Aurora

"Baby, you have to let me help you—.”

"No," I snarl, curling over my tight belly as I pull my knee up further towards my chest. The stretch of my hips helps to open my pelvis wider as the baby's head grinds its way down, pressing low and heavy against the burning tissue of my cervix. "I can... hnnnng, I can do this!"

You take a step away from the bed, hands slightly raised in a 'you're the boss' sort of way. "You're doing really well, baby," you murmur softly, your gaze fixed between my spread thighs. "You're absolutely right. You can do this. I'm right here, okay?"

I give you a frantic nod, taking a deep breath as I center myself and prepare to push again. "God, it burns," I groan, reaching down to slide two fingers into my puffy cunt. The head is just begging to slip through my cervix, and the pressure deep, deep in my belly is unrelenting. "Ohhhh, it's starting to come. I can feel it coming down!"

"Good, baby. Keep at it."

"fffffuckohmygod!" I turn to muffle a scream into the pillows as I bear down again, straining hard to pass the gigantic width of the skull through my cervix and into my birth canal. At two weeks overdue, I know just how big the baby I'm trying to deliver is, but any and all rational thought had escaped me when I'd reached transition.

I can't think about anything other than getting it out— I'm a mere slave to primal instinct, grunting and straining as I hold my legs open, sweat pouring down my face as I hold my chin to my chest. "It's there!" I gasp out, feeling the crown brush my fingers. "Mmmm, its coming."

I pull my fingers out and grip the pillow instead as I turn onto my side, panting sharply as I feel the head gradually moving down. "C-Can you see it yet?" I ask in a hoarse voice, letting out a frustrated groan when you shake your head at me.

"But it's moving, baby," you assure me. "There's a... bulge? You can definitely see something!"

I cup my hand over said bulge, growling through gritted teeth as I push again. The head sits just behind my furled slit, pushing my outer lips and my perineum outward. "Mmmm, burnING." Fluid trickles out from my cunt, and I know the head has made its first appearance when I hear your quiet gasp.

"There it is! Oh my God, baby. You're really fucking doing it!"

I choke out a small, wet laugh as I run my finger over the small, dime sized patch of slick wet hair. "Y-Yeah. I really... I'm doing it. I'm— ohhh, here it comes again. Gonna... gonna pushhhh."

"Slow, baby. You've gotta slow down." When I show no signs of doing that, completely lost to the pain of my yawning sex and my deserpate need to push through it, you hurry over to kneel in front of me. "Don't—."

"Can't help it!" I shriek, straining to get the head to emerge even a little bit further. It remains right where it is, stretching my red-hot lips as it slips out and back in, and then out and back in and again. "It burns so fucking baddd. I just want it out!"

You hurriedly place your hand over my own and I shriek again, thrashing my head to the side. "Slow," you stress. "You're going to tear, baby!"

"I don't careeee," I howl, too far lost to the throes of birth. "It's comingggg. I can't take the burning! Ohgodohgod, head's coming OUT."

"I can feel the head!"

Who I was talking to was beyond me, since I was home alone, but the need to narrate what was going on helped me not panic.

Too much.

The shower was warm, water pulsing on my back as it washed the last of the amniotic fluid down the drain. Stepping into the shower had been a split second decision, one that came right before my water had broken, which was a perk, since now I wouldn't have to clean that up.

Labor hadn't been long, which was exactly what had me panicking a little to begin with, but I couldn't care about that right now.

Right now I had a baby coming out of me.

I held tight to the shower grab bar as I crouched low, maintaining my balance carefully as I bore down with a grunt. Fuck.

"FUCK, that burns, it burns, ohhhh gods, it's coming OUT!" My other hand reached down between my thighs, cupping over my sex as it started to split around the head, feeling the damp hair of the baby.

A long, whiny grunt as I bore down again, my thighs shaking with effort. "C'mon, baby, come on out," I plead, before I bear down again, fingers exploring over my opening slit as it stretched more and more. I watched a trickle of blood get washed down the drain and once again mentally congratulated myself on keeping the mess contained by delivering in the shower.

"I can feel it, I can feel the head!" I repeated as it stretched me out a little more. "Oh, it's so big, ooh, fuck, it's so big, it's stretching me so wide!"

Of all the cruelties Marcy had endured in her nineteen years, none had prepared her for this. The locked pantry. The whispered exorcisms when her stomach seized. The father who looked through her like she was made of glass. She had escaped eighteen months ago. A greyhound bus, a duffel bag, a roommate she had found on a Facebook group for "secular students needing housing." Her first year at university had been a blur of borrowed textbooks, instant ramen, and the dizzying freedom of eating when she was hungry.

She had gained seventy pounds. Her parents had kept her thin, nearly underweight, with charts on the refrigerator and weekly weigh-ins like a curse. Now her body was soft and round, the weight settled evenly across her arms, her thighs, her breasts. A small belly, nothing more. She had always had stomach problems. Cramps that doubled her over. That terrible urgent pressure, the feeling like she needed to use the bathroom more desperately than anything in the world, only to sit on the toilet and have nothing happen. Her parents had called it the devil's grip. They had laid hands on her and prayed until her ears rang.

So when the pressure started three days ago, she ignored it. Just the devil. Just her old familiar curse.

But it worsened. The pressure became a low, grinding ache that wrapped around her lower back. She missed two days of classes. She lay on her narrow dorm bed with her knees pulled to her chest, sweating through her t shirt. The roommate, Alessa, a nursing student with kind eyes and a sharp efficiency, kept asking if she was okay. Marcy kept saying yes.

By the evening of the third day, she could not stand up straight. The pressure had become waves. Something she did not have words for. A tightening that started at her spine and rolled forward, squeezing her insides like a fist. She paced the small dorm room, bent over, gasping. Alessa found her leaning against the wall with her forehead pressed to the cinderblock.

"Marcy. Let me feel your belly."

Marcy shook her head. She did not want to be touched. But Alessa was already there, warm palms pressing flat against the stretched fabric of Marcy's oversized sweater. The moment Alessa's hands made contact, Marcy's entire abdomen hardened like a drum. A massive contraction. Alessa's eyes went wide.

"Oh my God," Alessa said. "Marcy. You're pregnant. You're in labor."

The words did not make sense. Marcy laughed, a broken, hysterical sound. No. Impossible. She was a virgin. Except she was not. There had been that night. The boy from the party. The one who had bought her a second drink and walked her back to his apartment because she had said she felt dizzy. She remembered fragments. The weight of him. The sharp, tearing pain. The way she had bled afterward and told herself it was her period coming early. She had pushed the memory down so deep she had almost believed it did not exist.

But she had not known. No one had ever told her. In her world, babies were a gift from God, delivered to married women after prayers and blessings. There was no anatomy. No explanation of what went where or how. Sex was a sin she had committed once, blindly, and now here was Alessa saying the word pregnant.

"No," Marcy said. "That's not possible. I have stomach problems. You don't understand."

Another contraction hit. Harder. She doubled over and grabbed Alessa's arm. Her body was doing something immense and involuntary, a great squeezing from the inside that made her want to scream. Alessa guided her to the edge of the bed.

"Marcy, listen to me. You are in active labor. I can see the shape of the baby in your belly. I can feel your uterus contracting. How long have you been feeling this?"

"Three days," Marcy whispered. "But it's just the devil. That's what my parents always said."

Alessa's face went pale. "Three days. Marcy, you need a hospital. Right now."

"No." Marcy pulled away. She stood up, shaking. She would prove Alessa wrong. She would walk this off like she had walked off a hundred other stomach episodes. She began to pace the room, but the next contraction stopped her mid step. She grabbed the back of her desk chair and hung her head, breathing in short, panicked gasps.

Alessa tried to reason with her. She explained about cervical dilation and effacement, words that meant nothing to Marcy. She showed Marcy how to breathe. She timed the contractions on her phone. Every four minutes. Then every three. Then every two. Marcy refused to believe. She labored standing, because standing felt better, her weight shifting from foot to foot, her hands braced on the wall. She moaned low in her throat. The pressure in her pelvis was enormous now, a bowling ball trying to force its way out of a space that had never held anything larger than a cramped bowel movement.

"Please," Alessa said. "Let me call an ambulance."

"No hospital," Marcy gasped. "I'm not pregnant. I can't be."

She tried lying down flat on her back, thinking rest would help. As soon as she stretched out, the contraction changed. It became a hot, searing band of pain across her lower abdomen. She writhed, threw her arm over her eyes, and cried out. Lying flat was unbearable. She rolled onto her side, curling her knees up, and that was better. That was almost tolerable. She clutched a pillow to her chest and let the contractions wash over her.

Alessa sat on the floor beside the bed, counting. The minutes blurred. Marcy lost track of time. She tried sitting cross legged on the mattress, rocking her hips. She tried getting on her hands and knees on the thin dorm carpet, her forehead resting on a stack of textbooks. In that position, the pressure shifted. Something changed. A deep, primal urge began to build, something far beyond the contractions.

"Something's different," Marcy said, her voice small and terrified.

Alessa checked her phone. "You've been laboring for about six hours since I found you. Maybe more before that. Marcy, I think you might be ready to push."

The word push unlocked something. Marcy felt her body bear down without her permission. A tremendous, visceral need to shove something massive out of her. She cried out and clenched her teeth. She did not want to push. She wanted this to stop.

"You can't fight it," Alessa said gently. "Your body knows what to do."

Marcy fought it anyway. For two hours. She pushed when her body forced her to, but she pushed against a closed door. She did not know how to direct the pressure. She strained until her face turned purple, until the veins stood out in her neck, until spots danced behind her eyes. Nothing happened. The baby did not move. The pressure only grew worse, a crushing, splitting sensation deep in her pelvis.

She tried every position she could think of. Standing, she bore down and felt nothing give. Lying flat on her back again, she screamed into a pillow. Side lying, she kicked her legs and sobbed. Sitting on the edge of the bed with her knees wide, she pushed until she saw stars. Hands and knees on the floor, she dropped her head and prayed to a God she no longer believed in. Nothing.

"Please," Marcy finally begged. She was drenched in sweat. Her long hair was matted to her face. "Please, Alessa. I feel like I'm going to die. I feel like something is tearing me apart from the inside."

Alessa did not hesitate. She called an ambulance. The ride was a blur of sirens and a kind paramedic who asked questions Marcy could not answer. She was wheeled into a bright, sterile hospital room. The lights were blinding. A team of nurses in scrubs descended on her. Someone ripped off her clothes. Someone else started an IV. A doctor appeared, a woman with sharp features and calm, tired eyes.

"Marcy, I'm Dr. Harris. You're in advanced labor. Your friend told us you've been pushing for hours. I need to check you."

The cervical exam was brutal. Gloved fingers probed deep, and Marcy shrieked. The doctor's expression did not change.

"The baby is head down, which is good. But you're not fully dilated. You've been pushing against a cervix that isn't ready. There's also significant swelling. We need to help you."

They wanted to give her pitocin to strengthen her contractions. They wanted to place an internal monitor. Marcy understood none of it. She signed papers with a shaking hand. The pitocin hit her like a freight train. The contractions that followed were not like the ones before. These were monstrous. They came one on top of another with no break, no mercy. Marcy screamed. She screamed until her throat was raw. She tried to stand, to escape her own body, but her legs buckled. She tried side lying, but the monitor cords tangled. She tried hands and knees, but the pain was too great. She ended up on her back, the position she hated most, because she was too exhausted to move.

Dr. Harris checked her again. "You're fully dilated now. But the baby is not descending."

The baby. Marcy had not even known the sex. She had not known there was a person inside her until hours ago.

"We need to use forceps," the doctor said. "Your contractions are strong, but you're exhausted. The baby is in distress. Heart rate is dropping."

Marcy did not know what forceps were. She did not have time to ask. A nurse placed her legs in stirrups. The lithotomy position. Her knees were pushed wide, her most private parts exposed to a room full of strangers. She was sobbing now, great heaving sobs that shook her whole body.

"Listen to me," Dr. Harris said. "When the next contraction comes, you need to push as hard as you possibly can. I am going to use these instruments to help guide the baby's head. It is going to hurt. But we have to get this baby out."

The contraction came. Marcy pushed. She pushed like she was trying to turn herself inside out. She felt pressure. She felt burning. And then she felt something cold and hard slide inside her, metal against her flesh. The forceps. They opened. They closed around something. The doctor pulled.

The pain was indescribable. A tearing, ripping, splintering sensation that went through her perineum and deep into her rectum. Marcy heard herself make a sound she had never made before, a high, animal shriek that went on and on. The doctor pulled again. Something gave way. A rush of blood and fluid. And then a baby, small and purple and screaming, was lifted onto her belly.

A boy. He was real. He was here.

But Marcy could not focus on him. The pain in her pelvis was still there, worse than before. She looked down and saw blood. So much blood. The doctor was frowning, her hands between Marcy's legs. The nurses' faces were tight.

"Fourth degree tear," the doctor said quietly to someone. "Through the anal sphincter. We'll need to repair it in the OR."

Marcy did not know what that meant. She only knew that she felt like she had been split in half. The baby was taken away, wrapped in a blanket, placed in a warmer. He was crying. She wanted to hold him, but she could not move.

"The placenta," Dr. Harris said. "It's not coming."

She pressed on Marcy's abdomen. Marcy screamed. The doctor pressed harder, massaging the top of her uterus, trying to encourage it to contract and expel the afterbirth. Nothing happened. Marcy's uterus, exhausted after three days of undiagnosed labor and hours of pitocin and the trauma of forceps, had given up. It sat there, boggy and soft, refusing to clamp down.

"We need to do a manual extraction," the doctor said.

Marcy did not know what that meant either. She learned.

The doctor reached inside her. Not with instruments this time. With her whole hand. A gloved fist pushed past the torn flesh of the vaginal canal, past the cervix, into the uterine cavity. Marcy bucked off the bed. Two nurses pinned her shoulders down. She screamed and screamed. The doctor's hand moved inside her, searching. She found the placenta, a slippery mass of tissue, still attached. She began to peel it away from the uterine wall with her fingers.

Marcy felt everything. She felt the scraping. The pulling. The way her organs shifted. She vomited. She clawed at the bed rails. She begged for it to stop, please God make it stop, but the doctor did not stop. She could not stop. If the placenta remained inside, Marcy would hemorrhage. She would die.

The doctor pulled the placenta out in pieces. First a large chunk, dark red and glistening, dropped into a steel basin. Then more. Then more. Each time the doctor's hand went back in, Marcy's vision went white. She lost time. She was not sure if she was awake or unconscious. The room spun. Someone was holding her hand. Alessa. Alessa had followed the ambulance and was here, crying, telling her she was doing amazing, she was so brave.

Finally, finally, the doctor withdrew her hand. The placenta was out. A nurse began massaging Marcy's uterus again, hard, to make it contract. The pain was relentless. Marcy's body shook with shock. She was hemorrhaging now anyway, the fourth degree tear pouring blood onto the sheets. They started a second IV. They gave her medication to stop the bleeding. They wheeled her toward an operating room to repair the damage.

As they pushed her gurney down the hall, Marcy turned her head. Through a window, she could see the nursery. A nurse was holding her baby boy under a warmer. He had stopped crying. He was looking at something, a light maybe, with dark, wondering eyes.

She had not known he existed twelve hours ago. She did not know how to love him. She did not know how to survive what her body had just endured. But as the operating room doors swung open and the anesthesia mask came down over her face, Marcy reached one hand toward the window.

Isabella had been waiting for this moment her entire adult life. At 21, she was halfway through her midwifery training, had attended 23 births as a student, and could recite the stages of labor in her sleep. She had read Ina May's guidebook until the pages softened, practiced perineal massage on oranges, and talked Josh's ear off about hormonal physiology until he could correctly identify the role of oxytocin, endorphins, and catecholamines in labor. Their small living room was already set up like a birth shrine: a birthing pool in the center, soft fairy lights along the windowsills, a basket of clean towels, and a plastic tub of birth supplies she had sourced herself.

Josh, 23, with kind hands and a nervous smile, had filled the pool that morning. Her mother, Carol, a retired nurse who had delivered 3 of her own children at home, sat on the couch knitting, ready to assist. The due date had come and gone 3 days ago, and the midwife, a woman named Helen with silver hair and 30 years of experience, had checked Isabella yesterday: cervix soft, anterior, 2 centimeters dilated, baby head down and engaged. Everything textbook.

"Call me when contractions are 4 minutes apart," Helen had said, patting Isabella's cheek. "Or if your water breaks. Otherwise, relax. Eat dates. Dance."

Isabella had done all of it. She had done spinning babies exercises just for fun. She had brewed red raspberry leaf tea. She had squatted on her yoga ball while watching The Business of Being Born for the dozenth time. She was ready. She was so ready.

Labor started at 2:17 a.m. on a Tuesday.

Isabella woke to a deep, rolling pressure low in her pelvis, not painful exactly, but undeniable. She smiled in the dark, elbowed Josh awake, and whispered, "It's time."

By 4 a.m., contractions were coming every 7 minutes, lasting 40 seconds. She timed 3 of them before she even got out of bed. Her notebook lay open on the nightstand, and she recorded each one with the precision of a student midwife logging a clinical case. Josh boiled water he did not need (a habit from movies) and fluffed pillows. Carol woke up at 5 a.m., made strong coffee, and said nothing, just watched her daughter with quiet eyes.

By 7 a.m., contractions were 5 minutes apart, lasting 50 seconds. Isabella moved to the living room and began her positions. First, semi reclined on the yoga mat against a pile of cushions, her knees dropped open, her hands resting on her lower belly. She breathed low and slow, humming through each wave. Josh knelt beside her and pressed his palm into her sacrum. She corrected him twice: "Lower. Harder. No, like you mean it." He learned fast.

At 8:15 a.m., she shifted into sitting. She straddled a low birth stool Carol had brought from the garage, her feet flat on the floor, her elbows on her knees. She rocked her hips through each contraction, making deep groaning sounds that vibrated in her chest. Josh sat in front of her and let her squeeze his hands. She cracked 2 of his knuckles. He did not complain.

At 9 a.m., she hit transition. The contractions came every 2 minutes, lasting 70 seconds. She had told herself she would handle transition like a warrior. Instead, she vomited into a bowl, shook uncontrollably, and said, "I can't do this," which she knew from her training was the single most reliable sign that she was, in fact, doing it perfectly. Carol wet a cloth and wiped her forehead. Josh held her hand and said nothing useful, which was exactly what she needed.

Isabella dropped into a squat between contractions. She found that squatting made the pain bearable, made the pressure feel productive. Her thighs burned, but she did not care. She squatted by the coffee table, gripping the edge of the sofa, her belly hanging low between her legs. She squatted through 4 contractions in a row, her breath coming in sharp grunts. Carol squatted beside her, a silent mirror, showing her how to relax her pelvic floor.

Her water broke at 9:43 a.m. It was not a dramatic gush. It was a warm, slow trickle down her thighs as she squatted. The fluid was clear, no meconium. Isabella exhaled with relief. She checked her own cervix during a break, something Carol raised an eyebrow at but did not stop. "7 centimeters," Isabella said, panting. "Maybe 8. Anterior lip but soft."

"You are not supposed to be your own examiner," Carol said dryly.

"I'm a student midwife," Isabella growled. "It's fine."

Josh called Helen at 10 a.m. Helen asked to speak to Isabella. Isabella took the phone, grunted through a contraction, and said, "I'm fine. But come. It's fast." Helen said she would be there in 45 minutes.

Isabella got into the pool at 10:15 a.m. The water was 99 degrees, exactly where she had tested it with the thermometer from her birth kit. She sank down onto the padded seat Josh had rigged at the bottom, and the relief was immediate. The buoyancy lifted the weight of the contraction from her hips. She leaned back against the pool wall, semi reclined, her arms draped over the sides, her wet hair clinging to her temples. The fairy lights reflected off the water. She thought, ridiculously, This is beautiful.

Then a contraction hit that was not beautiful. It was a wall of fire from her pubic bone to her tailbone. She screamed. Not a movie scream, a ragged, animal sound that made Josh jump. She flipped onto her hands and knees, then rose up into a squat, her feet planted on the pool floor, her hands gripping the rim. The water sloshed over the sides. Carol grabbed towels.

"You're pushing," Carol said. It was not a question.

"I'm not pushing," Isabella gasped. But she was. Her body was pushing. The fetal ejection reflex her textbooks had described so clinically was now detonating inside her like a bomb. Her uterus clenched and she could not stop it. She bore down with a roar that came from somewhere below her ribs.

The head descended fast. Isabella felt it move down the birth canal in a single, crushing wave. But when the head reached her perineum, it stopped. The widest part of the skull lodged right behind her pubic bone, and for a moment, nothing happened. The contraction faded, and the head slipped back just a little. Isabella whimpered.

"It's right there," Carol said, kneeling at the pool's edge, peering into the water. "The head is right there. But you need one more good push to get it past the bone."

Isabella wanted to cry. She was so tired. Her legs were shaking. The burn was already starting, that famous ring of fire she had read about a hundred times, but now it was real and it was awful. She reached down and touched the top of the head herself. She felt the wrinkled scalp, the soft fontanelle, the fine dark hair. Her baby was right there.

"I can't," she whispered.

"You can," Josh said. His voice was steady for the first time all day. "You are literally the strongest person I know. Push."

Isabella closed her eyes. She waited for the next contraction. It came 30 seconds later, a deep, rolling pressure that built like a wave. She tucked her chin, grabbed her own thighs, and pushed with everything she had. She pushed until her face went red. She pushed until she felt something stretch and burn and give. The head did not move. She pushed again on the same contraction, a second push before the wave ended, and this time she felt the head slip past the pubic bone. The ring of fire blazed white hot, and then the head was out.

It emerged slowly, not in a rush. The crown appeared first, a circle of dark hair. Then the forehead. Then the eyes, still closed. Then the nose and the mouth. The head turned gently to the side, just as it was supposed to. Isabella looked down and saw her baby's face for the first time, tiny and wrinkled and perfect, still underwater, still connected to her.

"Oh my God," she sobbed. "Oh my God, Josh, look."

Josh was looking. He was crying.

One more push, a much smaller push, and the shoulders delivered. Then the whole body slid into the water in a soft, slippery rush. Isabella caught her own baby. She lifted the child to the surface, and the infant opened its mouth and screamed, a furious, healthy, pink little cry.

"It's a girl," Isabella sobbed. Josh cried. Carol cried. Even the cat, startled by the noise, fled under the sofa.

Isabella held the baby against her chest, skin to skin, the cord pulsing thick and blue between them. The baby rooted immediately. Isabella laughed, exhausted and euphoric. "See?" she said to Josh. "I told you. Perfect. Textbook."

She leaned back against the pool wall, semi reclined again, the newborn girl latched onto her left breast. The water was pink now, but warm. Carol wrapped a towel around Isabella's shoulders. Josh kissed her wet hair. Helen was still 15 minutes away.

Then Isabella's body clenched again.

She felt it low and deep, a pressure that had nothing to do with afterbirth pains. Her eyes flew open. Josh saw her expression shift from bliss to confusion to something like terror.

"What?" he said. "What is it?"

Isabella looked down at her still swollen belly. The baby girl was nursing contentedly on her left breast. But her uterus was contracting again. Hard. And she felt something move. Something else.

"No," she whispered.

Carol leaned over and looked into the water. Her face, which had been soft with joy, went very still. "Isabella," she said slowly. "Do not push."

"I'm not pushing," Isabella said, and then her body pushed anyway. A massive, involuntary, explosive contraction lifted her off the pool seat. The baby girl popped off the nipple and screamed in protest. Josh grabbed the baby instinctively, cradling her in a towel against his chest.

Isabella dropped back into a squat. No. A deeper squat than before. Her heels flat on the pool floor, her knees wide, her hands gripping the rim so hard her knuckles went white. She screamed again, but this scream was different. This scream was pure shock.

She felt a second head descend. There was no break. No rest. The first baby was barely 2 minutes old. But the second head was already crowning, the sac still intact, bulging like a water balloon between her legs. Carol reached into the water with steady hands. "The bag is still whole," she said, her nurse voice locked in. "I need to break it."

"Break it," Isabella shouted.

Carol's fingernail swept across the membrane. The water in the pool turned cloudy, and then a dark head emerged. This time, there was no struggle. The second baby was smaller, and the path was already open. The head delivered in a single contraction, no ring of fire at all, just a violent, slick rush. The shoulders followed in the next push, and then the entire body slid into Carol's waiting hands.

A boy. Smaller than his sister, but his cry was louder. His fists were already clenched. His cord was thinner, wrapped once around his ankle, which Carol unwound with a single twist of her finger.

"Two," Josh said. His voice was high and strange. "There were two."

Isabella sank back against the pool wall, semi reclined again, both arms limp at her sides. Carol placed the baby boy on Isabella's chest, and the boy screamed directly into her face. The baby girl, still in Josh's arms, screamed back. A duet of fury.

Isabella looked down at the boy, then at Josh, then at her mother. Her body was shaking. The water was deep red now. Two placentas were still inside her, both still attached. She had no words. She was a student midwife. She had written papers on multiple gestation. She had assisted at a twin birth in a hospital 6 months ago. She knew the signs. She should have known.

But she had missed it. Every prenatal check, every time Helen had placed the Doppler on her belly, they had heard one strong heartbeat. Just one. The second baby must have been hiding behind the first, its heart rate masked. Or maybe Helen had been rushed. Or maybe, Isabella thought later, the universe had a brutal sense of humor for overconfident 21 year olds who thought they knew everything about birth.

Right now, though, she was not thinking about any of that. Right now, she was holding two newborns on her chest, both slippery and screaming and alive, and her body was pushing out the first placenta in a soft, meaty wave. Carol caught it in a bowl. The second placenta followed 12 minutes later. Carol examined both placentas carefully, checking for completeness. "Both look good," she said. "No retained fragments."

Helen arrived at 11:08 a.m. She walked into the living room to find Isabella reclining in a pool of blood tinged water, a baby on each breast, Josh weeping on a stool, Carol calmly tying off umbilical cords with surgical clamps, and a trail of wet footprints leading from the pool to the kitchen where someone had gone for more towels.

Helen stood in the doorway for a long moment. Then she said, "Well. That's a first for me."

Isabella laughed. It turned into a sob, then a laugh again. The boy latched onto her right breast. The girl was already asleep on the left. Josh knelt beside the pool and pressed his forehead to Isabella's temple.

"I thought I knew everything," Isabella whispered.

Josh kissed her ear. "You knew enough," he said. "You knew exactly enough."

Carol poured her a glass of water with a straw. Helen checked both babies: Apgars 9 and 9, then 9 and 10. The boy was 5 pounds 11 ounces, the girl 6 pounds 3 ounces. Both pink, both perfect. No complications. Not one. Helen checked Isabella's blood pressure: 118 over 74. Her pulse: 92. Her fundus was firm and well contracted. She had lost about 500 milliliters of blood, well within normal limits for a twin delivery.

"You realize how lucky you are," Helen said quietly, not as a scolding, just as a fact. "Two healthy babies. No hemorrhage. No retained placenta. Both head down. You delivered your own twins in a bathtub with no help."

"I had help," Isabella said, looking at Carol and Josh. "I had exactly the right help."

Isabella stayed in the pool for another hour while the water cooled around her. She did not move. She could not move. Her body had done something she had studied but never truly understood until now. Birth was not a series of stages and centimeters and textbook diagrams. Birth was a force. It did not care about her plans or her knowledge or her careful preparations. It had simply taken her, split her open, and handed her two children in the space of 3 minutes.

The baby girl was named Lily. The baby boy was named Samuel. Isabella had picked out one girl name. She had not picked out a boy name. Josh looked at the screaming, red faced infant and said, "He looks like a Sam." And that was that.

When she finally let Josh help her out of the pool at 12:30 p.m., her legs gave way completely. She buckled at the knees, and Josh caught her, babies and all, and carried her to the couch. Carol wrapped her in a fleece blanket and put a heat pack on her lower back. Helen stitched one small labial tear from the first baby's head, 2 stitches total, and pronounced her healed. The second baby had caused no tearing at all.

The fairy lights were still on. The towels were everywhere, hung over every piece of furniture to dry. The water in the pool had gone cold and opaque, tinged deep pink, and Josh would spend an hour that afternoon draining it with a bucket and a garden hose. The living room smelled like blood and birth and sweat and something else, something primal and sweet that none of them could name.

Isabella lay on the couch with Lily on her left breast and Samuel on her right. Both babies were nursing in their sleep, their tiny mouths working reflexively, their little fists curled against her skin. Carol brought her a plate of toast with butter and a mug of hot tea. Josh sat on the floor with his head against the couch, his hand resting on Isabella's ankle.

Helen packed her supplies and wrote her notes. Before she left, she knelt beside the couch and looked Isabella in the eye. "You call me if anything changes. Any heavy bleeding. Any fever. Any concerns at all. But I think you're going to be fine. You were made for this."

Isabella started to say something humble, something about luck and help and not knowing everything. But Helen was already walking out the door, and the twins were both asleep, and Josh was snoring softly on the floor, and Carol was washing the bowls in the kitchen.

So instead, Isabella closed her eyes.

She thought about the moment the first head had lodged behind her pubic bone, that terrible heartbeat of fear when she thought she could not do it. She thought about the second head emerging with no warning at all. She thought about Carol's steady hands and Josh's cracked knuckles and the sound of two newborn screams filling her living room.

She thought about her midwifery textbooks, stacked neatly on the shelf across the room. She would open them again tomorrow. She would study twin gestation more carefully. She would learn something new.

The first hint of snow was falling just after sunset, featherlight and harmless, dusting the fields around their isolated countryside home. Charlotte, early thirties, her belly a tight, impossible drum, had been feeling the first deep pulls of labor since midday. By the time the sky turned a bruised purple-gray, the contractions were a steady rhythm, a drumbeat she could no longer ignore.

Nathan, her husband, moved with quiet, focused energy. He ran a bath so hot the bathroom fogged over instantly, lit a dozen candles, lavender and beeswax, and stacked clean towels over the radiator. Outside, the snow began to fall harder, fatter flakes now, but inside, the world was warm and small and theirs.

Charlotte lowered herself into the water with a groan, the heat swallowing her hips, her lower back, the raw ache spreading across her pelvis. For two hours, she labored there, knees bent, hands gripping the edges of the clawfoot tub. Nathan knelt beside her, pressing a cold cloth to her forehead, whispering nonsense encouragement. She was dilated to five centimeters by his best guess. She had done this before, after all. She knew the feeling of the cervix thinning, the heavy descent of the baby's head.

"I need more wood for the fire," Nathan said quietly, kissing her damp temple. "I'll be two minutes."

She nodded, barely hearing him, already lost inside another contraction. He pulled on his boots and a heavy coat, slipped out the back door into the swirling white. The snow was falling faster now, almost playful, but there was a weight to the air, a pressure that made her ears pop.

The contraction that hit her the moment the door clicked shut was different. Harder. Deeper. It took her by the throat and squeezed. She climbed out of the bath on shaking legs, water streaming down her thighs, and wrapped herself in a towel just as her phone began to buzz across the floor. Nathan's face lit up the screen.

She answered, breathless. "Nathan?"

His voice came through crackling, broken, barely human through the howl of wind. "Charlotte, listen. The snow. It's bad. A branch came down. The path to the house is completely blocked. I can't get back in."

She pressed her forehead to the cold window and saw nothing but a wall of white. The shed was invisible. The tree line was gone. The storm had swallowed everything.

"I'm so sorry," he said, and she could hear his teeth chattering, the violent shake in his jaw. "But you're going to have to do this. I'm going to stay on the phone. I'm not going anywhere. But baby, the electricity is flickering. Get to the living room. Get the fire lit before the power goes."

She didn't have time to be afraid. Another contraction folded her in half, and she dropped the phone, caught it against her chest, and stumbled barefoot into the living room. Nathan guided her through it, voice strained and frozen, telling her where the kindling was, the matches, the old newspaper. Her hands shook so badly it took three tries to get a flame. The fire caught just as every light in the house died with a soft, final click.

Darkness. Only the orange pulse of the hearth and the pale glow of the phone screen. She propped the phone against the fireplace bricks, Nathan's face a tiny, ghostly image. His cheeks were raw red. Snow clung to his eyebrows.

"I'm here," he said. "I'm right here."

She labored for another hour standing, swaying her hips, gripping the back of the sofa until her knuckles went white. The contractions came like waves in a shipwreck, each one higher, harder, more devastating than the last. She leaned over the back of the sofa and let her belly hang, let gravity pull, let the pressure build into something monstrous. Nathan talked and talked, his words half lost to the storm, but his voice was a rope she held onto.

Then she needed to move. She sank to her knees on the rug, the wool rough and damp beneath her, and rocked through each wave. The fire warmed her left side while the draft from the broken window kissed her right. Hot and cold. She was a creature of opposing forces.

She moved to sitting, legs wide apart, leaning back on her hands. Then to standing again, squatting low, holding onto the armchair. Then to hands and knees, her favorite position, the one that made her feel powerful, animal, true. She rocked back and forth, moaning low in her throat, letting her body open.

Nathan watched through the phone. She could see him shivering, see the snow collecting on his shoulders, see the fear and love and helplessness tangled in his frozen face.

"You're doing it," he said. "You're doing it, Charlotte. You're so close."

Then something changed. A deep, primal shift. Her body clenched and began to bear down without her permission. The pushing urge was not a suggestion. It was a command. It was a fist around her spine, squeezing, forcing her downward.

"I have to push," she gasped. "Nathan, I have to push."

"Okay, okay, breathe first. One deep breath. Don't rush. You have to pace yourself."

But there was no breathing. There was only the fire in her pelvis, the ring of fire before the ring of fire, a pressure so immense she thought her bones would split. She dropped into a deep squat, her thighs burning, her bare feet planted on the rug, and she pushed.

The push came from her throat first. A guttural, low scream that built into a roar. She felt the baby descend a fraction of an inch, and then the contraction eased, and the baby slipped back. Nothing. No progress. Just pain.

She tried again. Standing this time, braced against the wall, bearing down with everything she had. Her face turned crimson. The veins stood out in her neck. She screamed until her voice cracked, and still the baby would not move.

"Something's wrong," she sobbed, sliding down the wall onto her knees. "It won't come. It won't come. Why won't it come?"

Nathan's voice was frantic now. "Charlotte, listen to me. Feel. Can you feel anything different? Can you reach down?"

She reached between her legs with a shaking hand. Her fingers touched something slippery, something small and strange. Not the smooth curve of a head. Something with edges. Something with fingers.

"There's a hand," she whispered. "Nathan, there's a hand. The baby's hand is next to its head."

She had read about this. Compound presentation. It was one of those things that happened to other people, the ones with hospital rooms and doctors and epidurals. Not to her. Not here. Not alone.

She shifted onto her hands and knees again, the position that opened everything, the position that had worked last time. She braced herself, dropped her head, arched her back, and she pushed. The sound that left her mouth was not human. It was a desperate, ragged roar, the kind of sound that comes from the oldest part of the brain, the part that remembers being prey, the part that knows it must birth or die.

The hand emerged further. She felt it curl against her flesh, those impossibly tiny fingers, and behind it, the head, the wide stretch of the skull, both of them forcing her open at once. The pain was a living thing. It had teeth. It had claws. It had been waiting for her her whole life.

She screamed until her vision went white. She screamed until the windows rattled and the fire flickered and the phone shook against the bricks. Outside, the wind howled back at her, matching her pitch, a duet of agony. Nathan was shouting something, she could not hear the words, only the tone, desperate and terrified and proud all at once.

The head and hand came together, a impossible shape, her flesh burning, stretching, tearing at the edges. She felt the hot trickle of blood down her thighs. She did not care. She pushed again, and again, and again, each push a war, each push a lifetime.

She felt the crown of the head stretch her wide. The burning was biblical. It was a ring of fire that had swallowed the entire world. She reached down and felt the wet cap of hair, and beside it, the tiny knuckles, and she knew there was no going back.

One more push. She gathered every scrap of strength left in her body, every ounce of will, every desperate prayer she had never believed in, and she bore down with a scream that cracked the night open. The head emerged. The hand came with it. And then the shoulders, slippery and sudden, and then a rush of small, warm weight into her hands.

A sharp cry. A furious, living cry.

Their son. A boy. Purple and perfect and screaming.

She laughed and wept at once, pulling him to her chest, grabbing a receiving blanket from the pile Nathan had left, wrapping him clumsily. She held him close, felt his tiny fingers curl, his mouth searching, his body shuddering with his first breaths. The relief was a drug. It flooded her veins, warm and sweet, and she slumped against the sofa, trembling, sobbing, laughing.

But something was wrong. Something was still inside her. She could feel it. A deep, foreign pressure, different from before. Not the soft slide of the placenta. Something harder. Something turned the wrong way.

"Nathan," she whispered. "Nathan, something's not right."

His face on the phone was pale, frozen, desperate. "What do you mean? What's happening?"

"There's another one."

The words hung in the air between them, across the howling storm, across the impossible distance of a few frozen feet and a fallen branch. He stared at her. She stared back.

"Another baby?" His voice cracked. "Charlotte, there's another baby inside you?"

Another contraction ripped through her, and she felt it then. The unmistakable shape of a bottom. A breech baby. Second twin, completely unexpected, completely upside down. The baby was coming butt first, folded at the hips, and there was no stopping it. Her body was already pushing again, already bearing down, already demanding.

She had no time to process. No time to be afraid. The contraction was a fist, and it was squeezing her from the inside out.

She laid the firstborn boy on a folded blanket, still crying, still healthy, still perfect. She tucked the blanket around him to keep him warm. And then she dropped to her hands and knees again, because she knew, some ancient part of her knew, that this was the only way to birth a breech baby.

The push came. The bottom emerged. Rounded, impossibly wide, stretching her in a way the head never had. The burning was not a ring of fire. It was a column of fire. It was a pillar of flame from her cervix to her throat. She screamed until her throat was raw, until the sound was nothing but gravel and air.

"Charlotte, what's happening? Tell me what you feel."

"It's breech," she gasped between screams. "It's coming bottom first. Nathan, it's coming and I can't stop it. It's so wide. It's so fucking wide."

She pushed again. The baby's bottom slid further, the tiny cheeks, the crease of the hips. She reached down and felt the small legs folded against the chest, the feet tucked up by the ears. Frank breech. The hardest kind.

She pushed and screamed and pushed and screamed. There was no rhythm to it now. There was only survival. The baby granted her no mercy. Slowly. Inch by torturous inch. The torso emerged, folded, then the shoulders, then the arms pinned against the chest. She reached down, felt the slippery back, the tiny folded legs. She had to keep pushing. There was no other choice.

The head was the worst. The head was a cruelty. It lodged behind her pubic bone, it stretched her beyond reason, it threatened to split her in two. She pushed through the fire, through the screams, through Nathan's desperate, frozen voice begging her to breathe, to pace herself, to wait for help. But there was no help coming. There was only her.

She changed positions. Side lying. She rolled onto her left side, pulled her right knee to her chest, and pushed with everything she had left. The head moved a fraction. Another push. Another scream. The head stretched her so wide she felt her flesh separate, felt the hot gush of blood, felt the tearing in slow motion.

One more push. She grabbed the leg of the sofa, dug her heels into the rug, and screamed a sound that shook the house. The head emerged. A second boy slipped into her hands, silent for one terrible heartbeat, his face pale, his body limp.

"No no no no no," she sobbed. "Please. Please breathe. Please."

She rubbed his back with shaking fingers. She wiped the fluid from his face. She held him against her chest and prayed to every god she had ever heard of.

He wailed. A thin, furious, beautiful cry.

She collapsed onto her side on the ruined rug, both boys pressed against her chest, her body shaking violently, blood and sweat pooling beneath her. The firstborn had stopped crying and was nursing, his tiny mouth latched onto her breast as if nothing extraordinary had happened. The secondborn was still screaming, his face scrunched, his fists flailing.

She held them both. She could not stop shaking. Her vision blurred in and out. The fire crackled. The wind still howled outside. And Nathan was still on the phone, still trapped in the cold, still crying.

"Are they okay? Charlotte, are they both okay?"

"They're here," she whispered. "They're both here. Two boys. Nathan, we have two sons."

She heard him sob. She heard the relief and the terror and the love all tangled together in that one broken sound. And then she heard something else. Banging. Shouting. The distant wail of sirens cutting through the storm.

The front door shuddered. Someone was hammering on it, throwing their shoulder against the wood. The frame splintered. The lock gave way. The door burst open, and a rush of freezing air swept into the room, carrying snowflakes and the smell of pine and the sudden, overwhelming presence of strangers in red coats.

Paramedics. Three of them. Their faces were shocked beneath their hoods, taking in the scene. The roaring fire. The bloodstained rug. The woman on the floor, naked and trembling, two newborns at her chest. The phone propped against the bricks with a man's frozen face still crying on the screen.

And behind them, stumbling, half frozen, ice in his hair, his lips blue, his coat crusted with snow, was Nathan. He had fought his way through the branch, through the drifts, through the blinding white. He had refused to wait for rescue. He had walked through a blizzard to get to her.

He fell to his knees beside her, his hands so cold they burned against her skin, and he pulled her into his arms, both babies pressed between them. He was shaking violently, sobbing into her hair, his entire body a knot of terror and relief. His lips were colorless. His fingers were numb. But he held her like he would never let go.

She laughed. A shaky, delirious, exhausted laugh. She shifted the boys against her chest, looked up at his wrecked, beautiful face, and said, "Surprise?"

The paramedics moved around them like a gentle storm of their own. One of them, a woman with kind eyes and steady hands, checked the babies. Two boys, both healthy, both breathing, both perfect. Another paramedic wrapped a heavy wool blanket over Nathan's shoulders and guided him to sit on the hearth. A third helped Charlotte onto the sofa, pillows behind her back, blankets over her legs, the babies warm against her skin.

Someone stoked the fire until it roared. Someone else called the hospital to say the emergency was over, that everyone was alive, that no one needed to brave the storm. The paramedics stayed for an hour, monitoring, cleaning, stitching the small tear that would heal into a scar she would one day touch with wonder.

Outside, the snow continued to fall. The wind continued to rage. The branch still blocked the path, buried now under a fresh layer of white. But inside that small, broken open house, there was warmth. There was heat from the hearth, heat from four bodies pressed together, heat from a love that had refused to freeze.

Nathan sat beside her on the sofa, his arm around her shoulders, his head bowed over the boys. He was still shivering, still pale, still processing. But he was there. He was home.

"Two," he said softly, looking at the tiny faces, the identical furrow of their brows, the identical curl of their fingers. "We planned for one."

Charlotte leaned her head against his shoulder, exhausted beyond measure, torn open and put back together, a mother of two boys she had not known existed an hour ago. "We should probably think of names," she said.

He laughed. It was a broken, wet, beautiful sound. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, we probably should."

༉‧₊˚✧Pairing : FireLord!Zuko x Fem!Raeder

༉‧₊˚✧ Summary: After having your first child with Zuko, you realized this is what he needed to finally heal. ༉‧₊˚✧ A/N: PURE FLUFF

You remembered Zuko during his first days upon the Fire Throne more clearly than anyone else ever could. Not the image the people eventually came to adore - the composed Fire Lord with sharp eyes and royal posture, draped in crimson and gold like he had been born for power.

You remembered the boy beneath the crown. Seventeen years old. Far too young for a throne built from generations of bloodshed and fear. He carried himself as though he belonged there, spine straight and chin lifted high, but you knew better. You saw the truth hidden underneath every carefully controlled expression. Zuko was terrified. Not merely of failure, nor of the war his family had left in ruins around him. He was afraid of himself.

Sometimes, late at night, when the palace corridors fell silent and the servants had long disappeared behind closed doors, you would catch him staring into the flames burning inside the royal braziers with an expression that almost resembled fear. As though he expected the fire itself to betray him if he lost control for even a second.

And perhaps that fear made sense.

He had been born from a love that was never meant to be gentle, crafted from two souls that should have never been bound together in the first place - a father who carved destruction into everything he touched, and a mother too isolated, too powerless against the monster surrounding her, to fully shield her son from the cruelty of the Fire Nation court. Ozai had burned his way through Zuko’s life long before the scar ever touched his face, and Ursa, despite loving him with everything she had, could only do so much while drowning in that palace herself.

The result of that broken union stood before the world as Fire Lord: scarred, exhausted, painfully human beneath all the royal armor. It showed in every part of him, in the stiffness of his shoulders whenever advisors questioned him too harshly, in the exhaustion beneath his eyes after another sleepless night, in the way his hands curled tightly into fists whenever anger rose too quickly in his chest, as though he feared what might happen if he loosened his grip for even a moment. Pain lived inside Zuko like a second heartbeat. So did trauma. So did anxiety. So did guilt that never truly belonged to him.

Even years later, even after becoming the kind of leader the nations learned to respect, there remained something unbearably heavy about the way he carried himself. As though the sins of generations rested across his shoulders simply because he happened to be born into the wrong bloodline. As though he spent every waking moment trying to prove he was not his father.

And perhaps the cruelest part was that Zuko never fully understood how extraordinary that alone made him.

Because despite everything done to him, despite the violence, the exile, the humiliation, the years spent desperately clawing for love from a man incapable of giving it, he still chose kindness. He still chose mercy. He still chose to become better. Every single day, Zuko fought a war inside himself that nobody else could see, and every single day, he won.

You knew Zuko far too well to ever mistake his silence for coldness. You had grown beside him through every version of his life - through the fear of becoming the next ruler of a nation stained by war, through stolen moments of happiness that never seemed to last long enough, through heartbreak, grief, healing, and every painful step in between. You had watched him survive the worst parts of himself and somehow still stand back up afterwards.

That was why you noticed the little things nobody else ever paid attention to. The way he clung to routines as though they were the only stable things in his life. The way every movement of his seemed carefully calculated, every decision thought through a hundred times before spoken aloud. Zuko hated unpredictability.

He hated losing control. After spending his childhood surrounded by chaos and fear, he had built patterns for himself so meticulously that stepping outside them almost seemed to unsettle him physically.

Because beneath everything - the title, the power, the fire running through his veins - Zuko was terrified of becoming a monster. The thought alone haunted him more than any enemy ever could. You saw it in the restraint he carried around others, in the guilt that crossed his face whenever anger slipped too sharply into his voice, in the way he would sometimes stare at his own hands after firebending too aggressively, as though he feared they belonged to his father more than to himself.

And yes, Zuko was Ozai’s son. There was no denying that.

You could see it in the intensity of his gaze, in the frightening strength behind his bending, in the authority he naturally carried without even trying. But the resemblance ended where it mattered most. Where Ozai ruled through fear, Zuko ruled through understanding. Where his father took, Zuko gave. He possessed the same fire, yet chose warmth over destruction every single time. That was the kind of man he became.

And as a man, Zuko was extraordinary in ways he never fully realized. Capable, intelligent, fiercely protective, the kind of person who carried the weight of entire nations on his shoulders without complaint. Sometimes he became too trapped inside his own thoughts, overanalyzing every mistake until it nearly consumed him, but even then, there was something painfully genuine about him. Something dependable. Safe. At the end of the day, beneath the scars and royal robes and impossible responsibilities, Zuko was simply a real man. And more than that, he became a real husband.

He refused to give you anything less than a true marriage. Not one built out of obligation or political convenience, but one founded on love, trust, and choice.

He waited until the timing was right - until the world around him had finally calmed enough for him to love you properly, without war breathing down his neck or duty constantly tearing him away. Yes, it took time before he finally allowed himself to court you openly, and there were moments when the waiting frustrated you more than you cared to admit. But looking back, you understood why. Zuko wanted to offer you stability before asking for your heart completely. He wanted to be certain he could give you the life you deserved instead of dragging you into the chaos he had spent most of his own life trapped inside.

And the wait turned out to be worth it in every possible way.

Because somehow, impossibly, Fire Lord Zuko became the kind of husband young girls dreamed about in romantic stories.

Not because he was perfect, but because every ounce of love he gave was real. He memorized the smallest things about you without even trying - the teas you liked after difficult days, the exact way you preferred your blankets folded at night, the expressions that meant you were upset even when you insisted you were fine. He kissed your forehead absentmindedly while passing through rooms, held your hand beneath crowded council tables, and looked at you with such quiet devotion that sometimes it still stole the breath from your lungs.

And because Zuko loved so deeply, and because you were hopelessly in love with your husband in return, it was almost inevitable that your love would eventually grow into something even greater. Maybe the pregnancy had not exactly been planned, but somehow, it still arrived at the perfect time. Life had finally softened around the two of you - not completely, never completely, but enough for peace to settle into the palace without feeling fragile. Enough for Zuko to sleep through most nights without waking from old ghosts. Enough for both of you to finally breathe instead of merely survive. And perhaps that was why it happened so naturally. It did not take long at all after your marriage truly began for love to bloom into something deeper. A few quiet nights tangled together as husband and wife, a few moments where the Fire Lord stopped carrying the world on his shoulders long enough to simply be yours, and suddenly the realization settled between you both like sunlight breaking through clouds.

You were going to have a child.

Before that moment, you and Zuko had spoken about children countless times, usually during the quieter hours of the night when the world outside your chambers no longer demanded pieces of him. You always smiled whenever the topic came up because, unlike him, you had never feared the idea of parenthood. Children had always melted your heart so easily. It was simply part of who you were. Every time you heard a toddler babbling nonsense through the palace gardens or saw tiny hands reaching excitedly toward their parents in crowded streets, your entire expression softened without realizing it. Zuko noticed it every single time. He would catch you smiling at children during festivals or stopping to wave at babies carried through the market, and there would always be this faint amusement in his eyes, like he already knew exactly what kind of mother you would become one day.

But him… him, it was more complicated.

There was always warmth in his expression whenever he looked at the children of the people closest to him. You saw it whenever he held Aang and Katara’s youngest in his arms, awkwardly allowing tiny fingers to tug at his sleeves while pretending not to know what he was doing. You saw it in the softness that overtook his face whenever little ones laughed around him, a gentleness so natural it almost seemed to erase the harshness life had carved into him. For brief moments, he looked peaceful.

And then the fear returned.

You could always spot the exact second it happened.

The subtle tension settling back into his shoulders. The distant look creeping into his eyes as though some painful thought had suddenly dragged him away from the present. It was sharp enough to ache every time you noticed it.

Because Zuko wanted children.

But he was terrified of becoming someone’s father.

It was not difficult to understand why. His own childhood had left scars far deeper than the one burned across his face. Ozai had turned fatherhood into something cruel in Zuko’s mind - something tied to fear, disappointment, and pain rather than safety or love. You knew there were moments when he genuinely questioned whether darkness simply lived inside his bloodline, waiting to be passed down like some terrible inheritance.

Once, during one of those late-night conversations, he admitted it quietly.

“What if I end up hurting them without meaning to?”

The vulnerability in his voice nearly shattered your heart.

Because that alone proved he never would.

Zuko feared becoming his father so deeply that he monitored every emotion inside himself like it was a weapon waiting to slip from his grasp. He was careful with his anger, careful with his words, careful with the way he carried himself around people he loved. Sometimes too careful. And perhaps he did not realize it then, but monsters never question whether they are monsters.

Ozai never lost sleep wondering if he was causing pain.

Zuko did.

Constantly.

That was the difference between them.

But despite all of Zuko’s fear, despite the hesitation that sometimes clouded his expression whenever the topic of children came up, you still felt it deep in your heart - he would be a good father. No, more than good. He would become the kind of father children felt safe running toward without fear. The kind that would kneel beside scraped knees and bedtime tears with more patience than he ever believed himself capable of.

You knew it because, beneath all the damage life had inflicted on him, Zuko carried an overwhelming amount of love inside himself. It simply took him longer than others to trust that love enough to let it breathe.

Before your child was born, you had always imagined yourself becoming the mother of a little boy someday. In your mind, he looked almost identical to you - your smile, your features, your softer expressions - but with Zuko’s stubbornness and quiet intensity woven somewhere into his personality. You imagined tiny hands gripping your robes through palace halls and messy dark hair sticking up after naps. That image had lived inside your head for years so naturally that you never thought to question it.

But the moment Zuko became part of your life, that fantasy slowly began slipping away without you even noticing.

Because realistically? Your genes never stood a chance against his.

Not against those sharp golden eyes capable of melting and terrifying people alike. Not against the dark hair that seemed painted from firelit shadows. Not against the sheer force of presence the royal bloodline carried even in childhood. Somewhere along the way, you simply accepted the inevitable truth: any child of Zuko’s would come into the world already carrying pieces of him too strongly to miss.

And then it finally happened.

After months of waiting, worrying, hoping, and countless sleepless nights, you brought your first child into the world.

A daughter.

The moment the midwives placed her into your arms, it felt as though the entire palace, the entire world, fell silent around you. She was impossibly tiny, wrapped carefully in soft blankets, her little face scrunched with sleepy confusion at being pulled into such a bright and unfamiliar world. Thick dark hair already dusted the top of her head, and when she finally blinked her eyes open, your breath caught entirely in your throat.

Amber.

Warm, glowing amber eyes identical to her father’s stared back at you.

You thought your heart might burst right then and there.

She was beautiful. Not because she carried royal blood, nor because she was destined to become a princess of the Fire Nation someday, but because she already felt like something precious enough to heal broken parts of the world just by existing.

And when you looked toward Zuko, you realized he was staring at her as though he could not believe she was real.

Your husband - the man who once feared himself so deeply, the man who spent years convinced he carried too much darkness inside him - looked utterly defenseless in that moment. All the strength he wore like armor throughout his life seemed to crumble the second his daughter wrapped her tiny hand around his finger.

You would remember that expression forever.

Wonder. Fear. Love so overwhelming it almost looked painful.

Your daughter became the greatest gift either of you had ever received.

Perhaps especially for Zuko.

Because despite all the horrors he had endured, despite the scars his father left carved into his soul, life had still placed something so soft and pure into his hands and trusted him not to break it.

Your little firecracker quickly became the center of both your worlds, filling the once quiet palace chambers with warmth that had been missing for years.

Laughter echoed through hallways once known only for heavy silence and royal tension, tiny babbles replacing the distant sound of political discussions and endless responsibilities. It was almost unbelievable sometimes, how one impossibly small child could breathe so much life into a place that had spent generations drowning in fear.

And she looked so painfully like her father that it almost made you laugh.

Even at such a young age, before she could properly walk or speak without stumbling over her own words, Zuko’s features were already stamped all over her. Thick dark hair that stuck messily around her face after naps, sharp amber eyes glowing with curiosity, expressions far too dramatic for someone who barely reached your knees. Her cheeks were so chubby that they nearly swallowed her eyes whenever she smiled, revealing tiny little teeth through drooling giggles that instantly melted everyone around her. Yet somehow, despite how adorable she was, there was already something strong about her presence - something unmistakably royal, unmistakably Zuko.

Sometimes you would catch servants staring at her with amused expressions because it truly felt like someone had simply shrunk the Fire Lord down into toddler form.

But beneath all the laughter and chaos she brought into your lives, there was something deeper happening too.

Something quieter.

Your daughter healed wounds she did not even know existed. Wounds her father had carried for so long that he no longer remembered what it felt like to live without them.

Because becoming a father changed Zuko more than anyone realized.

He had not expected it to happen so soon. Truthfully, he barely felt old enough to process being Fire Lord half the time, let alone someone’s father. But what truly shook him was not simply parenthood itself.

It was the fact that he had a daughter.

A daughter.

A tiny, fragile little girl carrying his bloodline forward.

The realization alone seemed to haunt him during those first months.

You noticed it constantly in the way he watched her. Sometimes you would wake in the middle of the night only to find him sitting beside her cradle in complete silence, staring at her with an expression so conflicted it nearly hurt to look at.

She seemed impossibly delicate in his eyes. Too soft. Too vulnerable for a world he knew could be cruel.

He could barely comprehend how small she truly was.

Her skinny little arms would wiggle wildly in the air while she crawled determinedly across the palace floors, stubbornness radiating from every movement in a way that was very clearly inherited from you. And Zuko would simply stare at her, almost disbelieving, as though he could not understand how someone so tiny could already possess such fierce determination.

“She’s impossible,” he muttered once while watching her stubbornly attempt to climb over cushions twice her size.

But the fondness in his voice betrayed him completely.

She was so small, her head barely measured the size of his two fists put together. Sometimes when he picked her up, his hands looked absurdly large supporting her little body, making him freeze every single time as though one wrong movement might somehow hurt her. You knew part of him was constantly terrified of his own strength around her.

And perhaps that fear deepened because she reminded him too much of another little girl he once knew.

Azula.

More than once, you caught his gaze lingering on your daughter with distant thoughts clouding his expression. Later, quietly, he admitted it to you. He remembered Azula at that age too - louder, taller, round-faced and sharp-eyed even as a child. He remembered the palace swallowing both of them whole long before either truly understood what was happening.

Perhaps that was why he watched your daughter so carefully.

Not because he feared her.

But because he feared the world around her.

Because despite all the joy your daughter brought into his life, Zuko struggled far more with fatherhood than he ever allowed others to see. Becoming Fire Lord had already forced him to grow up too quickly, but becoming someone’s father at such a young age felt entirely different. He had barely learned how to carry the weight of a nation without breaking beneath it, and suddenly he was entrusted with something infinitely more fragile than politics or war.

A daughter.

The reality of it seemed to shake him to his core.

Not because he was disappointed, never that, but because the thought of his bloodline continuing through such a small, delicate little girl awakened fears inside him he did not know how to silence.

A girl. Someone soft enough to be hurt by the world far too easily. Someone who trusted him completely from the moment she opened her amber eyes.

There was always hesitation in him during those first months. Hesitation before picking her up from her cradle, as though his hands were too rough for someone so delicate. Hesitation while helping her stand on shaky legs. Hesitation even while holding her tiny hand because he feared squeezing too tightly without realizing.

Your daughter was as delicate as a flower in his eyes.

And Zuko, after spending most of his life surrounded by destruction, did not know how to trust himself with something so soft.

“What am I supposed to do with you, my little firecracker?” he sighed one evening while sitting beside the bed, watching her happily tangle herself in expensive silk sheets without a single care in the world.

She barely acknowledged him, too busy babbling nonsense to herself while kicking her tiny feet excitedly against the mattress.

And despite all his fear, despite the anxiety constantly living inside him, you could still see it happening slowly.

Zuko was already hopelessly, completely in love with his daughter.

No matter how much Zuko tried to keep that careful distance at first, your daughter had completely different plans.

Maybe you were the one who carried her for nine months, the one spending most of the day feeding her, bathing her, soothing her back to sleep after nightmares, but in her tiny little mind, none of that mattered nearly as much as her father did.

From the moment she learned how to properly reach for people, she reached for him first. Tiny hands constantly grabbing at his robes whenever he passed by, little babbles filling the room the second he entered it, amber eyes instantly lighting up with excitement at the mere sight of him.

She was hopelessly attached to Zuko.

And unfortunately for the two of you, she was also painfully possessive about it.

Every attempt he made at peacefully loving his wife somehow ended with a tiny interruption. The moment he sat beside you, she suddenly needed him. The second he wrapped his arms around you, she came waddling over with offended little noises, demanding to be picked up immediately.

Half the time, she would physically shove herself between the two of you with all the determination her tiny body could muster, glaring up at you as though you were the intruder stealing her father away.

And Zuko, traitor that he was, always laughed before giving in.

“How could I possibly ignore the princess of the palace?” he would murmur dramatically while scooping her into his arms, despite the way you rolled your eyes at him afterward.

Truthfully, though, he never stood a chance against her.

He belonged entirely to that little girl from the very beginning.

Watching them together side by side was almost unsettling sometimes because of how deeply they resembled one another. Not only physically, though even that was undeniable - the same amber eyes, the same dark hair, the same expressive face incapable of hiding emotions properly - but in countless smaller ways you never expected. The similarities revealed themselves slowly over time, catching you off guard in the strangest moments.

The way she slept sprawled across the bed exactly like him, limbs everywhere as though she had personally fought the blankets and lost. The way she furrowed her brows while concentrating on something simple. Even the way she walked somehow mirrored Zuko despite her tiny unsteady legs still wobbling beneath her with every rushed step. Sometimes she would stomp around the palace with the exact same dramatic determination her father carried during council meetings, and it took everything in you not to burst into laughter whenever you noticed.

You found yourself watching them often.

Quietly.

From afar.

Sometimes from the doorway of your chambers while Zuko sat cross-legged on the floor letting your daughter climb all over him like a tiny firebending menace. Other times from the palace gardens where she ran circles around him while he pretended not to notice her attempts at sneaking away.

And slowly, over time, you realized something beautiful was happening.

Zuko was healing alongside her.

As your daughter grew older - becoming louder, faster, more mischievous with every passing month - something inside him softened completely.

The constant tension living in his shoulders began disappearing little by little. He stopped overthinking every movement around her. Stopped analyzing himself so harshly every second of the day. Around your daughter, Zuko finally allowed himself to exist without fear constantly breathing down his neck.

He learned how to simply be.

To be a father. A husband. A man.

Not a Fire Lord burdened by expectations or haunted by his bloodline. Just… Zuko.

And for the first time since you had known him, he looked free.

You truly noticed it around the time your daughter turned one and a half. By then, she had become a whirlwind of energy incapable of sitting still for more than a few seconds. Tiny feet carried her everywhere at alarming speed while her endless curiosity constantly pushed her toward new disasters waiting to happen.

That afternoon, she had apparently decided the palace gardens were hers to conquer.

You stood nearby trying not to laugh as Zuko followed after her across the stone paths, large hurried strides struggling to keep up with the way she changed directions without warning every few seconds. One moment she was running toward the koi pond, the next she was distracted by flowers, and then suddenly sprinting toward a servant carrying fruit simply because she found the basket interesting.

And behind her came the Fire Lord himself.

Tall and radiant beneath the sunlight, crimson robes fluttering around his legs while loose dark strands of hair danced through the warm breeze. He looked almost godlike like that - powerful and untouchable beneath the golden afternoon glow.

Yet the expression on his face was anything but intimidating.

The anxious frown that used to follow him everywhere had disappeared completely, replaced instead by a teasing smile that looked so natural on him now it almost hurt your chest to witness it.

“My little firecracker,” he called after her with mock exasperation, laughter already slipping into his voice, “come back here before you destroy something important.”

“My firecracker, get back to your father!”

He always called her that - my little firecracker. You did not know exactly when the nickname appeared or why it stayed, but somehow it fit her too perfectly to question it.

Perhaps it was the way she burned through every room with unstoppable energy, or maybe it was because she carried so much of him inside such a tiny body.

At the sound of his voice, your daughter looked back over her shoulder with wide amber eyes sparkling mischievously, and instead of obeying him, her tiny legs moved even faster. The sight alone nearly made you laugh. She could barely run properly yet, her steps uneven and clumsy, but she acted as though escaping the Fire Lord himself was the greatest challenge ever placed before her.

Zuko let out an exaggerated sigh before immediately giving chase again.

“Oh no you don’t-....”

It happened so quickly you almost missed it. One second your daughter was squealing triumphantly while stumbling across the stone paths, and the next Zuko had effortlessly swept her into his arms with a victorious grin spreading across his face.

“Gotcha!” he laughed, lifting her high enough for her delighted squeals to echo through the gardens. “And where exactly did you think you were going, huh?”

Your daughter answered him with incoherent babbling and breathless giggles, tiny hands immediately grabbing at his face while he pressed his cheek dramatically against hers. They looked almost identical like that - matching dark hair tangled by the wind, matching amber eyes glowing beneath the sunlight, matching smiles so full of life it hurt your chest.

“You’re in serious trouble now, missy,” Zuko continued with mock severity while she laughed harder at absolutely nothing. “Your mother is waaay too far away to save you this time.”

At the mention of you, your daughter immediately twisted in his arms searching for where you stood nearby, little hands already reaching in your direction despite the fact she had spent the last ten minutes actively running away from him.

Traitor.

And then Zuko looked up too.

The moment his eyes met yours, something inside your chest softened so deeply it almost ached.

Because suddenly the image before you became one you knew you would carry for the rest of your life.

Your husband standing beneath the warm glow of the afternoon sun, robes fluttering gently around him, your daughter held securely against his chest while both of them looked at you with the exact same eyes. The two people you loved most in the entire world staring back at you with identical warmth painted across their faces.

One your heart. The other your soul.

And somehow, they carried the same beauty so unmistakably that it felt impossible not to see how deeply they belonged to one another.

“Well, well,” you teased softly while walking toward them, unable to stop smiling, “look who finally got caught.”

Zuko narrowed his eyes playfully while adjusting your daughter higher in his arms as though protecting his prize.

“I caught a very dangerous criminal, actually.”

Your daughter squealed proudly at that, clearly taking it as a compliment.

“Perhaps I should step in and save her?” you asked, stopping in front of them.

At your approach, both their faces lit up at the exact same time.

The same smile. The same eyes. The same overwhelming love.

And in that moment, watching the two of them standing there together while laughter filled the gardens around you, you realized something simple yet devastatingly beautiful.

That was what home felt like. ----------------------------------------

CRYING, SOBBING, AND THROWING UP IN FATHERLESS

𑣲⋆ pairing: zuko x fem! reader ✮⋆˙ summary: raising a child was harder than you thought it would be, but lucky for you, zuko is an understanding husband 𖹭.ᐟ warning(s): a bit of angst near the end but theres comfort by urs truly, fluff time

12 hours.

you haven't been asleep for 12 hours.

your duty as the fire lady is hectic by itself, but to balance it as a mother now has got you heavily sleep deprived.

izumi lay asleep in your arms after countless attempts to put her to sleep, and you stood to place her back in her crib.

Fire Lord Zuko x Pregnant!Reader

Content warning: mdni!, suggestive themes, full term pregnancy, back labor, amniotic fluid, contractions, childbirth (explicitly described-waterbirth), precipitous birth, zuko catches the baby

a.n: A Mother’s Day special. Hi guys Atla has temporarily revived me, how have you guys been? Lol, I’ve been working on this for a while and I was nervous to post it honestly. The ending is a tad rushed I was legit fatigued at that point. Anywho…

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there 💖 w.c: 5k

— —

He’s been more clingy now that you could have the baby any day now. He doesn’t want to leave your side, and that means if he has to go somewhere, you have to go too. 

"That's it, love. Keep going!"

My legs tremble as I shift my position on the bed, continuing my pattern of breathing with small little grunts. I rest on my hands and knees with my back arched and my ass in the air, rocking my hips back and forth as I try to use the momentum to shove the oversized head of my overdue child down past the burning pressure that's engulfed my cervix.

As that circle of muscle tissue spasms at the height of my birth canal, eager and ready to do it's work, I find that everything else responds in much the same way. My belly contracts, sucking inward against my womb, and I groan as I open my hips even wider, bent almost completely in half as I grit my teeth and follow the 'chin to your chest' rule with my next push. My knuckles are turning white with force from the strength I'm using to both push and to hold myself up, but the action of bearing down breaks my water, spraying a gush of fluid down my legs.

"C-Can you see her?" I ask my partner in a strained, cracked voice. There's no hiding my pain or exhaustion anymore. Hours of labor and nearly 90 minutes pushing has taken it's toll. "Is she coming?"

The sac had been the main obstacle holding the head back and now that it's gone, I feel that I finally know what the true "urge" to push really feels like. The tight cramping of my belly has completely changed, and I moan low and deep as the head grinds down through the neck of my womb and passes through the last lip of cervix to settle behind my furrowed labia.

"Hang on, baby," they tell me, pressing a kiss to my sweaty cheek. Placing their hands on my thighs, they carefully and gently pull my legs apart, exposing my bulging cunt to the cool air. "You're really starting to open!"

I find the excitement in their voice endearing, but 'starting to open' was not what I was hoping to hear. I reach around my belly to stroke my fingertips through my puffy, protruding labia, trying to gauge a sense of how far back the head is. From what I can tell? A few more pushes should bring it to a crown. It couldn't be more than just a knuckle's width behind my furrowed pussy lips. "Mmmm..."

"That's it, love." My partner settles behind me (real, my brain screams on repeat, its real and its happening and its happening now) and puts their hand over mine for counter pressure. "God, she's come so far down. Look at what you've done."

I grunt. "H-Havent done anything yet." A familiar tug starts to build in my overtaxed womb, and I let out a cry of frustration as I bear down with the pain. "Ohhhh, I need her OUT." I'm pushing with my entire strength now, and my body trembles with exhaustion. I'm desperate to squeeze my thighs together to dull the sting that comes with the spreading of my labia, and I lean into my partner's hands supporting me as I try to roar the head out. "She's coming!"

"I know, baby, I know." Their voice is thick with emotion. "I can feel her. I can see her head when you push." I shriek deliriously with pain, but they silence me with a firm "shh" as their fingers slide across my vulva. The use the pads of their fingertips to ghost along my labia and my clit, rubbing in a gentle circular motion until I'm panting softly, my breathing far steadier and much more calm. "That's it. Thats perfect. You're doing so well."

I'm able to push in a more controlled manner with the next contraction, but I still cant help the high pitch whine that slips out as the baby comes to a full crown and actually stays. The lips of my cunt are stretched as far as they'll go, and the stinging pain brings tears to my eyes. "Mmm, it burns," I sob. "I can't do this!"

"You are doing this," my partner tells me, their voice steady and firm. "You're doing so good, sweetheart. Better than I could ask for." They chuckle wetly and lean over my rocking hips to press a kiss to the back of my neck. "I have my hand right here, okay? You're going to give me a push, and her head will be out. You can do this, baby. Tell me you can do this."

Sucking in a deep breath, I force myself to nod. "I-I can do this."

"Again."

"I can do this." My eyes fall closed as I focus on those words, repeating them over and over to myself as I feel my next contraction building. My voice gets increasingly higher in pitch as the pain climbs, and my partner whispers quiet affirmations as we wait. "I can do this- ahhhhhhhohmygodfuck!"

"That's it!" they exclaim. "Oh, baby. You're so, so good."