Lye stood at the bedside. Her hand reached out just shy of his attire. The torch's light on the wall cast a warm glow on the four horseman blade held against the small of his back. With his half blind gaze, he silently stared. The woman in the bed, cracked, broken, and swallowed in darkness seemed much more human in this moment. He knew her to be immortal, but what about the child? Was it his? Was it his enemy's? Would he be doing her a favor by killing it?

He pondered these questions and many more. As his thoughts deepened and whipped into a frenzy, the grip on his dagger tightened.

"Lye..?" Scarlet called out once more. She used his name yet again.

"How..." The sentence hung on his tongue. Did he really care about her well being? Did he really care about a child's; even his own?

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

Scarlet looked at him while still in a daze, but her brows further scrunched in confusion. She paused, closed her eyes, and rested her arm against her forehead.

"Tired," she muttered. "Feels like my stomach is in knots..."

'That's because you're with child,' he thought to say. His teeth clenched and again he felt the urge to plunge his blade into her abdomen. Where was Aurelianus when you needed him? Lye held himself back. Somewhere in the miasma of his twisted sense of reality, a small emotion stayed his otherwise vicious tenancies. It resounded like a voice in his head.

Daddy.

It was faint, distant. That shrill, innocent voice. A soft tug at the fabric of his trousers and two bright eyes staring up. A little smile, some teeth recently missing.

"Lye..?" That voice again. While it was hers, it overlapped another. His throat dried and he suddenly forgot how to breath.

"Yes?" he answered after a pause to catch his breath.

"What am I to you?" Scarlet asked. The cold, sharp words of her usual tone seemed absent. It sounded soft, genuine, if not weak and confused.

'You're nothing to me,' he thought to say, but the tightness in his chest held the words behind his lips. A mother? The mother of my child? A victim. A weapon and tool for the liberation of Salvar? A demon?

"You should get some rest," he stated. His words ended with the punctuation of blade against scabbard. Then, he reached over her and pulled dampened, charred sheets up to her neck. "I'll have fresh linens brought up."

Scarlet reached up while he was over her and drew a gentle hand across his cheek. It froze him for a brief moment.

"Stay?" she asked.

The assassin wrenched away and made for the door.

"Get your rest," he stated in his familiarly firm tone. The grate of iron groaned open and Lye removed himself from the room. The door shut, and the clang of metal on stone rang out.

Outside their quarters, Lye turned his eyes to the former Ixian that waited calmly beside the wall.

"The fuck are you doing here, puppet?" spat the assassin through a scowl.