A/N: You guys make me laugh. I love how into this you're getting. :)

.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.

"Will you marry me, Allen?"

Once again, fear hit me hard at hearing those words. However, I did not want to find out what Yuu would do if I hesitated a second time, so I did what he asked, and just reacted to the question. "Yes."

He kissed the top of my head. "Good Moyashi."

I scowled at his tone, because it was like he was talking to a dog, but he ignored my expression and pulled me tightly against his chest. "See? Getting engaged was not that bad. Right?"

The hand that was still in my hair tugged on the strands and forced me to nod. I didn't feel like agreeing with him, but he was clearly ignoring my protests at this point. "And it's not like we're going to rush out and get married, Lenalee is going to want at least a year to plan the wedding. We'll have plenty of time to adjust to the idea of being married before we actually have to go through with it."

His words pissed me off. I grit my teeth and punched him in the stomach. "Why the hell didn't you lead with that, Bakanda?! I was thinking that you wanted to get married right away! If I had known that you were planning on waiting that long, I would have said yes right off the bat!"

He let out a deep groan, letting go of me in favor of leaning back against the brick beside me. He slid down the wall and stared up at the sky. The expression on his face made it clear that he was kicking himself internally. "Dammit. I should have known that."

"Yes, you should have." I punched him again, this time in the shoulder. I was a lot less pissed at him now that I wasn't the only one who had done something stupid.

I sat down beside him and leaned against him with my head on his shoulder. Not knowing what else to say, I let the subject drop and turned my focus on my left hand and the silver band he had put on my ring finger. I watched it sparkle in the light as its meaning settled heavily on me. I was engaged. To Kanda Yuu. I suddenly understood why everyone freaked out when they first learned of our relationship. It actually was hard to believe that he and I were together. On the other hand, in the last seven months Yuu had gone from someone I couldn't stand to someone I couldn't live without. I was engaged to my daughter's father, and there was something poetic about that.

"Do you like the ring?"

The question snapped me from my thoughts, and when I refocused on my surroundings, Yuu had my left hand in his and he was absently twisting the band on my finger. I looked sideways at him. "That's a weird question. Why do you ask?"

He sighed. "I went with silver because I thought it would look better on you, but Lenalee seemed pretty convinced that you'd want a gold one because it's more traditional. And now that I've given it to you, I can't help but wonder if she was right."

I laughed lightly at how distressed he sounded. "Honestly? I don't think I care what it looks like. I didn't think you'd be the type to get me a ring, so this one's perfect because it's the one you picked."

"That's sappy, Moyashi."

"Says the man who insists on brushing my hair every night before bed."

The comment earned me an elbow to the ribs, but it was immediately followed by a deep kiss that took my breath away. Yuu was my soulmate, and though I had my doubts over our future, I didn't regret agreeing to marry him. We were going to be perfect together, I had never been more certain of anything else in my entire life.

.x.x.

The time between our engagement and our wedding passed quickly. Things between the Moyashi and I hardly changed after my disastrous proposal. Though the incident was embarrassing, "it's just who we are", to use the Moyashi's words. It resulted in some annoying teasing from our friends, who all insisted that even though we weren't married on paper, there was no need for us to get engaged because we were already a married couple. Marie pointed out to me that it was annoying because it was true, and while that scared me a little, I definitely liked knowing that everyone else knew that Allen was mine.

Addie grew from a mostly helpless seven month old into an obnoxiously independent toddler. It all happened way too fast, and I both loved and hated watching my baby girl grow up. Once she learned how to walk and talk, she wanted to do everything for herself. Her clothes were always on backwards, inside out, or with missed buttons, and her auburn hair was in a constant state of disarray. She was incredibly stubborn, which wasn't all that surprising given that Allen and I were her parents, but she had strongly inherited Allen's sweet side as well. If we wanted her to do something, all we had to do was phrase it like we were asking for her help and she would do it in a heartbeat. Her favorite words were 'no' and 'please' - along with 'Mommy', 'Chichi' (which, while it wasn't my ideal word, was at least Japanese), and 'Manda', as Miranda was her favorite babysitter.

Addie's love of the German woman had inspired us to name Miranda and Marie as Addie's godparents. From the moment Allen and I brought her to headquarters, Central had insisted that Addie be properly baptized before her first birthday. We fought them at first because neither of us cared about the Catholic faith, but after Lenalee pointed out that baptism is when a baby's godparents are named, we decided to go along with it and make the ceremony more about the naming of godparents than the baptism. Lenalee was initially upset that we had skipped over her for Miranda, but she dropped it when Allen reminded her that Marie was as much my brother as she was my sister.

Teidoll made good on his unspoken threat to spoil Addie and brought her gifts from his travels every time he returned to headquarters, which was a lot more often than it was before she came along. The nursery ended up covered in sketches and paintings of the places he had been. He tried many times to get Addie to call him some variation of 'grandfather', but always failed miserably. I thought it was amusing up until she settled on calling him 'old man'. Teidoll found it absolutely adorable that she mimicked me like that, and it was no longer funny.

Lenalee annoyed us with wedding plans for months, constantly asking about flowers and colors and the like. Neither the Moyashi nor I cared about any of those things, but our suggestion that she just do what she thought would be best was met with resistance. According to her, it was our wedding, so we had to choose. Allen didn't take that particularly well. "Look, Lena, I may have had a baby, but I'm still a man. I know nothing about those kinds of things. As long as you don't try to put me in a dress, I honestly don't care either way about any of the other things. The things you'll pick will be better than the things we would pick because you do care. And you know us better than anyone else does, we trust you to make the right choices."

I laughed at his unsuccessful attempt to reason with her and tried a different tactic. "You really should just give up, Lenalee. Even if you make us choose, we're just going to disagree."

Allen raised an eyebrow at me. "Really, Yuu? You think we wouldn't be able to agree on anything?"

"Well, given that you've said that your only condition is that you don't want to wear a dress, and I want you to wear one, yes." The words earned me a punched shoulder, but I ignored it and the childish scowl Allen was giving me. "Actually, I'm surprised that you're so against that. I saw you in dresses quite a lot in our first month together."

The Moyashi turned bright red and punched me again. This time I knew he was pissed because it hurt. "Bakanda! Pretending to be a woman because I'd had a baby and wearing a dress at my wedding are two very different things."

He had more to say, but he cut off abruptly when Lenalee started laughing. "Ok, I get it. I thought things would be different now that you're engaged, but that's clearly not the case. Out of curiosity though, is there anything you do agree on?"

I shared a look with Allen, but before we could figure out how to respond to the question, we were interrupted by a loud screeching as Addie ran into the room. The little ball of energy promptly threw herself onto my lap and grinned up at me. "Chichi!"

I tickled her and made her laugh more while glaring up at Lavi who was now standing in the doorway. This was why we didn't let the redhead babysit. He got Addie all riled up on sugar and then couldn't control her afterwards. Lavi blanched at the look I gave him and immediately turned and ran away. I couldn't stay focused on him for too long though as the giggling girl crawled out of my lap and began tugging on my wrist. "Chichi! Come."

Playing along with whatever the hyperactive toddler was up to was infinitely preferable to staying for more of Lenalee's wedding planning, so I stood from the couch and allowed Addie to lead me out of the room. "Alright, Addie, I'm coming."

As our daughter led me away, I saw Allen smile at Lenalee out of the corner of my eye. He leaned closer to her, and I almost missed his whispered answer to her question. "Actually, we've never once disagreed on how to raise Addie."

.x.x.

Lenalee stopped bothering us with wedding questions after that day. Or rather, she stopped bothering me with questions. For all I knew, she was still pestering Allen with them when the two were alone together, but he didn't complain about it, so I had no way of knowing. Without that annoyance, missions and my family kept me busy, and before I knew it, it was September, and our wedding was only a few days away.

Headquarters was a flurry of activity as Lenalee had everyone helping with the cleaning and decorating. Everyone except me anyway. Aside from a fitting to make sure that my tux would fit, I did absolutely nothing. It wasn't that I didn't want to help, which was true, but Lenalee and Allen wouldn't hear of it. Apparently, my jobs were to not complain about what they were doing and keep Addie out of the way.

I certainly did not object to being left alone with my twenty one month old daughter. I loved spending time with Addie, and having her completely to myself for those couple days made putting up with all the wedding chaos a lot easier. Yes, marrying Allen was all my idea, but I could have done without the whole big wedding fiasco; I would have been just as happy with signing the paperwork and skipping the ceremony. This is what made everyone else happy though, mainly Lenalee who had been begging to plan the wedding since she learned about my first proposal to Allen, and I knew the Moyashi wanted a ceremony, so I went along with it.

On the other hand, if we hadn't had the ceremony then I wouldn't have gotten to see Allen in a wedding dress. Apparently, even though he knew I wasn't completely serious, after learning that I wanted him to wear one, the Moyashi allowed Lenalee to change his mind about the whole thing. He decided that cross-dressing would be worth it just to see the look on my face when he walked down the aisle in traditional bride's clothes.

Allen looked drop dead gorgeous in the floor length white satin gown. It wasn't frilly, flowery, or sparkly, or anything else that would have made it too girly, it was just a simple, classic satin. The dress was styled in such a way that it left his entire left arm and shoulder exposed, and the black of his Innocence contrasted perfectly with the full length sleeve that covered his right arm. The skirt was puffed out just enough to allow him free range of movement without being too flouncy. He even wore a veil in his snow white hair, which was pinned up with pearl barrettes that matched the choker and bracelets he was wearing.

He looked so breathtaking that I barely noticed anything else during the ceremony and reception. It was a good thing that all I had to do was repeat after the minister, I was so distracted by Allen that I would have forgotten my vows if we had written them. I might not have even noticed Addie if she hadn't gotten stage fright during her duties as flower girl and latched herself onto my leg. Her dress was nearly identical to Allen's, though hers had a shorter skirt and was in a pale lavender. She even wore pearls like those that he wore, though hers were woven into her complexly braided auburn hair. She looked absolutely adorable, and I suddenly completely understood Komui's sister-complex; no potential suitor was ever getting within ten feet of my precious little girl.

.x.x.

While wearing a dress was not how I originally imagined my wedding happening, the look on Yuu's face when he saw me like that made it completely worth it. He actually broke his usual stoic expression to smile in front of everyone. And the way he couldn't keep his eyes off me was truly flattering. Unsurprisingly, when we kissed at the end of the ceremony, he had trouble letting go of me.

The dress was far from the only surprise I had for him that day. When I was announced at the reception as Allen Walker-Kanda, he almost had a heart attack. It blew his mind that I had decided to take his last name. Granted it was hyphenated, but he didn't care; that possessive streak of his liked that I was his in name too.

Yuu was marked as mine too. He finally had a ring, and I don't think I would ever get tired of seeing it on his finger. The best part was that his wedding band was made with turquoise, which was Addie's and my birthstone, so he would be doubly reminded of his family when he looked at it. It was Lenalee's idea, which was also why Addie and I had ended up wearing pearls at the wedding, as that was Yuu's birthstone, but while I thought the pearls were taking it too far, the ring idea was romantic.

Our wedding night was everything I wanted it to be. The others looked after Addie so that Yuu and I could have the night to ourselves. I knew from the way Yuu had been looking at me all day that he was growing impatient to have me alone, so it was unsurprising that he had me pinned to the wall the second it finally happened. "If you're wearing something you don't want ripped or broken, you better take it off right now."