Chapter Text
Alina didn’t even realize she was trapped at first. She entered into the captain’s quarters of the ship they’d found in Novyi Zhem with Mal, found the chair turned away, and then the chair turned revealing not some ship captain or potential salvation, but Aleksander, alive and apparently well, face marred by three gashes across his face.
“How good of you to join us, Alina,” he said softly.
He didn’t even have to gesture, several grisha and what must have been crew collapsed in on them and grabbed both Alina and Mal, clapping them in chains that would easily keep her from summoning. It was about then that Alina felt the rocking waves beneath them and promptly coughed and vomited all over the floor.
Aleksander arched an eyebrow at that. “Check that she’s not wasting again. You should not be ill, Alina.”
That was when a healer closed in on her and she struggled slightly but offered little real resistance while the woman checked her over. It was also around then that Alina realized that Aleksander looked very unwell himself.
His skin seemed… paler, in an unhealthy way. After a few moments he cleared his throat and Alina got the sense he was barely holding back a cough, and the color under his eyes seemed more bruise than skin. She didn’t have much more time to reflect as she was brought to what amounted to a holding cell, albeit a nice one, guarded by Ivan. She was almost excited to see him in a strange way, but she glowered at the man instead.
“Fancy seeing you here,” she snapped.
“Yes, you tried so hard to destroy everything, it must be disappointing.”
“It would have been worth it if he’d died.”
Ivan gave her a disdainful look. “That he survived is the only saving grace that grisha have now. Do you know how many grisha would have been murdered without him? How many were killed in spite of him? Hundreds, over half the Second Army would be dead.”
“Because of him!”
Ivan’s hand clenched in a way that made it very clear he wanted to heartrend her. “He destroyed the West Ravkan uprising and the tsar repays us with slaughter.”
Alina glared back at him. “They’re just scared.”
“The tsarevich ordered the execution of all grisha,” Ivan said. “The Little Palace gutted, grishenka slaughtered? Yes, otskazat’sya are always scared.”
Alina felt some of the righteous indignation leave her. Had the Lantsovs really ordered…? Ivan rolled his eyes dismissively at her. “You are somehow surprised?”
“If General Kirigan hadn’t—”
“Enough,” Ivan said, tone final but not loud. “The General has sacrificed everything that he is for grisha. I will not be lectured by some newly minted grisha with no understanding of our history.”
Alina intuitively knew that she would have no luck talking further and was more than a bit concerned that if she pushed too far he would simply heartrend her into unconsciousness if she was lucky and death if she weren’t.
She didn’t see Aleksander again until the next morning, dragged out of her room by Ivan and deposited in a chair across from Aleksander, two trays of food before them.
“Charming,” she spat, after they were alone.
“Eat,” he ordered. “You’ve not been summoning, that much is clear.”
“I have,” she protested.
He looked her up and down. “Not enough.”
She was too queasy to eat much, taking a small bite of fruit, and she soon noticed his hand where the antler fragment had been was clearly infected, so sickly it was black. She looked away, feeling nauseated by the reminder of their connection.
“Yes, I am not at my best, am I, Alina?” he said after he noticed her gaze.
“What… happened?” She was unable to help but care a little, even after Aleksander had hurt her so much.
Aleksander used the heel of his palm to press hard against one of his eyes, something she realized must have been a sign of a headache, something a grisha shouldn’t have. “It has only been scant weeks, Alina. You could not have forgotten leaving me, many of your grisha companions, and international diplomats to die in the Fold.”
“That doesn’t explain…”
“Merzost,” he said flatly. “The power of creation, an abominable manipulation of what should only be found in the making. The price is unpredictable, but I would pay it again without question.”
That seemed to be too much talking and he grabbed a handkerchief and started to cough. It was a wet, raspy thing that usually meant a child would die in a few weeks at most. In spite of herself, Alina winced. She almost felt she should apologize, he was so… shattered. Her sorrow was compounded when she realized he hadn’t coughed up mucus or even blood, but some black ichor that stained the handkerchief.
Killing him would be a mercy… wouldn’t it? He was clearly already dying. She had the thought as she cut up some meat she thought might be bacon. It smelled a bit rancid, and she gave it a slight sniff before putting the bite back down.
“You hardly seem your best, Alina. The life of a mouse doesn’t suit you.”
Alina sniffed pointedly at him and took a bite of egg instead. “I’ve been summoning, I just haven’t been hungry.”
“Then you are quite ill,” Aleksander said simply. “I will have the healer look you over again. Something was missed.”
“Your concern for my welfare is touching.”
“I only want what is best for you, My Alina.”
That seemed to be her breaking point, ‘My Alina’, as though she was still his after all that happened. She grasped the knife and lunged, the point of the knife aimed between the fabric of his kefta.
“No!” he shouted, but strangely she didn’t think it was to her…?
Suddenly a monstrosity, huge and black as the Fold, erupted from Aleksander and grabbed her arms to keep her from moving. Another erupted from him a moment later and grabbed Aleksander. Alina struggled, swinging the knife wildly at the shadow.
“Stop! They will kill you!” Aleksander yelled, this time clearly at her, and despite his screams she was startled that no one, not even Ivan, burst in to subdue her.
Still she struggled, flailing, but far from trying to kill her… the one holding back Aleksander released him and its huge presence circled their table and came up to her. It… inspected her with a featureless face and then… patted her head, like some strange child exploring an unfamiliar stranger. It began with her face, her neck, and even using hands to grope her breast. She gritted her teeth at the violation. Thankfully the shadow thing moved on, patting her arms and then her stomach and then lower until she again struggled at the things hands headed toward her core.
“Get these perverted things off of me!” she yelled, but when she saw his face she realized with some horror that he had no control over them.
His hands were out in a placating gesture and his face and stilled chest said he expected the creature to snap at her like wild animals. Instead of groping between her legs, the thing’s hand stilled below her bellybutton. After a few more… pats that seemed almost experimental, the thing began to rub her there. After the… invasion, Alina finally began to think, what had attracted these shadow abominations to her, what was… she looked down, the location of the thing’s hand finally registered. Below her navel and above her mound… she swallowed down the bile that threatened to rise up.
Like called to like. They were drawn to the darkness inside of her, black seeds he had planted in her so many weeks ago. She looked up at Aleksander, eyes wide, and he saw in the terror and wonder on his face that he’d drawn the same conclusion.
Unbidden the memories came to the surface, his mouth between her thighs, the feeling of his length urging her open, and the sticky mess he’d released inside of her as they both trembled and moaned. She remembered his fingers working inside her to bring her to another peak and then claiming and filling her one last time before everything shattered beneath her feet.
Aleksander’s shoulders slumped, he made a noise that sounded like a laugh that rapidly turned into a cough.
“You think it’s funny?” She gritted her teeth.
“You won’t be alone,” he said, voice soft. She looked at him, confused, of course she wouldn’t be alone, she had friends, allies… “In eternity,” he clarified. “I’m dying, Alina. I would have thought it was obvious.”
She didn’t protest because it was obvious he was deeply sick, something that shouldn’t happen to a grisha. “So why run after me, why kidnap me? Do something useful.”
And why focus on… it? She placed her hand over her belly and the… thing seemed to have finally gotten over its distraction at the presumed child inside of her and now that she wasn’t struggling with a knife she was no longer being held by the other.
“You can’t even control them,” she said. “Can you?”
Again he pressed the heel of his palm to his eye. “They protect me,” he said. “If something threatens me… the threat is eliminated. It seems this protectiveness extends to…” He gestured toward her stomach. “And why did I chase you? Alina you… are unprepared for what’s coming. The amplifiers, the political acumen, the leadership… You need all the help you can get, and protecting a small Shadow Summoner…”
She was still coming to terms with the idea that there might be a small Shadow Summoner at all. “What if I don’t want it?”
Aleksander looked at her, completely stunned, and he looked quite ill again but this time she was fairly certain it was from her words. “We’ve lost the chance to be eternal equals,” Aleksander said with obvious sorrow. “Don’t throw away your chance at an eternal companion, too.”
Alina pulled away, wrapping herself up in her arms and trying to soothe herself. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Aleksander was a mistake, this… darkness inside of her was a mistake.
“Please,” Aleksander said softly. “I don’t want to fight you, especially not now. The nichevo’ya won’t let you hurt me and our child means they won’t let me hurt you. It is a truce that could last another six months.”
She shook her head.
“What will you do? Hide?” he hissed. “Flee to the Lantsovs? Actually try to fight for grisha and flee from barely secure safehouse to safehouse while growing with child? I know you are not that naive, Alina.”
She didn’t shake her head, didn’t give any response, and it was very clear he was suffering from yet another headache. “There’s nothing to be done?”
“There is plenty to be done,” Aleksander responded. “Nobles to learn, etiquette to practice, political sparring to study, history and the patterns in its tapestry!”
“I meant about how sick you are,” she said, although she wasn’t certain why she cared. Until a day ago she would have said killing Aleksander was one of her goals, surely letting him slip off and die of his merzost inflicted wounds was almost as good. It would let her tackle the Fold, at least.
“If a solution can be found I will have it found, but my seemingly infinite well of hope seems to have finally run dry.” He again chuckled and was again racked with a cough. “What little of me remains will be given over to grisha and to ensure you are more ready than I was at eighteen.”
She stood.
“Sit.”
“I am not your dog, Aleksander.”
But when she reached the door she found it was barred. She banged on it a few times and no one came to open it.
“Lantsovs,” he said firmly when she finally stopped banging. “Pyotr III, Tatiana nee Grimjer, Vasily, Nikolai, closest kin beyond that is Vadik Demidov, a second cousin of the tsarevich. Court rumors place Nikolai as illegitimate and the product of an affair with the former Fjerdan ambassador Magnus Opjer…”
Reluctantly, she sat.
*
Aleksander’s intermittent cough had swiftly become almost debilitating, he had talked too long, close to two hours now, and Alina seemed mulish but was not actively avoiding listening.
Ivan entered soon after, and brought the healer. Alina glanced at the door repeatedly and Aleksander was certain she was plotting her escape.
“Your disobedience will be visited on your tracker,” Aleksander said. “His usefulness will soon come to an end.”
All thoughts of fleeing seemed to leave her. Ivan poured him a large cup of tea, the smell was noxious, jurda and willow and mentha combined to make a disgusting mix. The honey, however sweet, could not help the flavor. The first cup he downed in a few aggressive gulps, shoving down the nausea from the taste. The worst of his throat pain eased a fraction and the pounding in his head might ease enough to make him able to think.
“Check over Miss Starkova,” he said after the healer had done her best to block the nerves that most aggressively plagued him.
“I checked her yesterday, General.”
The urge to snap rose up and he shoved it down. Not her fault, not her fault. He pressed against his eye. “Check for a pregnancy,” he said. “About fourteen weeks.”
He saw Ivan’s look and knew the man knew what he was implying. Aleksander didn’t look at him. The healer went to work as instructed and looked for a child, they were almost impossible to notice on a cursory look until around halfway through the pregnancy.
“Yes,” the healer said after a minute or so. “Fourteen weeks seems accurate.”
He watched Alina’s face fall, her last bastion of denial gone. “Health?” he asked, finding his voice softened in spite of the pounding behind his eyes.
“A touch underweight, perhaps.”
Aleksander leaned forward and tapped his finger against the plate that Alina had left largely untouched. Alina rolled her eyes defiantly but returned to her food. Aleksander finished his second glass of tea more slowly while the healer more deeply examined Alina’s pregnancy. Ivan came up to him and bowed low enough to be just at his ear.
“Yours?” he asked the unnecessary question.
He nodded. Alina’s first response had she bedded the tracker would have been to immediately deny his potential paternity. Instead she had taken it as a given as soon as the nichevo’ya had made the issue clear. He was also quite certain even Malyen wasn’t stupid enough to fuck out of doors, on the permafrost, in winter.
Aleksander drank his final cup of tea lazily and Ivan nodded his acknowledgement and left with the healer and the cup.
“No tea for me?” Alina asked, clearly just to needle him.
“Jurda is terrible during pregnancy,” Aleksander answered without even needing to think.
“You’re just getting high?” she said, dismissively.
“It is the best my alkemi could do for the headaches,” he said, ignoring her bratty behavior. “Now, Novyi Zhem grisha—”
“Are zowa, blessed, and they practice however they want.”
Aleksander laughed, it almost felt good if it wasn’t so horrifying what had caused it. “Zemini grisha have no legal protections when they are kidnapped by slavers and poachers. They are legally full citizens, unlike Ravka, but the coastal policy concerning kidnapping is to do nothing, not even demand a fine. Whoever was telling you of the great life for Zemini zowa was either ignorant, lying, or attempting to sell grisha for coin.”
“And they don’t do that petty tribalism of differentiating orders,” she said, chin now tilted upward and defiant.
He was fairly certain his growing headache was not because of merzost. “So you’ve had no training as a cartographer? Was the study of human anatomy helpful to your summoning? Are you excited by new innovations to corecloth?”
Alina didn’t answer.
“No? Perhaps that is because the orders are different; perhaps friendships within orders are more common because they are fundamentally connected in the way they touch the making. Perhaps I am not someone who tells adults I will soon send to war how to conduct their personal matters.” Aleksander pinched the bridge of his nose. “I will not claim all traditions within the Second Army will always be correct. Times change, traditions change, I know that better than most anyone other than my mother. I will not be around for longer than another decade, perhaps two if I’m lucky, perhaps barely a year if not. At least understand why a tradition exists before tearing into it.”
He sighed and leaned back into his chair. This time he rubbed his temples and attempted to relieve some of the tension in his neck and spine and was not particularly successful. “Now, Zemini politics…”
Thankfully Alina had no more brazen idiocy for the next hour, and he eventually had to give up on continuing to instruct with how raw his voice had become and how deep the pain behind his eyes had grown.
He looked at Alina briefly, saw the way her hand went to her lower belly and he finally let himself think. A child. A child who was almost certainly a Shadow Summoner. He doubted his nichevo’ya would be so attuned to and protective of a different pregnancy. For a moment he pondered telling Alina how unlikely it was to have a Shadow Summoner pregnancy.
“You don’t seem particularly affected by this,” she said.
“It is a personal matter that largely doesn’t concern me,” he answered quite practically. “We are in conflict even if it remains purely theoretical until you choose what position to take in the brewing civil war. I doubt you wish me to acknowledge it or even say words like ‘my child’, and I will not see them grow to adulthood much less to maturity. What would you have me do? Beg for your affection? Ask to be their father? Pretend I am in any way qualified to be a parent? I am practical. I will make no requests or demands, you would deny them on principle.”
Alina looked away, a clear acknowledgment that he was right. He closed his eyes, trying to let his head rest but it was largely hopeless. Currently the only theory was he might be able to counter the creation of the nichevo’ya with even more merzost but he was also worried that would simply cause him to deteriorate further.
“Go,” he said softly. “We will have more lessons tomorrow.”
He heard Alina stand, and when the door finally closed behind her he looked down at her tray of food, thankfully she had eaten most of it.
Ivan returned a bit later. “More tea?”
He shook his head, eyes still closed. It wouldn’t help, he could already tell. “My nichevo’ya protect her, or at least the child, from harm. Be careful with her.”
“Of course, General.”
The future… he had to think of the future. “I ask that you prioritize yourself, Ivan.” He didn’t wait for the protest he knew Ivan would make. “If that child lives to be born, they will have a hard life, and I cannot know how much of an influence I will have on them before I… die.”
He heard the silence stretch in the room even as pain flared behind his eyes and made it difficult to concentrate. “I understand,” Ivan said finally.
“That will be all.”
“Allow yourself your rest as much as you are able, General,” Ivan urged him, before he too left Aleksander’s company and Aleksander tried to steal even a few minutes of restful quiet.
*
Alina stepped out onto the deck of the ship Alina would later learn was called the Volkvolny, the salt air caused another prickle of nausea. She’d never been on the True Sea until a few weeks ago and she had thought she just suffered from sea sickness, instead she now knew what it truly was and it took everything in her not to run her hand low over her belly now that she knew.
She was… with child, Aleksander’s child. She knew it was his, even if those creatures hadn’t all but confirmed it, she’d been with no one else. She’d thought about trying to be with Mal, had even planned to, but even kissing him had done nothing but assure her that it would have been a disappointment.
“Alina!” Mal came up to her and hugged her. “Are you alright? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t want to hurt me.”
Mal seemed skeptical, and even ran a hand down her back. After he’d assured himself she was well, even if she wasn’t, Mal introduced her to the actual captain of the ship, Sturmhond.
“How was your little meeting with your conspirator?” Sturmhond asked.
“We are not allies!” she snapped at him.
“Of course,” Sturmhond said, amused. “Because the famed Darkling is so well known for spending his resources on tracking down mythical beasts for his enemies.”
Alina couldn’t really deny that, maybe she could say that Aleksander was trying to make sure she was ready for the future but… that wasn’t exactly the actions of an enemy was it? And then there was… it. Perhaps Alina could have understood Aleksander preparing her for the future if he thought she would have it, but he’d had her captured before he’d know. Despite everything he’d prioritized training her.
Eventually she found an out of the way place to sit, curling up so she could place her hands against her belly inconspicuously. There was a definite small swell. She hadn’t exactly been in a position to notice for some time, she’d run from the Little Palace late in the night after she and Aleksander had… coupled, she’d been hunting for the stag, then dragged to the Fold, and then fled to Os Kervo, then the Ketterdam port, and then to Novyi Zhem. Yesterday was the first time in months she’d thought she might be able to have a proper bath in that lovely hotel.
Even though she’d threatened Aleksander with ending the pregnancy she really didn’t think she could. She knew there were pills, combinations of teas, and such. They were readily available among the First Army and she probably could have gotten one when she landed again in Ravka…
“Alina,” she heard a soft voice she hadn’t expected.
“Genya?” She looked up. So, she’d sided with Aleksander. She supposed that only made sense when he was the one who had allowed her into that red kefta she’d always deserved. “So you’re still with him?”
“He saved my life, Alina,” Genya answered softly. “Grisha have been getting rounded up by First Army and executed en masse. I was in Kirbirsk and… the General came and freed us.”
Alina turned away. She didn’t want to hear it. The First Army wouldn’t have turned on grisha if Aleksander hadn’t attacked Novikribirsk. A small part of her rose up in protest though, Aleksander had ended a major military threat, and he hadn’t destroyed the whole town, just the parts nearest the docks. She growled against the argument and squeezed herself tighter.
“He tried to chain me, he doesn’t get to make up for that by freeing other grisha,” she finally argued.
Genya looked conflicted for several moments before she took a deep breath. “You deserted,” Genya said firmly. “If you weren’t the Sun Summoner you’d already have been executed.”
“I didn’t desert!” she protested.
Genya gave her a look riddled with skepticism. Alina looked away, she knew she had deserted. She still remembered that morning, telling Aleksander she understood how much she meant to everyone. She also remembered giving into that desire that had been growing between them…
“He’s just going to try to enslave me again,” she said instead. “With the sea whip.”
Genya shrugged. “Our orders are that the kill is yours.”
“Since when?” Since the… it?
“He hired Sturmhond three weeks ago.”
Oh… she couldn’t really pretend it was some change of plan, and she almost wondered if Aleksander could have fixed his hand by claiming the whip and again fusing them together.
Late that night she slept in a small hammock near Mal. At first she had wanted to hold him, for him to touch her, but after a few minutes it felt wrong and she turned away. After a few more she curled up under her blanket and snuck her hand between the folds of her tunic and placed her hand directly against her stomach.
“So close to your tracker and yet thinking of me?”
She flinched and looked over her shoulder, Aleksander, hale and whole. This was a dream.
“No dream, a consequence of the stag.” He sat on the hammock beside her and it even swayed with his weight.
“Why aren’t you claiming the whip, then, stealing my powers all over again?”
He sighed, and she saw his hand come in front of her face, fingers skimming less than an inch from her form but never touching, trailing down until they hovered low over her belly. “The amplifiers are yours. The stag made that clear.”
She had a long moment to think. “It’s yours,” she said after thinking. “You can…”
Aleksander gently placed his hand against her middle, even through the fabric of her tunic she could feel the warmth of his body and the faint movement of his fingers as he mapped the modest swell there. Eventually she reached down again and placed her hand atop his, that was where the ruin of his hand should have been, and after she thought that she felt the swollen infection under her palm.
For a moment she thought to burn it, to try to break the connection between them, but the thought that they were already so connected somehow made her less vicious in the moment. Instead she used her hand to allow him under her tunic and against her bare skin there. She heard him inhale sharply, shocked, and despite how easily he could have taken advantage of the position he did nothing but run his hand over the place it laid inside of her.
“You should practice your summoning more,” he said softly. “That’s best for the child, and you, and it will help your control.”
“I need power for the Fold, not control,” she argued back.
“You need both,” Aleksander answered. “Downing the Fold will solve nothing, however, but more to the point your control is already ragged, another amplifier and it will grow even more so. There is a beautiful subtlety to summoning.”
She wanted to argue but she knew he was right. She’d felt it in the moments when he’d used her power when the stag still connected them directly. Eventually she rolled onto her back, Aleksander never moving his hand from where she’d allowed it, and she brought her hands up in front of her.
He took his free hand and drew a circle above her hands. “Summon a circle of light.” She did. “Break it into sixteen pieces.”
She started to make little pieces and he held a hand above her and she stopped. He summoned his own circle and she watched as it effortlessly broke into sixteen pieces all at once. That was fairly useless to her, just showing off what he could do, but he merged the shadow back together and she watched, fascinated, as he slowly cut the circle in half from top to bottom, then right to left, then across one diagonal, and then the other, leaving eight perfectly equal pieces. Four more swift slashes divided those sections again.
“Begin it as a process of the conscious mind,” he said, closing his hand and snuffing the shadow. “It will become intuitive and then instinctual.”
He sat with her, giving her tips and she continued the exercise, his other hand never moving far. It was… intimate. Finally he withdrew his hand and stood. “Good night, my little saint. Rest well.”
Alina felt momentarily bereft, but before she could think or say anything else, he was gone.
Their nights and days continued like that. During the day, Aleksander would tutor her in politics, geography, history, and other increasingly dry topics, and then at night he would come to her in the space between waking and sleeping, and walk her through increasingly complex control exercises.
She almost felt sad when they arrived at the island in the Bone Road that Mal thought contained the sea whip. Aleksander joined them on the hunt and in spite of his obviously poor health he kept up easily and even used his shadows to bind and immobilize Rusalye and Alina firmly stabbed the sea whip between the eyes and pulled several scales free before they returned to the ship.
Most of Sturmhond’s crew watched Aleksander anxiously as the durast from the ship took the first scale and placed it against her inner wrist.
“A touch higher,” Aleksander said lazily. “It will be best set against the…” He sighed at himself, stood, walked over, and touched her wrist a few times before sliding the scale perhaps a half inch.
“That could interfere with her summoning,” the durast protested.
“No, touching the wrist bones will interfere, this will not.”
The durast looked to her, she looked at Aleksander, and then she nodded. The durast slid the scale under her skin and Alina could almost feel the way it touched the bones and veins and became one with her body. She hissed, but it was a good hiss, pleasant, and Aleksander touching her again to roll her arm and gently place the scale on the back of her arm was also strangely pleasing. After he finished, Aleksander backed away and again leaned against a wall of the boat.
She nodded and the second scale fused to her wrist and she felt the full weight of Ruselye’s power begin to course into her. Alina looked at Mal, his face holding a slight wince and a strange glow, and then she looked at Aleksander and found his face held nothing but pride and satisfaction.
The irresistible urge to summon welled up in her and she pressed her hands together and drew them apart pulling every fleck of moonlight to her and she began to send it outward. Most of the crew at first looked awed, but that quickly fell away to panicked murmurs that Alina ignored. She looked ahead, Aleksander, his good hand pressed hard over the scarred back of his hand, somehow dancing with light, as though holding in his own Sun somehow, his eyes were wide, a few tears obvious from how intense her light was, and his lips were turned in the most contented smile she thought she had ever seen.
“Get back!”
“Alina! Alina! Alina!” She didn’t even recognize the voice speaking. “Let go of me, bloodletter!”
She continued to summon, continued to feel Aleksander’s eyes on hers and hers on his. Alina continued to feel the power inside her build, rise up, sing through her veins.
“Do not hold back.” Even though his voice was soft she could hear his voice ringing in her ears, clear as a bell.
Almost unbidden another wave crashed through her and she felt even more intense power ripple out of her.
“She has to stop!”
She didn’t. She kept her eyes on Aleksander as he urged her, again and again, to draw more, before the sky was so light it seemed like midday had come while she summoned.
“Enough,” he said softly. “That is the edge of it.”
Alina pulled her power back into herself and looked around the once again dark deck of the ship. Everyone except Aleksander had closed their eyes, turned away, huddled protectively, or all three. She felt drawn toward him, and took a few steps forward. The back of his hand was glowing, still, filled with some connection to her, a piece of her inside him… after all there was the piece of him inside of her… She reached out and placed a hand atop his, they were connected now, forever.
And then chaos exploded around them.