The pitiful mute... She had sandbagged herself when she did not listen to what the doctor told her to do. Hiei tried and failed to get her to listen to him as well, silently arguing with her her whole labor to get her to come to her senses. She should have given up when the pain got too intense for her. Her stupidity nearly killed her. Had the wolf healer not moved so quickly when wrapping up her delivery, the mute would have bled out.

Luckily for the mute's son, he was unharmed in the delivery, born underweight and small, but otherwise healthy. Her son had taken a shine to him the second he saw him. He considered the mute's son his son already, even though he had not discussed that concretely with the mute. Both of them were a handful of stress.

The mute slept for fifteen hours straight after her delivery, which was impressive by hibernation standards. Her son slept in an uncomfortable looking chair next to her bed. Nishi and Hiei had rested in the near by waiting room.

When the mute finally was roused, her son was quick to announce it. Hiei and Nishi were in the room when her son brought the mute's son to her. She was reticent to hold him at first and tried not to blink either. The mute's son woke up in her arms, fussing. That broke her ice cold resolve to be emotionless. She blinked, pausing to close her eyes long enough for a single tear gem to form and fall from her eye onto the cloth wrapped around the baby in her arms. Stiffly, she tucked the gem securely in the folds of the cloth.

'Is he worth it...?' she thought silently to herself. Hiei heard her, unbidden. She thought about the assault she went through briefly, her failure to hide her pregnancy from the other ice maidens, her first imprisonment, her daring first escape and jumping off the floating island in hopes to survive the fall, her recapture, her imprisonment with her son, her second escape, and her recent time in his girl's castle.

Nishi picked up on her morose, without really knowing the source. She stepped over to the mute, leaning down by her bedside. "Is there anything we can do? Something we can get you?"

The mute looked up at her feebly before passing her son to Nishi. Nishi took the mute's son, surprised to be handed to him. Nishi looked over at Hiei, a bit bewildered. 'Talk with her,' she pleaded silently, glancing down at the mute. 'She can speak freely with you.' The mute sat stock still, hands resting in her lap, eyes trained down on them.

Hiei's eyes flicked over at her son, sitting next to the mute. The foolish mute did not have to do anything and her son was willing to do whatever it took to protect her. "Out," Hiei said to both Nishi and her son. "I need to speak with her alone."

Her son sat up straighter. "She just woke up," her son protested.

"Izo," Nishi said in a tone that would not allow him to argue.

Her son brushed his fingertips along the mute's folded hands in a gentle caress. Then he rose up and left the room with Nishi, who still held the mute's son.

'How are you feeling?' Hiei asked her, trying to carefully get her to speak and open up to him. Yet also wanted to protect her son from being hurt by the mute if it came to that.

She did not want to speak with him, but being silently mentally was tens of times harder than being silent verbally. 'Everything hurts, and yet nothing hurts,' she admitted reluctantly. Her melancholy outweighed her physical pain.

'You're still protected,' he told her firmly. 'As long as you're both with us, you still under our protection.'

'You're not my sisters,' she thought cuttingly. She regretted those words as soon as she thought them.

'No, we're not. None of us were cruel nor heartless to you,' he cut back. 'My son saved you on impulse. He went without so you could eat. He insisted you be rescued as well. We took you in and cared for you. My son-,' he stopped, unsure how to finish that thought.

The mute finished for him, 'I didn't make him fall in love with me.' She was in emotional turmoil, but he wanted her to work it out now and worked passed it.

'He grew up on fairy tales and noble knight stories from the Human World, I wouldn't be surprised that he had fallen for the damsel in distress,' Hiei explained.

'I didn't wish for it,' she thought feebly.

'It still happened,' he warned her. 'If nothing else, handle that with grace and let him down gently if you don't desire him back.'

She pictured her son and his doting on her. She liked him surely, but it made her stomach sour at the idea of him loving her when she felt she did not deserve it. 'I want...' she shook her head, but pictured the ice maiden's floating island. The idea of that being home made her go frigid with rage at how she had been treated. She thought of his girl's castle and its unfamiliar halls. Safe, but new. '... to go home.'

'Your child is where your home is now,' he told her firmly. She scold at that, not wanting to love that child because of how he came to be and the burden on him, yet she could not help herself loving him. 'You don't have to stay in Alaric to stay safe and be protected. The king's home territory has many a man who would willingly mate claim a woman who is proven fertile in hopes to increase their population numbers.'

She recoiled at the idea of going to yet another strange land. 'I don't want that,' she admitted.

'There are other options. You can become a refugee in the Human World,' he suggested, thinking about how Yukina had chosen that path.

'I don't want that,' she recoiled at the very thought. The idea of going to a new world terrified her.

'There are other territories in the Demon World that you could take refuge in,' Hiei suggested.

The mute shook her head, lacking the desire to go anywhere new or unfamiliar to her. 'No.'

Hiei sighed. 'So long as you don't lead Izo on, you can stay in Alaric as long as you wish,' he promised her. 'No strings attached. Unless you hurt him, mislead him, or lie to him. Then you're gone.' She squirmed at that underlying threat. 'Be honest with him, even if it means you don't want him beyond a room mate essentially.'

'That's not my home,' she said forlornly. He could sense her trying to ice over at the idea, to shut down and go numb.

'It can be if you want it to be,' Hiei promised.

She wanted to shut down, freeze all her emotion and be cold and unfeeling, like the other ice maidens Hiei had encountered in his life. She could not though. She loved her child in spite of herself. She broke down in that moment, facing her emotional turmoil and her pain. She cried freely, oblivious of the tear gems that fell when she did. Her head hunkered down into her hands as she let her emotions wash over her, embracing them instead of pushing them away.