Assassin's Creed Drabbles

↳ little star

deimos hadn't expected to become a father, but nothing is so precious as his little star. 

HE RETURNS FROM Amphipolis with new scars and a new determination to return to Sparta to see where everything had all begun. You fear for him, for what he will find there and what will become of him. The Cult's champion was by no means an easy person to love, but you had loved Deimos since childhood after Elpenor found you in the streets of Athens —begging for coin and testing your luck at pickpocketing. You'd never taken to violence the way Deimos and the others had, but no one dared touch you for dread of what Deimos' retribution would be like.

"Deimos!" You cry, stopping him in his tracks as he departs from the villa to begin his journey back to Lakonia. He meets you halfway, brows furrowed with his tawny-gold eyes studying your odd expression —somewhere between happiness and pain. "Before you go back to Taygetos," you start, reaching for one of his hands. Drawing in a deep breath, you splay his hand over your stomach. His brows knit together, but you're unable to decipher the look in his eyes. "I just wanted you to know you're going to be a father." The physician, Lykaon, saw you just two days ago, confirming you budding suspicion.

Deimos bites down on his bottom lip, moving his hand from your stomach to cup your cheek. You cannot force him to stay, nor do you want to —he needs to do this for himself. Though now he has even more of a reason to return. Bending down, he brushes his lips against yours, fingers ghosting across your cheek and jaw. He pulls away with the softest of sighs.

"Come back to me," you tell him, as you always had before he left to do the Cult's bidding —feeling the dimples and scratches in his gold-and-black cuirass beneath your hand. "Come back to us," you add softly. Deimos offers a curt nod, bringing the head on his chest up to his lips. With a short kiss to your palm, he turns back continuing on his journey.

DEIMOS RETURNS WITHIN two moons and you can tell there is something different about him by the way he walks. He greets you with a smile, a warm embrace, and a kiss upon the cheek while he lays his hand against your belly —the first signs of a growing bump beginning to show through your peplos. When you query about what happened in Sparta, he promises to tell you everything later, but for now, you and he will finally have the freedom you'd dreamt about for so long. It does not take long for you to gather what few belongings you have, stashing them away in a small wooden chest before setting off to the harbor of Kirrha.

The waiting trireme has seen better days and the Amazonian woman standing at the helm bears an eerie resemblance to Deimos. "Alexios," she greets with a nod before turning her attention to you. He wraps his arm around your waist, introducing you to Kassandra —his sister and commander of the Adrestia. "Welcome aboard," Kassandra says with a smile, "my brother wouldn't shut up about you the whole way here." Deimos had said you were fair as Aphrodite and it is hardly an understatement, especially with a maternal glow on your skin.

"Where are we going?" You ask, glancing up at him.

Deimos stands behind you at the bow of the ship, arms around your middle and both hands splayed across your stomach. He dips his head down, pressing his nose into your temple —looking off on the horizon. "Home," he breathes, lips brushing across your cheek. Home, you think with a smile, your arms have always felt like home.

HOME IS A three-room mud and brick house just outside the agora of Sparta. Waiting in the doorway is Kassandra and Alexios' mother, Myrrine. She wears a warm smile, welcoming you into her arms and her home —making a light jest about becoming a grandmother. Deimos scarcely leaves your side in the days and weeks that follow —a pleasant change from the time he had spent away doing the Cult's bidding. If you had not loved Deimos before, you did now, wholeheartedly. Little-by-little he was burying pieces of the past, finding himself in the weapon Chrysis had tried so adamantly to forge until one day, he says his name is no longer Deimos, but Alexios. It is the start of a good and simple life.

As time passes, your belly grows larger and you tire more easily after simple tasks —wanting nothing more than to lay back and take the load off your swollen ankles. Though tonight instead of lounging on the feather mattress, you rest comfortably in a pile of pillows on the rooftop under a clear night sky. "Artemis or Athena," Alexios says, looking back up at the stars.

A question from Myrrine earlier in the evening about names brought the two of you to the current moment, discussing potential names for your unborn child. You laugh quietly at the proposed names for a daughter. "You know the gods don't take kindly to having mortals named after them," you chide, glancing over at him. There's a smile tugging at his lips.

Alexios raises a brow, rolling back onto his side. "I have the blood of gods, though," he refutes, cocksure. You shift, sinking further into the pillow pallet and roll your eyes. He may go by his birthname now, but it had not changed his streak of arrogance. "Astra," Alexios replies after a moment of silence between you both. A piece of him hopes it is a daughter, though he cannot say why.

"And if it's a boy?" You pose, curious to know what he would name a son.

"Diomedes?" He says, thinking of the Argolian king and Trojan hero who'd made Ares himself bleed. A strong name for son, especially one descended from Leonidas and Alexios. Son or daughter, they are already loved. Alexios reminds them every night —whispering promises to protect them and their mater from anyone or anything.

HE PACES OUTSIDE, wearing a rut into the earth —worried sick. Kassandra clasps onto Alexios' shoulder, doing her best to calm her brother's addled nerves. Childbirth was a woman's affair and Myrrine and the iatromea had promptly shooed Alexios from the home. He could hear your screams and cries as you labored to bring your child into the world —a feat more dangerous than any he could claim to have done. He waits, as patiently as he can.

The sun dips behind the mountains in the west before his mother comes to the door, smiling despite the blood on her hands. "Alexios," Myrrine says, motioning for her son to follow, "come meet your daughter." She draws back an unknotted curtain and he stops, heart beating in his throat.

Hair clings to your sweat-slicked forehead —pushed aside are bloody rags and red-tinged water. It looks like you had fought a hundred battles in a single day. Swaddled in pale green linen is a red face with small chubby cheeks resting against your breasts. Alexios kneels at your side, smiling despite the tears streaking his face. You reach out, gripping onto his hand and smile, exhausted. He looks down at the babe, hesitant to speak or doing anything that could wake her. But you sit up with a soft groan and hold out Astra, your daughter.

He's never held anything so innocent in his life —his are the hands of a killer— but as he looks down at his daughter everything fades and by the gods, he's never loved anyone so quickly. "Chaire, my little star," Alexios breathes, stroking her red cheek with his fingertip. A pair of tawny-gold eyes open and meet his own. "Pater's here," he whispers, dipping his head down and kissing her small, clammy forehead.

You smile, knowing he had worried about not being a good father, but his actions prove himself wrong. Alexios lifts his gaze from Astra to you, returning the smile. "She's perfect," he says, leaning down to press his lips against yours. Perfect like you, he thinks, still smiling into the kiss. Alexios gives a soft sigh as he lays down next to you, letting Astra rest upon his chest. He threads his fingers through yours, knowing the best chapter of his life had just begun.