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Paris in October smells of rain caught in old stone, roasted chestnuts from vendors who have worked the same corners for decades, and a cold that persuades strangers to drift a little closer together without ever admitting why. On the second Thursday of every October, that same chill settles over a narrow street along the Left Bank, over an unmarked wooden door easily mistaken for an apartment entrance, and over a restaurant so discreet that even the guidebooks mention it only in passing. It has become, without either of them ever saying so, the one place in the world that belongs entirely to Vincent Fabron and Sabine Callas.
They'd stumbled onto it five years ago, after a mission in France left them with one free evening and no desire to be recognized. The restaurant suited them perfectly — no photographs, no curious tourists, no reporters hoping to catch famous faces over dinner, just candlelight and quiet conversation and a maître d' who understood discretion better than prestige. So they kept coming back. Every October. The same table. The same modest bottle of Bordeaux they'd never once bothered replacing with anything finer. And always, at the end of the evening, a single pain au chocolat, served warm enough that the chocolate hadn't quite set — a habit the chef had simply adopted around the third anniversary, sending it out unasked. It wouldn't feel like October otherwise, he'd told them once, and neither Vincent nor Sabine had bothered to correct him. Tradition, they'd learned, required only repetition.
The maître d' looked up before Vincent had fully crossed the threshold.
"Monsieur Vincent."
Vincent inclined his head. "Bonsoir."
"The usual?"
"When has it ever been different?"
A knowing chuckle. "I suppose it hasn't."
No menu was offered. It never was. Their table waited by the window as it always had — crisp linen, two crystal glasses, a candle burned low enough to light faces rather than the room, exactly as Sabine had insisted the first time.
If we're going to hide, she'd said, I'd rather it not feel like hiding. He'd replied that a Michelin star behind an unmarked façade in Paris was already doing an excellent job of that. She'd rolled her eyes, then followed him inside anyway. Five years later, the ritual no longer felt like a choice.
He draped his gloves over the empty chair across from him — her chair — and didn't sit. Instead he nudged her wine glass a fraction of an inch, three millimeters, perhaps four, enough that she'd notice, because she always noticed. A cuff slightly off. A tie not quite centered. A skipped lunch he'd never mentioned and she'd correct anyway, without comment — coffee already waiting, documents already sorted, a quiet order restored that neither of them ever acknowledged aloud. It was the closest thing to softness Sabine Callas had ever openly offered him, and Vincent found himself faintly amused, in a way he didn't examine too closely, at how much meaning he'd learned to find in such small consistencies. If anyone from Protocol saw him like this — alone at a table set for two — they'd assume something far more complicated than it was. Fortunately, no one knew where he spent the second Thursday of every October.
Or so he believed.
Three floors beneath Protocol headquarters, at that very hour, Killjoy spun once in her chair, watching Sabine finish the last line of a containment report.
"You know," she said, "I've started tracking this. You always finish paperwork on the second Thursday of October."
"It's called efficiency."
"It's called a pattern."
"It's called you needing a hobby that isn't surveillance."
"I have hobbies. You're just not emotionally prepared for them."
"Debatable." No edge in it, no warning — and Killjoy had long since learned that from Sabine, debatable rarely meant disagreement. It meant delay.
Sabine closed the folder. 18:07. Seven minutes late. Her hand moved to the satchel beside her chair before she'd quite decided to let it — inside, a small velvet box pressed dark green against the lining, unremarkable to anyone who didn't know what it held: three positive tests, a lab confirmation, an ultrasound folded too many times to feel entirely real, and a pair of knitted socks so small they looked like a mistake the world hadn't gotten around to correcting yet. She'd rehearsed the words until they stopped sounding like language. Vincent, we're going to be parents. Every version collapsed halfway through, too large for a room that had never once required honesty of that size.
Her phone buzzed.
Vincent: You're late.
A second message followed:Should I assume you've abandoned me for someone with better taste in wine?
A faint curve touched her mouth, barely there.
Sabine: Running late.
Don't order dessert.
I have something for you.
The reply came quickly.
Vincent: Now you've made me curious.
Of course he was. He always was, when it came to her. She slipped the phone away and stood.
"Heading out?" Killjoy asked.
"I was."
"Was?"
Sabine didn't answer. The lights flickered — once, then again — and the hum of the facility shifted, like something deep inside had failed to exhale. Red emergency lighting flooded the room, and a calm synthetic voice followed.
Containment breach. Level four radianite instability. All available research personnel report immediately.
Killjoy's expression sharpened. Sabine's grip tightened on the satchel strap, and the box inside shifted, slightly. For a moment she didn't move — not hesitation, calculation — and then she exhaled, quiet and controlled.
"Not yet," she said, to no one, and turned toward the corridor, and walked back into the breach.
She never made it.
Killjoy drove. She never remembered the drive afterward, only flashes — a red light ignored, one hand on the wheel and the other gripping Sabine's wrist as though a pulse could vanish simply because she stopped checking for it. She refused to let anyone else take over, refused to leave until the doctors wheeled Sabine through doors she wasn't allowed to follow. Only then did she sit, hands clasped so tightly together they hurt, staring at her phone. Vincent's name sat under her thumb. What do I tell him — that she might be losing the baby, or that she already has? There was no way to choose between those sentences. So she didn't. Not yet. Not until there was certainty.
Across the city, Vincent checked the time. 20:14. Late, but not unusual — operations overran, reports bred reports, Brimstone possessed a remarkable talent for turning fifteen minutes into an hour. He adjusted the cuff beneath his watch, a habit he'd never once noticed in himself, and told himself she'd apologize for it later, the way she always did. Five years had taught him the rhythm of her absences. There was always a reason, usually a message, sometimes only a single word — delayed — and that had always been enough. This wasn't that rhythm.
His phone rang at 9:47. Unknown number.
"Monsieur Fabron?"
"Yes."
"This is Hôpital Saint-Louis. Miss Sabine Callas listed you as her emergency contact."
For one impossible second his mind simply refused the sentence. Hospital. Emergency contact. Sabine. Those words did not belong together.
"What happened?"
"I'm sorry, sir. You'll need to come—"
He was already standing. The waiter said something — perhaps asked if everything was all right — and Vincent didn't hear him. His chair sat half-pushed beneath the table, the wine untouched, his coat forgotten. He would remember none of it. Later, if anyone asked how long the drive took, he wouldn't know; traffic lights existed, apparently, but he didn't remember a single one. Only the hospital — too white, too quiet, built by people who believed cleanliness could soften bad news. It couldn't. The antiseptic settled at the back of his throat. He hated that smell. It smelled like things already decided.
Killjoy was standing before he reached her, blood on her sleeve — not much, but enough.
"She's alive," Killjoy said immediately, and his lungs finally remembered how to work. "She's stable." Then she looked down. "I'm sorry."
He didn't ask. He couldn't. He already knew. He simply walked past her.
Sabine sat against the pillows exactly as she'd been left, hands folded, IV taped neatly against pale skin, looking out at a window that didn't really show her Paris. The door clicked shut behind him and she recognized the sound immediately — of course she did, she'd have known his footsteps in any building on earth.
"I'm sorry." Not hello. Not Vincent. Not I missed dinner. Sorry.
His heart broke quietly, and it broke harder because he had never heard her sound like this — not once in five years, not in victory, not in exhaustion, not even in pain. She had always been composed in a way that made the world feel temporary around her. This voice didn't belong to the woman he knew.
"I was going to tell you tonight. I had everything planned. The box — I—" She couldn't finish it, because how could she — I was going to tell you we were going to be parents. Now I'm telling you we aren't — no language had words built for that.
"Sabine—"
"It was routine." A laugh escaped her, terrible and empty. "It was just a recalibration. I've done it hundreds of times. I didn't even think—" She stopped. I should have. The thought arrived before the words could. I am a doctor. I know what warning signs look like. How many patients have I told to listen to their bodies? Why didn't I listen to mine? "I should've known."
"You couldn't."
"I should've stopped working."
"You couldn't."
"I should've—" Her voice broke entirely. "I couldn't keep them safe."
Them. Not it. Never it — because she'd already imagined tiny socks, tiny hands, Vincent laughing, a family. To Sabine, they had already existed.
Vincent crossed the room before she could retreat from him. She tried anyway — instinct, guilt always pulling away before it accepts comfort — but he caught her hand first.
"No." Quietly. Certain.
"You are lying in a hospital bed. You are bleeding." His thumb brushed slowly across her knuckles. "You nearly died." A silence. "And somehow you've decided this is something you need to apologize for."
She couldn't hold herself together any longer. The sob tore out of her before she could swallow it back, her breathing collapsing, every apology dissolving into broken pieces. "I couldn't—" A breath that refused to come. "I couldn't—"
And that was what broke him, in a way nothing else had — not the hospital, not Killjoy's bloodied sleeve, not even the words you nearly died. Five years of her voice had been certainty and precision, something unshakable enough that he had begun to believe she simply did not fall apart. And now she was, in his arms, unrecognizable in her grief, and he understood, with a cold clarity that stole the air from his lungs, that he had never even known this version of her existed.
He climbed onto the bed beside her, ignoring the nurse's disapproving look, ignoring the IV line, ignoring everything except the woman folding into his arms as though she'd forgotten how to stand on her own. She shook hard enough that he could feel it through his ribs. He held her tighter.
"You do not have to be strong with me."
That was all. Because sometimes love wasn't finding the perfect sentence. Sometimes it was only refusing to let go. So he didn't — not when her tears soaked through his shirt, not when midnight settled over Paris, not when the nurse quietly dimmed the lights and left them alone. Some griefs cannot be solved. Only survived. Preferably together.
The weeks that followed learned the shape of silence. The apartment no longer felt abandoned so much as paused, every room waiting for something that never arrived.
The anniversary dress stayed in the wardrobe. The jewelry box disappeared into a drawer neither of them opened. They moved around each other carefully, speaking less, noticing more.
When Sabine finally found the tiny knitted socks and threw them away between one breath and the next, Vincent retrieved them an hour later, washed them by hand, folded them back into the velvet box, and set it in his own nightstand drawer.
Neither of them acknowledged it. Weeks later she found them there, quietly preserved, and the next morning she left a cup of coffee beside him before he woke. Between them, that counted as thank you.
Two weeks in, she finally asked the question she'd been circling since the hospital.
"Were you disappointed?"
The words left her carefully, as though speaking them too loudly might make them true. I am a doctor. I should have known. I spend my life preventing catastrophes measured in molecules — how could I not save someone so small?
Vincent looked at her, and for a brief, bewildered second he genuinely didn't understand the question.
"In me," she clarified.
Never. The answer arrived before thought did. He set the documents aside without marking his place — ink and paper suddenly seemed absurd, pretending to matter while the woman he loved sat across from him carrying a grief she'd quietly decided belonged to her alone. He turned to her fully.
"Sabine. I fell in love with you." Simple. Matter-of-fact, as though there had never been another possibility. "Not the possibility of children."
"I know, but—"
"No." Not harsh — certain, the same certainty she'd heard in his voice before impossible missions, before every moment he'd refused to entertain failure. He reached across the space between them and unfolded her clenched hand with infinite care until her fingers rested inside his. "If the only family I am ever allowed is you, then I am already the luckiest man alive."
She stared at their joined hands. He isn't comforting me, she realized. He's telling the truth. Something in her gave way, and the tears came before she could stop them, years of discipline dissolving beneath the unbearable gentleness of being loved without condition.
She had spent two weeks certain there would always be an empty chair at their table now, an invisible absence neither of them would dare name. Instead he moved closer — not because she was crying, but because she had been carrying it alone — and she folded into him, forehead against his shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around her with the quiet certainty of a man who had already decided, long ago, that this was where he belonged.
Some loves are measured in declarations. Theirs was measured in staying. So he stayed, and for the first time since the hospital, Sabine let herself believe she didn't have to survive this by herself.
Coming home proved harder than the hospital had. Sabine stood in the doorway far longer than she meant to — the apartment looked exactly as they'd left it, which was the problem. Her coat still hung where she'd dropped it before Paris.
The anniversary dress waited untouched behind the wardrobe door. Somewhere in a drawer sat the jewelry box she'd never had the chance to give him. If I don't move, she thought, nothing else has to.
Vincent didn't tell her it would get easier. Didn't tell her time healed anything — those were promises neither of them could afford. Instead he slipped his hand into hers.
"We'll start with one room."
Not the apartment. Not the future. Not the rest of their lives.
Just one room.
She nodded, and they began with the kitchen — the mugs still drying by the sink, the dish towel he folded without being asked. The next day, the living room; a basket of laundry had waited patiently for weeks, and she folded shirts while he matched socks, and neither of them mentioned the tiny pair that wasn't there.
Some evenings occurred when she stopped halfway through sweeping; when a memory arrived without warning, and he never asked which one — he simply took the broom from her hand and finished the floor while she sat at the table until breathing came easy again.
Some nights she woke before dawn, reaching instinctively for a future that no longer existed, and he was already awake — not because he'd slept well, but because somewhere along the way he'd started listening for the sound of her breathing, and had learned the shape of her nightmares before she ever spoke them.
The way her fingers tightened first, searching for something that wasn't there. The way her breath fractured before her eyes even opened. On those nights he was moving before she'd fully surfaced. "I'm here," he'd whisper into the dark, before she could fall too far back into it — a hand at her wrist, then her shoulder, then her back, steady and grounding and real.
He never asked what she'd seen. Never asked her to name it, or to be brave in the aftermath of something that had already taken too much.
He simply stayed close enough that her body could remember where she was, guiding her back piece by piece, breath by breath, until his voice was the only thing louder than the memory — and when the tremors finally eased and her grip loosened on his shirt, he stayed until her eyes closed again. For her to sleep. For him to remain. That was enough.
It wasn't enough to take the grief away. They both knew that. But grief, Vincent discovered, was strangely willing to make room for company.
Months later, life returned in embarrassingly ordinary ways — she complained his coffee was too weak, he pretended not to notice her stealing food off his plate, they argued over whose turn it was to buy groceries. Then that one evening, something ridiculous happened on television and she laughed; a real one, Vincent knew the distinction between her real laugh and what was fake. That it almost startled them both; she covered her mouth immediately, guilt flashing across her face as though happiness had arrived too early.
Vincent reached over and muted the television.
"You don't have to apologize for that either."
Her eyes filled again — not from sadness this time, but because she finally understood.
He wasn't waiting for the woman she'd been before. He wasn't measuring her healing or quietly hoping she'd hurry back to herself. He loved the one standing in front of him now — the one who cried in supermarkets after wandering into the baby aisle by accident, who still paused outside the spare room before walking past it, who sometimes needed to sit on the kitchen floor for no reason she could explain.
He stayed through all of it, not because he knew how to fix her grief, but because loving Sabine had never been about fixing her. It had always been about choosing her.
Again, and again, and again.
Grief never left; it simply stopped defining the shape of their days, and lived beside them now, quiet and acknowledged, no longer alone.
This is where Sabine’s body already — or, has always knew. Vincent Fabron is her safe place.
Winter surrendered to spring almost without either of them noticing, and the apartment slowly became theirs again — not because the grief had disappeared, but because they'd learned where to put it.
One evening Vincent stood at the stove attempting something that could generously be called dinner, while Sabine leaned against the counter half-reading one of Killjoy's reports. It was ordinary. Wonderfully ordinary. The pan hissed; he frowned at it.
"I've been thinking."
Sabine looked up immediately. That sentence, from Vincent Fabron, usually preceded either a very expensive purchase or an exceptionally dangerous idea.
"Should I be concerned?"
"Possibly." Vincent still couldn’t get the words out of his thoughts.
She smiled, only a little. He turned the heat down, and when he spoke again his voice had gone quieter, and for once he didn't sound like a man who'd already decided where the sentence was going — which alone made her pay closer attention,
Because Vincent Fabron did not wander into thoughts, he arrived at them fully formed and annotated. This one had slipped past him.
"I've been wondering what our lives would look like if you were my wife."
The kitchen went silent. Even the pan seemed to stop. Sabine stared at him; he still wasn't looking at her, pretending great interest in stirring something that no longer needed it.
My wife.
The words settled somewhere deep inside her, and only then did it seem to register in him what he'd actually said — his hand paused mid-stir, just for a fraction of a second, not enough for anyone else to notice, but she did.
I didn't mean to say that, he thought, belatedly, sharp and disorienting. He had been thinking about time, about probability, about how narrowly things had gone wrong before — about the one moment where he might not have had the chance to think any of this at all — and somehow, in the space between one thought and the next, the conclusion had simply escaped.
He was a man of plans. This was not a plan. This was a breach in protocol. He cleared his throat, as if that might retrieve the sentence. It didn't. The words stayed in the room, stayed in her, stayed in him.
She'd imagined children, birthdays, growing old enough to argue about whose turn it was to make coffee — but somehow not this, not because she didn't want it, but because she'd quietly assumed there would always be time.
"You don't have to answer now," Vincent said. "In fact, I'd prefer if you didn't. I appear to have chosen a remarkably unromantic setting."
Despite herself, she laughed, softly, and he looked over, relieved to hear it — relieved and faintly unsettled, as if only now realizing he had proposed in a kitchen, over a pan, while something was burning in a way that might technically qualify as dinner. He knew enough etiquette to know this wasn't how it was supposed to happen. And yet he also knew, with a clarity that tightened his chest, that if he'd waited for the correct moment, the correct lighting, the correct everything, he might have waited too long.
"I only realized" He searched for words, something he almost never did. "that I nearly lost the opportunity to ask at all."
There it was — not the proposal, but the truth hiding beneath it. He wasn't afraid of marriage.
Vincent was never afraid. But somehow, truth to be told— He was afraid of running out of tomorrows.
Sabine lowered her eyes. You should say yes, came the answer, so quickly it startled her. You've known your answer for years. Then guilt arrived, quieter but familiar. How can I think about forever when we couldn't even protect them? She swallowed hard.
Vincent crossed the kitchen before she'd spoken a word. "I wasn't asking because I expect an answer tonight." He reached for her hand. "I was asking because, whenever you're ready—" his thumb brushed her knuckles "—I'd like to spend the rest of my life waiting for it."
She looked at him, really looked, at the man who had learned the shape of her nightmares, who folded laundry when she couldn't, who made coffee too weak, who never once asked her to hurry through grief, and she understood, with a quiet certainty that surprised even her, that somewhere between the hospital and all those ordinary mornings, he had already become home. She rested her forehead against his.
Not yet — not because she didn't want to, but because she wanted to say yes without feeling guilty for surviving. Vincent understood anyway, and she knew, without needing to say it, that he always would. Not now. But someday, when the weight in her chest stopped feeling like something to atone for, she would say yes, because he had already earned it in every quiet way that mattered.
So he kissed her forehead, and waited, as he always had, as he always would.
Months later, Sabine wondered why the coffee tasted wrong, not bad, just wrong. She frowned into the mug Vincent had made her that morning, still too weak despite months of practice, and pushed it away after one sip. Don't be stupid. She thought to herself. But the nausea arrived on mid-afternoon, quiet enough that she almost dismissed it
By Wednesday she'd convinced herself it was stress.
By Thursday she stopped believing that.
By the briefing she wasn't listening anymore — numbers, dates, mission schedules, then her own calendar, counted once, stopped, counted again slower, a third time. She never miscounted. She was always calculated.
The pharmacy was three districts away, not because she thought anyone would recognize her, but because grief teaches strange superstitions — if I don't say it out loud, it can't become true. She bought one test, then another, and stood in her own bathroom for a full minute after the result appeared. Positive. She sat on the floor for a long time after that, not crying, not smiling, just listening to the silence. Tell him, she thought, throat tight, before I start imagining futures I'm not allowed to keep. This time, no surprises. No hope I don't dare touch.
Just truth.
She found him in the living room — one sock on, one still in his hand, reading glasses low on his nose while pretending to understand Killjoy's latest engineering report. Domestic, ridiculously so, quietly content in a way that still didn't quite fit him. He looks like he belongs here, she thought, faintly amused at how she no longer remembered when he'd officially moved in. At some point after the hospital he'd simply stopped leaving — one drawer had become half the wardrobe, his cufflinks appeared beside her laboratory gloves, his coffee cups migrated into her cupboards, and one morning she'd reached for a towel and found his hanging beside hers. Neither of them had ever discussed it. It had simply become true. And now I'm about to ruin it.
He looked up. One glance at her face was enough. He stood immediately.
"What happened?"
Steady voice. Searching eyes, already afraid.
She held out the test. He didn't take it — he already knew — and his breath caught, not with fear but something else, something almost like joy trying to form and not knowing where to go.
His eyes closed briefly. Oh.
Not regret. Just trying to understand what happiness was supposed to feel like arriving without warning. When he opened them again, there was only her.
"I'm terrified," she confessed, the words smaller than she meant them.
"I know." Like it was obvious. Like fear was not a reason to step back.
"What if it happens again? What if I—" She couldn't finish it; her mind did it for her anyway. Empty rooms. Silent cribs. Hands that used to hold and no longer could.
He crossed the room, not rushing, just certain. "What if we lose—"
"We." She blinked. He repeated it softer, like correcting something sacred. "We." His hand hovered a second before touching her wrist, as if asking permission even now. "You said we."
Not I. Not this time. We. And that terrified her more than anything, because it meant there was something to lose together — and something to survive together. Vincent, meanwhile, looked like a man standing at the edge of a future he'd never been taught to hold, his eyes already there, already imagining, already quietly and helplessly happy. I don't know how to be a father, he thought. But I know I want to try.
Without another word she stepped into his arms, the test still forgotten between them. He held her like she might disappear if he loosened his grip, looking almost afraid of his own hope, and kissed the top of her head.
"So," he said quietly, "should I take this as my answer?"
She only stared, then laughed, small and wet with tears. "I don't know." Softer: "But I think you already did." She leaned up and kissed him, slowly, deliberately, anchoring herself to something real. "I suppose you should probably start looking at rings."
His breath hitched — not from fear this time, but something dangerously close to joy. For the first time since the hospital, hope no longer felt fragile. It felt like something they were carrying together.
The weeks that followed were measured in appointments — ultrasounds, blood draws, checkups neither of them called routine anymore. Vincent attended every one, not because Sabine asked, but because after the hospital it had become unthinkable to let her walk into an examination room alone. He memorized every physician on her chart, read reports before the doctors finished explaining them, kept a notebook in his jacket filled with appointment dates in precise handwriting beside Protocol missions he'd already rearranged around them. When Brimstone raised an eyebrow at yet another scheduled request, Vincent simply adjusted his cuffs.
"My fiancée has an appointment."
It was the first time he'd said the word aloud. The room went silent. Sabine's fingers paused over the datapad for a fraction of a second — barely visible, but he noticed anyway.
"Your what?" Phoenix asked.
Vincent looked mildly confused by the reaction, as though the word explained itself. "My fiancée."
Raze laughed first. "I told y'all they were gonna get married."
"I literally had a spreadsheet," Killjoy said, offended.
"You made a spreadsheet?" Jett asked.
"I make spreadsheets for everything."
Sabine pinched the bridge of her nose, more for composure than frustration. "Can we please continue the briefing."
"You didn't deny it," Raze grinned.
Sabine's eyes flicked up, sharp and warning. She still didn't deny it. Vincent, entirely unbothered by the chaos he'd caused with one sentence, had already returned to the mission file — only the faintest lift at the corner of his mouth suggesting he knew exactly what he'd done.
A week later he proposed properly. Not in a laboratory. Not in a kitchen. Certainly not while burning dinner. Paris again — the same hidden restaurant, the same corner table. The maître d' smiled the moment they arrived.
"Monsieur Vincent. Madame Sabine."
Her gaze flicked to Vincent at the title, quick and unreadable, but her hand brushed his sleeve as they passed, grounding more than guiding. This time dessert arrived without baby socks. Instead there was a velvet box, dark green and simple, and inside it an emerald-cut diamond flanked by tapered baguettes, set in platinum so precise it looked less like jewelry than something pulled from history itself. It wasn't merely expensive. It was Vincent — elegant enough to outlast them both.
"I thought about asking if you'd marry me," he said quietly. A pause; her fingers tightened around her glass before she set it down with deliberate care. "Then I remembered I already did." A soft, disbelieving laugh escaped her. "So this is me asking again."
She looked at the ring, then at him, her expression softening in a way she rarely let anyone see. Without a word, she slipped it onto her own finger. It fit perfectly; her thumb lingered on the stone, as if confirming it was real.
"Does that mean—"
She nodded once. "Yes."
No speeches. No applause. Just a single word carrying every ordinary morning they had survived together.
Back at Protocol, the ring lasted eleven minutes before Killjoy spotted it. "Oh my God."
Sabine's hand shifted closer to her body, not fast enough to matter.
Phoenix nearly dropped his coffee. "You actually proposed?"
"I accepted," Sabine corrected, too quickly, then realized she didn't need to defend it at all.
Vincent looked up from his paperwork. "I should hope so."
The room erupted. Even Brimstone smiled. "Congratulations," he said simply, and Sabine gave a small, professional nod in return — though her fingers brushed the ring once beneath the table, almost without meaning to. "Now get back to work," she added, and nothing else changed, and everything did.
Vincent became almost unbearable at appointments — insisting on carrying her bag despite it weighing less than his briefcase, learning which waiting-room chair caught the best afternoon light, packing snacks she always claimed she didn't want and stole from him anyway. When the obstetrician recommended reducing field work, Vincent had already submitted the paperwork before Sabine's head had finished turning toward him.
"I can still work."
"No," Vincent said.
"Vincent—"
"No."
Her jaw tightened, then eased, as though she'd already decided not to escalate a fight she knew she'd lose. "I am pregnant, not fragile."
"You are pregnant, mon amour" he agreed. "And therefore carrying the two most important people in my life."
That landed differently. Her expression shifted, subtle and almost imperceptible, gaze dropping before returning to him more quietly than before. Brimstone cleared his throat into his fist, hiding a smile.
"I've reassigned Agent Callas to research and strategic oversight."
"You approved this?"
"I approved your fiancé volunteering to take every field assignment you would have been given."
Her eyes cut back to Vincent. "You did what?"
"You were going to attend your appointments."
"And the missions?"
"I will attend those as well."
"Vincent."
"My schedule is flexible."
"It is not."
"I have decided it will be."
She studied him for a long moment — searching, weighing, already knowing the answer before it came. There was no changing his mind. Everyone knew it, including her, and she sighed the particular sigh reserved for realizing that Vincent Fabron's greatest strength and his greatest flaw had always been the same thing. Once he decided someone was under his protection, the discussion was already over.
Near the end, the appointments became weekly. Precaution, the doctors called it, and neither of them objected. Sabine never said she was afraid, but sometimes, as she lay back and the monitor flickered to life, her hand found Vincent's without looking, and he was always there before she reached. Every ultrasound ended the same way — Sabine watching the screen, Vincent watching Sabine, waiting for her smile before he allowed himself his own.
Routine had become a dangerous word; neither of them used it anymore. Still, the appointment began the way every other had — Sabine on the examination bed, Vincent in his usual chair, their fingers laced before the lights even dimmed. The monitor flickered to life. A heartbeat filled the room, strong and steady, and Vincent finally breathed, only then realizing he'd been holding it. The sonographer smiled, taking measurements with practiced ease — head circumference, spine, tiny fingers flexing across the screen. "So far, everything looks—"
She stopped. Not abruptly. Just long enough. The probe shifted once, then again, and her smile faded into concentration. "Hm." Barely audible, but Sabine had spent too many years in laboratories not to recognize the sound professionals made when something no longer matched expectation.
The sonographer excused herself. A minute later the obstetrician stepped in — no urgency, no alarm, just another scan, another careful silence. Vincent's thumb had been tracing slow circles across the back of Sabine's hand. It stopped.
"The baby's position has changed," the doctor said gently. "They're breech." Sabine nodded once; she knew enough medicine to understand what that meant. "And because of your previous history, we'd rather not wait for labor to begin naturally." There it was — not emergency, not danger, just the quiet change in language that somehow frightened her more. "We'd like to schedule your delivery a little earlier."
The room stayed silent. Sabine looked at Vincent. He hadn't said a word — only adjusted the cuff beneath his watch, once, then again, a habit he'd never admitted to having.
"They caught it early," she said in the car afterward, watching rain gather on the windshield. "That's why we've been doing all of this."
"I know."
"You don't sound convinced."
He rested both hands on the wheel without starting the engine. "I trust our doctors." A pause. "I simply no longer trust the word routine."
She reached across the console and covered his hand with hers. Neither of them mentioned Paris, or hospital rooms, or tiny knitted socks folded inside a velvet box. They didn't need to. Fear had a way of remembering for them.
The delivery was scheduled for the following week. Controlled. Planned. Safe. They let themselves believe those words, one last time.
The delivery had been set for 0900. At 0730 Vincent sat in Protocol briefing room three, because Sabine had looked him dead in the eye that morning and said, "It's a scheduled Caesarean, not an execution. Go to your briefing." He'd argued exactly once. She'd won, as she usually did.
Liam stood at the front of the room, a holographic map suspended between them, outlining an emergency Kingdom operation that couldn't wait. Every available senior agent had been called in. Vincent listened, or appeared to — his notebook open, his pen never moving, his phone face-up beside it. For the first time since Liam had known him, Vincent Fabron wasn't calculating angles or questioning strategy. He was watching the minutes. 08:14. 08:21. 08:33. Liam noticed; he'd watched Vincent grow quieter over the past year, watched him trade overtime for doctor's appointments, watched the sharpest marksman in Protocol memorize prenatal schedules with the same precision he'd once reserved for ballistic trajectories.
The vibration against the table was almost silent. Vincent answered before the second buzz.
"Yes."
The room continued around him, until it didn't — every conversation stopping the moment they saw the color leave his face.
"The baby's heart rate has become unstable," the obstetrician said calmly. "We're moving the delivery forward immediately."
"I'll be there." He was already standing, already reaching for his coat, already halfway to the door before he registered the briefing hadn't ended. He stopped. Turned back to Liam. "I—"
"You don't need permission." Quiet. Firm. Liam held his gaze only a second before giving him a single nod. "Go."
No lecture. No reminder of duty. Just that. For a heartbeat Vincent couldn't move, and then he inclined his head. "Thank you." It was the first time Liam had heard gratitude sound so much like fear.
The drive should have taken twenty minutes. He remembered none of it — only the moment he found himself gripping the wheel so tightly his ring dug into his finger, and the single coherent thought left in a mind that had forgotten how to hold anything else: stay with her.
By the time he reached the maternity ward they were already preparing the operating room. A nurse met him before he reached the doors. "They're ready for you."
Sabine lay beneath impossibly bright lights, monitors filling the room with a rhythm that would have sounded reassuring if he didn't know how quickly rhythms could change. She turned her head as he approached.
"There you are."
He managed a smile. "You were correct. The briefing survived without me."
Despite everything, she smiled back. "Told you."
He leaned down, pressing his forehead gently to hers. "I'll be right outside."
"I know." Three words, simple and certain. She had never once doubted him.
A nurse touched his shoulder. "We need to begin." He squeezed her hand a last time before letting go — every instinct screaming against it — but she gave him the smallest nod. Go. So he did.
The delivery was supposed to be controlled. It stopped being controlled within minutes.
The first sign that something had gone wrong wasn't an alarm. It was the silence. Through the narrow window in the operating room doors, Vincent watched people begin moving faster without raising their voices — a nurse crossing the room with blood products, another disappearing behind the curtain, someone calling for a second neonatal team.
Another? He frowned, and the doors swung open before he could think further.
The surgeon stepped into the corridor, mask hanging loose around her neck, looking as though she'd run there. "Monsieur Fabron. There's been an unexpected complication."
"What happened?"
"The hemorrhage is severe." Every word after that became harder to hear. "Your fiancée has lost a significant amount of blood. We're delivering the baby now, but her uterus isn't responding the way we'd hoped."
"No."
"We're doing everything we can."
"No."
She held his gaze. "We need you to understand that if her condition continues to deteriorate, our team may be forced to prioritize the life we still have the greatest chance of saving."
The corridor went impossibly quiet. Not again. Not after Paris. Not after the socks folded into velvet. Not after every appointment, every scan, every promise whispered in the dark that this time would be different. Something in him simply refused.
"You misunderstand." Calm. Too calm. The surgeon blinked. "You save her."
A step closer. "And you save our child."
"Monsieur Fab—"
"Both." The word cracked, not loudly, just enough for everyone in the corridor to hear the man beneath the composure.
"I have spent the last nine months watching that woman fight every fear she has ever carried. You do not come out here and ask me to prepare to lose her."
"We aren't asking you to—"
"You save both." For the first time since anyone at Protocol had met Vincent Fabron, there was no elegance left, no measured words, no practiced charm — only terror, raw and undisguised.
"You save both. Please."
The surgeon's expression softened. "We'll do everything humanly possible," she said, and disappeared back through the doors.
Vincent stood frozen, until something brushed against his fingers inside his coat pocket — the socks, still there, the tiny grey pair he'd washed by hand months ago. He closed his fist around them until the knitted fabric disappeared inside it. "I'm sorry," he whispered, not entirely sure which child he was speaking to. Perhaps both.
Time lost all meaning after that. Liam arrived at some point and didn't speak, only sat beside him for nearly three hours, two coffees cooling untouched between them. Sometimes grief doesn't need conversation. Sometimes it only needs someone willing to wait with you.
The operating room doors opened just after sunrise. The surgeon looked exhausted, but she was smiling. "They're alive."
Vincent forgot how to breathe. "Both?"
She nodded. "Your fiancée made it through surgery. And the baby is doing remarkably well."
A shaky laugh escaped him before he could stop it. "Can I see them?"
"I think," she said, smiling a little wider, "there are actually three people waiting for you."
He frowned. "I'm sorry?"
"It seems your fiancée has been keeping one last surprise. The second twin was hidden behind the first for almost the entire pregnancy — their position made every scan look like there was only one. We only discovered it during surgery. She made us promise not to tell you if we found out."
He sat back down, not because he wanted to, but because his knees had stopped cooperating. A disbelieving laugh escaped him. "That sounds exactly like Sabine."
When he finally pushed open the recovery room door, morning sunlight had already begun spilling across the floor. Sabine looked exhausted, paler than he'd ever seen her — but alive. She turned her head just enough to find him.
"You look terrible," she whispered.
He laughed through tears. "I was about to say the same thing."
She smiled weakly, glancing toward the bassinets. "I suppose my anniversary surprise got a little bigger than expected."
Only then did he look — one bassinet, then another, two impossibly small bundles sleeping side by side.
"Sabine."
"I know."
"You—"
"I know."
"You had—"
She nodded once. "Apparently."
He crossed the room, kissed her forehead, and looked down at the twins for what felt like forever.
"I made a reservation for three," he murmured.
She blinked, and he smiled. "It appears we'll have to ask for a larger table."
Her laugh was weak, and brief, and perfect.
Then something in his expression shifted — the particular look he got when a variable he hadn’t accounted for presented itself, a look she knew far too well from five years of watching him recalculate everything from wine pairings to extraction routes in real time.
“What?” she asked, too exhausted to make it a full question.
“The apartment.”
He said it the way other men might announce a structural collapse.
“It won't do.”
Sabine blinked at him.
He's serious.
“Vincent, we have not even been home—”
“Two bedrooms, Sabine. Exactly two.” He frowned somewhere beyond the walls of the recovery room, already mentally standing in their apartment. “One of them currently contains three biohazard cabinets, your laboratory equipment, and a filing system I have been explicitly forbidden from reorganizing.”
Which, incidentally, remains an unreasonable rule.
“I accounted for one nursery.”
A pause.
“I did not account for two.”
Sabine stared.
He's planning a floor plan.
Four hours after nearly watching me die.
Of course he is.
“You're doing this now?”
“There is a house on Rue de Varenne with a south-facing garden—”
“Vincent.”
“—and another near the Bois that receives significantly better morning light. Children's circadian rhythms are strongly influenced by natural—”
“Vincent.”
She said his name the way she always had.
Dry.
Patient.
Faintly exasperated.
Entirely affectionate.
It stopped him more effectively than any interruption ever could.
“We just had them.”
A glance toward the bassinets.
“Four hours ago.”
“I am aware.”
“You've already picked a house.”
“I've narrowed the options to two.”
He actually looked embarrassed.
Only for a heartbeat.
Vincent Fabron.
A man who could predict an opponent's firing angle before they pulled the trigger.
Who planned dinner reservations months in advance.
Who remembered anniversaries, blood test schedules, and exactly how she liked her coffee despite never making it correctly.
Completely defeated
by arithmetic.
Two babies. Two. How was there not a contingency for two?
Sabine watched the thoughts move behind his eyes with almost clinical clarity.
There it is. The planning. The spreadsheets.
He's cataloguing bassinets already.
It should have been ridiculous.
It was.
It was also—
GodI almost died.
And the first problem he's trying to solve is whether our children have enough sunlight.
Something inside her softened all over again.
“I told myself I was prepared,” he admitted quietly.
Every appointment.
Every scan.
Every specialist.
Every possible complication.
He'd prepared for all of them.
Or thought he had.
“I believed I'd accounted for everything.”
“And?”
His eyes drifted toward the sleeping twins.
“And it never occurred to me” He laughed once beneath his breath, almost embarrassed by himself. “that we would require additional bedrooms.”
Not money. Not time. Not fear. Bedrooms.
“I have never overlooked a detail that large.”
Sabine reached for his hand.
It still amazed her that he always met her halfway now, as though he'd learned, somewhere after Paris, that she no longer had to do all the reaching herself.
“You didn't overlook it.”
He looked at her.
“You simply loved one child so completely” Her gaze shifted to the second bassinet. “that it never crossed your mind life might be generous enough to give you another.”
Silence.
His shoulders relaxed.
Not because she'd solved the problem. Because she'd forgiven him for trying to.
He looked from her, .to one tiny sleeping face, then finally the other.
His family. My family.
The thought settled over him with surprising ease.
It didn't frighten him. It steadied him.
“Rue de Varenne,” he murmured, almost to himself.
A tiny pause.
“We'll need a larger dining table.” Sabine laughed despite the ache in her abdomen.
There he is. My beautifully, catastrophically overprepared man. She thought.
Somehow, she had never felt safer than she did watching Vincent Fabron solve problems no one had asked him to solve, already building tomorrow while she was still recovering from yesterday. Because that was how he loved her. Not loudly. Not extravagantly. He loved her by making sure there was always a tomorrow to come home to.