Distractions Her Greek lesson was open in front of her, but Alicia was not attending to it very well. Her eyes kept straying to the pair of bassinets beside her desk, just to be sure that nothing had disturbed either of their contents.
The boys had never been inclined to give her much peace, but they had become unusually active even for them about three days before they were born – enough so that when she had first began feeling some pain quite early one morning, she’d wondered if they’d bruised her somehow. It had not taken her very long to realize that was not the case, though she had forced herself to carry on as normally as long as possible; she had been trying to brush her hair out for lunch when she’d dropped her brush, and when she’d stood to reach her wand so she could retrieve the brush, she had nearly fallen. Reluctantly, she had asked the nurse who’d been hovering about for a few days at that point to inform Thad of the situation; she’d still been able to walk about at short intervals and carry on conversation (slightly ridiculous conversation, admittedly; in retrospect, she was afraid she’d sounded half-drunk) until eight o’clock, at which point she had very reluctantly asked her husband to go into exile in the library when she realized she was not quite sure how much longer she would be able to put on a presentable face for his benefit.
Things got strangely hazy after that, but apparently it had been about four in the morning when the boys were born. She remembered being absolutely exhausted, eyelids fluttering without her willing them to do so, and then, five minutes later, feeling as though she’d had amphetamines. She had been barking orders, she was told, making everyone crazy, demanding someone help her to the bath and to find the dressing gown she’d had made for the occasion and trying to put on her make-up herself until she’d abruptly begun shaking violently all over. They had tried pressing blankets on her, and offering sedatives, but she hadn’t been cold or nervous – just afflicted with all-over tremors, so that, after a nurse, with some difficulty, put her lipstick on for her, she’d been forced to reject the offer of both the wailing bundled-up shawls someone had wanted her to take and tell the offerer, through chattering teeth, to give them to their father instead – she did not consider ‘shaking all over’ a thing she could do and be presentable at the same time, even with her dressing gown located and it and her make-up on, but it had seemed very important that someone in the family look after the bundles, or at least supervise the professionals in looking after them, and Alicia had been afraid she’d drop them.
Alexander Thesius had kept his name for the duration, but Nicholas Diomedes’ had not been finalized until almost the last moment, and by chance at that – Alicia had been reading one morning and realized it worked very well. Alexander was a great conqueror, Theseus a clever man; Nicholas – accounting for linguistic variations – was the name of many intellectuals, Diomedes a great warrior, the mortal who had wounded both War and Love, who had also founded civilizations. Of course, the problem was that they were all rather Greek names, which was why Alicia was now trying to learn Greek at the rather late age of twenty-six years and eleven months. It was difficult going, though, and she could scarcely imagine how it would go once she was back to a full social calendar….
She had just redirected her attention firmly to her lesson when a small noise from one of the bassinets drew her away again. Nicholas, it seemed, was awake, but not particularly inclined to scream at the moment, which meant Alicia could deal with him herself instead of calling Maeve so their nanny could first determine whether it was the desire for a clean napkin or a bottle which had prompted the screaming and then take the baby away to deal with said problem once its nature was determined.
“Khairete there,” she said, quietly so she didn’t wake Alexander. She picked the younger twin up from his bassinet and carefully returned to her desk chair. “Did you have a nice nap? You did? That’s lovely.”
She had sworn to herself, over and over again, that she was not going to be ridiculous, or confirm the stereotype that mothers were overly emotional and a bit stupid in general. It was their father she had sworn her loyalty to, and their father who’d earned it over the years – they were means to an end. And she felt she was still loyal to her husband first. He was, she thought as she absent-mindedly traced the outline of the baby’s face with one hand, the one person on this entire mountain who she wouldn’t kill for mere suspicion that said person posed the slightest threat to either of these blank-looking, wobbly, currently objectively fairly uninteresting little creatures.
If Thad definitely posed an actual threat...well, of course he wouldn't. His grandmother or father might persuade him it was a good idea, maybe, but then Alicia would persuade him otherwise - it had worked before, after all. She was only here because he'd been willing to push back over their objections to her. If that didn't work, though...then, she supposed, things would get very complicated. But she was never going to have to make that call, of course. He had made promises to her, too - she thought he loved her, and knew he respected her too much to challenge her lightly over something she really cared about. It was them against the world, and these two were extensions of him. Their interests were all the same.
Tiny fingers brushed her bracelet. “You like Mommy’s bracelet? It’s very shiny, isn’t it? I suppose we’ll have to get you and your brother gold teething rings instead of silver in a few months. Won’t that be nice?”
OOC: Khairete: transliteration of Greek for “hello.”
On names, picked with Thad’s author: Alexander is a nod to Alexander the Great, as Thad and Alicia are both the sorts to regard it as fairly reasonable to anticipate their offspring will be capable of conquering the known world if so inclined and intellectually sharp enough to be tutored by Aristotle. Thesius is Thad’s father; Theseus, a figure from Greek mythology who charmed Ariadne in order to survive the Minotaur. ‘Nicholas’ has a slightly less distinguished reputation with emperors, but an excellent one with scholars of various kinds, while ‘Diomedes’ is a figure fighting for the Greeks in the Iliad, and one of the figures lucky enough to survive the epic; he became the only mortal to wound two gods in one day in battle, injuring Ares and Aphrodite enough to force them to flee the field, and later, according to some myths, established several cities in Italy and was deified after his death.