Here's the second part! :) Thank you for the reviews and the favs! Hope you like it!
"But papa, why must I wear my boots if we aren't playing in the snow?"
"You still have to walk to the sleigh, don't you?"
"Oh, right."
"Plus, we need your toes to stay nice and warm."
She can hear the two of them from the bottom of the stairs as she grabs the expensive coat her husband conveniently "found" for her while conducting business in Canada a few weeks prior. Their domestic chatter filled up the cabin with as much warmth as the fire place, and Elizabeth found herself pausing, one arm into the coat, so that she could slip it on a little more quietly in order to hear what they were saying.
"And why must I wear this big jacket if there is a blanket?"
"Because it's cold outside."
"But, papa, you said your hugs chase away the cold, and I have your hugs and the blanket and mommy and dedoolya."
"Those are all magnificent points, my princess, but any Knight worth his salt knows that, having sworn to defend his princess's body, soul, and spirit, he cannot do all of those things if he is hugging her the whole time."
"No matter how much he wants to?"
"No matter how much he wants to."
Smiling as she listens to them counter back and forth, she grabs her gloves from the counter in the kitchen before making her way towards the door by the back porch where she can just see Red's figure positioned on one knee; a tiny, booted foot resting on the other so that he can tie the bows of Agnes's laces more securely.
"There," He says in a voice that conveys a sense of excitement, tapping the side of her boot as if to emphasize a job well done. Liz rounds the corner towards them and nearly laughs at the scowl on Dom's face as he sits beside Agnes; appearing very much like a scolded child. He's staring at Red's mischievous grin as if it were the epitome of all evil.
"Are we ready to go?" There's an excited smile from her daughter as she spots her, and Liz welcomes her bouncing baby girl into her arms, spinning around once, when Agnes all but vaults off the bench the two men had placed her on. "I'll take that as a yes." She laughs as she tucks a strand of her daughter's dirty-blonde hair behind her ear.
"Papa and dedoolya are fighting, again." Agnes whispers the news into her ear and leans away in that manner which children have a habit, as though making sure that she is being taken seriously. Mother and daughter stare at one another for a brief moment before Liz raises her voice loud enough for Red and Dom to hear.
"Oh they are, are they?" The two men manage to cast accusatory glances at one another before they both look at her and shrug. The synchronicity of their movements let's her know that, in the past few years, they have definitely been spending too much time together. "And what's this fight about?" Agnes looks between her father and grandfather with a mixture of confusion and curiosity.
"A name."
"A name?" She immediately looks to Red who has pursed his lips in contemplation but seems to draw a conclusion after a moment and gives her a smile that makes him look as though he's the cat that ate the canary. "I don't suppose you're going to explain that smile on your face?"
"There's nothing to explain, Lizzie. Everything is well in hand, I think." And Liz thinks a guilty man has never looked so smug.
"Uh-huh. Dedushka, what do you have to say for yourself?" Dom looks down at his own boots, arms folded across his chest. "Dedushka."
"Your..." Dom looks over at Red with a sort of derision he only knows how to harbor for a short while; a kind of irritation that, much like a lighted match, sputters and dies when it's burned itself out. "Husband, has impugned my honor as a grandfather, a great-grandfather, his elder, no less, and he won't apologize for it."
"Impugned your honor?" She looks to Red who stands there as if enjoying the quiet victory of the moment. "What did you say?" She can't withhold the smile forming on her lips. It's at that moment, looking at her father, that Agnes mutters something under her breath that draws the attention of all three adults. And, damn him, Red looks so proud of her that, if Dom were to poke him, Liz believed he might burst.
"You see?" Dom tosses his arms in the air, his face a mask of agitation. And, since Liz knows better, her grandfather's antics are entirely too forced for him to fully mean them. "My sweet, innocent little granddaughter knows it, and it's going to become a habit now that he's introduced it to her vocabulary."
"Relax," Red looks at Dom as if to brush the conversation away. "It's harmless."
"Harmless? Their brains are sponges at this age, Raymond." Their arguing has honestly been one of Elizabeth's favorite things since meeting Dominik, and she's so caught up in her amusement, and the fact that she is so endeared to these two men, that Agnes has to tug at her coat collar to get her attention.
"What does it mean, mommy?" Even Liz doesn't know. The word, though Russian, is a complete mystery and no doubt stumbling in her daughter's pronunciation.
"I don't know, pumpkin, why don't you ask your father?" Liz turns with a crocodile smile to Red who narrows his eyes a little at her beyond his smirking and shrugs. He walks over to Agnes, places his hands up to her ear, and whispers what Liz can only guess is the answer. Having been the one holding Agnes, she thought she would have heard what Red had stated but it was just a hiss of noise and nothing more.
Agnes pulls away from her father's hands and gives him a look of disbelief before casting a reproachful look upon her grandfather for the apparent ridiculousness of it all. A split second later, Agnes gives a very Raymond-esque chuckle and squirms out of her mother's arms to go take hold of her grandfather's hand in order to pull him up off the bench. "Come on you old fart, let's go see the sleigh."
Dom sputters, mouth opening and closing, looking back at Red and Liz with a, "Did you hear that? Masha, I told you he would be a terrible influen-" before Agnes tugs him out the door.
Liz watches Agnes and Dom carefully descend the icy porch steps outside, before she turns to find Red staring at the retreating image of their daughter and Dom with the most profound look of adoration and contentment she has ever seen. Though she is loath to vanish such a look, Liz swats at his arm and shakes her head at him when he recoils dramatically; a slight pout on his face.
"So you're teaching our daughter Russian slurs now, are you?" Red turns to her, reaching out to grasp the edges of her shoulders before gliding his hands down the red fabric of her arms. Her gaze trails from his own, to the cuts and fading bruises on his face, and land briefly on his lips before making a return journey to his eyes. His hands have stopped at the junction of her elbows and he gives a little squeeze, tugging her just the slightest bit closer; his eyes shining with affection and amusement.
"I hardly think старпер is a slur, Elizabeth." Liz rolls her eyes and reaches up to adjust the lapels of his coat and the scarf around his neck before slipping her arms into the warmth of his jacket to snake them around his lower back; their knees mingling when the move brings her body nearly flush against his own. Red looks at her expectantly, giving a slight, appreciative hum in reaction, and when she meets his warm gaze, a rush of heat spreads through her and leaves her breathless.
"Don't give me that look, Raymond." Though tempting, they still had a carriage ride and a visit from Santa to get through tonight. Balking just a little, Red tilts his head at her as if he has no idea what she's talking about.
"What look?" She smiles and stifles a laugh, a part of her immediately recognizing her desire to remain in these safe little moments for longer than they last. Thanks to Agnes's diligent perusal of the weather yesterday morning, it was a tiny miracle that they'd even made it to the cabin before a fresh layer of snow arrived this afternoon. And while it hadn't been a storm by any means, if they hadn't left a half a day earlier than they planned, the roads might have been too dangerous given how tired the two of them were. On top of the close calls and the worry of the last four days, the fact that he was standing here, preparing a perfectly normal Christmas with her and their daughter, felt a bit surreal.
The three of them had grown too accustomed to a quick change of plans and making the most of what they could in years past.
"Don't play coy, you know exactly which look." Challenging and playful, Liz leans up and gives him a peck on the lips. Red responds by holding her there against him, and Liz can feel her breath catch in her chest again. With their lips just a breath apart and their eyes glittering with intent, the back door opens in a rush of cold air and reveals Dom staring in wry amusement at the both of them.
"Are you two going to make bedroom eyes at each other all evening or are we going to go on this damn carriage ride?" Red smirks down at Liz and then turns his attention to Dom. Collecting themselves, Liz and Red follow him out into the back. Liz breaks away from the two of them to scoop up her daughter who has been left standing with the driver: an elderly woman who is showing Agnes the ins and outs of the bells along the two horse's collars and traces. They make themselves comfortable under the blankets as they seat themselves, and Red delves into the differences between a sleigh and a carriage, to which Dom continues to mutter and mock him for a good five minutes into their ride along the river trails while mother and daughter exchange amused glances and perfectly identical eye rolls at the men.
They arrive back at the cabin just as the last traces of sunlight filter out of the sky. The temperature is starting to drop rather dramatically, and Red ushers Liz, Agnes, and Dom inside to get warm while he and the driver, whose name, Liz discovered during the ride, was Dottie, got the horses some water and a few treats for the return trip home. Dottie, it seemed, was a neighbor of Dom's from down the road; a kindly, salt of the earth woman that Red had met once about eighteen years ago. It didn't surprise Liz to know that Dottie remembered him for his charming ways, nor that Dom seemed more than interested to hear about that little story. The two of them, had apparently never told Dom that they knew one another. And Liz is almost ninety-percent sure it's cause Red was keeping tabs on Dom through Dottie's good graces.
Fifteen minutes later, the back door opens and shuts, and Liz looks up from the tea she's been making as Red shirks out of his coat and hangs it on the hook by the door. He gives her a small smile, one she returns, and comes around the counter to brace his hip against it in order to lean closer to her.
"Tell me she's sound asleep because she doesn't want Santa to skip her." He stifles a yawn half-way through the sentence, and Liz can't help but think the lackadaisical expression on his face after is adorable. While she also feels a pang of guilt knowing that exhaustion was likely catching up with him, she smirks and shakes her head.
"Nope, Grandpa is to read her a Christmas Carole until papa comes to give her a kiss goodnight." Liz lifts the tea bag from her mug and squeezes the remaining water from it, making a tiny face at the way the heat burns just a little before tossing it in the trash. "Her words, not mine. I was kicked out." She frowns just a little and takes a small sip of her tea. "She's been pretty attached to you since you got home." I think she's worried.
"I keep catching her staring at me, at the," He brings his hand up to wave at the general area of the left side of his face, and Liz sets her mug down on the counter to look at him, and after a moment of staring off in the direction of the dining room, Red turns to her. "It's not alarming me now so much as the thought of when she grows up, when she'll remember more, when she recognizes the violence we have to contend with." Liz studies his face as he speaks, following his eyes as they look off over her shoulder as though he's seeing a thousand and one scenarios that concern him.
"If you're afraid she's going to ask us to stop some day, you should be." She reaches out to place her hand over his and lets her fingers slip just under his palm to curl there in a gentle grip. "She will ask, and we will have to explain to her why it's important." This was not a new topic for them. It wasn't even a new discussion. The questions would come. The desperation and the sorrow and the stress would come. She didn't have to explain the psychology of all that to him.
Kids asked questions, and lying to their daughter was out of the question. Answers like, your father can't always be there because there are bad guys he needs to protect you from, would turn into discussions about papa being an internationally wanted criminal and mommy being an adjunct field agent assigned to a team that didn't officially exist, that worked out the cool building with the bright yellow elevator she used to ride in when she was little. Because, at some point, her God-parents wouldn't just be the fun people with the cool stuff, they would be soldiers in a war to prevent global control by shadow governments and people with money in all the wrong things.
It was going to be a bit of a nightmare, but nightmares were their specialty.
Their lives would still infiltrate hers, and there was no way to prevent it. As Agnes has gotten older, their attitudes about parenting have flipped. Where Liz had once been the panicked and fearful mother of a newborn, willing to do anything to keep her safe, Raymond was the worried and fearful father of a precocious five-year old who was going to get older and wiser and less oblivious to the danger in her and her family's way of life.
Red grips her hand tightly and there's a kind of sadness about his smile that echoes a dozen memories of the last eight years since she met him. "You didn't want that for her."
Liz's faked death still sits in awkward corners of their life, a dull and chronic pain prone to flaring up at the most inconvenient of times. She always knew that she would never fully get rid of what she'd done. And though the sting of the topic and the memory for him has lessened over the years, she knows that the hurt she caused comes back the way all old griefs do; a cyclical and determined shadow of brief desolation and ruin.
"I don't. And you don't, either." Her eyes travel down to their hands. She's brought back to the day she shot that undercover cop while on the run with him, and a smile finds its way onto her face. "This life has a mind and momentum of its own. And while I can't find any good reason to subject her to what we go through, I also know that we're the safest people she can be with." She looks back up at him and he's got a pinched expression that has stopped halfway between concession and a wince as his own words come back to haunt him. "Plus, I'm pretty sure it's about five years and seven months too late to take that night on the container ship back, don't you think?"
He stares at her, at her teasing look, and when he remains quiet, Liz finds her brow furrowing in concern. A dozen questions about the events that took him away from them four days ago pop into her head, and as if sensing her worry, Red slides around the corner of the kitchen to come up behind her; wrapping his arms around her and placing a kiss where her neck slopes into her shoulder.
"I wouldn't trade that night for the world, Elizabeth." The warmth of his breath on her skin and the low rumble of his voice cast a shiver down her spine and Liz all but melts into him; shutting her eyes and breathing deeply as he turns his face into her hair.
"Neither would I." Ensconced in his presence and the comfort of the cabin and the peace this entire day has brought her, Liz feels a sweeping sense of gratitude for how terribly things had gone in order for her to be right here, right now. Turning, bringing her arms up to her chest so that she is nestled against him, she turns her face into the fabric of his shirt and lets him hold her there for an indeterminable amount of time.
At some point, Red makes his way into Agnes's room where he finds Dom blinking tiredly, glasses perched on his nose, with a dozing little girl curled up against him as he reads to her about Mr. Scrooge's change of heart. Red switches places with Dom, and it almost seems as if Agnes is about to get a second wind when she sees her father, perking up a bit so that she can listen to him as he finishes the story. He's read it so many times, that, when asked if he needed the reading glasses Dom had been using, he declined, opting out on account of ego, memory, and the disdain he feels for falling asleep with his glasses on.
Liz checked in on them ten minutes later, and to no surprise, Red and Agnes were sound asleep; the book splayed open and resting on Red's chest as Agnes clutched a fistful of his shirt in her hand. It reminds Liz of Agnes as a baby; how her hands would always find some way to hold on to him, as if knowing, inherently, that the world would try to rip him from her life.
That night, it is Dom and Liz up until the wee hours of the morning preparing the cabin as if Santa had come down the chimney; dusting soot in certain places, and creating footprints on the floor leading from the fireplace to the tree where Agnes's gifts are laid out in such a way that she couldn't possibly miss them. Stockings are filled with candy and Dom eats a few cookies they'd left out and leaves one half-eaten.
"Evidence," He says, when Liz asks why Santa would only take one huge bite out of a cookie and leave it on the plate. It seemed rather rude. Her grandfather just shoos her away from his part of the gig and drinks nearly all the milk, as well. All in all, it took them about an hour to complete their tasks, and, after surveying their handiwork and tossing any and all evidence of Santa's true identity, Dom dusts boots, and they head off to bed.
In the morning, Liz wakes to the excited voice of her daughter and the distinct, resounding rumble of Red's response down stairs.
It's a weekend of family.
Of burdens borne and lifted.
Of little stories about her mother when she was Anges's age.
And when they leave, Agnes's bike from Santa in the back of the suburban along with a dollhouse from Dom, Liz finds herself looking at Red as they leave the veritable haven that has become Dom's cabin in the woods. It's in these brief seconds of leaving that she feels the regret and longing for a permanent life the way they experienced it this weekend.
With rest,
and laughter,
and a reality that didn't seek to make them bleed or suffer.
But then, looking back at Agnes as she watches the forest drift by, she entwines her arm with Red's where his elbow rests on the center console, leaning against him slightly, and thinks that these days of peace and rest are only sweet and treasured because of the difficulties that they face. And, she decides, as they drive back into the world of inherited wars and strife, that she wouldn't trade any sort of life that would ruin or dull the sensation of blessed normalcy that existed and made special the memories they had just created...
There you are, mymostpreciousking! I hope you liked the final installment, haha I don't think I've ever written something this fluffy before xD I'm sorry it got mildly angsty at the end. I honestly don't know how that stuff slips in there but it does haha. I also didn't know how to end it, so I'm sorry if it seems a little disjointed there. Again, thank you to everyone who reviewed and favorited this! You're the best ^^ I hope the rest of you enjoyed this little bit as well.