all the world's a stage

She hadn’t thought it was possible. Or, at least, it had been easier to believe that, so she simply had. 

It had been hard enough to conceive of the idea of being married, when that had become necessary to conceive of. It is not as frightening as Frieren thought, now, something gentle and welcoming where she’d expected confinement or to confront an entire world of expectations she could not meet, but it had been an adequate shock to make her wish to avoid any further ones. Having a child would be a far greater shock than Himmel had been, so it is easiest to rationalize, and to tell herself that a human and an elf are unlikely to conceive, and that she need not worry that they would.

She senses it quickly, though, and it simply becomes a fact of her life.

For all of her fear of shocks and sudden alterations, Frieren carries them off well when they come. There is no use in panicking, so she never does, calmly and forthrightly laying out the facts first to herself, and then to Himmel. She’s read about things like this, so she knows the signs when she senses them: a sluggish feeling of carrying too much weight, strange disruptions in the flow of her mana. It becomes erratic, harder to conceal and control. Like it is acting with a mind of its own. 

Frieren does not waste time trying to rationalize it away or come up with other reasons she might be feeling so strange. Best just to face it: somehow, in spite of the differences in their biology and the infrequency of their coupling, they have managed to make her pregnant.

If anything, it only makes her a little sulky. Frieren is not a stranger to hardship, but she has never had to stop moving, and this exhausted feeling like dragging a ball and chain behind her makes her want to curl up in her bed and sleep away whole days. She will not be able to continue her work if that is the condition she’s going to remain in. And she has to tell Himmel.

Himmel who has not had to live a settled life since he was fifteen.

Himmel who looks at her so longingly but says nothing, knowing her interest is as capricious as it is infrequent, too hesitant to tell her what he wants.

So it is unsurprising that he looks more stunned than she had when he finds her curled up miserably in bed in the middle of the day, and later, when she tells him the reason why.

“I’m exhausted,” she says weakly. “Constantly.” 

Himmel sits beside her, his weight upsetting the mattress, and presses the back of his hand to his forehead. “Are you getting sick?”

She raises her head; this is the time to say it, laid out perfectly in front of her.

“Not really.”

“Then-”

“I think I’m pregnant.” 

He draws back his hand, frozen in the air, and blinks, twice, three times, before he lowers it back down to his lap. His mouth opens and closes but no sound comes out. She thinks with less amusement than she wishes she could spare that he’s never looked so befuddled before.

“How…?” 

For this, she gives him the dirtiest look she knows.

“I mean, I…I…when?” Himmel stammers. “I thought…we thought…”

“Well, we were wrong.” 

“I…”

Then Frieren decides he’s been paused for far too long, and tugs at his shirt.

“I’m tired, Himmel.”

He turns to her, and his face softens.

“You’re serious?” he asks. 

“Mm.”

“You think…a baby…?” 

“Mmhm.” 

She’s too tired for questions, too sick for conversation. He senses it quickly and moves back the covers to lay down beside her, looks without touching, then, gingerly, brushes his fingers across her cheek. 

“That makes me so happy, Frieren,” he murmurs, and it is so strange to see him happy without his usual exuberance that she almost does not believe he really is.

But it clicks, then–he must be holding himself back, trying to give the reaction he thinks she can handle, restraining his wild enthusiasm because Frieren doesn’t have the energy for it. Restraint is the only reason he barely touches her when he usually forgets his strength and embraces her like he’s trying to squeeze her to death when he gets too excited. Already he is being cautious, thinking of her and what this means for her body and her heart, and it is Frieren, not Himmel, who comes closer.

There are good things about Himmel being so much bigger than she is. He is a place she can easily hide. And now she takes comfort in that, the way he blocks out the light that her aching head doesn’t want to see when she buries her face in the crook of his neck. She clutches at the back of his shirt, and he knows her meaning. 

Later, when he’s less frightened of frightening her, he’ll want to climb up to the roof and announce it to the whole wide world, and pick Frieren up and spin her like a rag doll until she scolds him for making her dizzy, and go out and buy everything he sees for a baby whose presence isn’t even visible beneath her clothes yet. He’ll theorize wildly about when it happened, whether it was this day or that, and laugh in triumphant disbelief at his own luck for having beaten the odds this way, and kiss her, and do all manner of things Frieren will be too tired to even try to keep up with. That is his way–gentle when he is asked to be, wildly exuberant when he is not. He will simply be too excited to restrain himself once he wears out his self-control.

But he hasn’t yet, and he holds Frieren like she is delicate, something with which to be very careful, and though everything is frightening, this is known. Safe.