[Author's note: Author has not had children. Author, after researching facts for this chapter, would like to never have children. Author welcomes corrections to her facts, plus all the gory details readers would like to drop on her, but will not take kindly to being chewed out for ignorance. Thankyou.]

Time.

Contractions had been a steady discomfort for almost a day, now - not as serious in her opinion as some of the fights she'd gotten into with her father, but still enough to keep her from really concentrating on anything else. Garrett had noticed as well; hard not to, when his wife's features would suddenly tighten with the ache.

"Painful, dear?" he asked with a smirk as he sat on the edge of her desk in her office. "It'll get worse, you know...oh, and I'll have to watch, won't I, as you rip wide open? That'll be really traumatic, you know."

"You would like trauma?" Daear snarled, gray eyes flaring gold. "You shall have it!"

Her power dragged him to the stairs and pulled him down them, but although he bled from several cuts he was still breathing at the bottom. A pity, Daear thought to herself. It would have been convenient if that had killed him. Hissing as another contraction took her, it was easy to sound breathless when she picked up the phone. "Hello? This is Adrienne Deling - yes - oooohhh," and she faked a contraction. "Yes - my husband - I started having contractions and he panicked and he's fallen down the stairs and it hurts -"

Much as Daear hated playing the weak female for any reason, she delighted in the benefits of this particular ruse as she spun a tale of near-comic tragedy befalling her hapless husband. Garrett would be in the hospital, immobile, for at least several days - he was becoming known as the President's bumbling son in the press - and could therefore come nowhere near her until her daughter was safely born. And she would be seen to be all the more brave and resourceful for having coped all on her own, which would help her when she eventually killed Garrett and made a bid to take his father's place as President. She walked around the room - pacing, really, which helped both the contractions and her nerves - until the doctor she had requested came.

Daear had planned for this necessity for a very long time. Doctor Enson was old; an expert in obstetrics, but old. When her daughter was safely born and all the procedures attended to, Daear fully intended on killing the good doctor so that he could not report on the specifics of birthing for her kind.

Her kind. Daear believed fully in the superiority of her own kind, but there were so few of them. Gwynt had apparently managed to breed, which was patently a miracle unless the female involved was a whore; an entirely likely possibility. With Gwynt's child and her own, that still made only eight of them. Not enough to do more than make the already-paranoid SeeD Commander nervous. Daear fully intended on having at least one more child if she could, though she had no intentions of letting Garrett or any man touch her sexually again. There were other methods that did not involve ignorant, grunting, sweating pigs rutting atop her for a quarter of an hour, and these she fully intended on exploring.

The contractions were getting closer together. The doctor was not yet arrived - or more likely was involved in getting her useless blob of a husband hospitalized - and she had nothing else she could do but keep moving, keep walking. At least it was not all that painful; more irritating and distracting than anything else. She sense-shifted when she could, and listened - yes, doctors were here; she could hear them picking up Garrett from the base of the stairs, arranging him on a gurney for transport. She wanted to leave her office to watch, to smile at her husband when the paramedics weren't looking. She might be having a baby, but he'd be in the hospital a lot longer. She let go of the sense-shift when she heard steps on the stairs come closer to her.

"Lady Deling?" asked a man's voice on the other side of her office door. "He'll be all right, Lady Deling. I'm Doctor Enson."

Insofar as Daear liked any member of humankind, she'd grown to like Dr. Enson. If only because the man understood when he was outmatched. For the past three months she'd been regularly arguing with the man over how this day would go, and in the end he'd agreed to her requirements.

Mostly, they both knew, the only reason for the argument was because what Daear wanted was going to be uncomfortable for a doctor. She did not pretend to be weaker than she was around this man; she knew quite well that when her daughter first took breaths of air, he was a dead man. So she said, "Come in," and did not pause in her walking.

The doctor came in, all quiet smiles and reassuring demeanor - habit, Daear knew, from dealing with too many frightened mothers. He also kept his distance - which was a habit that Daear had taken great pains to teach him. He was permitted to touch her if there was a necessity present that he could convince her of, otherwise he was to keep his hands to himself. It was only with great patience that Daear had learned to tolerate being examined by his eyes. She had considered, briefly, using a female doctor - but there was only so much inane prattling about the joys of family and childbirth she could take. Behind him, Daear saw a small team of nurses.

"So, how far apart are they?" the doctor asked. "Can you walk to the room?"

"Of course I can," Daear snapped, and shoved past the white-clad nurses in the doorway. They were nothings, and didn't count, and would all be dead before this was over. They didn't like being shoved, but Daear knew they thought she would be helpless soon. They could wait.

There wasn't any pain, as she'd thought there might be. Between one step and the next, a slight popping feeling and then water poured out of her, down her legs, ruining her dress and shoes and pooling on the wooden flooring. It was humiliating even though it was normal and somewhat expected; it was her water breaking, and the contractions felt harder, sharper. She refused to let it show; she walked in her soaked gown down the halls to the room prepared for this day, her jaw clenched on contractions, and only spared a gritted, "You. Get the staff to clean that up," to one of the nurses as she did so.

The birthing room she'd prepared did not have all the equipment that a hospital would boast. Most of it, Daear had refused simply because she knew it would not help her, would not be needed. She pulled off her ruined gown, struggled with what pride she had as she removed her soaked underwear and thigh-high nylons, sitting in the birthing chair as the doctor got cleaned and prepped. One of the nurses automatically moved to tilt the chair back, so that she would be lying on her back. Daear's eyes immediately shifted to dark fields of yellow gold.

"Do not touch the settings on this chair without my express permission," she snarled. "Or you die. Do you understand? Doctor Enson, you may proceed. Carefully, if you value your hide."

It hurt - of course it hurt, and there could be no relief from pain, not with her body - as the doctor proceeded to get stiffly down on his knees and pushed his hand and arm up into her body, feeling her cervix and poking fingers into her uterus to feel for her daughter. Humiliating, deeply humiliating - was she a cow, to be rummaged around in? - and painful, as the doctor pushed down hard on her stomach to feel the dilation. Daear's lips parted in a teeth-grinding snarl as she refused to make any noise.

"Two centimeters," said Doctor Enson mildly, as nurses indicated she should tilt forward so that a monitoring device could be strapped to her stomach to monitor her baby's vital signs.

Two. That meant waiting, and boredom, and pain. Doctor Enson and the nurses had plenty to do - it was December, and cold, and they were busy making the room toasty warm and preparing the various items for the baby. Daear herself had little to do but get through the labor process; currently she spent about one minute in five in contractions, which left her four minutes to seethe. The contractions weren't even very painful - sort of like cramps, all in all. She got carefully to her feet and resumed walking, as much as she could. With her eyes shifted and glowing the nurses carefully avoided touching her. She was not permitted water - a stupid restriction to her mind - but she was allowed to suck on cubes of ice. Given how warm the room was going to become, she decided against arguing the point.

Her body wasn't hers any more. She soon had to return to the chair - not because of pain, but because of nausea. Her body trembled for no reason she could name, the room was too cold and too hot and she wanted this over with damnit, and she snarled when the doctor put his hand up inside her again, and again what felt like only a moment later, and she couldn't kill him just yet. However, when a nurse told her sternly not to push, she reacted by lashing out with her power - crushing the woman's heart, tearing it down through her body. The only gain was that Daear felt better, but she admitted to herself that she did feel better for doing that.

"Six centimeters," said Doctor Enson after withdrawing his hand, as two - now very nervous - nurses dragged the body of their fallen co-worker out of the room. "And the baby isn't turning."

Daear barely registered the meaning; she was lightheaded from the first attack of nausea in her life, and the contractions that were getting fiercer. However, the doctor quite helpfully clarified. "I'm going to have to try to turn her."

And now it was not merely one hand but two inside her, and she screamed. Loudly and at great length, and her hands bent the steel bars they were clenching. Hands tried to touch, presumably to soothe, and Daear's own hands - already fisted on pain - lashed out with all her preternatural strength. Her ears registered a crash, but she paid little attention. Her world was full of her own pain, and the need to get that baby out.

She screamed herself hoarse, too far gone into pain even to register her own cries, and then - merciful Diablos - the doctor withdrew his hands and said, "Push. I can't turn her, and you're fully dilated. The faster you birth her, the better off everyone will be."

At last. She grunted with the effort, feeling the baby move, and tried to concentrate. If she could just touch her power, pull the baby out as she pushed...but the pain was so great and the contractions took all her concentration. But she'd won a vital point in the birthing chair - she couldn't increase gravity, but gravity was on her side. Another nurse died, from her crushing the woman's throat, as the doctor reached one hand in her - again! - to do some small maneuvering thing to the baby, something was coming out; she was sure of it. Her body burned, stretched, and it was only one more pain on top of all the others but enough to make her groan.

"You're almost done," said Doctor Enson. "She's out up to the shoulders. One more good push should do it."

Liar, thought Daear, as another contraction gripped her and she pushed -

Into a white-hot field of pain, frightening because she knew it had nothing to do with birthing. This pain was new, fierce, different, and she didn't even know if she screamed. It filled her entire body, sharp and white hot and stinging, and it lasted for what seemed like forever...

And then it was over. Daear looked down at her deflated, sweat-dripping belly, her mind numb and her body floating with blessed freedom-from-pain and the lightness of the baby being gone. She blinked blankly at a corpse on the floor; she had killed another nurse? Her body ached fiercely and she felt very - stretched. Both nurses seemed very busy with the baby, and the doctor - with a grim look - pushed hard on her stomach.

The baby was out, there shouldn't be any more contractions! But there were, and positioned as she was she got a good look at the roundish bloody mass that came out of her next.

And then...finally, it was over. A nurse came over and wiped her down with a cool cloth, which felt very good and Daear was too tired to immediately react to being touched. And then the other nurse brought her baby.

Such a little creature, to have caused me so much trouble, she thought, but didn't really mind much. Her newborn daughter looked as tired as she herself felt, and radiated a quiet kind of...friendliness. As if she were happy to be where she was. And, fading in her eyes, a dark green glow flecked with gold. My child, my daughter of power. Her power, Daear knew, that had made the last push so hard. Well she knew that children like herself would show their power when afraid, and what could be more frightening than birth? Her lips twitched faintly in an almost-smile as she remembered her foster father training Nodwydd. As a child, Noddy should have been unable to call his power consciously at all - but Detmer had taken to scaring the wits out of the boy at regular intervals until he learned to control the fear reaction. Now, of course, it meant that Nodwydd wasn't really startled by much of anything.

That will not be necessary for you, my daughter, Daear thought tiredly. I can defend us both until you are strong enough to take your rightful place. Idly, her arm firmly around her baby, Daear looked at the doctor and the two surviving nurses, who were cleaning up the various messes with an apprehensive air. Waiting, no doubt, for death. Now that she was no longer in pain, Daear could feel her power waiting. She could kill them now, if she chose. She let her eyes shift again - they had reverted to normal as she relaxed after the birth - and memorized their scents. There would be no hiding from her if she wanted them dead, be it now or later.

Doctor Enson didn't seem to fear the prospect much, but then he was old. "What is her name, Lady Deling?" he asked quietly, apparently determined to die with dignity if that was what was required of him.

Hm, Daear considered, regarding her contentedly sleeping daughter. She did radiate a kind of comforting friendliness; Daear couldn't really attribute her own relaxed state to anything else, given that she was naked and far from her personal best at the moment. And her eyes, before fading to a human baby blue, had been green and gold. Her research into the Guardian Forces led her to suspect the Tonberry King. Friendliness and innocence masking an ability to cause a great deal of pain. Daear knew that in time, her daughter would be able to kill with that pain. The birth shock was the weakest use of power, because it was the first. And it had not been something to shrug off; Daear was content to recline because otherwise she might tremble with the aftereffects.

"Nissa," she said at last. "Her name is Nissa." That meant friendly, and that power would serve her daughter very well. The darling of the media, the darling of her family who would not understand that their desire to love her was power-driven...yes. Daear's eyes half closed on a soft, tired smile. She could intimidate, and command, but she'd never gotten the hang of making people like her. Nissa would not have that trouble.

"Nissa Deling," said Doctor Enson, and stepped back as Daear's head snapped up and her features hardened. Her gold-eyed glare left the three survivors no doubt that she would accept nothing less than what she stated should be.

"Her name is Nissa Deling ab Daear ab Llew," she snarled. "I will spell it for you if you like. That is her name. And the first one of you that uses any name past 'Nissa Deling' dies. You do not have the right to make use of her full name. If I should ever see my daughter's full name in the paper, or on the news, or spoken in the street, all three of you die."

It was a credit to her ability to inspire fear, that naked and tired from birthing she still commanded absolute obedience - though both nurses and the doctor looked puzzled at the command, for they knew her only as Adrienne Thomas. The paperwork duly filled out, the nurses brought a wheelchair - and then waited uncertainly, having already seen four people die for touching her. It took a great deal more energy than she would have liked, but Daear managed to get out of the birthing chair and into the wheelchair, slipping into a thick soft robe on the way. Nissa, comfortably wrapped in a blanket, was settled in her arms. Doctor Enson moved to push her as one of the nurses left to instruct the servants in preparing a bath and the other continued cleaning up the birthing room. Daear looked over the birth certificate with some surprise. "What day is today?"

"The fourteenth of December, Lady," the doctor replied. To her puzzled expression he added, "You were in labor for nearly a full day. You may not need much rest, but I and the others do."

Daear found that it was already relatively easy to look back on her pains, but she found it hard to believe she had worked so long. At least it explained her exhaustion; she might be of the Pride, but even so she did need to sleep. "And the time?"

"It is now nearly dawn, Lady. About half past six in the morning."

Daear nodded. She would doze in her bath as long as the baby let her, and there were servants to handle changing her. By noon she should be able to become presentable enough to show her daughter off to the world.

"So, Lady," he said as the other two busied themselves. "How long?"

Daear smiled; the doctor did understand her quite well. "I will have two children, Doctor," she replied serenely. "It would be best if an experienced doctor were to assist me with the next. But it is not required."

"I see," he nodded solemnly, pushing her carefully down the hallway.

"We shall see if four can keep a secret," said Daear, focusing on her baby daughter. "Or if three of them must be dead."