He’s very slow to wake up at first. His head is foggy and his mouth feels like cotton. He still feels so very tired, like he’s been sleeping a long time and even though he knows he needs to get up, his eyes feel really heavy. He manages to stay awake long enough for his mother, who transferred specifically to that hospital to look over him, to give him the quickest of check overs and run throughs, before he falls back asleep. 

When he wakes up a second time, he’s not as foggy. He’s aware of being sore, but comfortably so. Pain medication worked wonders. Over that though, he comes to a different realization as he blinks awake.

Biggs was drawn downstairs by the commotion. Excited children chatter didn’t happen often nowadays. Not since the plate fell a couple weeks prior anyways so he was curious to see what was going on.  

Resting against the doorway, he leaned out to get a look, catching the familiar sight of one Barret running past the orphanage with a...cat? lion? Animal thing hot at his heels and Tifa following along. No doubt to see Marlene at the flower girls place. He wanted to call out, to get their attention but Barret deserved to his daughter. 

Plus his attention was drawn away from them when the kids were greeted by the pretty flower girl and behind her, Cloud. 

 He heard after he’d woken up that the others were okay. That they’d been by the house up the way. Heard it from Marlene herself when he saw her. He heard Wedge had been up there too but hadn’t yet seen him nor Jesse in the time he’d spent recovering yet. His plan had been to go find them. Follow their trail and figure out what was going on but no one there would let him leave the sector in the condition he was in. One arm gone. Side healing. Injured leg, head and shoulder. He could understand the other teachers need to keep him in one place for now. 

It was almost overwhelming to see the blond there in person and the older man stumbled out of the orphanage a little towards them, completely forgetting that as far as Cloud and the others knew, he’d died up on that pillar.

He’s sitting up in his hospital bed, scrolling through everything he could on his phone. It was....a lot to take in and reading it just made him even more tired. He would deal with all that later....

 Tossing his phone onto the bed, he sat back, looking over when the door to his room is knocked on, a familiar head peeking in. 

The babies were healthy, impossible but healthy, and definitely inside of her. After a day of disbelief and denial, the heartbeats that went wherever she went were a constant reminder that the impossible had somehow happened. Caroline was a pregnant vampire, a magical surrogate for babies that weren’t even hers. She would never children, at least none of her own, the vampirism that had been forced upon her had taken away any chance of that. The loss of her dream of a family of her own was something she had come to terms with when she had come to terms with being a vampire. At least she thought that she had, but the ache in her heart as she listened to the heartbeats was proving otherwise.

The music was blaring and everyone in the room were dancing, laughing and having fun. Well almost everyone, Stefan and Caroline were perched at a table, eyes trained on Nora and Mary Louise as they continued their babysitting duties. The girls were alternating between slow dancing together and Mary Louise standing awkwardly as Nora excitedly danced about to the party songs. Things were going well for the moment, the heretic couple too caught up in themselves to be paying any attention to the time. Tension lingered around the pair, especially during the up beat songs, but they had each others attention for now and that was good news for the rest of the party-goers.

Caroline couldn’t help but sigh, her head bobbing about to the music as they kept an eye on the girls. She wanted to be out there dancing with Stefan, to wrap her arm around him and cuddle against him as they swayed to the music. Unfortunately even the briefest brush of contact with her skin would scorch Stefan and her angel costume wasn’t exactly modest. The low cut top of the short dress made for quite a deliciously dangerous display of skin. Normally the wings of any costume choice with such a feature were the most annoying thing when trying to dance but for once they were the least of her worries.

Her nails rapped against the table, her gaze shifting back to her boyfriend who was sitting close and yet so far away. This wasn’t a date, first dates were supposed to be special and wild college parties spent babysitting murderous heretics was just not special. But just because this wasn’t a date and they were on babysitting duty didn’t mean she wanted to just sit and do nothing. She wanted to dance and as her eyes trailed over Stefan, her mind wandered trying to think of a way for them to dance without her hurting him.