Ivan Press

[Hilary] Christmas came and went, and that raw, painful visit a few days later. New Year's Eve turned into New Year's Day. Perhaps it was a token of kindness, or an act on her part to confirm that the visit did indeed happen and was not a dream, but on the first morning of 2011 Ivan received a text from Hilary, wishing him happiness. It was sent at what would be late morning in Chicago, so entirely possible that Ivan was still lazing away in bed with however many soiled doves he'd picked up last night when his phone lit up with the incoming message.

He doesn't hear from her again til a week and a half later. It's a letter. That may be the first time he's seen her handwriting in more than a hastily written sentence or two, and Hilary's upbringing comes once again close to being illuminated, a hiding thing just barely avoiding the light, moving in the shadows: her script is achingly pretty on the page, a paper so pale purple it is almost nothing more than a soft gray. The loops of her descenders are sweeping and elegant. Maybe one could take her pages to an analyst who would have something to say about [b]control[/b], about the slightly larger-than-normal gap between each word, about the leftward lean of her script, about certain surprising secrets revealed by the size of certain letters, the pressure used on the page.

None of which, more than likely, matters to Ivan when he gets around to bothering with the mail that's usually not important and usually not personal and so is usually not handled by him personally. What matters isn't even the content of that brief letter -- just a couple of pages, Hilary's writing filling only one side of each. What matters, most likely, is that she wrote to him.

Nothing very important. It's so pleasant, such a traditional correspondence it could have been written a generation or two ago. She tells him about the weather, how it has been and how it is expected to be. She shares an amusing but inoffensive story about a misunderstanding with one of the servants. There is an apology that she did not have her husband contact Katherine Bellamonte before she departed the city to go to Mexico, but that Espiridion has assured her that upon her return to Chicago there will be a letter delivered to the Silver Fang elder there as soon as possible requesting that Hilary's guardianship (and, obviously, the guardianship of her impending offspring) be transferred to Ivan.

Of all the many things he is, Dion is -- not surprisingly -- a raging sexist. And sometimes, for a former Philodox, very blind. Willfully so, guarding the world as he wishes it to be far more than he unveils the world as it is. No surprise he became a Galliard, remembering their War in songs sung in a low, haunting baritone.

The letter mentions, as would be expected of a normal, sane pregnant woman, mention of the pregnancy itself, the baby. A normal pregnant woman, though, would devote four pages to a single doctor's visit. Hilary writes a paragraph, and a short one. Her heartburn has improved considerably and she is feeling generally comfortable. She's been told that it is a boy. Her doula asked if she had thought of any names yet. Hilary has no ideas.

She closes: [i]Fondly.[/i] Her signature is her first name only.


Almost precisely a month later, a second letter, no longer than the first. She inquires as to his health. This one is a little more personal: she writes about a piece of music she heard one evening while on a walk before bed, something playing distantly that she could not see the source of over the wall. Hilary says it made her think of Chicago, though she does not describe the piece whatsoever.

Still: it is not hard to imagine, or wish, that what she means is that it made her think not of the city but of him.

Dion visited last month, taking up most of the latter half of January with his presence. The weariness permeates the pages, makes her handwriting looser, makes the letter overall less cohesive. She still has not thought of any names. She asks Ivan if he thinks Espiridion would be offended if she simply named the baby after her brother. There is a mention of beginning a search for and training of a nanny, though it's three months yet til she is due to deliver. Her stepchildren are brought up, as though by duty: one wrecked his car, the other received some academic award or another over in Paris.

She tells him about a beautiful public garden she visited a little north of the estate. After the blizzard, she does not miss Chicago at all. She closes: [i]Fondly.[/i] Her signature is her first initial only.


Some time after the letter was sent, perhaps just a day or three after it arrived in Chicago, there is another text, and it is short: [i]You may visit me, if you like.[/i]

He gets that on Saturday, the 12th.

[Ivan] On New Year's Day, a response comes moments after Hilary sends the text:

[i]Happy New Year. Wish you[/i]

and then an abrupt break, a few moments' delay as though he wants her to fill her words there, guess at what he means, before he adds the rest:

[i]the best in 2011.[/i]

Then no contact, until that letter arrives. And he gets invitations, to be certain; he gets mail from any assortment of hanger-ons who want to capitalize their relationship with him into some access to his awe-inspiring wealth, but letters? Genuine personal letters? That's a rare thing.

Rarer still, that he replies in like. God only knows what monumental act of patience it took for Ivan to not simply reach for a phone, a computer, and tap or type a response. For him to actually take the time to sit down some lazy afternoon or evening, set pen to paper, and write back.

His notes are invariably shorter than hers; and yet, perhaps more personal. Rawer. They lack the idle, polite details that pepper hers. He has no close family to speak of, anyway, only an assortment of servants. He compliments her on her lovely penmanship. His own is a tragic victim of the digital act. He thanks her for speaking to Dion regarding his guardianship of her and

'the infant,' is how he puts it,

and he expresses gladness that her heartburn has largely passed. He makes no comment as to the baby's name. He mentions that Chicago is a duller place without her.

At the bottom of the page, his signature. Just above it, a white space marred by a single black speck, as though perhaps he'd set the nib of his pen to the page and failed to come up with a proper farewell. Not [i]fondly[/i]. Not [i]sincerely[/i]. Not [i]cheers[/i] or [i]regards[/i]; certainly not [i]love[/i]. In the end, there's only his name.


The second time he writes, he asks her to describe the music. He says Chicago is almost unrecognizable right now, but hopes that it was pleasant in her memories.

He encloses a small microSD card, which will fit into her phone if she has no computer handy. There are pictures on it: a dismal, grey-skied, white-grounded Chicago seen from the terrace of his penthouse. She can see the lake, frozen into one green chunk of ice; she can see the Navy Pier, roofs white with snow; the skyscrapers of the Loops all but lost in the blizzard. In one picture, she can see the pileup on Lake Shore Drive, Ivan's arm extending into the frame to point out the exact point where the buses jackknifed and shut off the boulevard, froze it into the ground.

In another picture, he's turned his camera around so the frame captures him. His expression is one of disgusted incredulity; he's gesturing in the direction of the pileup, all but shaking his head at the camera at the travesties mere mortals inflict on themselves.

The letter addresses this briefly: he tells her what happened, he comments on the stupidity of it all. Easy for him to say, safe in his glass tower a million miles above the face of the earth.

Ivan has nothing at all to say about her stepchildren. He could care less about them. Perhaps it means something, then, that as little input as he gives on the unborn infant, he answers her every time. This time, he tells her he's sure Espiridion wouldn't mind. However, he advises, she should ask her mate's opinion. Perhaps he will have a name in mind already.

He also inquires what her brother's name was. And he mentions, quite offhand:

[i]I rather like Anton. Though I suppose it would have to be Antony, which isn't nearly as dignified.[/i]

In closing, he wishes her a happy spring, and hopes the season will find her long before it finds him. His signature this time does not have that space, that hesitant point of ink above it: it is simply his name.


With weather the way it is, it is entirely likely that the letter precedes the man only by a day or so, if not less, if not trails him altogether. On Sunday, the 13th, rather early in the morning, she receives a text message:

[i]I'm in San Miguel de Allende. Where should I meet you?[/i]

[Hilary] The letter does, in fact, lag behind Ivan when he departs for Mexico. It trundles along, containing that SD card, that question about the music that by the time she gets the letter and chooses to write again she will have likely forgotten. Containing the name he likes, the desire to know what that devoured young Cliath's name was. Perhaps the letter will arrive on Monday, borne along with truckloads of red and pink cards. Perhaps not til later -- it takes a great deal of time for mail to make it from estate to post, or back again. Perhaps it will linger, arriving after Ivan has departed, a time-lost phantom of him.

Sunday morning her phone chimes softly. Hilary, laying asleep with sunlight seeping into the room but not yet touching the foot of her bed, opens her dark eyes and looks at it lighting up, twinkling gently with sound. She reaches for it, slides it off the nightstand and draws it across the bed close to her, looking at the message without quite seeing the sender. It takes her a few bleary seconds to process what the message means, another to note who it is from, and longer still to remember that she invited him -- after a fashion. The sudden burn of anger that came at his presumption breaks apart like a crumbling cookie, and the pieces of it dissolve as though in milk.

[i]Bellas Artes. The courtyard. Two hours.[/i]

[Ivan] Two hours go by and Ivan is in the courtyard of the once-convent, lazing about under the cafe umbrellas, legs crossed. He looks lean, elegant, the lines of his grey silk suit at once relaxed and sharp. His phone -- it's a new one, some newfangled chunk of carbon fiber or solid fucking titanium or something even better, even newer, even more expensive than the last -- sits next to a small cup of espresso.

It's seventy-someodd degrees. His clothing is light. He's wearing sunglasses, though the sky is overcast -- that sort of thin, uniform greyness that hardly seems to dim the brilliance of the day. Visitors stroll by in short sleeves, in sundresses. It's another world from Chicago's blizzards and ice storms.

Ivan looks at ease, even lazy, but his senses are keen and searching. The moment he catches sit of Hilary, his attention rivets to her. He swipes the sunglasses from his face in a smooth, crisp gesture, tucking them into his inner jacket pocket. As she nears, he stands, his mutable eyes flickering over her. There's perhaps a beat of pause as he mutely takes in changes.

Then he crosses to her, putting his hand on her elbow, leaning in for a polite kiss that at the last moment he shifts: turning his head so that his mouth falls on hers.

[Hilary] Two hours isn't so much. The last time he saw her was a month and a half ago -- more, really. Two hours is a vicious long time to make him wait, though. He doesn't complain, doesn't call her to ask her what the [i]fuck[/i], he came all this way at the merest hint from her that he would be welcome, or at least not hit and smacked and pushed away. Two hours later, he is in a courtyard under an umbrella and the light jacket of his suit doesn't feel warm because the shade and a breeze keep the courtyard feeling a pleasant, reasonable temperature. Several people walk around in short sleeves and no-sleeves, some people walk around in long-sleeved peasant tops. There are so many Americans in San Miguel de Allende that it's hard to even recall that they're in Mexico. It's a Sunday, but that doesn't mean everyone is at mass somewhere. The courtyard mills with people.

Hilary carries secrets. Little things: [i]the infant[/i] has open eyes. Strong hands. The doula tells her to speak to it -- the doula says [i]him[/i] -- because it can recognize her voice now, it will remember the sound of her when it's born and turn towards that voice like a plant turning towards the sun. Hilary holds secret to herself that she is vaguely but instantly horrified by this.

Ivan sees her long before she sees him. Her dark eyes are covered by dark glasses, depite the overcast day. Her hair is down, thick and soft on her shoulders. It's grown longer. Her skin is still pale, just as it was in Chicago's summer, even when she was out on the yacht; her tone is ivory and not gold. Her clothing is casual, as though she left just to go shopping or out to see the city. Her jeans are a dark denim with artful fading here and there, hips and shins. Her black top has a deeply plunging neckline, the bodice made to look like it's a length of fabric wrapped around her torso, tied off at one hip. Over it she has on a three-quarter-sleeved seersucker blazer, the cut skimming her sides. There are two wide, chunky bracelets in matte black on her left wrist. Her wedding ring, with that enormous pink diamond. She walks in leather sandals with cork wedge heels, her toenails and fingernails done in the white-tipped 'French' fashion.

Hilary is twenty-seven goddamn weeks pregnant, and there is no amount of focusing on the luster of her hair or the composition of her outfit or what season that yellow Prada bag is from that will erase or hide or even distract from the fact that she is [i]twenty-seven weeks pregnant[/i].

He moves as soon as he sees her, and that draws her attention, turning her head towards him. Hilary starts towards his table, unhurried, in fact walking slower than usual perhaps, but it's hard to read her expression when her eyes are hidden. She looks up at him as he rises, her lips moving as though she's about to smile politely.

Given the way their last meeting went, one couldn't be surprised if she met him in public so there might be less chance of him [i]mauling[/i] her. She doesn't tense when he touches her elbow, or when he leans in to her. She is starting to greet him in kind, a bit distant, her lips about to kiss the air by his cheek though their faces are brushing together

and Ivan, for some reason, tilts his chin and kisses her mouth instead.

There's a slight intake of breath, then a furrow of her brow. She doesn't kiss him back, seeming suddenly very distracted, but she doesn't jerk her head away, or -- worse -- slap him across the face. Hilary just waits for him to finish and then looks up at him. Her right hand is, though it wasn't before, pressing against the side of her belly as though trying to shift something back into place. She doesn't seem to realize this, or it's become so commonplace a thing for her that she doesn't put any thought into doing it.

"Ivan," she says, almost a sigh.

[Ivan] But it's not so much a finish, this, as it is a pause. His lips part from hers, but only barely. He's still so close that to look at him is to receive only a blurred, too-close impression of his face: its fine angular lines, its surprisingly heavy brow.

"Kiss me," he whispers. It's too sharp, too insistent, to be a murmur.

She is twenty-seven weeks pregnant. She is not so unfortunate as to be well and truly huge -- she always was, and remains, on the slender side, and she carries the swelling high on her abdomen -- but it is no longer possible to even remotely pretend she is not in the situation she is. The proof is there, but aside from that first glance Ivan has not looked at her belly at all; does not look now as her hand goes instinctively there.

For his part, he looks scarcely changed. Still so young, so beautiful. With darker hair now perhaps, the gold gone with the sun that bleached it into his locks. Cheeks a little leaner, perhaps. A hungrier, more feral self, the wolf in winter.

His hand moves up her arm and cups around the side of her neck, the base of her head.

"Kiss me," he says again, eyes closing as his head tilts -- nothing even close to the polite little air-kiss he seemed about to give her at the start of all this.

[Hilary] People look at her when she goes out because she is wealthy, vivid, beautiful. They look at her because she's so well-bred that even mortals lift their heads from the muck and follow her with their eyes, feel the way about her that they feel when they see a lone bear cub, wonder where the larger, more frightening protector is, start looking for the danger they will inevitably face if they dare to be drawn. People look at her now because she is so undeniably pregnant, the obviousness of this fact accentuated by how slender she is, no matter how much she downplays her growth with her clothing.

He orders her to kiss him. Says it a second time, his hand on her neck, cradling her head now. The gesture mingles tenderness and command, ache and threat, and Hilary responds as though she has no choice, as though obeying that voice of his comes as thoughtlessly and instantaneously to her as that hand on her midsection -- less protective than perhaps a bit startled -- was.

Hilary breathes in, and people turn and look at the strange couple over under the umbrella. She knows there are people here who know or are even related to people who work in her estate, so she's afraid, but she tilts her head back and kisses Ivan. Drenchingly. Her lips part, caressing his lower one. She tastes his mouth, tastes lightly of fruit herself -- strawberries.

No one here recognizes her, but she doesn't know that and can't be sure. But everyone, all these strangers who look at Ivan and look at her and see the way he touches her, the way she kises him

instantly think, [i]well, that must be the father. He looks a little young, doesn't he?[/i]

[Ivan] In those two hours between his arrival at the local executive airport and his appointment with Hilary, Ivan had a little time to explore this city. He's been here only once before; likely would have never thought to come here otherwise. [i]Mexico.[/i] The territory of Uktena and half-breed Shadow Lords, isn't that so? Far out of his territory, Crescent-blooded Fang that he is.

He's been to Spain, though, at least a few times -- the old towns that have their roots in Rome, ringing the Mediterranean. The heart of San Miguel is so strongly reminiscent: pedestrian streets hewn out of stone, winding up and down narrow alleyways that follow the curvature of the land rather than cutting through it. The entire city lies half a mile above the ocean, and when he finds a high point, he can look across a subtropical landscape to the shadows of mountains on the horizon, like teeth carving against a pale, midcontinental sky.

Much of this city is so very old. Five centuries or more. Even the parts that are not seem old. And this place, this school of fine arts that is in and of itself a piece of art, was a convent nearly a hundred years ago. Was built two centuries before that.


Amidst all this, Ivan looks so young, so new, like a bright, shiny, newly-minted coin. But he kisses this lovely dark-haired woman, this woman who wears her wealth like she's far more entitled to it than any young upstart, like she has a right to her: putting his hand to her neck, thumb along the line of her jaw; raising his other hand to her hair, her temple, caressing down her cheek.

And she kisses him. Not briefly, not simply to get him to stop insisting, but softly and deeply, drenching him like tropical rain. The last time they kissed like this may have been Lausanne. He can't even remember.

When they draw apart this time, he lets her gain distance. His hand follows the line of her arm back down. He wraps his fingers around the blade of her hand, and then he reaches back just long enough to pick up his phone. He leaves his espresso half-finished, tucking phone and hand into the pocket of his trousers as he leads her --

somewhere. Deeper into the school, into its cool and shadowed corridors, away from this center of activity. Somewhere where they can have a modicum of privacy; where he can't feel her wariness, her awareness of all the people around her, any of whom might know someone who knows someone who works at the estate.

Where they can talk. Where he can be with her, at least for as long as she'll let him.

[Hilary] She follows him. Of course she follows him; lets him lead her. She walks slower than he does, her slowness making him adjust his stride or else let go her hand. Sometimes she's so [i]resistant[/i]. So stubborn. Other times...

other times she hears a certain tone in his voice and she succumbs as though by instinct, all her will turned towards answering it. It's that way he has of unlocking her, undoing her.

They find a corridor, all shade and arches. The wan sunlight of the morning is not making it here so no one comes here to relax or work, and the passageway is so dull that almost no one comes here to take pictures of anything. It is not strictly private; past several trees and across a smaller, rectangular courtyard are passages where the light touches, and they can hear people's voices. It is not strictly solitary; there is every chance someone will walk down this exact corridor.

The open air still touches them. Hilary still holds his hand. They slow. They stop.

"It moved," she tells him. "When you kissed me." This said, not as an entreaty -- to care, to invest, to love, to cherish, to praise her for fulfilling some biological directive -- but as something of an explanation. Why she didn't kiss him back, perhaps. Why she seemed so unnerved at first when he did. Why he had to demand it of her.

There is also a note of affront, almost annoyance.

[Ivan] There's hurry in Ivan's steps at first -- but Hilary trails behind, either to make a statement or simply because she can't move any faster than that. So he slows, glancing over his shoulder once. He falls in beside her, saying nothing of it, his hand still wrapped around hers.

It's the only contact they've had in months. The first time he's touched her in [i]months[/i].

They retreat to that not-quite-abandoned corridor. It's not private enough for some illicit tryst -- but then, perhaps he wouldn't have tried that anyway. Not after last time.

Not with her looking like this.

They slow. They stop. She tells him what she does, and his head comes up and around with a sort of silent swiftness, eyes flicking surprised and wide. Almost against his will, they drop to her abdomen a moment later. His free hand rises. Hovers indecisively over that unrelenting, insistent curve; ultimately does not touch does. His fingers curl back on themselves and he lowers his hand, looking into her face again.

"Just another three months," he says, as though to reassure her. But then a few moments go by. Softer, "What if it's mine?"

[Hilary] She has noticed that since he first reached for her just a couple of minutes ago, Ivan has not taken his hand away from her body. He's run his hand along her arm and cupped her head and held her hand but he hasn't let go of her. Hilary is not the most perceptive person in the universe, but she's not oblivious. And even on a warm day, his hand is hot to hers. His body heat, due to rage or lust or some mingling of both, flavored with who knows what other feelings, all but radiated off of him when she kissed his mouth.

The last time Hilary felt Ivan near her, she was drifting off to unconsciousness. She woke alone, the bed long since cooled. She wondered if she hallucinated it. She hasn't hallucinated for a very, very long time; dancing and cooking had both helped, both very concrete, multi-sensory, physical experiences. So that was doubtful; when she received that letter back from Ivan in late January, it confirmed somehow that he had, indeed, come to San Miguel de Allende and pushed her up against a pillar to try and touch her, fuck her, [i]have her[/i] again. It confirmed that she did not imagine him holding her while she slept.

Ivan's alertness seems to started Hilary. She blinks, taken aback, but doesn't jerk away from him. If anything, she holds his hand tighter when he looks at her midsection, when he almost touches her. Hilary doesn't retreat but she squeezes the hand she holds, look at [i]me[/i], be with [i]me[/i], that doesn't [i]matter[/i], please [i]pretend.[/i]

But he speaks, looking at her again, and she exhales as though relieved, her grip relenting a tad. Then she scoffs. "We fucked [i]one time[/i] during the week it was conceived, Ivan. The chances of it being 'yours' --" this, as though even the slightest hint of ownership is not only preposterous but tasteless, from the woman who has seemed possessed in whole by him at times, "-- and not Dión's are almost nil."

She does not mention Christian whatsoever as a possibility for paternity. She calls what they did that [i]one time[/i] 'fucking', as though it was the same as every other time. She and Ivan both keep calling the unborn male 'it'. She also does not answer his question.

[Ivan] Like the illicit lovers they are, they linger in the shadowed arches of ancient halls; they murmur in low voices. But she holds his hand like it's a lifeline, or a line back to her self. He stays close to her because he's been kept so far [i]by[/i] her.

"I know the probability is vanishingly small," he replies, low, "but [i]what if it's mine?[/i] What if it's born fairskinned and fairhaired, as I was?"

That fairness to his skin is still there, particularly in winter: skin not quite the shade of porcelain or ivory as hers is, but clear, pale, a sort of lightness that reveals the faintly rosy hue of blood and vitality that summer's gold flush obscures. His hair has darkened, especially with the lack of sunbleaching, but as a child he was utterly blond; stayed that way until his early teens. And then there's her own coloration. Her eyes are dark, thank god, dark as her husband's, but her hair has notes of auburn in the light; echoes of some fairhaired ancestor that they can only hope will not decide to reveal itself in her unborn child. And no matter how dark the child's hair and eye, there's always the question of skintone. Never in a million years could they manage to produce a child whose complexion will even remotely approach Tomas's. Or Micaela's. Or Dion's.

She doesn't seem to care, though. Or worry. Or even think about it. But then, she seems to do her best to ignore the thing inside her altogether. Most first-time mothers would be agonizing over lists of names; would be working on crocheting or embroidery or sewing or [i]something[/i] to prove their maternal worth, their feminine ability -- all those urges and insecurities so utterly lacking in Hilary that she doesn't even seem aware of their lack.

His hand grips hers. He presses softly, "What will you do?"

It was never, is never about the welfare of some unborn fetus. It was always about her.

[Hilary] If one were to ask Hilary the last time she had sex with Ivan she would not name a date or a time or even a place without effort; she would remember that it was before Thanksgiving. That it was a very, very long time ago. That it was before she started showing and before she started feeling the shift and change inside of herself readying her body to go through what she mentally refers to as [i]all this bullshit[/i]. That he did not want her to go and came very close to fighting her to make her stay, to convince her not to just [i]leave[/i] like this. That in the end he admitted that no, she was probably right, and of course he wouldn't want to fuck her like this.

Which was not, as it turned out, the only reason she had to go away in the first place.

"I don't know," she whispers, looking at him from behind her shades. And that's when she tries to work her hand out of his, tries to pull back, like she can't quite handle it right now. She looks down at their linked hands, pale skin to pale skin, her breathing slightly elevated. A sudden furrow to her brow then, and she swats her free hand on her stomach, her teeth briefly clenched in annoyance.

"I don't [i]know[/i]," she repeats, as though answering someone else.

[Ivan] Almost instantly, he catches her hand -- doesn't let her swat herself very hard, if at all. Ivan moves closer, his back to the shaded corridor as though to guard her from onlookers or passers-by. A moment before answering, during which he raises his other hand to wrap it behind her head, draw her closer as he kisses her brow.

"Arrange to come back to Chicago to give birth," he says, then. "When you're a month or so away, tell Dion you want the child to have American citizenship. If you're in Chicago, you'll be in my care by his own wishes. We'll get rid of the doola, get you a team of handpicked obstrecians and nurses. We'll wait until he's out of town. Then they'll discover something wrong, some complication that necessitates immediate delivery. They'll induce labor, you'll give birth, and if the baby is his or at least looks passably like him, we'll call it a success and report the good news to your noble mate.

"If the child is unquestionably mine, I'll take it. They'll tell Dion it was stillborn. He can take it out on them if he wants; I'll be out of town. We'll tell him I'm fleeing my shame and his wrath, but I'll bring the child to my kin in Russia. They'll raise it as my bastard, mother unknown. And the next time you're off the pill, I'll wear a goddamn condom."

[Hilary] It annoys her that he won't let her discipline her child. It annoys her that 'her child' won't stop moving. It annoys her that he hasn't been this mobile ever before, that now he's kicking like an excitable mountain goat. It annoys her that this movement coincides with Ivan's presence. He keeps his hands on her -- touching the back of her neck now, their holding hands switched. She reaches up and removes her sunglasses, holds them at her side. Her eyes are just new spots of shadow in the dimness, as though they are holes in her that he can see right through. As though the shade they stand in fills her up, finds a way out.

"How old-fashioned," she says quietly, of this plan. Of some purebred little baby growing up. An unknown father is more common, is a certain tragedy of its own -- your mother was a harlot, for one thing. To come of age with your mother unknown means that the people around you or the people around them are keeping her a secret. It means the people you trust [i]know something[/i] and they will not tell you. It casts a darker shadow on an already tainted future, particularly within their tribe.

But what Hilary says means that she knows there's precedent. Poor child, should he be born pale -- he'll go to Russia and grow up as though he's in some old novel from that very country's more tortured authors. Dammit.

She doesn't look shocked, though. She doesn't step away, a hand to her middle, suddenly and achingly protective of her offspring. No murmurs of [i]But... my baby![/i] No brightly shining, tear-lit eyes. No wary, bitter anger: [i]you've really thought about this, haven't you?[/i] Just that, and one might think that should the infant turn out to be undeniably not-Dion's, perhaps he'll be lucky to grow up away from a mother who did not so much as blink at the idea of never seeing him again.

That much easier to pretend it never happened. If anything, she looks relieved. After a moment of hesitation, perhaps considering her torso, Hilary steps forward and lays her head on Ivan's chest. "As long as this handpicked team of yours can perform a C-section," she says, as though her only real concern is continuing to avoid the messy and uncomfortable business of a vaginal birth.

[Ivan] The truth is, Ivan hasn't thought this through. He vaguely considered the possibility once or twice; he may have thought Hilary already had a plan in mind, so unflappably calm about it all as she's been. Or -- not calm. Empty.

He thought about it, though, when she said [i]I don't know. I don't [b]know[/b].[/i] He thought about it in the few seconds he put his mouth to her brow. That's how quickly he thinks on his feet. That's how quickly he lies.

But then, she already knows that. Dion trusts him to take care of his darling wife, after all. For now, anyway.

Hilary requests a C-section as though this were her only concern on the matter. For all Ivan knows, it is her only concern. She steps forward -- her belly touches him first, round and hard and surprisingly warm, making him startle ever so slightly. His hand slides around to her opposite shoulder, though, his arm wrapping around her. "If anything," he says, "it'll make the story that much more convincing."

[Hilary] There's a faint intake of breath as Ivan startles at the feeling of her swollen abdomen. Even if he's not revolted, she is. She pulls away slightly, so that her shoulders and head can touch him but that her belly is not, her disgust almost palpable. And distracting.

She touches his chest instead of wrapping her arms around him, resting there for a few moments only, then withdrawing. Her eyes are down, looking at the way a single ray of sunlight manages to cut through and glint off the gold plating at the corners of her sunglasses' frames.

"Let's get out of here," she says quietly. "Anywhere. Just... alone."