the canonical Nadia.
