Here is your so-sweet-it's-tooth-rotting epilogue.
Around 5 years later...
When Soul entered the house the sound was overwhelming thanks to the cacophony of little voices. "Mom? Maka?" he called over the racket.
"In the kitchen," Marie called from the center of the noise.
Soul tossed his bag on the floor before heading back, hoping that knot that had been sitting in his chest all day at the office would unwind. His appearance in the doorway added momentarily to the noise, the twins instantly erupting into renewed chatter until he made sure to hug and kiss each one. "How's the little brothers today?" Soul saved a kiss for Marie's cheek, "And whatever's on the way?"
"That's the weirdest way of saying it," Marie huffed as she glided her fingers over the globe of her stomach. "They're all fine. Though, I wish the boys would follow your example rather than their other brother."
Soul snorted out a laugh, "Where's Shel?"
"With Maka in the cottage."
"Ah, the bookworms at it again," Soul grinned.
Marie's smile faltered as she let worrying fingers fix one of the crayons in the twin's hands. "No, Maka still wasn't feeling well and you know Shelley."
The knot was now a brick, all of his hopes turning back into a million panicked possibilities. "Still?" This week Maka had been actually struggling through work and realistically it had been more than a month since she'd felt a hundred percent. This morning he'd put his foot down and left her lying listlessly in bed.
"I did get her to go to the doctor with me this morning," Marie offered hopefully, "but she didn't have much to say after."
Soul sucked his teeth before sighing, "Thanks for making her go."
"Definitely felt like the nagging mother-in-law today." Marie settled the second little pair of hands at the table with another picture before bringing her eyes back to Soul. "Just go, honey. You already look like you're about to burst. The boys will survive without big brother time."
"Yeah." Soul passed affection around the room again, letting his hands linger on the tiny blond heads for a minute longer in apology before heading back out the front. Today, the argument was going to happen, or at least that's what he was deciding as he walked across the lawn. Feeling bad for a day is one thing, but a few weeks? And if she didn't actually get any real answer from the doctor, we're going to whatever kind of specialist in the city because I'm done watching her suffer. He was falling down the rabbit hole as he walked up to the house, Shelley already opening the door for him with a reserved smile.
Sometimes Soul still felt surprised when he saw her, his mind never fully coming to grips with the idea that she was a preteen, that it was no longer a screaming, breakneck run when she saw him but a soft smile and a "Hey, big brother," that he was rewarded with again as he passed her into the house.
"How are you, Shel?" This time he ruffled her adolescent sensibilities and gave her a hug.
"Fine," she tried to look annoyed by the closeness but neither worry-wort actually wanted to give up the hold, both of them settling for a moment in each other's arms. "How was work?"
"Fine," he mimicked. "Black Star says he'll be home this weekend. Bringing Tsu so we're all supposed to be on our best behavior."
"Like we're the thing that's going to ruin his relationship," Shelley rolled her eyes to herself.
"Give the guy a break, he's trying," Soul managed a laugh as he finally relinquished his hold on her. "Maka reading?"
"Napping upstairs." The placating smile made that answer worse.
"She say anything to you?" Soul would take what he could get except at this point he was fairly sure that loyalty had been slowly slipping to Maka's side as the years went by anyway. Plenty of secrets had passed between those two and now he was getting a taste of his own medicine, sometimes worrying if he was being replaced in Shelley's heart.
"Well," Shelley started but seemed to reexamine the oath before rolling her shoulders in a shrug. "Just the regular stuff."
"Regular stuff," Soul huffed.
"Like this," Shelley put him on display with a wave of her hand. "That you'd been your predictably panicked self when you got home."
He frowned, "I'm not-" but sensibly cut himself off.
Shelley could laugh at that and did before she patted him on the shoulder. "Bye, big brother."
"Bye," he grumbled as she slipped past him. Soul waited, watching her leave the house and disappear across the lawn. With a pained sigh, he started the slow and purposefully quiet ascent up the stairs. If she was sleeping he wasn't in a rush to wake her, especially since the fatigue seemed to be her number one symptom. Instead, he crept up the stairs just to catch a glimpse of her curled in their bed before hitting the shower.
He wanted to be ready to crawl between the sheets with her, to do whatever she needed him to because life wasn't supposed to be difficult anymore. Eibon's center was built and had been in the black for the past three years with projections for a fourth. Even better, as far as paperwork at the local municipality was concerned, the two of them were married as of two years ago, though they hadn't exactly decided to make it anything more than that since then. Parents weren't even technically privy to that information and maybe more and more he'd been thinking that it was time to make a show of it.
He'd bought her a ring for that express purpose but then this nagging illness had crept in so he'd shelved it. There was no reason for a wedding if she was wasting away, and of course, that was where his mind always went. As he exited the shower, he was pushing himself to be firm. She's going to a real doctor, she's going to get better because we deserve the next step. That was the mantra as he put on his boxers and slid in next to her on top of the sheets. But Soul was very much still himself, and he crumbled a little especially at the sight of her shirt riding up her side, displaying a burst of color above her hip.
Maka had made a liar out of herself a few years ago, not needing Soul to hold her hand through the pain of the bursts of flowers she'd gotten tattooed down her side. Part of it was for him, he knew that since seeing the scars from each one of those knife cuts still brought his blood to boil but she'd wanted to memorialize rather than forget. Maka had chosen Ophelia's flowers from Hamlet, symbols of remembrance, mourning, sorrow, innocence, and most importantly love, to not just cover the past but to give it its due.
His lips pressed to a columbine just above her hip bone and those green eyes blinked open, a soft smile curving her lips. "What are you doing down there?"
"Whatever I can to make you feel better," he murmured against her skin as Maka's smile grew. "What did the doctor say?"
Her grin was slowly turning into amusement as she absently ran her fingers through his hair. "Cutting to the chase, huh?"
"Maka, please," he wasn't any good at making that not sound like begging, the spine he had assured himself he had withering as all of the hypothetical possibilities continued to plague his brain.
"OK, OK," she soothed. "She wasn't happy with me, said I took too long to come in."
"Something we can agree on," Soul grumbled. To ease that knot he was carrying he started to crawl closer, hands grabbing into her t-shirt to bring her closer.
Maka allowed him to turn her, bringing her to face him but kept firm hands planted on his chest so that her smile still burned in the face of his worry. "But there's really not anything-"
His anxiety tautly snapped in his gut, the words already finishing in his head. There's nothing she can do, which means it's worse, it's probably too late. "Then we'll find someone else. We'll find someone in the city, I'll take you tomorrow. Maka, please…" The end was warbling off and her smile finally faltered at the sight of that familiar shine to his eyes.
"Soul, take a breath," she smoothed his hair again before he gave in, letting air tremble over his lips. "Can I show you something?"
"Show me?" That derailed some of the worries especially as her teeth came to nibble at her lip, showing off what was still her clearest tell for a surprise coming. "Maka, what are you…?" He didn't know how to finish since she'd already turned from him, grabbing her book from the nightstand.
"I had to sneak it so Marie and Shelley wouldn't see," Maka's laugh was more for herself than him. She pressed the book open between them, a picture tucked in the seam of the spine. It had to be flipped, revealing swirls of black, white, and gray that only became more confusing as Maka focused a finger on one of the blobs. "That's it."
'A tumor!' came the alarm in his mind. She's dying because I was stupid enough to think I deserved to have everything I want. "What am I looking at?" he offered shakily, trying to keep the terror at bay as his finger moved next to hers to dimple the photo.
Her lips touched softly to his cheek as her hand slipped over his on the picture. That smile was now right next to his ear, her whisper faint but elated. "Baby Evans."
"Baby?" His grip tightened on hers as his hold on everything else fell away. There was no clear outline in the image in front of him but his mind was easily painting it, feeding off of all the hopes and daydreams he'd had for the past few years.
Maka let him stare, not begrudging him the same amount of time it took her to look, to process in the face of all their waiting. It wasn't until the tears started down his cheeks that she intervened, forcing his face to hers so she could clear them away. "It's seven weeks old. Eleven more and then we can find out if it's a boy or a girl." The details seemed to soothe her but turned his tears into a downpour.
Soul shakily brought his lips to hers but he was still unable to bring his fingers away from the picture, touching it like a talisman. Maka was waiting, ready for the wave of excitement to finally hit him when the weak whisper broke their lips instead, "I thought it was my fault."
"What?" In her surprise, Maka pulled away just in time to see the desperate pleading in his eyes.
"What I did, all those things, it was some terrible karma or something," he croaked. "We weren't ever going to have a baby because I didn't deserve one."
This wasn't one of those moments she had expected her heart to break, but there it was, another fine line that brought tears to her own eyes. "No, Soul, no," she urged softly as she brought a smile back to her lips for him. "It's actually your fault we got pregnant if the doctor's theory is right."
"What?" His eyes darted between her and image, the beast of blame still strongly settled in his chest.
"What were we doing seven weeks ago?"
'Having sex, I guess,' would have been Soul's playful answer but he still wasn't there, fist wrapped tightly around his own pain. "The vacation."
"Uh-huh," Maka answered joyfully as her fingers played through his hair again. "I mean, I may have made sure that it was during a peak fertility time, but you were the one who was focused on just relaxing. And you made me, remember? No work, no other kids, nothing that even resembled an anxious activity. I think it's the first time I've relaxed since, I don't know, maybe right after we got you back from the hospital after you got your pins out."
He was already shaking his head, "But relaxing-"
"Is key," Maka urged back. "There was nothing wrong with either of us so the only thing holding us back was stress, or so the doctor thinks and with the timeline, you know, I believe it." She kissed at his dumbfounded lips as he just barely held on. Maka stole his hand, finally separating him from the image to press his fingers to the real thing, the almost imperceivable swell of her stomach. "And if there's anyone in this world that deserves this, it's you, Soul."
"We deserve it," he murmured as his fingers spread as if he could feel the life there. "We've got our family."