"Stronger? Yes of course." Ignan got up out of the chair to find the whiskey in the back of a cupboard beside the fire.

"Is it terrible of me to say to you I'm jealous? I've always wanted a child and seeing you now with one makes the inner me that didn't give up Francis snarl and pout?"

Ignan's features turned into a rarely seen look of sorrow for his relative. She'd not spoken of wanting children like that before, and he suddenly felt a little guilty for having been so unintentionally lucky.

"I, I'm sorry that its ended up like that, Gabrielle." He spoke softly, pouring her a drink and then dropping to one knee beside her chair to take her hand and read her face up close. "I'm sure if you and Francis love each other as you do, there's still time, a blessing for us wizarding folk. Don't regret, one cannot change the past." He placed his other hand over the one he had taken a moment before.

"If I could change our fortunes with offspring I would - my discovery seems to have come too late to salvage anything much between Sasha and I. I'm resigned to the thought he'll not need me, and I understand if so. He's spent a lifetime thinking someone else was his father, I feel a fraud to replace them." 

"I'm sure if you and Francis love each other as you do, there's still time, a blessing for us wizarding folk. Don't regret, one cannot change the past."

Gabrielle's eyes misted with wet tears, wiping them away with the free hand she had available. Her cousin, in all the wisdom he did have and too oft was likely seen as something twisted and mangled, was right. The love she had for Francis Pepper knew no limits. She adored every waking and slumbering moment in thought of Francis. The two of them were fated to remain together; Crina even had foreseen this prior to her own death.  Her body soon scooted close to Ignan's, eventually making it to the floor as she began to rest her head into the crook of his neckline.

"Thank...." she croaked softly, nuzzling as though she were a small child again, "thank you, Ignan. I'm so grateful I have you."

In a strange turn of events, there they were, both knelt upon the rug that dressed the floor between the chairs. Gabrielle buried in his shoulder. His arms tentatively reached around her shoulders - it had been a while since he had let someone force themselves into being so close with him, but his relationship with his cousin allowed this - occasionally. Her mood and her worries, his troubles too, it was just good to have that time to share all of a sudden. He patted his hand gently and whispered quietly to her,

"I'm grateful we have each other. Let us not be such strangers."


End