Work Text:
Violet’s silver tipped hair fans out over her shoulders, released from its braided confines now that they’ve settled amongst the warmer altitude. These days it seems the pins holding her braids to her scalp are always tugging the wrong way, leaving her with headaches that can only be relieved with the freedom of her hair. Xaden never minds, of course, and if it weren’t for the fact that she’s suffering from the aches, he’d be thankful for the excuse to look at her flowing hair all the time.
Recently, something just seemed softer about her to her friends. Maybe it was her free hair, maybe it was her seemingly constant smile, or maybe it was that for the first time in her short life she lived in a time of relative tranquility.
As tranquil as it could be as the twenty four year old Queen of a newly independent country, but she’ll take it as peace nonetheless.
Violet stretched her legs out beyond her, supporting herself with one arm as she leaned back towards the sun. Aretian winter was brutal, but here, amongst the hatching grounds, it felt like summer. Even the thinnest layers of her leathers could be disregarded at this altitude, and she exposed as much skin as she could to soak in the warmth. It felt like sitting under the sun on the warmest summer day, toasting by the Tyrrish coastline as they had six months ago.
She’d have to thank her dragons, later, for this glorious December recommendation. The hand not supporting herself comes up to where her husband is resting his head on her thighs, and runs through the thick, dark hair on top of his head. It felt surreal, that this soon after the war they could be so at peace. It was like she lived in a dream that was just too good, but she didn’t have it in her to force herself awake and into a cruel reality. It felt like a dream, but Violet was more adept than anyone to know that no, this is her real life.
“ What’s going on in that beautiful mind of yours, love?” Xaden’s voice trickles across the bond, as he drags his hand lazily over her thigh before trailing down her leg. He massages just above her well wrapped knee, which is one of the many large joints constantly aching her at this stage.
“I can’t believe this is real life, that's all.” She thinks to him, pulling the hand from his hair to crest along the upper curve of her belly. With the typical armor and leathers tossed to the side, she felt every one of the 30 weeks (and four days) pregnant that she currently was. Nevermind that the war had most certainly not ended more than thirty weeks ago. Closer to twenty seven, actually but who was counting.
(Their friends. Their friends were most certainly counting. Imogen had figured it out, as had Mira. Imogen laughed. She laughed so hard tears had actually run down her face. Mira’s reaction, however, was the reason that the sisters had hardly spoken in three months. Violet would likely forgive her for the things she had said and suggested , but Xaden never would. He didn’t think she was deserving of her sister’s forgiveness, and was most certainly not deserving to see their child.)
The heat from the hatching ground soothed every single one of her worsening joints, one of the less pleasant side effects that growing a whole new human being had on her body. They knew it would be unpleasant for her, but the Aretian winter plus the increased laxity and weight– Violet was hurting and everyone knew it.
She was hurting. She had new responsibilities that came with being an actual queen. She couldn’t ride her dragons (or rather her dragons refused to fly her), and Gods was she exhausted . Yet, despite all of that, she wouldn’t change a thing.
Xaden turns over on his back, so that he was now facing her body and not her feet. “If you’d have told me a year ago, this was going to be our life, I’d have thought it was my turn to have walked into someone’s dreams.”
“I think I’d also have thought I walked into someone’s dreams if I saw myself in the hatching grounds.” Violet muses, her eyes fluttering close when she feels his hands close to her own. She smiles to herself as Xaden murmurs something lowly in Tyrrish to the general vicinity of her belly, where his hands wander reverently.
“ It is an exception for you and you only, Silver One.” Tairn warns, though there is no real edge in his tone. Violet hears him huff from his space wrapped around Sgaeyl about twenty yards away. Violet and Xaden sit comfortably midday between their dragons and the massive nest containing three shimmering eggs. It goes without saying that Tairn even flying her here was an exception to his self imposed rules on his pregnant rider. “ Considering you cannot fly for mental relief at this stage, this is what I can give.”
“They’re my eggs, I make the decision who sits near them.” Shimmering blue snaps down the bond, and Violet can’t help the laugh that escapes her at Sgaeyl’s even more bristly than usual demeanor.
“They’re older than us, shouldn’t they be making their own decisions by now?” Xaden sends down the three way bond, and Sgaeyl audibly huffs in the background. There's a warm blast of steam that ruffles the ends of Violet’s hair as it breezes over her back.
“ Our kind needs time to grow, we have to cultivate perfection. It’s not as simple as being unable to deny your human fantasies. While you two were busy procreating, we were busy preparing to win the war.” Violet wishes her eye roll were audible as Tairn’s rambling continues in her head, and she resists the urge to throw up an Archive wall to shut him up.
“ And they’re only twenty, not twenty five, they’ll still likely grow for another year or two before hatching, thank you very much–” Sgaeyl tries, before Tairn’s rambling continues.
“ In fact I even carried you AND your newly growing hatchling into that final battle, Violet Sorrengail, and it would serve you to remember that–” Tairn continues despite the heavy sigh from Violet.
“You’d think he’s the most hormonal one here, You know it’s bad when Andarna is avoiding them. Even though she considers herself the older sister to those eggs…:” Xaden grumbles, but his hand stills over hers at the harsh reminder of what exactly they had to risk at the end of the war, something in his tone shifting. “He had a point about the whole battle part, though.”
“I am the older sister!” Indignation fills Violet’s head, and she tilts her head back in a laugh, as she relays the clarification to her husband. “ They just aren’t any fun pre-hatching. Neither is yours, Violet.”
“I apologize my daughter bores you.” Violet sends down their shimmering thread, but her heart catches when she hears the change in his voice.
“Xaden, hey– we didn’t know. Even if we did, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. We did what we had to do. We needed me to fight. You and I both know we weren’t winning without your favorite lightning wielder ” She brushes her hand down over his cheek, thumb catching on the very bottom of the scar on his eyebrow. “None of us would be here otherwise.”
“Yeah, I know, and you would have been right to. It’s just…it’s fucking scary to think about now.” He admits, catching her hand in his and bringing her fingertips to his lips. He then redirects his attention to her belly, pressing his other hand against her, reveling at the movement that responds under his fingers. “Maybe she was the key all along, right? My tiny little mini lightning wielder.”
“You know that's not how signets work, right? They aren’t genetic. Though I guess my mom wielded storms…“ She retorts with a bemused smile, but the heaviness that settles in the center of her chest is unyielding.
She had been, frankly, terrified when many many many months later she actually realized what was going on – it was not just her body adjusting after the war after all.
Tairin ultimately had to tell her, four months into the whole thing, that she was going to be grounded soon– and why after that final battle he had significantly pulled back the amount of power he gave her.
She had nearly broken down then and there in the flight field, at the gravity of it all. She had walked so close to the line of burnout in those last moments. Still, to this day, no one can figure out how she did not just…die. She burned out, but she survived. Xaden continues to insist it simply had to be their girl. He’ll hear no other explanation (as if anyone could even give him one).
When Tairn had told her she had immediately remembered that feeling, the flaming hot agony of burnout, and all but burst into tears. She had sobbed, borderline inconsolably, to Tairn and Andarna, begging to know if she had effectively baked her child.
“She would not continue to grow and move if she were baked, Silver One.” Tairn had tried to assure her, when Andarna nuzzled her face right up to her abdomen.
“She’s completely fine!!” Andarna had promised in response, giving a huff of approval. “I can sense her in there. She’s doing great! You’ll be able to feel her soon, I think– can you feel her now?”
"Wait it's a girl? I'm having a girl?" Something, that Violet would later identify as joy, seeps into her voice.
"Oh I don't think we were supposed to say that were we?"
"No.. but our human is an exception." The elder responds with something a kin to warmth.
Thus, the day Violet found out she would be a mother, she also found out she would have a daughter.
Xaden, to no surprise of Violet, was truly overjoyed about every single part of this revelation. They were having a baby , and even better, he was getting a little mini Violet.
“I don’t like to think about what could have gone wrong, Vi.” He admits, resting his cheek over the space where their daughter was moving, before locking eyes up with Violet. “I haven’t even met her and I don’t like to imagine life without her.” There was the unspoken other part of it too. How if she had not found him and cured him, absolutely none of this would be possible. Sometimes it even frightened him, that the absolute dream that is their life together, was only that. An impossible dream, that any moment he would wake up from and be back with the venin, back with his hands on the earth trying to take and take.
It didn’t seem real, that a world he had taken so much from, would be willing to give him them.
Violet doesn’t need him to say a word, and she doesn’t need to be in his head either, to know exactly the thoughts clouding those dark, beautiful eyes.
“Xaden, it’s okay. She is okay. We are sitting in the Aretian hatching ground, our baby is fine. I’m fine. Our friends are more than fine. You are here and whole and you . We are fine!” Violet puts one hand on his cheek, stroking just under his eye as if she can force her love right into him. She settles for sending it down the bond, along with the exact feeling she gets when their daughter moves within her to respond to his voice. It is love and longing and everything good they would not have imagined having only a year ago. “She’s going to be okay, my love.”
“Think about it. Her future dragon is probably growing twenty yards away from us. Probably. Well, unless she becomes a scribe.” Violet tries to tease, but squeezes their single joined hand together. She doesn’t have the means to bend down to kiss him anymore, but it doesn’t stop her from trying. “We survived near burnout together, she’s off to a great start. Think about it, she's practically already got a leg up at Threshing.”