Chapter Seven....Restless Mothers and Nervous Fathers
She was restless tonight. Facing the fact, she was restless every night. It was next to impossible to sleep when you
felt like a leviathan. She sometimes thought she'd forgotten what sleeping on her stomach felt like. Soothing she
ran her long hands across her stomach. A little life. Almost as restless as she was all the time now with its little
hands and feet moving against her skin. Yesterday, they'd had the hiccups. Tonight, her baby was sleeping though.
Sound and still inside her. And Andromache was walking. Walking the walls of Troy.
"This is yours." she whispered to the tiny life inside her. "All of it. Its people, its bricks, its life. Your daddy watches
over it and one day you will too."
The 'daddy' in question was sleeping right now. The way any sensible person should be. He'd been so busy lately.
She'd laid next to him in the moonlight and watched him sleep. Loving him. Loving him and loving the life he'd given
her. Her hand absently stroked across her stomach again.
The soldiers nodded as she passed them and sometimes she joined one of them to look out from his post at the
moonlit night beyond. It was their secret - that the princess of Troy, the wife of their prince, had taken to wandering
the high walls in the middle of the night. Something they shared and it tied their hearts to the new baby as well.
Knowing the child had walked the walls of Troy before it was even born. Andromache found comfort in their
presence and quiet acceptance as well. Soldiers she'd thought she would always be wary around and that now
belonged to her heart as closely as the rest of her city did.
"Quiet tonight." she murmured with a quiet smile in answer to one of their questions about the child. Knowing they
had a betting pool going on to see who could guess when their new prince or princess would come. She rested her
hands folded lightly across the top of her stomach and stood watch as well, wind blowing its cool breeze across her
face.
Hector woke up with a start, as if a bell or alarm had gone off. He was surprised he had fallen asleep, actually, but
somehow he had. And awoken to find himself alone in the bed, something that hadn't been true since he'd returned
to Troy with Andromache.
He sat up straight and rubbed at his eyes and looked around the room. She was no where in sight. His heavily
pregnant wife wasn't where she was supposed to be!
Hector threw on some clothes and started to search Troy for her, getting a bit more frantic the more places he
searched, places she wasn't at. Finally he saw her up at one of the look out spots with one of his soldiers. Relieved
he climbed up there, taking a short cut ladder. He nodded to the soldier who snapped to attention upon seeing his
prince and general in the middle of the night, even if his prince was barefoot and bare chested.
"Restless?" He asked, trying not to let any of the anxiety he was feeling creep into his voice.
Andromache turned with a smile, surprised to see her husband awake. He'd been exhausted when he'd gone to
sleep. She'd honestly expected to have to shoo servants that might come looking for him in the morning out so that
he could actually sleep in for once. And now he was here, in the middle of the night, wavy hair tousled, barefoot and
bare chested, eyes wide awake and worried. She moved over to him, cupped his cheek with one of her hands.
"What are you doing awake?" she asked with a softly puzzled smile.
"Could ask the same of you." He said pointedly. "Kind of late to be out here....this high up..." He would never get
any sleep at this rate, not that it was a painful thing to endure. "Little one keeping you awake?"
"The little guy likes to make sure Troy is secure before going to sleep, sir." The soldier said, part of the betting pool
who said it was a boy. "Reminds me of someone else come to think about it."
Hector rolled his eyes good-naturedly, but chuckled at the comparison. The soldier smiled, and casually moved
away toward another post, figuring between the prince and princess, and the unborn, this spot was watched more
than adequately enough.
"We like being up here." Andromache told her husband, shifting so she could rest her back against his chest. Not
being able to hug him properly was possibly one of the worse points of this entire pregnancy, stomach pains and
the sickness earlier on included. She turned her face into the side of his throat and reached up to slip her fingers
down his cheek.
"I just couldn't stay in bed any longer. I had to walk somewhere. I didn't mean to wake you up. I'm sorry. You've had
such a hard day."
"I'm fine." He assured her as he put his arms around her to rest on her ever growing stomach. He was trying really
hard not to go overboard, but couldn't she just sit somewhere...closer to the ground preferably! He did a mental
count of the minimum amount of stairs she would have had to take to get here, and it wasn't a very comforting
number. "And it’s a very nice view." He said carefully. She was a rolling ball of hormones, and sure his mother had
told her it was normal and Andromache was better than most, but still.
Frankly the whole thing was terrifying to him. His father had lost a wife in childbirth, another wife had a stillborn. He'd
seen it all his life, as the second oldest child of Priam's ever growing brood, he had a half brother who had just
turned three. "You sure you're okay?" Though he was certain if he asked one more time, she would smack him.
"Hector," she turned slightly against him so that she could look up at his face. Torn between laughing and loving
exasperation. "I'm fine. We're fine. Your child's asleep tonight." She shifted one of his large hands against her
stomach so he could spread it wide and feel the slight bump that Andromache imagined was the head. Or a knee.
Or elbow. Restless child was always poking her with something. "See?" she asked. "Nice and still for a change." Her
face softened and she reached up to tuck a curling wave of his dark hair behind his ear. "I worry about you.
Remember? Not the other way around."
"No, I’ve just had you fooled this whole time." He was always the type to think of the worst case scenario, then make
plans to avoid it. It made him one hell of a soldier and general, but a nervous father to be, since there were so
many scenarios he didn’t know how to avoid. Though it wasn’t for lack of trying.
She could easily take a tumble down a set of stairs. On the market days she could get elbowed someplace bad,
accidentally of course. She could have been thrown from a horse, but luckily she’d gotten too big to be comfortable
on one, so that was one battle he’d won, by default. She could over do it in the hot Trojan sun and pass out
somewhere, with his luck someplace where she wouldn’t be found for a bit. Far too many scenarios.
He ran his hand across her stomach, the child was indeed quiet for the time being, feeling the lumps and bumps
that protruded from her skin. "I’ve always worried."
He made her heart hurt. So - protective and gentle and loving and she leaned her head back against him, wishing
she could wrap her arms around him and tuck close. Worried about her? After all the time she spend worrying
about him.
"Its not as if I'm picking up sword and shield and going out to battle." she murmured. Trying to ease his mind. "All I'm
doing is mooing around the walls." she certainly felt about as wide as a cow these days at least. "Its nothing
dangerous. Women have babies all the time, my love."
He chuckled a bit. "You’re not ‘mooing’ around the walls." He assured her. "But the retaining wall is not very high..."
He said, looking at the low wall that made up the border between Troy and falling to one’s death. "And to use your
logic...men ride off to battle all the time." He countered. "But somehow I bet that doesn’t make you worry any less,
does it?" It was unsettling, really. He’d protected and worried over his country for his whole life, and though he knew
the people, they could still be forced into masses without faces while in battle. An ideal to keep him focused.
But now he had two people, one right here, one yet unseen, to worry about. Which he did, constantly. If he could
have wrapped her up in linen padding and confined her to bed, he surely would have. One would think worrying
and protecting two people in one body would be easy, but it wasn’t a load off his mind at all.