(Maybe) I'm Amazed

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Addam wanders into the manor at dawn the day they're set to leave Aletta and steam full through Dannagh on in to Auresco. The sound of his shoes - not boots, more clogs - on the front foyer tiles is more than enough to set his mind tumbling again, thinking about all the things he's still yet to learn and all the other shoes down in the garrison yard that have never touched these floors.

There had been eight of them, eight fully qualified assorted Drivers and Blades, and they hadn't been able to take down a single Slithe Jagron without Minoth's shocking deus ex machina, an entrance entirely too convenient and theatrical for Addam's war-weary tastes.

It was just like him, wasn't it? And of course Addam didn't, wouldn't, couldn't, shouldn't begrudge him the glory one bit. Whatever it was that had made him decide to stake down his vulnerability and come join up with Addam for real for the very first time, among a veritable traveling band of warriors that he'd apparently known were coming, Addam most definitely wanted him to be as confident as possible doing it.

A traveling band! Or maybe "you guys" had only referred to him and Mythra, and Milton into the bargain, but oh...

This isn't about Minoth. This isn't about Milton, or Mikhail either. No, it's about the most m-arvelous of them all, Mythra and Malos to boot with her. A full year, and they still hadn't done with it. It had gotten to the point of a roundly gossiped-about attack on Auresco herself, and he and Mythra were still twiddling their thumbs, wondering uselessly about Amalthus's true motivations when the one person in the world who knew them the most intimately had just fallen in with them and is sleeping, knee propped jauntily on knee, not fifty meters away.

Addam is lost. He's standing in the entrance parlor of his very own house, and he's lost. Which way is the master suite? Down, right? Right. The only way to go from here is down, after all. Oh, but he'd meant right as in correct, and which side is it on, actually?

He peeks to the left. Dining room. Behind that, kitchen. Of course. He'd had, what, two full years to get used to the layout? Of course that's where the kitchen is. Idly, he passes a hand over the heads of Lucky Lettuce laid on the counter next to bunches of bitter radicchio. So the farm really is still well, at least in Flora's own spare garden plot. He hadn't taken the time to look.

Hadn't taken the time. He's hardly even got the time, now, before he has to roll out. Early morning hours fall away far too quickly. They always have. So he comes out of there, turns around, and very nearly walks right, which is left again. Confound it, it's early. He should still be asleep. And when he's tired he goes...

Flora had always liked to sleep with a dim lamplight left on. It saved her the trouble of groping around for the fixture's catch when she inevitably tossed one of the pillows in a merciless turnabout to the floor, and though she'd never been as heavy a sleeper as Addam, she didn't need it to be pitch-black to get sufficiently rested.

Still, the dimness is recognizable illumination. He sees the familiar shapes of the bed and end tables, the thresholds of the study beyond and the quiet doorways of the closet, bathroom, and sitting room. All is as it should be. At least, in here, it is. Not so everywhere.

Gingerly, Addam lays down his sword in the corner - he'd decided that it would probably be more suspicious and alarming if his kit was seen sitting all by itself in the compound than if he'd just snuck off alone with it, to train or some such as he'd will (Aegaeon wasn't keeping watch, since they'd luckily managed to convince him that Kaleena would be doing quite enough of that).

One by one, he undoes the straps on the armor plates that buckle onto his legs, and shuffles out of his shoes. The same follows for his vambraces and his gloves, and eventually he deems himself disarmed enough to approach the bed.

There she is, adorable as ever, hair arrayed wildly over the pillows underneath her head and a bolster pillow stuffed between her legs (the duvet is more or less down for the count, and none's the pity, because early summer days when you're nine months pregnant will do that to you).

Addam's eyes stutter for a moment over the far-too-big shirt she's wearing before realizing that it's one of his old pajama shirts, collar well messed and lower buttons undone but quite surely the same old flannel in worn, well-loved deep red.

She hasn't changed. Not visibly, that is, besides the size of her stomach. Addam...doesn't know if he should be happy or sad about that, so he ignores it. If she sees fit, she'll probably tell him what she thinks about the whole affair from her perspective, and if she doesn't, then he'll consider that when he gets to it.

"Flora?"

No reaction comes directly in time with Addam's soft address, but a few seconds afterward, Flora turns from one side to the other and adjusts the pillow accordingly. Now, if she happens to open her eyes, she'll be staring directly into his crotch, which isn't the worst thing, but also probably isn't Addam's ideal scenario, so he drops to his knees and leans elbows on the bed just in front of her face instead.

"Flora?"

He singsongs it this time, trying to step away from the pathetic cliché that is simply dangling her name in front of her dormant ears like a limp bone with nary an enticing wiggle. That is to say, he'd prefer it if he didn't look as stupid as he feels while he's doing something that is well and truly beyond respectability: sneaking back home for cuddling and a mild rewiring of his brain because he certainly doesn't know what's going on in there, not like what Lora would think, and he is very, very afraid.

He gulps and feels his laryngeal prominence (see, we don't have a name for that one, just yet) jut against the edges of his thumbs, fists curled one of top of the other and leant in against his throat as they are. Down with one hand, careful, careful, and he reaches for one of her own...

No, she doesn't startle or shriek at the touch - that would be altogether too slapstick. She just grunts a little, lets herself be lightly jostled, then gradually wakes to his golden eyes staring three-quarters of a year worth of melancholy into her own crystal-blue ones.

"Addam?" she queries softly, nearly coos. He nods, fifty times as uncertainly as he has any right to, and Flora nods back, closes her eyes in a sort of appraising "of course, that's how it should be" gesture, and pulls his hand in to tuck back under her cheek with her other.

"What are you doing here, lovie?" Her words slur, and it takes everything Addam has not to bundle her in to his chest then and there. Of course she'd known that he'd been back; she couldn't have but known. Apparently, however, she hadn't expected his visit, just as much as he hadn't intended on it. Not...not at first.

"I missed you," he could say, or "I had a spare moment," or "There's something I need to tell you," but instead he's completely, bare-facedly honest: "I'm lost."

Flora wrinkles up her nose, eyes still shut. "You got here by being lost? Silly. It's a nice surprise for me, anyway."

"No, no," Addam protests, shaking his head. "I feel lost. And I missed you. And...and I always miss you, and I haven't stopped missing you, not once, and I..."

Her eyes are open now, watching his almost fearfully as he reaches out to stroke her cheek. "I'm so afraid, Flora. Would you...would you tell me it'll all be alright?"

Something in her voice firms up. "I could tell you that in three seconds flat, and it wouldn't mean a thing. Is that really what you want?"

"No," he says again, borderline mopey now but trying not to make it a boyhood admission. "I want to cuddle you. I want you to cuddle me, really. I'm quite tired."

At that, Flora starts to giggle, and then her whole chest shakes, and then she's laughing full out. "Silly!" she manages around a gasping sigh and a wide smile that Addam has missed, missed, missed. "As if I'd ever say no to that. Did you forget what I like already?"

"Did you mean what you are like?" Addam questions, climbing in next to her all the same. Flora doesn't answer, just busies herself abandoning the bolster pillow and clinging to his arm as a welcome substitute, head well nestled to just about over the place where his heart is.

"I missed you too," she says quietly after a little while, in place of any pat acknowledgement of physical comfort. "It's lonely here without you. You know, I always thought it wouldn't mean much, if you ever had to go away, but..."

"But we are in love, aren't we?" Addam finishes for her. She nods; he cradles the back of her head in his hand. "That's just about the only thing I feel sure of, these days. I'm glad I still can be."

In silence, Addam stares at the ceiling. It's not better than staring blankly up at the stars, and the World Tree, is it? A crack here and a spiderweb there give him something to focus on, but the overall rove of his eyes is aimless nonetheless.

He hardly even notices she's there, so continually caught up is he in his own thoughts. Perhaps that's some of the same problem he's having with Mythra - and Minoth, too, though that hasn't fully started in yet. Rather than being unable to see the forest for the trees, which is how Lora and even Flora herself behaves, he's unable to see the trees for the forest: the Blade for the Aegis, or the man for the Blade.

(Back and forth, he goes. To Mythra, he would say, I shouldn't be your Driver, the role is too defined and I am too weak. To Minoth, he would say, I shouldn't be your Driver, the role is not defined enough and I could be too strong. But it's easier, with his old friend, much as he'd like to deny it. When he likes, he can simply ignore the fact that Minoth is just as much of a complex organism as Jin, or Aegaeon, or Haze, or Brighid, if not more. Not so with Mythra.)

Addam strokes Flora's hair. Flora listens to Addam's heart.

He doesn't deserve this. Not one bit. But he takes it anyway.

"So?" she prods after a few moments longer.

"So?"

"What are you afraid of, exactly?"

Ah. Rather, oh. So he's got to say it out loud, now.

"I said to Lora that-- Oh, no, you wouldn't..."

"Wouldn't what?" Her finger is running its way through the hair above his right ear, seeing how long the little braided tuft has grown and how much he probably needs a haircut, though the way she trusted herself to do it probably isn't the one he needs.

"You don't know who Lora is."

"No, I don't."

"And you don't mind that?"

"Do you think I think you were just jumping to lust after other women on your grand and glorious travels, leaving your knocked-up wife at home where she couldn't bore you?"

"I...I don't know. Do you think that?"

"Certainly not - and there are plenty of reasons why. If I wanted to be silly about it, I could say that I think it would be more likely that you'd find, more seek out, Minoth, of all people, and shack up with him, but-"

"We did find Minoth," the admission falls out of Addam's mouth and onto the top of Flora's head, where he immediately parks his nose to hide his shame.

Unperturbed, Flora perks up, arguably due equally to the new piece of information and to her husband's adjusted position. "Oh? How long ago? And how long ago did you meet this Lora, since apparently she's significant too?"

Ridiculous, isn't it, that this quest has become one along which one can find people, and add them to the ranks, and in general be whimsical about a target that they would have thought - they would have thought! - would have them single-minded and laser-locked. Ridiculous. But, unfortunately, real.

Addam thinks on it, ticking up on his fingers by thumping them gently against the back of Flora's head and the side of her belly. There would have been their time here, and the trips to and from Gormott, never mind Gormott itself, and all through Lasaria...

"Well, it can't have been more than a few weeks, and Minoth was...the day before yesterday, I think. Just up on Olnard's."

Flora giggles, but tries to smother it. "You think he was coming to visit me?"

He had explicitly said that he was searching for, again, "you guys", but he might implicitly have been homing to the one place across all of Torna in which he'd ever dream of staying for anything between short- and long-term. So "Maybe!" Addam says, returning the mirth and hugging her closer.

He loves to say maybe. Loves to make half-promises. Loves to talk about dreams in the most abstract way possible. Working the land, indeed. And what does that even entail? Some prince you are.

Some prince. He doesn't even want to be. But he does...he does love his princess.

"So anyway." He picks at the collar of the pajama shirt, runs his thumb over the bumps that outline Flora's ear before brushing her hair back over it and bending as close as he can to kiss it. "I said to Lora that scores of soldiers could die by my hand. If Mythra..." misbehaves? rebels? awakens? "...if Mythra and I can't work things out together."

"Your hand," repeats Flora softly. Her palm fits so naturally over his chest. "So you're not just nervous about the Aegis. It's a teamwork thing."

"It's a teamwork thing," Addam agrees. "Just like it was with us. I always believed in you. It was just...me I was afraid of. The two of us, together. Me bringing you down."

"Silly," Flora murmurs. It's practically an expletive, the way she says it as a catch-all. It's a noun, an adjective, a pronouncement of vaguest description that only she could get away with. Oh, Flora.

"Everything's so complicated now," continues Addam, "and I'm not even that much older or wiser than I used to be. It's like I was telling Hugo - oh, yes, we met him too, I was quite surprised - that of all the royal, important Blades I thought I might be saddled with, the Architect's first was never one of them. I'd sooner have had the Paragon of Torna - though, judging from how we get along, I think he's quite happy to be just comrades, and no more."

Narrowing her eyes, Flora walks back the details as quickly as she can. "Jin? From the old legends? You met him?"

"Ah, uh...yes. Lora's his Driver."

"Quite the company."

Quite. "I suppose they are. I love them dearly, all in all. Milton's made fast friends with the little boy they picked up. Oh, and Hugo should have one, too, shouldn't he, then? My my, that would be a sight."

"No you," Flora says quietly. "Even if I can't hardly see you." But the sun is rising. The moon is falling away.

Sighing, Addam holds her closer, then holds her away. "I've got to go now, I think."

"Did it help?" She's smiling so sweetly. Her freckles show in the most darling of ways. How is it that she's hidden here? How is it that's she mine?

"I think so. I'll let you know, I suppose."

Up he goes, with one kiss for each cheek and the back of each hand and one for her belly, and "Oh, wait, don't you want to listen for the baby?"

Addam's heart breaks as he straps on his armor once more, buckles tight his shoes. "When I...we'll be back eventually. No, not eventually. Soon."

"Soon," she nods, upright with heels kicking nervously at the bedskirt. She's so small, and in this moment he feels it too. He wasn't meant to leave her. Oh, no, not ever.

"I love you."

She grins. "I love you more."

"You amaze me," he says, thinking of all the other amazing things he's seen in just the past month.

None will ever be Flora, though. Not for Addam.

"So do you."