((OOC: Fanfiction challenge 001))
001. beginnings
It wasn't supposed to start out this way. All those months spent visualizing, imagining, discussing hadn't prepared him for what he was facing. The beginnings of a family were supposed to be happy, slightly messy, and full of new and unexpected changes. Things now were new, messy, and unexpected, but not happy in the least.
"It's going to be a boy," she said to him, her tone completely assured. "It has to be; he simply won't sit still. And he likes to kick in the same spot all the time."
"He might just be excited."
The memory of her placing a hand over her stomach was still vivid in his memory. "Excited that he has such a famous father?"
He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "I'm sure it's because you are going to be his mother." The thought of having a son to inherit his position was a secret, deeply-buried desire of his, but just having a healthy child would make him happy enough.
"That's why I'm excited," she had responded, unable to hide a smile.
They never discussed names, since they assumed it would be a boy, and he would take his father's name. Despite how certain she had been about the gender, they still couldn't commit themselves to purchasing blue baby clothes. "If he has your hair," she had mentioned, "blue would clash horribly." Of course, clashing colors never seemed to be much of a concern of hers. In the end it came down to yellow or orange, since both could go either way. "Orange is better," she assured him. "It's more of color for a boy. He'll love it."
But something had gone wrong. Fevers were a common thing for her, and being so frail and small, she often took several days to recover. The fever had come on so quickly without warning, and at first he had not been too alarmed. It would pass like the others, just as it had done in the past when they first met, while he courted her, and shortly after they were wed.
The doctor had said she still had a month to go before it was time.
Yet the month hadn't arrived yet, and suddenly the fever arrived, and then she was gone, and it had been a girl after all, not a boy, and she had no mother or name. So he named her after her mother.
((Nuu, I wanted to write something happy for my first piece! D: Ah, well. It seemed to fit...I think? Too tired to think right now. >< Pfft.))