Ivan Press

[Hilary] In the weeks since Hilary returned to Chicago by way of private jet, she's seen more of Ivan than she has in 5 months. That was his intention all along, that was what he flat-out told her when she was back in his sphere; he planned on spending at least some of his leisure time with her. He spoke of leisure time as though it was something precious, when most of the world would look at his life and see nothing but an endless waterfall of time, somehow golden and sunlit no matter the season. Perhaps Ivan's view of what is 'leisure' time and what is not is different from most people's. Fucking one of the dancers that caught his eye while he sat in an otherwise empty theatre with Hilary could very well be counted as one of those things that just, goshdarnit, interferes with the time he'd otherwise take for himself.

If she considers it, that's what Hilary thinks. Leisure time doesn't mean any time Ivan has away from The War, The Nation, whatever pack he's chasing around. She's never asked about any of this, never showed interest. Her sole purpose is to be as she has always been: lovely, graceful, available to her mate, preferably pregnant. She has never fulfilled her duties as kinswoman more completely than she has in these past few months; she provides no funds, food, or shelter to the Garou at large, she is utterly uninvolved in sept politics or the pathetic and laughable jockeying for Respect and Autonomy and Independence and Whateverthefuck that many younger kinfolk flail around at. Like so much in the world, Hilary just could not give less of a fuck about any of it.

She does care about Ivan, though. She cares that he missed her, whether that was just hormones or not. She wanted to be near him again. She wants to see him. When he steps away from her out of frustration or anger or hopelessness she fades away a little more, sits in silence til he comes back, does not care much to go on eating, pretending to be interested in her surroundings, in other people. Some glimmer of humanity in her knows that's insane. That it's wrong. That she can't lose herself in him, that's not all right,

but another part of her thinks it's only wrong, it's not all right, because if she loses herself entirely, he won't want her anymore. It's hard to say how often Hilary can think of it and know that it's fucked up.


They see each other far more often than all that time she was in Mexico, but the visits aren't as long. He leaves before the fact that he can't take her to bed and destroy her becomes such a tension between them that they all but claw each other's or their own eyes out. She's visited him a little, come to the penthouse where it was just a little bit safer for them to even lie down together, touch each other with a little more yearning than they can at her own. She is mistress of that apartment; Dion's people aren't anywhere in sight, and the nurses are under Ivan's payrol, but somehow she seems more relaxed when she's in what is undeniably Ivan's territory, Ivan's place. Hilary is easier to deal with, he could see in a brief comparison between one penthouse and the other, with every subtle step further into his control.

Bizarrely enough, that's when she seems most likely to assert herself in small bursts, when she'll speak up about her real wants, when she won't simply be exhausted by the thought of having to decide anything. That's when her own desires seem to come to her without effort, when they flow easily into her and when she can say yes and more importantly, no without it being a monumental struggle for her.

So it is midafternoon, one of Ivan's stretches of leisure time, and his invitation to her was more of a command to come to him, a heads up that a car would be arriving for her at X time, that he wanted to see her. And in a rare, rare turn, sounding very peaceful but very tired about it, Hilary said,

Couldn't you come here?

[Ivan] Their relationship, such as it is, is so twisted by strange ironies that Ivan wouldn't know where to begin if he tried to list them off. She cares about him when she cares about just about nothing and no one, but she doesn't know how to express it. She wants to see him, but she's a million miles away. She needs him to dominate her, to control her, to tell her where and when and how and how much, just so she can assert herself a little bit.

He's pathologically incapable of devoting himself to anyone, of bending his will to anyone's but his own, but if she asked him -- if she just opened her pretty little mouth and demanded -- he'd roll on his back for her. He'd move mountains for her, set sail a thousand ships, burn them all down, if she gave any indication that that would make her happy. Make her present.

Except --

if she demanded, she wouldn't be her. If she were so petty, so demanding, so petulant, he would be bored inside the week.


So that's the delicate, sick little balance they exist in. She's so far away and that's why he chases her. He's so incapable of responsibility and that's why she gives herself over to him.

When he wants to see her -- that strange leisure time he speaks of that makes no sense because Hilary's mind can't even grasp of anything else an overprivileged, spoiled little shit like him could possibly do with his life other than be at leisure -- he tells her when the car will be there and where she should position herself to await pickup.

She asks, couldn't you come here?

And he's there.


That mattress in her bedroom was replaced first thing in the morning, the day after she returned. That night, after the ballet, he left her to wash and undress for bed while he loitered in the kitchen downstairs, had a snack of cold salmon on spiced crackers, a bottle of ginger ale. By the time he came to her in bed she was already under the covers, her body hidden away. She was wearing something the maids set out for her; he went to the bathroom and washed and dried and stripped bare and came naked to bed, naked and marble-pale and toned and beautiful when he wrapped himself around her from behind

and found her wrists with his long lovely fingers, clasped them together in his grip,

held her just like that, half-symbolically, until they woke sometime in the mid-morning. He took his time getting her home. It was nearly 11 in the morning by the time he took her to her door, and by then her previous mattress -- it could hardly be called old -- was already long gone and her new mattress was not only installed but bedsheeted and comfortered and made up, ready for her.

He bade her farewell at the door. Since then, they've seen each other a handful of times -- more than they have in all her months in Mexico -- and yet somehow less, less completely, always with some distance, some tension. Less when they're at his place. More, when they're at hers.

He tries to be patient. He tries to remember: just be. And: just a little longer.


He stands at her door, midafternoon on a weekday, ringing the doorbell and waiting for one of the nurses -- it damn well be one of them, or else what is he paying them for? -- to come to the door and let him in. He's not carrying roses, or chocolates. Well; no. He's carrying a small chocolate rabbit in his hand, foil-wrapped and in a clear box. A joke, really. When he sees her, he sets the rabbit down next to her, throws himself languid and lean and long into whatever armchair or easychair or couch or bed is nearest.

"Happy Easter," he says.

[Hilary] Since she got back, Hilary has been tired. That's nothing new; even when she wasn't pregnant, just being around anyone was enough to wear her out. Being around Ivan with all his demanding, all his craving, all his grasping for her to be with him, was enough to make her want to just go home, not spend the night, but that's changed. Now she dissolves into him precisely because she does feel that he can take all that responsibility for her existence away from her, hold it in his infinitely incapable, careless hands. If she has an inkling that he really can't, that dominance isn't the same as responsibility, that the burden of her soul is far too much for him or anyone else, it has no impact on her day to day existence.

On the phone she sounded tired, but vaguely amused. Possibly she doesn't realize that he'd move mountains, sail ships, any of that. It doesn't seem to phase her that he would summon a ballet company on a whim for her, no matter how many times he snapped at her during that night that everything, all of it, was for her sake. It's nothing to him to do these things -- send a jet, call in favors, replace a mattress, buy her the goddamn moon -- or so she thinks of it.

Then she asked if maybe he couldn't just come to her apartment and he hung up and moments, minutes later, he was with her. Trying to be patient. Knowing he'll have to be. Knowing how far away she is. Knowing she can't be bothered to dwell in her own skin more than a few seconds at a time right now even if, by god, he'd break his back trying to please her for just a moment. Knowing that it's quite a lot, in fact, for her to even keep telling him she wants him, she wants him near, wants to see him, even if she's a half-vacant shell the whole time he's there.

Even when he grasped her wrists together, held her captive even if was only symbolically, she didn't respond. Unless, of course, her near-instant sleep in his arms and her lack of anger the next day at being kept so long at his place were a response to him. To that.


Hilary is in the living room, sitting on the ample chaise arm of the sectional couch, leaning against the back and looking out the window. There's a small balcony in her penthouse, a strange little box just big enough for, perhaps, a couple of slim chairs. Three walls of glass, one open panel, more a miniature sunroom floating above the city than a balcony. She doesn't go out on it; it makes her feel enormous. She sits in her living room and stares at Chicago.

The nurse who opens the door is dressed like an assistant, not in scrubs or some ridiculous aproned uniform but slacks, a crisp buttoned shirt, and a rather fashionable cardigan that hourglasses her top half. Her hair is tied back, her glasses are subtly catty, and she never smiles. She did when she was hired, but, well. Welcoming him in with barely two words exchanged, she returns to the kitchen to continue creating the light luncheon that will be eviscerated with criticism and displeasure by the bitch in the living room.

The bitch who is not noticably bigger than the last couple of times he's seen her, as though she simply can't grow any more. The bitch who wears a simple black top that fits but does not hug her, loose pants that are comfortable without being overly useless. She pays a great deal of money to look even remotely stylish while pregnant, and hates every article. She's fantasized a great deal about burning it all after this is over. The bitch who doesn't look up when Ivan walks past a wall of glass and into her surroundings. She looks at the rabbit a moment after he sets it down, stares at it instead of the city while he throws himself onto the couch beside her.

Close. But not too close.

"I hate April," she says, looking out at the view again. "Everyone quoting Eliot like they're being profound or original with it, obsessed with their own pathos." She glances at the rabbit again.

Pauses. Reaches out and picks it up, bringing it closer. She looks at the brand, the maker. Decides to open the box, and take the foil-wrapped bunny out. She looks vaguely bland, bored, and yet... childlike and curious and innocent almost, as she carefully unwraps the top

and snaps the rabbit's ears off.

"So I've decided to wait until May to cut the brat out," she says before she so much as tastes the chocolate, talking about her own incised flesh like it's nothing, not knowing she's thinking the same thing Ivan did, once, of her impending C-section. "My brother was born in May," she adds, too. "I'll have to pass his name on, at least in part."

Hilary takes a bite of chocolate.

[Ivan] Ivan snorts a laugh as Hilary declares her hatred for April, for that abominable poem everyone's been quoting for the last month. April is the cruelest month, as if they had any idea why, what came after, what that whole damn rant was about.

"Your heart would have responded," he replies, "beating obedient to controlling hands."

He's stretched beside her, slouched down on that well-cushioned couch of hers, his long legs crossed at the ankles, his feet on the coffeetable. Perhaps there are books there; if there are, he doubt Hilary picked them. He wonders what she does sometimes when he's not there. He saw her only briefly when she had not seen him -- at San Miguel, in her hacienda, moving amongst the arches and the pillars with her belly gently rounding out. Only five or six months along, then. She didn't seem to be doing much. Thinking much.

He did not see her that night at the restaurant, motionless and empty when he left her.

His head turns, short hair scritching faintly against fabric or leather upholstery. "I read the Wasteland when I was a schoolboy," he says by way of explanation. As though he were so very vastly past that age now. As though he were not, in fact, about the age of a college senior this very year. "A badly selective quotation, that was. Forgive me. I'm pretty sure there was a line sandwiched in there about 'gaily' responding, too, and something about happy little boats on an ocean, but I thought that was a bit ridiculous to quote meaningfully at you even under the standard of poetic license."

He holds his hand out for a bite of the chocolate he brought her. It's hardly a chocolate rabbit off a Walgreen's shelf. The candy itself is luscious and delicate, bittersweet and smooth as silk. The name emblazoned on the box unfamiliar except to a very select crowd. If she gives him a piece, he pops it in his mouth, chews thoughtfully while she speaks of May. Her brother.

"You did mention you wanted to name it after your brother," he says. "Did you finally settle on something, then?"

[Hilary] He snorts, quotes another line from The Waste Land, and Hilary just looks at him a moment, lost, confused, the reference falling awkwardly between them as she does not know that line, nor remember it, nor perhaps even know the name of the poem she hates just because everyone quotes the first line all the time. She just knows it's Eliot, and that because of this and because of her poor devoured brother,

she'll wait til May.

It doesn't strike her til a few beats later in the conversation why that line of all lines came to Ivan's mind, that he -- whether even he realized it or not -- was talking about her.


A schoolboy, he says. Such an archaic little term. Apologizes for that line, that ever-so-on-the-nose line, while she sucks on a bite of chocolate. "I thought it was rather apt," she says mildly when she finishes the bite, though this is as much forgiveness as he ever gets from her, just as her taking a bite at all is about as much appreciation for the rabbit as he should have expected.

He holds out his hand and she narrows her eyes at his palm, then at his face, the first time she's really looked at him since he entered. "You selfish thing," she says, and breaks the head off, passing the already ravished crown to his hand.

"No," she says, turning her head away again. "I want to know whose it is first."

[Ivan] "It was, wasn't it," Ivan muses, but quotes no further. Nor discusses. Strange to think that might've been the closest either of them has ever come to discussing her behavior; the way she opens to him, settles into herself, when nearly every shred of self-will has been taken from her.

Strange, because he's clawed at her for just about everything else. Bits of her history, her past. Why are you like this, why, why. Why are you so broken, why can't you be with me. And through all that, the one, the most fundamental truth of their relationship

( -- such as it were -- )

remains all but mute between them. Unremarked. They move on; she calls him a selfish thing, which he can hardly deny.

"If you want more, I'll buy you a truckload," Ivan replies instead. She says she wants to wait to see whose child it is. It, it. They keep calling the boy an 'it', when it's all but ready to be born. When it's all but an individual. The corner of his mouth twists up. "Why? So you can name it something Russian if it's mine and something Spanish if it's his?" A pause. "What about that other boy of yours, the Ahroun with the pretty eyes? Do you have an Italian name picked out too?"

[Hilary] "I was still on the pill when I fucked Christian, Ivan," Hilary says, with some vague annoyance. "Dion didn't come back til the day after that."

Some women would be ashamed, or embarrassed, or... anything. Talking to a man who admits he might be in love with her, even if he wouldn't have any idea what that should feel like, telling him that he's silly. That she fucked some flailing near-adolescent the day before her husband came back and started railing her. Hilary thinks in the logistics of it all; it's impossible that the baby is Christian's. So it's really a coin-toss. Option A or option B. It helps narrow it down, at least.

She takes another bite of chocolate.

[Ivan] "How could I have forgotten," Ivan replies, droll.

Perhaps it would be cruel, were he any other man, to speak so frankly of such things. He admitted he might be in love with her, for god's sake. He flies her across the globe if she asks. He comes to see her if she all but snaps her fingers. He brings her easter chocolates on a whim, quotes poetry at her like a besotted -- well. Schoolboy. -- poetry that leaves little question, that may as well be saying:

I know you. As unknowable as you are: I know you.

At least a little bit.

And to that, she tells him: she was still on the pill when she fucked Christian. And then Dion came back, and he fucked her too. And somewhere in there was a night with Ivan, and then --


He doesn't care, of course. If he did, it would be cruel to tell him these things. But he doesn't care; that's the whole point. She eats her chocolate bunny and he licks chocolate off his fingertips, aristocratic fingers, long and straight and slim, much as he is. Not a callous on his palms -- beautiful, brutal boy. He hears himself asking,

"Who else do you fuck?"

[Hilary] What is there to know, she'd think, being told she's known. But he doesn't tell her that. He says something about a responding heart, controlling hands, and she feels that thing she can't and doesn't want to name, that thing she feels when he's wit her. She doesn't know what it is and she doesn't know how to understand it, but it feels right, and safe,

so she accepts it. And asks him to come again. Eats the chocolate he brings her as though the very act of someone giving it to her means she's entitled to it, its hers, and requires no reciprocation nor even a simple thank-you.

"I'm not sure you knew," she says thoughtfully, though neither of them really care. She licks a spot of chocolate off her thumb and turns, easily and actually quite smoothly curling against Ivan's side. She tucks her legs up, knees near his lap. She's an odd shape, of course, and her stomach presses against his chest and his stomach and his leg all together, but she lays her head on his shoulder, her brow to the crook of his neck,

but this all happens before he asks her who else she fucks. She frowns, suddenly viciously, twistingly angry, something she hasn't even had energy for for months now. She scowls, but her face is hidden. He might feel that wave of tension.

But her voice is so bored, so irritated. "Let's not do that."

[Ivan] What lovely people they are, even now, even like this, the woman swollen and far away; the man more or less ignoring that great curvature that may well house his bastard. What lovely creatures they are, lounging on her couch: so languid, so at ease, the city at their backs through glass, untouchable. It could never touch them, that city, its stains. They're too mad for anything but perfection.

She curls into him and he doesn't respond. He doesn't put his arm around her; he's already thinking then of the question he asks but doesn't care about.

And she's angry. In a flash, viciously angry. He can't see her scowl. Her voice is merely boredom and irritation, which is not rage. He feels the wave of tension; he doesn't respond to that, either. His voice is light, just as bored as hers.

"Do what? What is it you think I'm doing, Hilary?"

[Hilary] "'Who are you fucking?' 'Well, who are you fucking?'" she says, intimating a needless and endless back-and-forth with her tone. Hilary sighs. "I don't want the pretense or the reality of not caring if the other ceases to exist sexually when we're apart, I don't want to think about it. I don't want to know, I don't care to talk about it with you."

She draws away. He didn't put his arm around her, anyway, and the feeling or lack of feeling she had for a moment that spurred her sudden decision to be that close to him is gone. Feels ripped away, in fact, for no reason. She did nothing wrong.

More energetic than she's been in months, more graceful than a woman this pregnant should ever be, Hilary pushes herself up off the couch and they both hear, quietly, the door to the second bedroom open and closet behind the woman who answered the door.

"You're ruining it by even bringing it up," she says, petulance covering disturbance, unease, the fear that so often roars into fury. "Why would you ask that?"

[Ivan] That nurse shutting herself quietly into the spare bedroom: that poor woman. Came here thinking it would be a nice, cushy job. A pregnant woman. An expectant mother. Glowing; and even if she isn't glowing, even if very fucking pregnant women are more cranky than glowy this late in the term, well after the initial excitement has worn off -- still, even then, a nice, cushy job. A young woman, so far as such things are considered in the nursing field. Still motile. Not some ancient bedridden crone with no control over her own bowels. A few weeks' of work that pays more than her usual annual salary. She was smiling when she was hired, her and the rest of that team that she sees only in shifts -- two nurses here twenty four seven, an obstetrician, a technician, god knows who else -- but that was before she met this expectant mother, this glowing madonna

who spends hours simply staring out the window, who barely seems to rouse herself to live half the time and yet still manages to dredge up coolly ego-crushing commentary on every attempt at lunch she's ever made. She's a goddamn nurse, not a chef.

And then there's the young man whose money apparently foots the bill. The one that comes around, that lounges about like some oscar wilde lordling, that sometimes just sends one of those fucking Russians up to fetch his lover, that,

today,

has decided to broach the ever-popular topic of who else are you fucking.


God, what that nurse must think of them.


They don't care, of course. They're above such things. And he doesn't care who else she's fucking; he's above such things. She's so angry that she gets to her feet with more grace than he thought capable and he just watches her, bemused.

And then amused -- laughing at her, "Oh, Hilary, did you think I would care? Did you think I was -- oh god, you thought I'd be jealous, is that it?"

Laughing,
lying,

and then not. His laughter stills and his brow furrows. He looks at her across that new distance, looks at her a long time.

"I don't know why I asked that," he says quietly. Coldly perhaps. And then with a flicker in his brow, disturbed because this is the truth: "I don't want to know the answer.

"I don't care who else you're fucking, but I don't want to know."

[Hilary] Hilary has no idea how much those poor nurses are being paid for their time, but she assumes it's enough. Enough to make the job worth it, enough to secure their discretion and availability, enough to make them choose to live with strangers for just a few weeks, enough to put up with everything she might put them through, all that might be asked of them. Else why would any servant serve? She can't wrap her mind around the idea of loyalty that is anything but bought, and so she assumes enough and doesn't think much past that.

The door to the second bedroom closes and the walls here are thick enough to muffle any murmurs between the two nurses, one a crisp, neurotic, bespectacled white girl and the other a tall, thin black woman with short hair and less backbone than she pretends to have. And in the little living area that is only loosely separated from the rest of the vast apartment, Hilary levers herself to her feet and prematurely puts her hand on her distended middle to press against the brat before he can start jogging on her organs.

Ivan laughs at her and she whips the headless chocolate rabbit back at him, bouncing it off his shoulder, her eyes ignited. It's hardly the worst she's done to him, tried to do to him, but at least one of the dry twigs keeping her sanity aloft snaps just then. "You don't know for a second what I thought," she lashes at him, though the whip is too gentle to cause so much as a ripple, to even catch much notice.

The laughter stills and dies, her hand leaves her stomach, she stares at him like she would like to come over there again and claw her hands down his face, rake his eyes out, dig her fingers into his cheek til it rips, til he can't ever smile again, til all he's doing is scr--

Her heart is racing so much she's lightheaded, and Hilary closes her eyes for a moment while Ivan's talking, not knowing what's going through her mind, only knowing she looks angry, then dizzy. Something something something why I asked something something I don't want something something you're fucking something something want to know.

She goes back to the couch and sits down, breathing more heavily than before, looking at the low, dark-wood coffee table, an anchoring point in all the light colors and sunshine, a contrast which informs the chocolate-brown patterns against pale-blue fabrics here, there, the frames on the art Hilary never looks at for long.

"You have a compulsion to ask questions like that," Hilary says, as though she's calming down, her voice quiet. She doesn't sound like she wants to shred his pretty young face with her fingernails any longer. She looks dazed, head still spinning from a sudden rollercoaster of blood pressure. "Questions that end up hanging over our heads, lingering in our minds." Her eyes close a moment. "I don't care if you'd be jealous; it isn't any of your business. But I don't care who else you fuck; I just don't think of it."

Which is what he said, too. Sort of. Her eyes open, stare at the wood. "When you're with me, you're with me. And I'm here with you. That's all that matters."

[Ivan] Perhaps some of what she's thinking shows in her eyes. Not a lot -- so little can show in those black eyes of her -- but then he's so perceptive sometimes; not a reader of men, no, but sharp. Perhaps he sees just a glimmer of it. Knows that when she throws a chocolate rabbit at him, almost laughable -- that her intent is something so much blacker.

There's so much rage in her. So much toxic, bleeding rage that it seems to gut her. When she sits down he's done talking; he's looking at her; he looks a little discomfited, holds a hand out uncertainly as though he might

what? Keep her from falling, maybe. Keep her from coming closer, maybe.

She speaks. And after a long moment, long and indecisive, his hand touches her after all. He puts his fingers on the back of her neck. He wraps his hand there at the base of her neck, over her shoulder. She still feels slender there. Slender and graceful, even as the rest of her mutates beyond recognition.

If she lets his hand stay, if she doesn't tear herself away -- after a moment, his touch grows a little heavier. He kneads, strokes, rests, as though trying to communicate without communicating. Communicate his presence. Communicate -- something a little akin to apology, maybe. Maybe.

"What are you afraid of?" he whispers.

[Hilary] The truth is, this is all she wanted. Curled up against him suddenly, hopefully, nesting against his warmth and his presence, as though this time she's the one needing to be reassured that he's here, he's here with her, he's not so far away. And as soon as she did, he asked that awful thing, that awful thing she's going to pretend he didn't say, because it's very important that they both pretend not to care too much.

Ivan put his hand on her neck and she exhales, eyes falling closed again, relaxing as though she were a robot and he were flicking a switch, turning her off. He starts to massage her there, the way he massages her back and shoulders when he's had her wrenched into some position for minutes or hours, some position meant to make her body more appealing, to increase his pleasure in her. Hilary sighs and shifts, lays down on his lap, lying on her side on the couch.

"I don't know," she says, flinching faintly at the question. "I don't know, I don't want to know, just stay. Stay this time and don't leave me."

[Ivan] They don't care. It's so very important that they don't care, that they not care, that they pretend not to care even if it's not the truth. Because if they cared this becomes insurmountable. And terrible. And devastating.

They could never belong to each other. Not merely because of who she is, who she belongs to, but because of who they are. They could never --

stay for long.


Still, when she says that, when she flinches a little like that after all but melting back into his presence as though that's all it took, that hand on her skin, that touch, that implication of soothing, of dominance -- that's all it takes for her to lose her grip on her anger and melt into whatever it is she is when she's like this with him --

still, when she says that, flinches like that, his brow contracts like someone's put a knife in him. Not brutally, but stealthily. Silky-smooth, so quick and whisper-soft: a killing wound, dead before you even feel the pain. His hand strokes her hair. He pets her like she's some pet, strokes her hair back from her face, touches her face, strokes the side of her face like she belongs to him.

"When have I ever really left you?" he murmurs; he can't tell if it hurts to say that because it's a lie, or because it's the truth.

[Hilary] Whatever happens to them, wherever she goes or whomever she's mated to, there's no more future for them than there is for any pair of Silver Fangs. Their own madness pulls them apart from the inside. If there is a peaceful mateship in the tribe, it exists primarily in the minds of the individuals, each pretending it is everything they should want, each pretending that what they want and what they have are even in the same realm, lying to themselves and laying it on thick so that they can survive.

Dion and Hilary fit that mold, too. And look what's become of it: a new Fang for the tribe, a well-bred Kin or maybe even a Garou. Both of them pretending this is all right, this is good, this is what they want. Both of them, most of the time, pretending that what they want doesn't matter. Shouldn't.

She settles, now, more peaceful, as though that burst of rage never happened, as though she wasn't staring out the window at nothing, waiting for him to be there so she'd have some kind of purpose to her sudden energy. If she understood herself and what's happening to her she might realize this is her body's sign that it's coming, it's almost time, that if she weren't going to have a c-section anyway she'd go into labor on her own any day now. She might understand that her sudden energy, her fanatic smoothing and re-smoothing of the bedding every time she wakes up, her need to cook for no reason but to chop something up, is all her body unleashing stored-up forcefulness, unleashing months of strength to get her through these last weeks, through labor, through recovery.

But right now, she melts against his lap, letting him stroke her hair, run the backs of his fingers against her cheek, so smooth and pale and cool, faintly flushed with color. Her hand rests on his leg, fingers lightly curled. She has no idea she could hurt him like his expression intimates she has.

There's no answer to that. To be literal, it would be a list: every time he visits, every time he drops her back off, every time he walks away, every time she pushes him away, every time, always, always, he's always leaving, he never just stays, as though she'd even want him to stay with her all the time. To be honest, though,

would be too hard for her, for them both,

and so Hilary says nothing at all. She lets the moments unfurl as he strokes her hair and touches her face, her neck, her shoulder, smooths those long, silky strands back. Her breathing steadies. "Sunday is a waning crescent moon," she whispers, only dimly understanding that this is even the name of his House. "Very close to new. I think, even if it's Dión's son, that's only fair."

[Ivan] That brings another pause. It's barely there. Just a dynamic sort of stillness in his fingers, as though they might quiver in place, though they never do. Then they move on, stroking, stroking, gentle. He catches a slender lock of hair between his index and middle, guides it back behind her ear. She's such a lovely thing. It's almost incomprehensible how such beauty can hide such a flawed, broken soul.

She asked him this a long time ago. Or no; it was only last week. It seems like a long time. It always seems like a long time now, as though the nine months that went before somehow stole by because they were out of one another's sight; as though these last agonizing days stretch on forever because they see each other so much.

Leave each other so much.

She asked him this, though not quite in these words, and he asks her back: "Do you want him to be mine, Hilary?"

[Hilary] It's such a tender little question, the sort of thing she'd like to crush under her heel, shatter out of existence. She doesn't want to think about it like it's a person, like it's an actual son, a child, a person who will have to grow up one way or another. The last time she really did that was in Mexico, standing alone in the shower after the last time she ever had sex with Ivan, holding her arms around herself and begging the universe or the child or both for a dozen impossibilities. It was so monumentally painful she hasn't done it twice. She couldn't even hold those thoughts in mind for more than a few seconds.

And she can't drink, and she can't take the pretty pills, the pretty white ones or pink ones that make everything go away for a few hours, so she just leaves herself. She leaves herself, and then Ivan's there and to be with him she has to be in herself again,

and it all hurts a great deal.

But the truth is, she has thought about the It inside of her like it's a boy, a child, a baby, a person, and she's not so dim or mad to not understand that he is vulnerable, he's as helpless as it gets, she's the only thing protecting him from scary things like light and air and noise. Ivan asks her what she's afraid of and she can't bear it, she can't say it aloud. I'm the only thing keeping this thing alive. I'm the only thing protecting it. Me.

Who wouldn't find that frightening, she has to wonder.


A deep breath at the question, held caught for a moment, then exhaled. "I don't want him to be mine," she whispers, her eyes shut tight like a child after a nightmare refusing to open them. Her hand tightens faintly on his leg. "And if he's yours, he goes away, and then he doesn't have to be mine anymore."

[Ivan] That might have been the first time Ivan ever called the thing inside her a he. He's known for a long time that it was a son, a boy, a prince and an heir if only it lived a few hundred years ago. She told him, he imagines, or else let it slip somehow. Neither of them like to acknowledge it, but they're not fools. They're not forgetful, and unmindful.

A boy. A son. Him.

He thinks for a moment after she answers. Her eyes are closed, and that flash of anger is gone, gone, but there's something like terror in her, only it's as fragmentary and fragmented as she is. His hand moves from her face to her hand. He takes her fingers in his; she's afraid because she's the only thing protecting this unborn boy, and if he knew that he'd laugh at the irony.

He's responsible for her now. Her, and the baby. He's responsible: him.

"If that's what you want," he murmurs quietly, "I'll take him away whether or not he's mine. But Hilary, it'll only buy you a small measure of peace. A few weeks, maybe a few months. It'll only mean Dion will be trying to sire another trueborn heir on you soon enough. Another pregnancy, another baby, all this all over again. And he'll be that much less patient. That much more resentful and angry."

His hand closes over hers. Sometimes he thinks: I'm the only thing protecting her. Me.

"If it's his, let him keep it," he finishes quietly. "It'll be easier that way."

[Hilary] "I wouldn't give it to you if it weren't yours," Hilary says quietly, opening her eyes. His hand is warm on hers, and all of her is warm, it seems, the apartment kept cool to keep her comfortable as a result. "That wouldn't be right."

It doesn't bear noting, this time, the ridiculousness of the statement, the concern for what is good and right and moral. She turns her head and looks up at him then, their hands twined, cupping one another.

He'd roll over for her, and she doesn't quite realize that. He'd stay and hold her if maybe, maybe, that would make her something like happy for a few hours. Buy her a new house. A plane. A country. And she'd never ask for it. None of that would make her happy. None of that would make her sane and better.

For a moment, she just looks at him. There's nothing she can say beyond that. Nothing she knows how to say, at least.