CW - more NSFW in this chapter.
ALEX TRIED TO digest the torrent of information she'd finally managed to coax out of her husband once they'd gotten dressed and snuggled back into their cloaks again. Ixillius had confessed, nearly word for word she guessed, the letter that he'd sent to her gigno on top of the litany of over-thinking he'd been doing the past week specifically, and since she'd been sent to Verus in general. She'd been surprised at the frank honesty he'd put into the letter, but figured her gigno would appreciate the bluntness. Sertor was a man who demanded open communication, and had no fear of providing his thoughts on any topic at any time, whether the listener wanted to hear those thoughts or not.
It was something that Alex had learned to do at a young age, which had gotten her into trouble more than once. Oddly, speaking her mind created tension in her first marriage because Jeremy would have preferred her not to think so much. In her own time, the blunt conversations Alex would have with anyone left her labeled as being brutal and rude. Here and now, curled up in a burrow in the snow with the horses resting nearby, Ixillius had just been refreshingly harsh with what was going on in his thoughts. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed solid conversation.
He was still waiting for her to reply to his questions and worries, his arms tightening slowly the longer she was thinking. She didn't want to answer quickly, though. She would need to be careful with some of her replies or he would catch that she knew more than she was saying, and then there would be a lot of uncomfortable questions that she didn't know how to answer in a language that he understood, or that she even wanted to answer right now. Actually she didn't want to answer them ever, but figured at some point during the rest of their lives that they would have to talk about the time travel stuff without her switching to Russian or English as she'd been forced to do back at Chlodochar's village. Hopefully with her gigno there as backup so she wouldn't sound crazy.
First and foremost she needed to reassure Ixillius that she wanted to be with him specifically, and Minerva's 1st in general, as they marched for Illyria. Meeting Lothar and being at the village, that had all been great, but a huge defeat of the Romans was looming closer and closer in the time period she was currently living, and she didn't want to be in that war – the outcome was that her side all died. The fact that Lothar had been returned to his family so young, even more loaded up with Roman military intelligence and training than she'd been at that age, was hard confirmation from her gigno that they all needed to get away from the area as quickly as possible. As well, despite what Ixillius said right now about being fine with deserting and being banished from Rome – totally lying through his teeth, she assumed – Alex figured he would have a very, very hard time living in the village after the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest happened. If the two of them weren't simply killed out of association with Rome, he'd be miserable. Alex didn't really care where they were living, to be honest, she just wanted him, and his place was with the Legion.
Secondly, and the hardest thing in her opinion, she needed her husband to understand that her gigno wasn't going to lay eyes on him and then slaughter him. Alongside Ixillius's name and rank at his retirement, the inscription on his tomb stated 'Chosen Son and Heir of his Wife's Father'. Who the 'Wife's Father' was had been conveniently vandalized off around the same time their longest lived child died. Alex didn't know when the adoption happened, but apparently her gigno accepted her choice of husband well enough to adopt him. Getting Ixillius to believe he would be accepted prior to meeting her gigno was probably going to be impossible without having her momma's report in hand because of all the boogey-man stories about her gigno and grandfather, and believing his own status as below a slave since being disowned. And again, anything she could use as facts to help settle his mind would go back into that time travel conversation that she didn't want to, or know how to, have.
Third and finally, she wanted to go back and kill that village witch one more time for planting the thought that a woman's fertility could be divined with a hard stare while shaking some pebbles in a gourd. Thinking now, Alex figured that at least a year had passed since she'd last menstruated, and the past three months had been about as close to the opposite of optimal conditions as she could get as described by the doctors of the future. Great sex aside, she wasn't pregnant.
The thought of sex brought up a fourth train of thought that Alex didn't know if Ixillius wanted to talk about. He'd mentioned he was pretty ashamed about having sex with her after swearing to her gigno that he wouldn't, and essentially promising the Legion that he wouldn't, then going ahead and breaking his word every time she came on to him when they were alone. Alex didn't have a problem with the situation – they were married and she enjoyed being his lover immensely – but she did understand the guilt that he felt like he was lying. Verus had threatened to kill her, after all, because of the need for honesty and honor and all that. Her gigno would most likely snort a quick laugh at the promise in the letter because he'd made a similar vow to his future father-in-law a week after meeting his future wife, and she'd often gloated that in less than ten minutes after her mother and father left the apartment she'd gotten rid of that silliness. As a child, Alex hadn't gotten the joke. As an adult, the memory made her smile whenever she was reminded of her parents. Right now, maybe she should just quietly ask Brasus to lay off chiding his best friend.
"Please say something," Ixillius begged.
His arms tightened another notch, as if he felt like she was turning to sand and would slip away if he didn't hold her together. If he squeezed much harder she wouldn't be able to breathe, she thought with amusement.
***
"I don't know the question to answer the first," she replied. The breath he'd been holding rushed out as if she'd kicked him in the gut.
"Answer anything!" he'd whispered, his voice lost in the tightness of his throat. His thoughts were driving him mad, tumbling and spinning in his mind even faster now that he'd committed to being a total fool and tossed his heart and fears into the snow around them, certain that she was going to laugh at him for his worries now that he'd heard the hint of amusement in her voice.
"I want to go home," she said. Oh gods, she was leaving... "My home is with you, and you are the Centurion, so our home is the Legion."
The steel band around his chest released and he could breathe again.
"You are Ixor Moldovan, I say so. You are my husband; I love you. You have so much worry about Gigno and you must stop," Alex said, matter of fact, as she twined her fingers into his. "Gigno is a man, he is not a nightmare. He will laugh because you worry he will kill you." She squeezed his hand tightly. Ixillius wanted to believe her, but he couldn't. The surety that she was wrong was too strong in his mind, but he was grateful to her for saying the words in an attempt to comfort him.
"And the witch..." her voice trailed off and she shook her head. "I have no blood for one year. She made Hludwolf and Poldi insane with lies. When a child grows for us, the midwife will tell us because the babe grows. The witch cannot say before what will happen," she stated, prying one of his arms loose and drawing his hand to her mouth, kissing his knuckles. He didn't realize he'd been holding her so tightly until she tried to move his arm for him.
He felt some of his thoughts settle. She wanted to be with him, to rejoin the Legion. She loved him. Alex didn't believe the witch, but he would still pray every day that the crone had been right and his failures, weakness and broken promises weren't for nothing. He sighed in relief, breathing deep the smell of her sweat and sex inside his cloak, realizing much too late that that smell would be in the wool far longer than she would.
"Ixor?" she asked the name she'd bestowed on him hesitantly. "I will try to not ask for sex from you," her tone was careful and he instantly regretted telling her of his weakness and shame.
"No, Alex, I—"
"No. This makes you sad," she stated. "I will try to not ask."
"This isn't your weakness, Alex," he admitted, and to his surprise she laughed.
"This is not my strength," she chuckled. "I like the sex very much."
"You do?" he asked. He felt like the dog Naevius had named him to be, but the plain statement that she enjoyed sex with him, combined with knowing she would start abstaining from him, flared his need for her. He slipped his fingers out of hers and caressed the length of her torso, releasing the ties of her pants again.
"Ixor," she cautioned, her hand stopping his from creeping against her skin and pulling loose the ties of her little bindings. "You say the sex makes you sad. I do not—"
He cut her off with a heavy kiss. Her resistance melted, as she'd just said, and she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. He stripped her of her pants and little bindings again, her body yielding against him as he rolled on top of her, and arching high as he gave her his sex.
"Tomorrow," he begged between kisses, thrusting deep. "Stop me tomorrow."
She chuckled against his mouth and he leaned back, questioning with a look what he had said or done that was funny to her.
"I said I will to try to not ask, husband," she smiled up at him. "I do not want to stop you."
The same amazement he'd felt the first time he'd asked her for sex rose up inside him. She'd said back in Bonna that once her rib was healed, he could take her in sex any time he chose, have her as he pleased. He dropped back down to kiss her and her mouth yielded to him as freely as her body.
Ixillius woke twice in the night, his need for her leaving him helpless as he was overtaken. She woke for him both times, moaning the name she'd given him and pulling him to her, her arms and legs wrapping around him as he drove her to peaking over and over. She begged him to plant his child inside her.
The contented smile she gave him in the dawn light scattered his wits. He could wake to this every day: her body beside him, her smile that his hands touched her skin, the smell of their sex filling his head... All he had to do was turn off the road and ride away from Minerva's 1st, taking her with him somewhere that her father couldn't find them.
"What if we don't go back to the Legion?" he asked quietly. "What if we leave the road and travel south to the ocean?"
Alex smiled faintly as she considered, eventually bringing his right hand to her lips and kissing the scars on his knuckles. She opened his fingers and traced the callouses on his palm with her fingertip.
"Can you tell me, in truth, that you can walk in comfort with no sword on your belt, no Rome in your heart?" she asked, holding his gaze with her own until he had to look away.
"I cannot," he admitted. Her face held nothing but understanding when he finally looked back at her.
"Your home is the Legion, my love," she said, folding her fingers into his and kissing his knuckles again. "My home is with you."
"I cannot have you in the Legion," he argued, pressing his forehead to hers.
"We will find the answer," she soothed, her confidence doing nothing to undermine his sure knowledge of the black, hopefully short future that awaited him.
"Do you still say I can have your sex any time I choose? Even with the sun rising to witness your promise?" he asked, needing to know.
"My mind, my heart, my body; I am all for you, husband, and only you."
He ignored the harsh reality of the day and sexed her again, her orgasm blending with his own.
"Grow a child for me, Alexandria," he commanded, still panting as the last of the shudders rolled through her body beneath him. "Promise me that my failures are worth something."
"I will," she swore, and held him tightly as the morning sun touched her face.