Chapter 133
Valkyrie went home with Nadia that evening after some persuasion by Tanith and with the knowledge that Ghastly wasn't there to get in Tanith's way. Tanith's parents were staying the night and after Valkyrie had debriefed Tanith's brother on the naming situation, he'd been all for helping keep the peace, especially because he thought the name was adorable. So, home she went. Nadia had been at the door for her when she got there.
"I love you," she muttered into Valkyrie's shoulder immediately.
Valkyrie breathed in the scent of Nadia's hair. "I love you too baby. You mean everything to me."
"You're being silly," Nadia smiled, a blush coming to her cheeks. "I made some cakes. And Fletchers eating them all, you need to save them."
Valkyrie laughed and put an arm over Nadia's shoulder as they went for the kitchen. She was starving!
"Hey Val," Fletcher said, mouth full of cake. "How's Tanith?"
"She's fine, and so is the baby. She's so beautiful."
"Aww, cute," Fletcher said, then picked up a cupcake. "Want some cake?"
Valkyrie took it from him. "How are you and Myra?"
"I'm good. Myra's at uni at the moment, so I have some free time."
"So you spend it eating cake. I like that. How's work?"
"Insane. The Sanctuary has me teleporting back and forth all over the place. I keep getting offers from other Sanctuaries too, and Corrival said I have to tell him about them all and that takes up, like, all my spare time," he said, shrugging at the end. "It's all good though. Really good money."
"Well, that's good then," Valkyrie smiled, then complimented Nadia on her cake making. "Do you know where the guys are?"
"I don't know. Probably asleep though, since you were all at the hospital last night," he said.
"Wow Fletcher. That was one of the most observant comments you've ever made," she teased, giving him a wink when he gave her a salty look.
He cleared his throat before answering. "Yeah, well, I'm not incompletely incompetent, as you'd say. Tell Tanith congratulations for me."
"Will do. See you later," Valkyrie smiled and she and Nadia went off in search of the men, who ended up being upstairs. Dexter, Saracen and Erskine were spread over Erskine's bed like sardines and Anton was fast asleep on the sofa, a cushion covering his face for whatever reason.
"Hey guys," Valkyrie grinned brightly, opening the curtains.
There was groaning around the room as the four men complained about the bright light, getting even worse when Anton flung the pillow straight between Erskine's legs. Nadia had to cover her face to hide her laugh.
"Come on, time to get up! Don't you want to know what the baby name is?!" Valkyrie asked them, and they were all sitting up moments later. "It's Laila Marianna Edgley!"
"Aww, that's cute!" Erskine said.
"Why'd she get your last Chosen name?" Dexter asked Valkyrie. "Didn't think Ghastly would go for that."
"Well, Ghastly didn't was a hyphenated name with Tanith, and Tanith said she wouldn't have just Bespoke or just one of them when the baby is part of them both, so they started fighting about it and I said they'd have to choose something more neutral. They decided on Edgley since they both like me and Gordon. Plus, she's going to change it in ten to twenty years from now."
"True. It's sweet she gets to have your name, have you told Gordon yet?"
"No, he's on the list. We're hoping Tanith can come home tonight or tomorrow morning. I have the first bag of dirty nappies to be washed downstairs so that's fun," Valkyrie grinned. "Have you heard from Pa?"
"Other than to send Tanith more congratulations, not really. He wants to hear from you because apparently your team has been trying to get a hold of you and you weren't answering," Dexter told her.
"Phone died."
"I told him. He said you had to charge it and call your team or else."
"Fun. I'll do it later," Valkyrie said, pulling up the desk chair and sitting down. Nadia leaned her hip against Valkyrie's shoulder. "Nothing else I guess?"
"Just mail," Saracen sighed. "Err, there's actually some for Nadia. It was at the gates last night when we got here. We err, fell asleep before we could tell you."
Nadia nodded and took the offered letter. It had been sat on, as shown by all the creases in the paper. Valkyrie saw that it just had the words 'Nadia Robin' in the front in Mrs Keena's handwriting. With a sigh, Nadia opened up the letter and pulled out the sheet inside.
After a few minutes of silence while Nadia read, she gave the letter to Valkyrie, but Valkyrie just put it on the desk and pulled Nadia to sit in her lap. "What does it say?"
"Just that they are leaving today, and that they are disappointed in me," Nadia said, wrapping her arms around Valkyrie. "They also said that I should expect a letter from Daadii, my grandmother. She's probably really mad with me."
"Well, Mrs Prachi did say before that you had to, like, stand your ground and stuff didn't she?" Valkyrie asked. "This is you doing that. She told your dad to back off."
"Yeah, but I don't think she actually expected me to move in with you and not go to India with my parents, even if I didn't go to the school," Nadia said, sighing again and letting her go. She looked a little defeated. "It doesn't matter. I like it here, I just don't want to get all these letters saying how awful I am."
"You're not awful. In a few years from now, when the Spiders are dealt with and the dust has settled, they'll see that you did a good thing. I'm sure they will. They're just mad because their baby is growing up, and honestly if Laila ever grows up I'm going to be mad too."
Nadia snorted a laugh. "You're going to be so annoying about this."
"House rule is that she's not allowed to grow up. She can't break it or it's a lifetime of being grounded. End of!" Valkyrie announced.
"God, I remember saying that about you," Dexter said. "You were all little and cute and we thought we had a few years where you'd be all over boys and cute stuff and want a horse."
"Yeah, you thought wrong," Valkyrie told him.
"I want a horse," Nadia nodded. "Can I have a horse?"
"If I can have a dog."
"No, I want a cat and a horse and no dog," Nadia told her.
Valkyrie took a deep breath. "I think we need to break up."
Nadia slapped Valkyrie's arm. "What else were you like as a kid?"
"I think that's for us," Anton intervened with a smirk.
"Exactly," Saracen nodded. "I remember the time Gordon told us you tried to run away from home."
"Oh my God," Valkyrie moaned and hid her face in Nadia's shoulder.
"She was living with her mum, so she was maybe six at the time? She wanted to go to swimming lessons, but that day was her piano lesson and she wouldn't be convinced that she could go to swimming the next day and had decided she hated piano for whatever reason. For the record, she was the best in her group at the time so she loved it. While her mum phoned to say she wasn't coming to the lesson because she was having a tantrum, Valkyrie had packed her school bag with granola bars, socks and her toy penguin."
"But the best bit," Erskine continued with a giant grin, "was that she went to her mum to open the front door for her! She couldn't reach the latch."
"Her mum opened it too," Dexter finished. "She walked all up the street and apparently stood at the end and suddenly ran all the way back in and hugged her mum."
Nadia 'aww'-ed her, because apparently that was adorable, but Valkyrie continued to hide her face. She remembered that day. She remembered having a fit about swimming and piano and it was a silly story, but she also remembered vividly getting to the top of the street and seeing Mr Hogan walking his little terrier dog. He had seen her, his eyes had widened and he started crossing the road towards her, walking quickly, and she had felt all the blood drain from her face. Then she ran to her mum and hugged her and acted good for about a week so she wouldn't have to think about anything else.
Valkyrie looked up and noticed Saracen's eyes narrow. "Do we want to have a takeaway for lunch?" She asked quickly.
The other agreed and Saracen didn't question her, and she let the men decided what to have while she went to wash. After scrubbing the memories viciously away, she felt refreshed.
She threw on a load of her own laundry and the nappies in a separate machine, of course, and she answered the door and paid the guy. She ate and sat with Nadia, texted Tanith, ordered the first lot of pictures to be printed of baby Laila and emailed the renovations company that had previously added the security measures they had wanted. They would probably have to redo all their work in a new layout so that was pretty annoying in an ecological and economical sense, but it was what they wanted and Valkyrie wouldn't let the environment get in her way.
Tanith got to come home that evening despite Laila being three weeks and a few days early. She was very strong and Tanith had a heartbeat monitor on her foot full time to keep an eye on her. Dexter the two with Erskine who was way too excited about it and took them to a magical paediatrician to give Laila a lookover while Valkyrie and Nadia cooked a pasta dinner. Thankfully, Laila was perfectly healthy except for being a little behind on growth, and she'd have to go in for a lot of extra appointments in the weeks to come, but Tanith and all of Valkyrie's family was just grateful both mother and daughter were healthy.
Ghastly had left at some point and no one heard from him, nor did anyone bother texting him Laila's results. If he wanted to make no effort, no one was going to help him along.
When they got back, Gordon got to see Laila and shared more stories about Valkyrie – that didn't have bad memories attached but were way more embarrassing – and Nadia nagged Valkyrie to play the piano for her. She was able to not do it by the skin of her teeth because the piano wasn't tuned. The stories revealed all the stuff she had learnt as a kid and it wasn't okay!
Laila was a quiet baby, and since Tanith's milk had come in, she was a good eater too. Which, for a baby, was really good. To compensate for not being able to bottle feed Laila anymore, the men were allowed to pick out her clothes. They were lucky Laila was so patient with them because they spent almost twenty minutes very gently getting her to put her arm through an armhole rather than just putting it in the hole with a little more force like a normal person would have. Laila had just drifted off to sleep after. Dealing with the Idiots was tiring after all.
Solomon helped Tanith with getting her stuff up the stairs and carried Laila for Tanith since she was still in pain from giving birth. He was very doting on the baby, and it was nice to see him look like himself rather than have that haunted shadow in his eyes when Laila wasn't around.
Valkyrie and Nadia went to bed early.
"I've missed you," Nadia said, snuggling into Valkyrie's side.
"I missed you too. It's been a crazy few days."
"Mm. Do you want to watch a movie?"
She and Nadia got changed into their pyjamas, separate from each other, and Valkyrie's eyes followed Nadia around the room when she came in from the bathroom. Valkyrie had seen short shorts before, Tanith had a few and so did she, but she wasn't even sure where these started on Nadia. They were tiny. They looked more like underwear than shorts, but they had pockets on the back side. Valkyrie spent so long staring and contemplating that she didn't realise Nadia was standing right in front of Valkyrie's face.
"You okay?" Nadia asked quietly.
Valkyrie looked up and tried very consciously not to stare at her breasts that were pushing up out of her top. She had to have been wearing a push up bra and Valkyrie appreciated it. "I'm fine."
Nadia twisted her hands nervously. "Do you like it?"
"The shorts?" Valkyrie asked, her eyebrows raising. "Yeah, I like them."
"Good," Nadia said, and quickly straddled Valkyrie's lap and pulled her into a hug. "I just thought you'd like to see them."
"You sound nervous," Valkyrie said, feeling her redden.
"I am," Nadia laughed. "It's silly. We've, you know, slept in the same bed and we've done stuff before. I wasn't nervous before."
"It's okay," Valkyrie smiled, wishing she'd thought to put on something other than Erskine's old, ratty jogging bottoms and Anton's gigantic, comfortable shirt. It was not quite the vibe Nadia was trying to create. "Should I change?"
Nadia blushed darker. "I can help you," she said breathlessly, and Valkyrie could see she was shaking a little. Not wanting to stop whatever Nadia wanted to do, Valkyrie let her pull the top off, leaving Valkyrie's top half entirely bare. Nadia had only seen her breasts once before.
"I love you, Nadia," Valkyrie whispered, kissing her neck.
Nadia looked her over but didn't seem like she was confident enough to touch. Feeling like she would be forcing Nadia if she did anything, Valkyrie asked if she wanted to watch the movie. Nadia nodded quickly and they snuggled into each other, Nadia having a hand on Valkyrie's belly and Valkyrie holding Nadia's thigh. Valkyrie's heart would skip every time Nadia moved her hand even a little. Halfway through the movie Valkyrie was definitely not paying attention to, Nadia suddenly pushed Valkyrie flat on the bed, covered her breast with her hand and kissed Valkyrie soundly.
No more clothes were removed, but they touched each other all over and moaned into each other's mouth's way past the end of the credits, talking softly and giggling to each other. They fell asleep in each other's arms and Valkyrie felt as if some barrier had been crossed – one that she'd be very glad to leave behind.
OOOoohhhh! I don't even know where to start, they're all just so fucking cute! I'm glad there have been no objections to the name Laila also, but even if you do, don't fret - we get to do this all again not too long from now (oh my god!).
There were a few questions so I thought I'd answer them without spoilers (these are from Lonelygirl702): We will be following the family for a few more years at least, so we will see Laila grow up though I do not yet know how far this story will go after the Spiders are finished with (that is the end of the known plot for me). She will certainly grow old enough to have her own personality, name and such, so no worries there, though I don't yet know how much of that will be included within time jumps as of now. Everyone should keep an open mind for that as like I said, that stuff is in a ten-twenty year age range. So some time may be skipped. I just don't know how much time will be skipped or how much that that time jumping may miss story things out, etc.. I can certainly make her throw up on Ghastly, I have a little bit of plot worked out for her early life with her parents and family, but you'll have to wait and see how it goes ;)