There has never been a time that Revan can remember returning back to a place and thinking to himself I'm home. Nor has there been a moment that he has felt a faceless weight drop from his shoulders upon immediately gazing at one place in particular. These were simply things Revan has never experienced or thought.
But after the journey back from the snow-covered lands of Mraz, after muttering I can't wait to be back repeatedly to himself as he retraced his steps back towards Atollon, he can finally say that he has. For the moment that the snow slowly began to disappear and the sun grew a little strong, Revan felt an impatient sort of excitement that slowly formed into relief.
It was a relief to see the land slowly change, and to leave behind the looming pines and white-outs that Mraz seemed accustomed to. It was a relief to smell the salt grow strong on the breeze and to feel the sun slowly warm his bare back. Even if he was sorely in need of some rest and had lost some weight after the hunt and traveling, Revan felt more awake -more alive- than he had while tracking down the elk and attempting to best it.
He had missed Atollon—he had missed Kira.
Seeing her again was certainly the one thing he was looking forward to the most. After months of being apart Revan was free of any apprehension when it came to embracing her upon his return and basking in the warmth of her touch. All the while telling her exactly how much he had missed her.
Just the thought alone of seeing her is what made him hold onto that blessed bond between them. His guiding light, he followed that tether all the way back through the wasteland of E'renthas and then the meadow and up along Ilikos. All the way until the river opened up and he could see the crystal blue waters in the distance that Revan didn't need help navigating.
Buoyed by the familiar settings Revan had already told Kira well ahead of time through their bond that he was close, and Kira had told him to meet her along the border. While Revan had assumed Kira would have said she would meet him within Karros (tending to things as he might have assumed), Revan had hardly questioned it. Anything to see her sooner than he had expected.
Only depending on their bond now to assist him in pinpointing the general direction she laid, Revan moved easily over the land. Free of the weight of his cloak (for he had lost that within Mraz's forest) he was unencumbered and carried only his weapon and pack that was now mostly empty.
Allowing himself the chance to breathe in the air and look far off into the distance where palms could be seen out in the water, Revan only took his attention away as he walked along the lapping shore of Atollon's border whenever he spied a familiar figure in the distance. A figure that he could not yet fully make out the details of.
Not yet calling out to Kira as he kept moving closer towards her, a slow smile began to grow on his face with each step he took that shortened the distance between them. She was right there, after so long and Revan felt happy.
"Kira!" He called out, a bright and beautiful smile on his face as he slightly picked up his pace to remove the decreasing meters between them.
When that distance grew small enough however, Revan noticed something immediately.
Confusion mars his brow, pinching down his eyebrows as his smile slowly fell. When only a handful of meters were left between them, Revan came to a slow and uncertain stop.
It felt like years since last she had seen Revan. Like a hundred thousand things had changed, and yet a million more had stood still. There was a part of her that feared the sting of negligence, and her heart had ached with the passing days as her gravid belly grew heavier, as the sun set each night upon the blooming realization that Rabi had, indeed, told her the truth. That whatever fanciful daydream she had been spun in the meadow had come to fruition, and she was left to wonder about the unknown all alone, the father of those twin stars just out of reach.
It would have been so easy to tell him; to breathe it across the bond and to beg him to come home to her. But Kira hadn’t, torn between her fear of his reaction and the terrible reality where he might never return at all. She rarely let that terror seize her, and it only found the strength to creep up when she lay unsuspecting.
Guilt became her frequent companion, accompanied by the nagging realization that, as desperately as she wanted Revan to know, she lacked the words to put paint to the truth.
It was no easier as she stood upon the shore of Atollon, the blooms of the island in full spring despite the wintry climate that lay beyond the islands’ waters. The kingdom flourished, booming with a glittering resplendence that rivaled the sun itself. And Kira never quiet learned to associate its health, its prosperity, with the two little lives that grew within her.
She knew only keeping her mind busy; keeping her hands full with the tasks that she could balance. And she knew only the silhouette that now pushed through the water, the size of him parting the sea as he mapped his way back into her life—as how much she had ached for him returned in full force. His smile, a rare thing, was so bright that she was sure the glimmer of it reflected upon the water’s surface. Brighter still was the crushing loss of it as it dimmed and a frown claimed its place.
And yet, still, Kira stood silent as a sentinel, her expression softening as she warred with a hundred emotions; as her hazel eyes traced the familiar shape of him and reveled in the certainty that he was home, he was here, he was safe. She didn’t care for the elk pelt that sat folded and strapped to his back, and for a heartbeat, she could pretend that nothing had changed.
Nothing—and she would curl up in his embrace and reclaim the lost time.
But things had changed. And she could see the realization plain upon his dark features, she could map the confusion that shifted over ever constellated freckle upon his brow, and a shallow breath expanded her narrow chest as she looked at him pleadingly.
There was no concealing the obvious curve to her abdomen, how the months had turned her into a blundering little thing that, so accustomed to her own smallness, she didn’t really know how to function. How to sleep at night, how to breathe without being conscious of every movement—
How to not burst into tears when she felt the pressure of a gentle kick within; the affectionate nudge of one of those errant stars as they asked for her attention at midnight, as she beamed at her stomach and nudged them back with a gentle press of her muzzle.
But how, exactly, did she tell Revan any of that?
“Hi,” she greeted timidly, lamely. Inching forward apprehensively, her eyes flitted nervously over the chasm of space between them, and when she tilted her chin up toward him, her lips were parted with the noiseless expression of everything she wanted to say but couldn’t quite find the words to form aloud.
“Revan…” she started, near-pleading, still. “I missed you.”
Her expression begs him not to move, as if Revan truly would. As if he had it in him to leave her a second time when the first had torn him asunder.
Ears held back in uncertainty, nothing but confusion continued to show itself over his face as he tries to make sense of what he's seeing. It's an undeniable thing, and to even think it is almost something that Revan's mind cannot do. Nevertheless, it was obvious.
Pregnant.
He can't figure out how that is possible, how it hadn't been obvious before he had gone to Mraz. He never would have left had that been the case but why had she never told him? Why hadn't Kira let him know? Revan would have been back here within a matter of days, an elk be damned. Why hadn't—
Hi,
Revan quietly swallows, baffled expression still apparent as he looks across the space between Kira and he as she takes a hesitant step closer. That step in itself make's Revan's heart ache to remove the last of the remaining space between them, but he doesn't understand.
She pleads and Revan doesn't know why, doesn't know anything other than the fact that he was gone for months and has only come back to find Kira pregnant.
He takes in a deep breath, chest feeling tight as his mind runs to try and make sense of it all.
"I—" he shakes head in bewilderment, "I missed you too but... but Kira—" Revan can't find the words and he doesn't know what to say to begin even asking for an explanation of all of this.
"Kira what... you're pregnant?" He asks her somewhat breathlessly; asking even though it's foolish to, for there is no denying the obvious swell to her belly that makes guilt and uncertainty dance together within the pit of his stomach.
"Why—" he can't even finish his next question, his own insecurities beginning to wreak havoc. "Why didn't you tell me?" He finally manages to get out, his mind attempting to plant scenario after scenario in his head as to why she hadn't told him. Revan doesn't allow them to take root though, not as he stands in front of Kira waiting for an explanation that he hopes is better than anything his mind might be able to formulate.
Kira never missed the way his eyes ventured, daring to drink in the sight of her even as her brow drew tighter together in worry. The light within his eye shuttered into uncertainty, and her heart clenched painfully within the hollow of her chest as she regarded him, her hooves shifting uncertainly beneath her body. Impossibly, she hadn’t anticipated the suddenness with which he would speak the words aloud; as though the revelation was something to be gleaned within an instant.
It was, of course; she had made no attempt to hide anything. She wouldn’t have known how to, anyways. But that didn’t change the swiftness with which her ears flicked back, her teeth worrying the inside of one cheek as she gazed at him, her hazel eyes still imploring and wide, begging him not to turn around and go. Kira’s heart had descended into a chasm: a gorge through which it plummeted, in desperate search of purchase as the uncertainties in Revan’s voice chinked more holes in her armor.
Why didn’t you tell me?
She drew in a breath, one so fiercely tense that she feared her lungs might burst from her chest, and Kira swallowed down the bitter iron of naivety as she fought back the pressing sting of tears. Guilt assembled like a league of warriors, their javelins spearing through the walls of her heart, and she parted her dry lips as she regarded him with youthful uncertainty—
Because, despite everything, she was still so very young. So new to notions of oneness, of belonging, of family.
Family. A rare gift that felt someone stolen; a treasure that she feared she had unintentionally robbed from Revan, if not through her silence alone.
“Revan…” she repeated, her voice breaking upon the craggy stone of her own insecurities. She had loved those twin, beating hearts since the moment Rabi had guided her into their temple, offering her the gift of basking in their shine for but a moment.
And Revan had had no idea.
“I’m sorry,” she tried, her words whisper soft. “I wanted to. The moment I found out, I wanted to, Revan, but I…”
Her chest broadened with the effort of a deep, uncertain breath. She inched forward, begging him to close the last span of distance that lay between them, too, even if she couldn’t bring herself to ask it of him.
“I was afraid,” Kira swallowed, her head lowering as she peered up at him through coppery lashes. “Too afraid to tell you through the bond. I never knew what to say. I still don’t, Revan—”
And then, because she feared where his treacherous thoughts might lie—
“They’re yours,” she promised, her words tattered with emotion, the silvery shine of a tear rending her resolve apart. “Both—both of them, there’s two.”
He can only stand there and continue to stare as Kira feebly attempted to breath, her eyes shining within the Atollian sun that Revan can still remember shining brightly down upon them the day Kira stumbled across this land. Revan can also remember walking alongside her and being so uncertain—just as uncertain as he is now.
Because his mind is running amok with the thoughts that the demons of his own making are adamant in instilling within him. They want him to doubt and question, and to keep him from bridging the space that the woman he has done his best to change for unknowingly begs him to close moments later. Those fiends wish to torment him just enough that Revan steps away and turns his back on her just as he did under the tree in Ilikos that a part of him will always call theirs.
And Revan's mind is close to making him do so; it is so very close. The only thing that keeps him from moving however is the way their bond is securely wrapped around his heart. The way the threads he had cut and torn from that very organ have finally healed after years of working to mend them. To turn his back on her, to cut those threads, is something Revan had promised himself in the towering trees that had been swallowed by the mist that he would never do again.
He had made a vow to never harm Kira again.
So he silences the demons and swipes at the shadows with a blazing torch. But only after Kira had croaked out his name, fear shining in her eyes. A fear that Revan still desired to expel from her hazel gaze as Kira apologized and explained how she had wanted to tell him. Revan doesn't doubt that Kira had wanted to, but the fact she hadn't lends strength to dark thoughts that are only finally slayed once Kira pressed on and promised him they were his—
They,
There is still uncertainty, fear, but the beginnings of something like wonder begin to peek through Revan's gaze.
"Two?" He wonders out loud, taking a slight step closer to her, neck faintly stretching towards her. "There's two?" Revan repeats in breathless wonder, voice as soft as the warm breeze that flows through Atollon all year round.
Then his own guilt surfaces more strongly.
"I would have come back, I—I wanted to help but had I known I would have come back." He says quickly, taking his own imploring step closer now. "I would have never gone had I known I just—I went for you. I even-" his words come to a fumbling pause again as he uses hidden hands to drag the bound pelt off his back, a pair of imposing antlers laying over it.
He sets the antlers and pelt carefully on the ground, an offering and gift to the Sunbeam. "I got this for you. I wanted to help and I... I think I did but I never would have gone had I—are you okay? Are-Are they okay?" Revan worriedly asks, concern creasing the line of his brows once more as he looks at Kira across the ever decreasing distance that separates them still. It had been months after all, and Revan can't believe he allowed himself to be away that long but he had thought it would be fine.
He should have come back sooner regardless. He should have never stayed away for so long.
The glimpse of wonder she could see in his eyes was neither enough to eclipse his worry or hers, and Kira could only look on in silence, with only the sound of his words and the hammering of her heart ringing in her ears as she waited expectantly. For what, precisely, the young queen could not say for sure. But perhaps only the desperate hope that Revan wouldn’t turn away; that he wouldn’t shy from the truth that she had wrongfully held from him.
It was guilt, in the end, that was strong enough to replace the flicker of awe, and a tide of Kira’s own came sweeping through to seize her limbs as she dragged herself forward again, her eyes imploring.
“But you didn’t know,” she started. “And that was my fault, Revan. It wasn’t yours.” Her breath came shakily as she looked up at him, hardly registering the motion that dragged the elk’s pelt and antlers from his back, the cargo deposited upon the sand like a peace treaty. Kira didn’t need an olive branch, though—she only needed him.
But she could think of two tiny bodies swaddled in the warmth of that pelt, tucked together for warmth as their too-long legs intertwined; as they kicked and whinnied in their sleep. It was nearly enough to make her sob, watching him, as just a sliver of terror ebbed with the shy step Revan dared forward.
She managed a smile of gratitude, one wet with emotion, before Revan’s expression furrowed with a worry she wanted nothing more than to dissuade. Kira shushed him gently, her lips parting with the unending plea.
“I’m fine, Revan,” she promised. “And they are, too. They’re strong, and wonderful," she remembered that much; two, strong, healthy heartbeats. Two thundering drums that, somehow, she swore she could hear with each passing day.
Swallowing thickly as she dared to bridge the gap between them, her attention bypassed the gift he had placed upon the sandy ground as she moved in, as her chest tightened with her need to brush her muzzle against his.
When it did, a current of electricity shivered over her spine, and Kira desperately sought to amend months apart by melding her skin with his, pushing her head into the crook of his neck as she hid away in the sheer size of him, the tawny color of her desert-skin shadowed by the abyss of his.
“They’re perfect,” she whispered, the words a levee that split apart until tears trickled down her cheek; until she could only bow her forehead into his chest as she expelled a ragged breath. “I should have told you. I’m so, so sorry.”
A mind like Revan's would never care if Kira hadn't told him, and that there would have been no possible way of him knowing what he does now because of that. Meaning: he truly couldn't be blamed too much for being gone. But no, a mind like Revan's took the smallest fault and found a way to alter the aim of countless daggers so that they were pointing at himself instead.
So he did not blame Kira, only himself, and it was not something easily eliminated. Even as Kira told him it wasn't his fault. The demons made of self-depricating thoughts were different from the ones before though, made all the stronger by the guilt he would forever carry from his past life into this one.
He had missed so much, had been gone for so long. Which meant there was so much to make up for. He should have been here.
Filled with guilt and worry, only part of the pressure compressing down on his chest leaves once Kira assures him that she's okay. That they're okay; they're okay.
They. Two.
Two tiny foals that would be here whether Revan was ready or not. Two new lives whose very existence terrified and excited Revan in equal measure. Because this meant he was going to be a father. Him. He who had hurt and harmed and still worried about stepping foot outside of the shanty that Kira and he lived in because he feared messing up again.
There was the self-doubt, settling in like a poisonous in the pit of its self-made den.
Sucking in a shuttering breath, his eyes fell closed as Kira bridged the last of the distance between them. The felt of their muzzles brushed against one another's, and when Kira dared to tuck her head close Revan had made to do the same. In that moment all thoughts grew silent and the place Kira's presence rested against went still in his mind. So long as he was here, so long as Kira was here, everything would be okay.
With the croak of her voice Revan pinched his eyes close even more. "It's okay, I don't blame you." He rumbled out reassuringly as he draped his neck over across the crest of Kira's own, hugging her to the best of his ability. "And regardless I—I only wish I had been back sooner is all." To be here and help her; to care for her.
There wouldn't be much time for that now, not with how obvious the swell of her abdomen was. However, there were years of taking care of her and their family to look forward to.
Something that, again, Revan never thought he would find himself ever being able to say he would ever have outside of Kira.
Keeping down the thoughts that doubted himself, Revan merely curled his more securely over Kira's, basking in the missed sensation of being with her. "I missed you," he mutters. "And I'm glad that you're okay—that they are. I—" he loses his words once more, swallowing and scrambling to regain them as quickly as possible. "How long? Until they're here, you think? How long do we have?" Revan wonders as he lifts his head up, taking a step back so that he could brush his face near Kira's throat latch. "Have you thought of names or—I don't know," he rambles on. "I just want to be ready," he says a little timidly.
"I want to be ready for the day they get here," he reiterates, laying his ears back as he does.
It was an unspeakable relief when Revan didn’t shy from her touch. A shuddering breath left her lips as she sank against her, months of apprehension and fear dissolving in presence of tidal wonder and longing. Kira melded with him without a second thought, her mind nestling near to the perfect countermelody to her own song, until her lyrics meshed with the hymn of him. Squeezing her eyes shut, the young queen tucked near, impossibly so, as she hid in the shelter of his draping neck.
“I don’t blame you, either,” Kira promised him. The guilt would weigh on him regardless, she knew; just as her own would press down for the days to come. She could only hope that their twin lights would be enough to abolish that darkness, when at last they were here.
When they were here— and my, what a terribly exciting, terrifying, thought that was.
An inconsolable whimper left her as she wept quietly against his neck, because in place of it all, she had dearly missed Revan, too. Neither of them were suited for the likes of codependency, undoubtedly, but that didn’t change the truth that their souls certainly knew how to dance, and that every obstacle in life was better conquered with a hand to help the other climb over what demons lay ahead.
They had let go one too many times before, and Kira never wanted to do that again.
“We are,” she repeated, filling the gap of his scrambling footing with what certainty she could offer. “We’re alright. All three of us, Revan.”
And then Kira was laughing, almost impossibly, as she equal parts chuckled and cried into the dark skin of his neck from where he had tucked her away. Their home was some distance from where they stood now, Atollon’s water still sluicing over his skin, and though Kira wanted nothing more than to offer him a moment’s rest, she knew neither of them would manage to shut an eye now.
“I—I’m not sure,” she confessed. “Another month or so, maybe,” Kira swallowed, her ill-preparation, her naivity, the most treacherous factor of all. The healers of Atollon had done well to help her, but there where things that could only be entrusted to the instinct of her heart—and perhaps, admittedly, to fate.
And she prayed, for once in her life, that she could trust the whims of the world.
“I haven’t,” she had already been prepared for this question. “I need to see them, first,” Kira explained softly, brushing her muzzle against the skin at the base of his neck. “I need to look at them in order to know. But I know they’re perfect; I know they’re beautiful.”
She smiled, her mouth curving against him as she sniffled.
“It’s scary,” she said, perhaps only seeking to affirm his confidence with the certainty that she was still just as rattled, still just as unsure. “But I know that I’m ready to love them, and to see them—and to have a family, Revan—”
She paused, she forced herself not to sob, as she wetly whispered, “We have a family, Revan.”
The certainty the Kira offered was finally able to alleviate the worry; it was finally able to mend growing cracks in the walls of his being that contained all he was. However, it could not vanquish the guilt, for that was something else entirely. Nothing could ever truly manage that, only time, support, and Revan himself could.
While words were not able to do that though, they were able to draw him away. For her words were accompanied by a light that guided him away from such depths, that same light that always lead him to places he had only ever been able to find thanks to Kira.
Continuing to slightly ramble despite the sound of her laughter -a sound that Revan hadn't realized how much he had missed until he heard it- Revan listened attentively as Kira did her best to give him the answers he sought. Answers that somehow didn't cause him to fret even more but, instead, made him look forward to things to come. A month or so certainly wasn't much time, and he was sure he would worry over lack of names later, but with Kira tucked close there was no chance of such worries wedging itself between them.
Even then, Revan held himself tightly, revealing just a sliver of his fear and concern, but to hear Kira voice such similar thoughts made a rattling breath leave him. Because while it was scary and terrifying, those were things Revan would never actually say. He struggled to say such things still. With Kira having spoke such words into the would however, Revan found it easier to voice them too.
He didn't yet though, not when the notion -the simple idea- that they would have a family practically rendered him silent.
Family, for the both of them, had been a thing they shared in common when it came to not having. For while Kira had never actually grown up with one while Revan had, they both felt as if such a thing had never truly been theirs.
This, though, this would be theirs. Their family, and the beginning of something terrifying and wonderful. With that thought came the one that told Revan he would do his best for their children. Even if he would come to doubt himself and struggle as he did now. Revan was going to try his best—he needed to.
"We do..." he quietly rumbles, brushing his muzzle down Kira's throat. Squeezing his eyes shut for just a moment, he brushed a kiss near the base of her neck. "We have a family." There's a mystified tone to his voice as he repeats these words, words followed by a quiet and disbelieving huff.
"I love you," he murmur's into her skin right after, "and them." Even if he had yet to even see their children, the foals that would be theirs. Revan would love and cherish them from this life into the next.
And it was at this moment the plans he had had in his mind before going to Mraz were going to be ones he would see through. He would take all the gems he had and find another Atollian craftsman to make what he had in mind. He would.