My Home, My Family, My Duty, My Doom (Spy X Family) (MATURE!!)

Epilogue

Loid Forger did not remember much about the birth of his son - because he fainted about halfway through it. The nurse who rushed to his side to catch him before he hit his head on a metal contraption had murmured an exasperated "duh, men" under her breath. Loid was about to vehemently defend his sex and himself - he of all people! Squeamish? - but all the light was snuffed out around him before he could prove his point to her - and when he woke up prostrate on a plastic bench in the hospital corridor, what should have been a momentous experience for any father-to-be was already over without him experiencing anything apart from deep humiliation.

"Papa," Anya, who was sitting next to him studying a Spy Wars comic book, looked up when he stirred, "that wasn't elegant."

It really wasn't. But seeing Yor in such pain, hearing her groan and curse and cry, seeing her bleed like that... Oh god. He felt sick to his stomach.

"Anya's brother is very ugly," Anya declared, "he looks like an egg. But it's okay, Anya will protect him against bullies."

Loid sprang up abruptly. His son was here! His son!

"Careful, Papa," Anya murmured when he staggered and had to support himself with a hand against the wall.

He was still feeling faint. Or maybe he felt faint again. He was, it was no use denying it, completely overwhelmed by how monumental this day was.

"Where...," he stammered, fighting a lump in his throat. So many things went wrong during childbirth. So many women died.

"Ah, Dr. Forger," the nurse came out of a room across from where he stood with wobbly knees, "you are finally awake."

"Are they..."

"Everything went really well," the nurse smiled at him with benevolent condescension, "your wife is an exceptionally brave woman. Both mother and child are doing great."

Loid took a deep breath. They are doing great. They are doing great... without me. His biggest fear was to be a useless father, like his father had been. A father who wasn't there for his family when they needed him most. A father who hid in a cave in the mountains while his pregnant wife and their innocent daughter struggled by themselves in a new environment. A father who fainted when his wife bore the pain of giving birth to his son. I'm so sorry, Yor. I'm so sorry.

"You can go in to see them," the nurse lifted her stern eyebrows. "They are waiting for you."

Loid unfroze his limbs and swallowed down his crippling anxiety. He was a world class spy, trained to solve each and every situation in his favor. Everything was going to be fine, right? He just needed to venture forward into the unknown, step by step. This was the beginning, not the end. His little family - they were all here in the West with him. They were safe, they were happy. The world around them had entered an era of peace - true peace that would grow stronger every day on the soil of hope.

"Right," his voice sounded brittle, mechanic. "Thank you. Anya, want to come in with me?"

"Yes," Anya jumped down from the bench. "The baby smells really good! Wanna bet Bond will love to lick his egg head?"

Fortifying himself with another deep breath, Loid pushed the door open ... and stopped dead. There they were. Illuminated by a ray of sunshine sneaking through drawn blinds, Yor sat in the bed with her hair open, holding a tiny bundle in her arms. Loid could only stare. She looked pale, yet so pure and radiant. The sight of her beauty hit him like an arrow to his heart.

Someone like him didn't deserve this.

It was a fact, not a fancy. Yor didn't even know his real name. He continued to live a convenient lie as Dr. Forger who had needed to leave Berlint because of a dangerous, murderous patient. His long absence? A ruse so that the patient would believe him dead and could be locked away again.