The sisters had started a circle of conspiratorial whispers that Tsubaki was barely able to tear herself from. They're right - he is acting strange but it's… am I about to say it's a good strange? No matter what she could convince her mind of the worry was still there, and she urged her feet forward to the wall next to Black Star who was still engulfed in feverish writing. "Black Star?"
He looked up at her for no more than a snap of his neck before he was back to his work and grumbling, "Did someone go back down and check on that guy, Kid, again?"
"Liz just got back from it."
Black Star grunted approval.
"Do you need more paper?" Tsubaki offered gently as her foot nudged the sad pile of crumpled sheets that had only been growing over the past few minutes.
His eyes dropped to the movement and his jaw clenched. "I need…" Say something stupid. Something mindless. A joke about her legs around your head or- "Can you write?"
"I can." Tsubaki dropped down next to him, her knees dangerously close to him.
"It doesn't matter what Stein's looks like," Black Star muttered just into the space between them, "and that's the one I already sent, but the other announcements to the other lords, I guess they should look good."
"Oh," Tsubaki perked, a smile stretching across her lips. "That's sweet that you'd start the birth announcements for them."
"Well, Stein has to know now," Black Star barked back but it softened under her gaze and drizzled down back to a whisper. "Write the other ones for me."
"Of course." Tsubaki held out patient hands for the parchment and quill.
He handed the goods over but his fingers hung between them even as the solidity left them. "Thanks." The only right reaction was to jump to his feet, starting the new, painful task of running a rut into the floor in front of Maka's door. It was then that the wail came, not the frustrated, pained one he'd already heard a dozen times from Maka but a tinny, shrill call that snapped all the heads in the room to the door.
"Sounds like the first baby is here," Liz cooed happily.
"And with lungs good enough for the world to hear," Patty finished with a smile.
Black Star couldn't produce a sound, his feet frozen in front of the door as all of him coiled in wait. Behind him, he could hear their murmurs continue and the scrape of the pen to paper but that wasn't what his ears were grasping for, just a horrible ticking countdown for Soul's scream or Maka's, the idea of a second normal cry never coming to him. That is until it did, in another but stronger bawl. There was a surge of relief that Black Star choked, but he still managed to turn his head towards the girls. "Maybe we should place bets on a third?"
Liz rolled her eyes, "If there's a third, I'll kiss you."
"Oh, don't make promises you won't keep," Black Star crooned back to her but instantly cut the rest of the fun with a sharp turn of his head. He was intent on the door again, mostly waiting but also willing it to open, to give comforting sights to the sounds.
It took years, Black Star's hand starting to waver at the handle of the door before it creaked open, Soul's face with an oddly brilliant smile bursting from the corners. Before words could slip from that grin, Black Star found the worried ones croaking from his throat, "She's alright?"
"Fine," Soul nodded with a still trembling surety. "And so are the two little princes, Wes and Crona."
There was joy erupting all around him and while some of it had eked into his heart Black Star still wouldn't let it to his face. His hand grasped at Soul's shoulder, pulling the other boy close in a way that made his arms stiff from the inexperience. Soul waited for a whisper since he was sure now that secrecy was usually the only reason for Black Star to get this close but none of it came, just the two of them grasping tightly to one another.
It was Soul that finally murmured, "I think you can see them if you want. She's in a much better mood now that she's not in pain."
"No," he answered tightly as he pulled away. "There's too much to do anyway and the girls are probably dying as it is." Black Star leaned down and snatched the papers from Tsubaki before turning his glare to the sisters. "Go in and see her, the lot of you."
"Captain's orders," Liz laughed as she squeezed past him, pulling Patty along with her.
"I can finish those," Tsubaki offered her hand back for the stack but Black Star gave her a terse shake of his head. "Alright, but later, then…"
"Just go in already," Black Star grumbled as he grabbed the hand she had left for the letters and pulled her to her feet.
"Thank you," she murmured with a smile before bowing her head to Soul.
"You could be nicer," Soul chuckled.
"Don't you start, too," he hissed before pressing the papers to Soul's chest. "Look, I already sent a messenger directly to Stein which means we can assume he'll be here along with probably her father in tow. Some of the other letters are done but those should be sent tomorrow at the latest. Two heirs are good news and after the witch bullshit these lords'll eat it up."
"Thanks," Soul laughed softly. "Since when are you so on top of things? I thought you were the captain of my guard, not my steward."
Black Star knocked him in the shoulder before taking a few steps out of his reach for retaliation. "I'm whatever the hell gets both of you safe and sound so that I can take a damn rest."
Soul sent a hesitant look back at the doorway before settling half of a smile on Black Star. "Really, come in and see her. The babies, too, then you go ahead and take the rest of the night off. Actually, get some sleep."
He shook his head slowly. "I'll place my bets on tomorrow being the first time she wants to see my face, but tonight… tonight I'm guarding your room. No one else. I'll take tomorrow night off."
"Black Star-" Soul started but another shake of his head muted the rest of Soul's words.
"Go on, go back in," he waved Soul off but those red eyes spent another moment appraising him before starting slow steps into the room. Black Star let out a long, low exhale as he slid down the wall, planting himself next to the door. Why don't I want to look? What is it about it that I don't want to see? What do I expect? I'm not jealous, but there's something about it I don't want to face or feel and I can't.
Soul wished when he closed his eyes it was only the soft hum of Maka's breath that he heard or the rustle of the sheets as his legs moved restlessly. Instead, it was a clamoring overlap of a million different conversations, most of them just the words whispered in the back of his own mind but now joined by Kid's voice. There were the old ones too: Free, Yaara, Stein, all of them spinning his thoughts about the tiny bundles at the end of their bed.
Like most new parents he was up, slipping out of bed into the inky darkness but not because of the way sweet little cries could stir that kind of movement but instead to let anxious feet bring him to soft cherubic faces shining in the moonlight. My sons, the idea still struck him as strange and when he settled down on his knees next to them, legs tight between the two cribs, the two sets of eyes blinked open at him as if to answer it. Maka had been right, there wasn't any argument that these two were his boys with stark white hair and crimson eyes that were maybe just a shade deeper, a little more mahogany or cherry or -
I desperately wish they were green. And hopefully, their hair darkens to at least Maka's or even better a dirty blond because they'll look human. I still don't feel like they're- He tried to crush the thought to the back of his mind as he watched the fragile hands lift in the air, both of them starting in trembling grasps as the boys tested coos and the beginnings of other contented sounds. As Soul lifted his hand he stopped, eyes falling on his own fingers hovering in the air with a distinctive tremor, one that his breath suddenly shared. Instead of reaching for them, his hands joined together, his fingers plucking the ring from his right hand and holding it in the air.
He hated the thought; it was an oily, slimy beast gnawing on his heart. Even though the shame enveloped him he reached the ring forward towards the tiny outstretched hand.
What will you do? What will do you if that hand fizzles, sizzles, oozes into nothing? What will you do to the other? What will you tell Maka? Was that even his voice or did it sound like Yaara? Or maybe even a little bit of that horrible thing that trounced around in his dreams?
The gold shimmered and the delicate digits reached and Soul let them meet, his heart jumping into his mouth only to crumble to ash, making his tongue feel thick and useless. There was no change besides another soft croon set free into the darkness and the flexing of those working, exploring fingers. As the heat started to burn the rims of his eyes he moved the ring away to the other boy, expecting his world to collapse, the reality of it to disintegrate but finding only the serene normalcy to torture him.
The sob caught in his throat, grating against his flesh until it was raw and ripped. He forced the ring back onto his finger and caught his head in his hands, letting his shoulders rattle with the next wave.
"Soul?"
"Fuck," he let tremble hoarsely from his mouth.
"What is it?" Maka didn't bother to get out of the bed, her body still stuck from the exhaustion of it all, but she crawled to the foot so her face could peek over the edge. "Are the boys alright?"
"Fine," he croaked.
"But you're not alright," she murmured.
Soul's hands fell away from his face and his eyes searched up at her. "I'm sorry," a more pathetic plea had never come from those lips, so awash with misery.
Maka's hand reached down for him but she watched him hesitate, sad eyes turning to the tips of her fingers. "For what?"
"I…" the words had no sense or sorting. He wanted to scream that he'd had been ready to be a murder, to destroy those beautiful bundles they'd worked so hard to create and keep safe. "I touched them with the ring."
"Oh." Maka dropped her chin to her hand, staring at him thoughtfully but to his surprise wiggling her fingers and renewing the request for his touch. "What did you expect to happen?" Nothing but analysis saturated her voice and maybe just a hint of wonder, leaving Soul spellbound for as long as it took his hand to reach up to hers.
"I wanted them to be alright," he heaved the words like a rock from his chest.
"And they are," Maka nodded.
"But I shouldn't have needed to," he hiccuped through another wave of tears. "I should have looked at them and just known, trusted, but I couldn't. I'm…"
"Still thinking like you're a monster," she corrected easily, sending a chill up his spine. As he gulped down a groan she smiled softly and ran a thumb over his knuckles. "You were so excited, that night you found out, that night with the ring and my mother. I thought maybe it had settled, that the idea had stuck. I told you I already knew that you were fine and I wasn't lying, but I thought maybe that would be enough to bring you to the same conclusion I'd come to almost the first time we touched again." A forlorn sigh broke up the words before she continued, "but I saw the way you looked at them the first time. It wasn't the look a wife expects to have on the face of her husband at the birth of their children."
"I'm sorry," he moaned again.
"I'm not saying you should be," Maka murmured back with a swift shake of her head. "Because it wasn't hatred. It wasn't that you wished them gone or wanted them killed - it was sadness. So much searing pain right across your face that I knew then that you hadn't given it up, hadn't stopped thinking of yourself as a monster and saw that reflected in them." She tapped the ring carefully with her nail, a soft clink that still made him wince. "But you're not. They're not. They'll be good boys because they have a good man for a father. A man who will teach them to worry about giving into the darker side of themselves, one that we all have but maybe our boys might have to fight a little stronger than others. You'll be there to teach them through that, though, and I never for a moment felt like I couldn't trust you with that."
The air crinkled in his throat, crushed by another rattling cry that took him. Maka waited, squeezing his hand through each tremble as she reached out the other and stroked his hair. A grumble started as an echo to Soul's sob and on the next sweep through his hair, Maka lifted his head back to look at her. "Wes is calling for you, Soul. Pick up your son, hold him. I have a feeling he's not exactly hungry just yet."
Staring at her was simply creating the time he wanted for her to take it all back, to bolster all those dark things that whispered at the edges of his heart but all he got to fill the time was her soft smile and the beckoning of his son. Soul turned towards the cry, seeing the pouting lip and the creased forehead that was starting without tears. The way his hands slid under the bundle was automatic, cradling the head and lifting little Wes out of his not so restful resting place. With a few sniffles, Soul brought the boy to his chest, hands cradling and soothing as he let his breath start to even.
There was easy silence again.