Chrissy walked through the front door of her house. Ryn and Jasper were entangled on the couch watching a movie.
"Hey." She said, exhausted.
"Hey," Ryn called back, sitting up. "We got him to eat something for breakfast, and something small for lunch. He's just been sleeping."
She took a breath. "Thanks again."
"It's no problem." Jasper replied.
"We can stay and make dinner if you like." Ryn suggested.
Chrissy just shook her head. "No, it's fine. I just wanna join him in bed. Jasper, you have the spare key, right?" She asked.
"Yes, ma'am." He replied.
"You can finish your movie. Just lock up when you leave." She offered.
Chrissy went upstairs and into their bedroom, tossing her bag, her pants, and her bra on the floor. She crawled into bed next to Tristan. He turned and wrapped an arm around her. "Hi." He murmured. "I missed you."
"I'm sorry I had to leave." She told him. "Her name is Bronte Allison."
"Where'd they get Bronte from?"
She shook her head. "I have no idea."
"Allison was your mother's name, right?" He asked.
She played with a piece of his hair. "Yeah."
"Hm." He snuggled her closer.
"She's got her mom's hair." She told him.
He chuckled to himself and smiled. "Redheads are fun."
She flicked him on the forehead. He chuckled again. After a minute of lying there, Chrissy sighed deeply. "I took a pregnancy test."
"It was positive?" He confirmed.
She leaned over, picked up her purse and dug through it. She handed Tristan the test.
They were silent for a while. Tristan stared at the positive result.
"I'd understand if you didn't want to keep it." He finally said. "You're only nineteen. You should be having fun, going to college, going to parties. No one so young needs so much responsibility."
She'd thought a lot about this on the car ride over. "Well, then I guess it's good thing I'll be young forever. What's twenty years when you have a thousand?" She murmured. "Plus, Alex and Ryland already figured it out. If... I did, and they found out, they'd have a heart attack on the spot."
"I couldn't do it at nineteen." He said. "I didn't have any sort of emotional maturity."
"Ah, well... I had to be an adult by the time I was seven." Chrissy commented, still playing with his hair.
He frowned.
"Nothing we can do about it now." She told him. Chris changed the topic of conversation. "How are you feeling?"
He shook his head. "I'm not recovering like I should be. I still can barely walk without help."
"Maybe we should call up the doc." She said, then had to bring up the immediate fear that popped into her head. "Can someone take your immortality?"
He shook his head. "No." Tristan took a breath. "I would be dead if so."
She had to ask. "Tris... what did he do to you?"
He flinched, shook his head. "I don't want you to know."
That really stung for some reason.
"I wish I didn't." He mumbled.
She stroked the side of his face. "You can't bury that shit. Believe me."
"Can't I just push it down until one day I implode on myself?" He tried to joke. Though Chrissy wasn't laughing.
After a moment, mustered enough courage to tell her something. "He, uh... hooked me up to some kind of generator. It felt like everything in my body was being torn apart and smashed back together." He took a breath but his voice cracked anyway. "I just saw... flashes. Pitch black and bright white. The sound is nothing you can even articulate." He took another breath. "And when he decided on that, I was grateful."
It would take years for Christine to know everything he went through, all the psychological and physical torture. And some days she wished she hadn't known at all.
*
They woke up later that evening to a knock at the front door.
"I got it," Chrissy groaned, touching Tristan's arm as she left the bed.
"Put on pants." He muttered.
"No."
He sighed and turned over in the bed. Chrissy ran downstairs to unlock and open the door. She suddenly wished she had been wearing pants. It was Tristan's mom, of course.
"Hi, Elizabeth." She said, raking a hand through her hair and parting it on the opposite side. Liz looked rough.
"Hi, Chrissy. Uhm, I heard that Sloane and Micah had the baby. Congratulate them for me?"
She nodded. "Yeah, of course. Her name is Bronte."
They stood in an awkward silence for a moment. "Can I see him?" She asked.
She shook away her shock and sleep. "Absolutely, uh, come in." Chris opened the door to let her in. It occurred to Christine to let Liz up the stairs first so she wouldn't have her mother-in-law staring at her ass.
Chrissy walked into their room and sat by Tristan, running her hand through his hair to wake him up. "Tris," she murmured, "your mom is here."
He roused, sat up with some effort required. "Told you to put on pants." He grumbles.
Chris rolled her eyes at him and grabbed a pair of sweatpants off the floor and put them on. "Anybody want coffee? Or tea?" She asked, wanting to give them a little space.
"I'll take a coffee, I'd you don't mind." Liz asked.
"I could go for a coffee." Tristan told her.
"I'll make a pot." She said. She walked downstairs and stopped halfway, as it occurred to her she shouldn't drink caffeine. Her next thought was, naturally, that she could use some nicotine to stay awake for a while.
Nope.
"Fuck." She muttered to herself, continuing down the stairs.
She sighed, looking at the coffee maker and started preparing coffee for them. As she watched the coffee trickle into the pot, all she could do was stare at it. Stare at it... And cry.
She folded her arms on the counter, buried her face in them and just started... sobbing.
Chris didn't have a particular reason for crying, she just couldn't hold it together anymore. She wanted to stand there and cry for years. Maybe the pain would slowly leak out of her tear ducts.
Her husband was traumatized, she was traumatized, she saved her people, she was pregnant, she'd killed a man, she was so confused, and the list just kept going.
Chrissy finally ended up catatonic on the floor, squeezing her knees to her chest.
*
It'd been a while since Christine had gone to make them coffee. A lull had come in Liz's and Tristan's conversation.
"I'm going to check on Chrissy." Liz told him.
"Here, I wanna come with." Tristan offered, straining to get out of the bed.
She gave him a warning look, pushing him back into bed. "I know, you're antsy. You can take a day to rest. I don't think I've known you to ever take a day off, even as a kid. Take this one." Liz left the room, knowing he couldn't leave without help.
She walked downstairs, not immediately spotting Chrissy. Liz walked around the counter.
"Oh, great goddess above." Liz pulled Chrissy off the floor, holding her head in the junction of her shoulder. When Christine finally wrapped her arms around Elizabeth, she rubbed her back in a soothing manner.
"I know." Elizabeth murmured, settling her cheek into Chris' hair. "You've been through so much."
Chrissy gave up. She started sobbing like a child, wailing and sniveling. She held on tightly to Elizabeth's sweater, fisting it in her hands.
"Oh, darling. I can't even imagine." She ran her fingers through Chrissy's hair.
"I'm- I'm fucking pregnant," she said into her shoulder, "and-and I don't know what to do... I'm so goddamn tired. I-I never had-had a mom."
"I'll be here."
*
They'd had her coronation early on in her pregnancy. She taught Tristan how to dance, and adored casually wearing her crown. She'd also demanded a traditional wedding from him, so they did that too. Chrissy invited her college friends, who were happy to meet her mystery man.
Liz helped out a lot, and Chrissy began calling her mom.
Ill brains, the lot of them.
She had to take care of Tristan well into her pregnancy. It was rough. Near the end, he had started to be able to take care of her. She didn't tolerate being taken care of very well, but he didn't either.
"Tris, get your ass down here!"
Tristan ran downstairs, just woken up. His hair had finally begun to grow back. It got closer to his shoulders every day. Right now it had been tied up and slept in.
Chrissy was standing almost naked in the living room. Just Tristan's boxers and a baby on each hip.
Luke was happily gnawing on his fingers and drooling on his mom, and Amos was sleeping on one of her breasts. He woke up to grin as he saw his daddy.
"Good morning." He muttered.
"Take them."
He blinked a couple of times. "Can I make coffee first?"
Her expression told him everything he needed to know. Christine couldn't touch a drop of caffeine, and she made him well aware of that. "Take. Them."
He scooped up Luke first, then Amos.
"I've been up since midnight. When the hell is mom coming back?"
He looked a little concerned. "You could've woken me up."
Her face said that she hadn't even thought about it. Three months in and she still had trouble asking people for help with her babies.
"Mom is coming back tomorrow." He reminded her.
He found that, surprisingly enough, Chrissy trusted Elizabeth. She'd even started calling her mom. He wasn't upset that Chrissy found it hard to ask him for help. She had to take care of him for months, well into her pregnancy. After some research they discovered Tristan's immortality was... Cracked, in a manner of speaking. He still wasn't a hundred percent, but both could be fixed with time.
"You can always ask double As to help. Even Ryn and Jas. They love these guys.
She sighed. "I know, I know. I'm working on it in therapy."
They'd decided that was a good idea for both of them, after pleading and begging by Elizabeth.
Christine came forward and rested her head on his chest. Hands full of baby, he pressed his lips to her hair.
"My boobs hurt." She told him.
"Do you want me to get you an ice pack?"
"Yes." She said miserably.
"Do you want breakfast?" He asked.
"Yes." She said, even more miserably.
He kissed her head. "Okay. I'll go get these two settled. Go lie down."
Chrissy made it to the couch. Tristan got the boys settled in their rockers, and put them in eye-line while he made her breakfast.
When he finally came around to serving breakfast for the adults, Chris was sitting on the floor cooing at her grinning, kicking babies. As exhausted as she was, she'd never loved anything more. She glanced at her husband. Well...
"I made these." She said in wonderment, watching Amos curl his chubby little fingers around one of hers. Tristan sat on the floor next to her. "These tiny fingernails? I made those." She whispered.
"Innit that somethin'?" Tristan drawled.
Chrissy elbowed him.
"I know." He sighed. "I'm astounded too. Strange little creatures. Just think about when they're twenty years old - now that will be really weird."
"I'm starting to see why you have fourteen siblings." Chrissy commented. "I mean, you've got me fucked up if you think you're knocking me up that many times, but I can see how."
Tristan's eyes widened. "Yeah let's just... worry about these two."
They stared in silence at the cooing pups before them.
"I made those." Chrissy whispered again.
"I know." He whispered back.
"They're not even human." She hissed conspiratorially.
He chuckled.
"I can't wait to see them as little wolfy monsters. They'll be cute and fluffy." She put her elbow on her knee and head in her hand.
"Shifting's easier for kids, once they hack it." Tristan told her. "And oh-so very cute. Very fluffy." He confirmed.
"This one scratched me in the eye earlier." She pointed at Luke.
He looked at her. "No pain?"
She shook her head. "No." Chrissy looked over at Tristan.
"Queen of Glass." He murmured, tucking her hair behind her ear.
She sighed. "Stop with that. Enough of your fairytale bullshit."
"Baby," he lifted her chin, brushing his lips across hers, "we are some Grimm fairytale bullshit."
——————————
I couldn't think of anything else so I guess...
I guess it's over. We all knew it was coming.
I just wanted to say I love you all so much and thanks for reading. This has been my passion for so long and I really hope I can publish something soon. This is my second fully completed book and I love it so much.
Y'all r cool.
Yeah no I don't write books like most people I just write until it's over. I'll publish my "planning" lmao. I think it's funny and there's a few gems in there I think y'all would be interested in seeing.
It feels a little odd to end it here but I feel like their story is still complete. There's nothing much more to say. Maybe I'll add more, like a wedding or coronation scene. I hate endings. But I really think that's it for T and C.
Thanks for stopping by
- Aurelia Kingsleigh