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eudaimonia83 · 1 year ago

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Ok so this is a very raw and unedited scrap that I wrote one day in the line at a coffee shop (it has no plot or anything, just floof) but it’s super cute and relates to the baby thing. Elucien with the Daybies is canon in my heart. 🌞

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Elain opened her arms to the little girl, and folded her tightly within them, pressing a kiss to her strawberry-blonde hair. “Were you scared?”

The little arms snaked around her waist, holding her tightly. Elain had never felt a better hug. But Aurora nodded, and then turned her head so Elain could hear her muffled reply. “I heard you and I thought someone was hurting you.”

Elain’s eyes were suddenly hot with tears. She stroked her daughter’s head softly, then slowly, awkwardly, careful of her screaming muscles and sore legs, knelt down to look her in the face. “I’m sorry, sunshine,” she said gently, her thumbs wiping away the tears that hung on Aurora’s lashes. Such radiant lashes, gold and russet, gleaming around her sea-blue eyes. Elain could never wrap her mind around how perfect her eldest daughter was; a clash of stormy feelings and sunny disposition, Lucien’s smart mouth and her gentleness, and a stubborn streak her aunt Nesta adored. “You were young enough when the boys were born that you don’t remember. It’s hard to give birth, so…”

“So you were screaming?”

“Yes,” Elain admitted.

Aurora frowned, her lip sticking out in a fierce little pout. “Papa said he’d never let anyone hurt you.”

Elain smiled and struggled to her feet, catching at the back of a chair to steady herself on her still-wobbly legs. “He wouldn’t if it was possible not to, sunshine. Sometimes something is hard and we have to do it to get to the reward.” Aurora’s face turned contemplative as she thought about that. Elain brushed her hair away from her face and went on, “But it didn’t hurt any more than it had to, and it was over quickly, and Papa was there with me. So I’m very happy, because now I have your beautiful baby sister to help me feel better. And your Papa, and Helios and Reyus, and….” She paused dramatically, waiting for Aurora to finish the sentence.

Aurora brightened. “And me!”

Elain squeezed her hand and kissed it. “And you.” She looked up at the sound of a reedy, earsplitting wail from the next room.

Aurora turned her head so swiftly that her curls bounced, and stared at Lucien as he carefully walked in, balancing the screaming baby against his chest. “Is that her, Papa?”

“It is.” Elain squeezed her hand again. “Why don’t you go get your brothers and you can all meet her together?”

Aurora tore her hand from Elain’s and ran out of the room, swift as a sunbeam in her excitement.

Lucien grinned after his retreating eldest. “She tried to get in here with my dagger, you know.”

Elain gasped. “She didn’t.”

He placed the baby in her arms and assisted her to sit on the nearest couch, then nuzzled her hair affectionately. “She did indeed. When I found her she was in her room crying, trying to cut down the curtains so she could make a rope. She wanted to climb across the balcony to you.”

“My sweet girl,” Elain murmured, leaning her head against Lucien as she pulled her dress aside and fitted the baby’s mouth to her breast. “She was so worried.”

“She’s fierce as a falcon,” Lucien said proudly. “And she was most upset with me that I let it happen in the first place. I had to promise very profoundly not to do it again.” He stretched out a long finger to stroke the baby’s downy cheek as she sucked, hungry but contented, at the nipple.

“She’s not wrong there.” Elain shot him a glare.

Lucien laughed loud enough that the baby startled, stirring in her feeding. Elain slapped at his knee. “Hush. It’ll be loud enough in here in a moment without you…”

The door banged open and Aurora rushed back in, leading her two younger brothers, all of them running fast enough that the room abruptly boiled with activity. Elain winced as dark-haired rambunctious Helios grabbed her around the knees, shouting, “Baby sister! Baaybeee seeeester,” and shushed him gently with a light tap on his upturned nose. Reyus, the nickname for his twin Nereus, was a quieter little boy, who clambered up to kneel on the couch and stare at the new arrival with saucer-like brown eyes under tousled red hair, until Lucien scooped him into his arms and snuggled against his neck as he giggled. And Aurora tucked herself tightly against Elain, bony knees up against her chest, eyes wide as she watched the baby feed.

Lucien spoke quietly, and they all hushed to listen to him, squirming to control their eagerness. “This is Lyra,” he told them, “your new sister. She likes quiet, because she has to sleep so she can grow, so you’ll have to be careful to let her do that.”

“Papa!” Helios looked like he might burst with whatever he wanted to ask.

“Yes?”

“She’s tiny!” Helios squinted at the baby.

Lucien nodded. “She is now, but she’ll get bigger. Just like you will. You were tiny like her once too, and now look how big you are.”

Helios beamed, the light from his expression blinding. Elain felt her heart twist in her chest, and the answering tug from Lucien down the bond; their beautiful boy, named after his grandfather, dark in complexion and the actual sun in almost everything else, bouncing from thing to thing throughout the day in utter chaos until he collapsed with exhaustion at night, his eyes so big that his eyelids didn’t close all the way over them. Aurora had shrieked in disgust when she’d noticed that at first, until Elain smothered her laughter and hugged her into a better mood. Reyus was more retiring but understood others in a way that moved Elain profoundly; right now, as Helios reached forward curiously to poke at his new sister’s leg, Reyus sternly pushed his twin’s hand away and said, “Careful, Lios,” seriousness grave in his little voice. Bless them, Elain thought with a surge of emotion. They’re all so sweet and different. Lucien kissed the top of Reyus’ head and said, matching his seriousness, “Yes, thank you Reyus, we have to be careful.”

Elain loved watching Lucien with their children; the most joyous she had ever seen him, and the most self-assured. He wrangled them like a cattle rustler when they were all playing, could lull them all to sleep faster than even she could, and expertly negotiated the million daily conflicts as they stole one another’s toys, argued over whose turn it was with what, or whined about doing what THEY wanted to do. Elain had found him once standing barefoot in the boys’ room holding Helios upside down with one arm as he screamed at the top of his lungs, while Reyus watched from the wreckage of a checkerboard game with teary eyes and runny nose, until Reyus began laughing himself. She’d burst out laughing too, and the diplomat she’d escorted into the residence, who had traveled all the way from Dawn, stood watching in confusion as they all, even Helios who had been the source of the argument, bent over with uncontrollable giggles. But then, it wasn’t unusual when receiving official correspondence that one of the twins be hanging off his leg while another had both arms around his neck. Or for Aurora to read books with him for hours, out on the balcony while lunch was served. Or for Helios to braid his hair, little face screwed up in concentration. Or for them all to follow him like ducklings into the palace fountains, splashing and screaming with excitement, chasing the bright fish that called the fountain home. Lucien could catch them like a lightning strike through the water; while Helios and Aurora lost interest and took to splashing one another in mischief, Reyus had the same unerring eye and steady patience as his father. Elain sat forward, adjusting her arm under the baby, and Lucien turned. “Is she heavy?”

“A bit,” Elain allowed.

“Aurora,” Lucien said gently, “will you get a pillow for your mama’s arm?”

Aurora clambered off the couch and seized a satin pillow, then shoved it under Elain’s elbow. The baby squirmed and fussed; Elain stroked her fuzzy dark hair and quieted her, then sat back, wrapping her arm around Aurora on the other side from Lyra. Helios tried to climb onto her lap, and Lucien seized him and scooped him to sit on the opposite knee as Reyus, then kissed his rumpled dark curls. “Lios,” he said with a tone of great excitement, like it was a secret only the two of them shared, “will you go get your blocks you were playing with before, and show Mama how high a tower you can build?”

Helios sat bolt upright and crowed, “Yes! I builded one almost as high as the Sun Tower, Mama! It comed all the way up to…” he looked around, casting about for a comparison and, not finding one, threw his chubby arm over his head with hand extended to the vaulted ceiling. “…all the way up to there! The sky!”

“It did not,” Aurora sniffed.

“Did huh,” said Helios, bottom lip beginning to stick out.

“It was really high! But it falled down,” Reyus piped up, sensing that Helios needed support in the way that only a twin brother could, “and Lios cried because he had to build it all OVER again.” He emphasized his words dramatically, leaning back against Lucien with a thump. Elain made a mock-horrified face, and Reyus met her eyes, the mirror of his own, and gave her a big saucy grin.

“That must have taken you all morning,” Elain said, smiling at her boys, who bounced in glee at the attention and nodded vigorously. “My goodness, what are we going to do with two Sun Towers? Your Grandpapa will have to find a place to put it. Maybe right next to the one that’s already in the harbor guiding the ships.” Lucien grinned at her. Helion had to be prevented from buying the children too many presents on an almost weekly basis; it was laughably easy to imagine him putting his grandson’s block tower on display in the Rhodes harbor, sectioned off with a velvet rope.

Helios beamed and clambered down off Lucien’s knee, then trotted off toward the door to get the blocks. He stopped right before exiting and turned back. “Will baby sister want to play too?”

“Not now, she’s tired from eating and she needs to grow,” Lucien said, so deeply serious that Elain almost laughed and cried at the same moment. “But if you ask nicely, maybe Reyus would play with you. Or Rora.”

“I want to read a book with Mama,” Aurora protested.

Reyus hopped nimbly down from Lucien’s knee. “I’ll play, Lios,” he said, and the two of them trotted out together.

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elucien headcanon:

lucien feels through the bond that elain is under extreme stress in the middle of the night and can sense her panicking. despite his better judgement, he winnows to the river house thinking something terrible has happened and she is in immediate danger.

but when he frantically arrives, sword in hand, it's just elain babysitting nyx, with bags under her eyes, a diaper blow out all over her, covered in spit up, and a crying baby she is desperate to put to sleep.

"m-my lady, i apologize, i thought you were under duress--"

"i am in duress" elain starts crying.

cue elucien baby sitting night.

#elucien #elucien headcanon #lucien vanserra #elain archeron #the daybies tho

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