Easy to Love

Women weren’t exactly queueing up to join the Order. There were families, of course – some of the men chose to live like monks (Bernardo included), but they weren’t expected to take a vow of chastity. The women in the village had prayed to the Goddess and had been gifted in return for their faith, the same way her father and the rest of the men had. It had all been different in Lima though. The city had set aside most of its old faith, people had been converted by the Conquistadors in more ways than one and now they prayed to their God. It bothered Copacati none, she still had her faithful and floated around the city as though the ignorance of the others didn’t exist. Maybe more of her attitude had bled into her daughter in the womb than Katja would admit.

She’d certainly ignored all the ridiculous talk of marriage and babies when the girls had hit puberty and suddenly it seemed as though half of her class was more concerned with motherhood than standing on their own two feet. They had been almost feral in their attempts to make it happen too – ridiculous, one sign of some backbone and they put it to use on that? – a couple managing it before they had even made it to graduation. Weddings rushed through before the hypocritically white frothy dresses had to be let out to hide the growing bump.

It had all seemed ridiculous. The fire in your belly should’ve been reserved for more than a life in a kitchen with kids clinging to your skirts. Like a fool she’d flown in the other direction, determined not to quench hers the same way. There’d been no frothy white dress, just precarious perches that had almost cost her that fire in the end. No, it had just driven it deeper inside, beyond their touch, away from the scar that she felt with every breath, every heartbeat, every murmured word. Katja felt it in the pit of her stomach as she just watched him breathe, that tiny life cradled carefully on his chest. Hands she trusted keeping him safe.

Shit. Now she’d woken him, the words she’d spoken before she’d realised that Bo wasn’t the only one who’d finally given in to a nap, and the ones she’d spoken believing he wouldn’t hear them, cutting through enough to draw that hum out of him.

Propping her chin on her knees. Katja half smiled. There was always a care around babies. She’d noticed it with Hazel, before she’d sprung up overnight, and now with Bo too. Like they were a ticking time bomb, one that had grasped your heart in a tiny, surprisingly strong little fist, you didn’t want to set them off and feel your heart shatter at those shrieking cries. Her own twisted faintly from the embarrassment at being heard – the daughter of Copacati should never be soft. ”Not Theo,” she assured him, her fingers drifting down to his ankle in emphasis. ”He has nothing to worry about with you watching the baby.” Theo knew as well as she did that Kit would give anything to protect the baby. They both would. Dark hair tumbled over Katja’s shoulder as she tipped her head back towards the door. ”Bernardo.” That one word truthful. ”Copacati will toast him when he gets back, not bringing me.” Toast? Roast? Did it matter when that was a half truth slathered on to hide that bashfulness?

Those blue eyes drifted away from hers, leaving her the room to brush her hair back, her fingers grazing her cheek to brush away the heat she wouldn’t let come through to the surface. No need to worry? She almost laughed, but the sound would’ve woken the baby and wiped the look off of his face – the one that would’ve been all the reason for Bernardo to drag her back home. Before she severed the tie to the Goddess again.

Katja paused a moment and then slipped down off the arm of the sofa. She padded to the other end, stretching out slowly, carefully, on the edge of the cushion. There was a scent – not the sharp, foul one that had necessitated a diaper change ten minutes after his parents had walked out – soft, sweet, like that little face. She slipped her arm around Kit’s waist, her lips pressed to his bicep as she looked at it. ”He’s beautiful,” Katja admitted softly.

Her smile grew, the warmth inside growing as those tiny fingers that were curled in fists against his uncle’s chest tightened around her own heart. ”Do they always smell like that? Like ….” Her nose wrinkled like she was trying to pick it apart, but her bran couldn’t do it. ”… everything good. I know he didn’t earlier, but he’s a man, that comes with the territory, si?” Amusement had her eyes twinkling as she settled her head properly against Kit’s shoulder. He was good with him, had been from the start while she’d fumbled her way through it, slowly learning by watching those deft hands. If circumstances had been different, maybe by now it would’ve been one of his own laying there, his mother some blond starlet from Hollywood. The heat in her chest grew, almost growing painful with the pang that hit her at the thought.

Tagged: KIT CLARKE * Word Count: 887

They were too alike. Bernardo had said it a hundred times when her conversations with Copacati had ended up with the two of them yelling at one another. The halls of the Order’s headquarters would ring with it, the heat sometimes too much for the worshippers – the hardy ones like Bernardo, at least – to try and bear to intervene between the two of them. She’d swear she was nothing like her mother, but there was more of her that had been passed to her than just the fire they could spit and what she’d thought was a complete lack of motherly instinct. Feeling that warm, squirmy bundle settled in her arms for the first time when the littlest Damasca had been brought to the house for their reveal to the rest of the family, Katja had realised it wasn’t true. Copacati might not have wanted the baby’s screams echoing off of the cave walls where she’d isolated herself, but she’d had a parent, someone to teach her that there was a warmth beneath all of that heat. A real parent.

Even with her husband in the grave Copacati had not changed. Perhaps the thin surface that held that heat back on a daily basis had grown a little more brittle, but she’d grown no more motherly. It was still her way or nothing, expectations laid on thick enough to choke and she had started to lay them on the minute she had pulled her daughter from what she’d believed would be her own grave. Not going home would just be further proof that her daughter was fighting those expectations with every step.

Bernardo’s solo arrival would leave the halls ringing again, but she wouldn’t hear it from here. Even Copacati’s fire was not that powerful, although it might leave Bernardo a little crispy around the edges. She’d offered the mental image up to Kit, although he was obviously still more sleepy than she’d expected, his confusion leaving her frowning. Katja shook her head, brows drawing together. ”A glass? Like a drink? No, no. She does …” She wasn’t about to let the heat rise in her now, not with the baby so close. She pinched her fingers close to her lips, throwing them open as she rapidly moved her hand away from her mouth, a poor representation of breathing fire, but the safest one. ”Toast him, like bread. She’s less control of her temper than me, it spills over.” Although usually only with her, someone who could heal in an instant. Bernardo was more fragile despite his muscles and Copacati’s soft spot for him might mean that he escaped the worst of it.

She might still have felt the ache in her other scars, but would add more to protect what she meant the most to here. A soft spot in a different way running through her chest, softening further in her chest as she settled in against Kit’s sleepy warmth. Katja hummed out grumbling amusement against Kit’s bicep, her eyes rolling at him. ”Si,” she murmured. ”Although you’re not so bad.” Theo, Frank by default, wasn’t either, although it was probably a relief to both Theo and Freyja that neither Hazel or Bo had inherited that nose. It had character, that always took time to grow into though, what marked you out from others rarely showing itself before those soft baby features began to develop. ”For now he is, you never know though. He’ll be dark…” She brushed a fingertip over the baby’s fuzz of hair, already a few shades darker than his sister’s. Would her own have had dark hair, or that burnished gold…

The cuteness of babies had to outweigh all those little joys – scents that didn’t leave your own womb aching, but had you swearing off of children for life. And men, if they were jerks. Grumbling under her breath at Kit’s teasing, Katja barely her teeth and gave his chest a little nip. ”If they smelt as bad as the peas, I wouldn’t be,” she assured him. ”You’d be straight in the shower.” In the camps you had little choice but to put up with it, sacrificing the pleasant for the necessary – but it was easier to handle when everyone smelt as bad as one another. Katja rolled her head slightly, settling it back into his shoulder as she watched Kit’s thumb brush Bo’s ear. ”They do…” she breathed. ”You’re not so bad either.” A small compliment when the bigger ones stuck in her throat, like they were catching on the scar tissue that bisected it. In truth it was more than just smelling good, it was smelling like home.

Her thumb brushed idly over Kit’s side, her gaze on him as much as it was on that little face that was perfectly relaxed in sleep. Bo knew when he was safe too, babies could tell, could wail it out with their screams and struggling bodies. She had always felt that way with her dad, his the hands that could patch up skinned knees as a child, his voice the one that soothed. Copacati had given her a different sort of shelter, a different sort of education. ”They’ll love him whatever he is,” she almost whispered. Katja remembered the way her father would talk about Copacati, telling the story of how they had fallen in love, it had been so hard to imagine later.

Shrugging in Kit’s hold, Katja frowned faintly. She’d already known what she would become before he had died. After that Copacati had laid the warnings on thickly, almost waiting for the moment her daughter would start to reveal what she was. "Maybe," Katja breathed. ”I wasn’t scared when I started to feel the heat, the itch. I was waiting for it.” The excitement had filled her when her wings had almost torn their way free. Maybe there’d been some fear underneath, but not in the way she’d seen it bubble up in Kit that first night he had turned. Lifting her head, she pressed a kiss to the hinge of Kit’s jaw, resting her head against the side of his for a moment. ”It’s shitty and awful, but having you there, I’m sure it helps them. They have their parents, they have us, love makes all the difference when it’s … shitty.” Once upon a time he’d put his life on the line to protect others, had saved Frank once. If it came to it again, she knew Kit would be there, putting himself between any of them and danger. A good man, better than Copacati would give him credit for.

Tagged: KIT CLARKE * Word Count: 1100