Everything I Am - Orm Marius/Ocean Master

Chapter One - A New Adventure

That green light and all the weight it carried kept flashing through her mind.

I'm pregnant. 

When mother and daughter (and soon-to-be-child) arrived back up at the docks, Orm was waiting for them.

"Everything all right?"

"Oh yes," Atlanna answered.  "Just taking care of some important business." She squeezed her daughter's arm before heading up the path towards the lighthouse where the rest of the crew awaited them. 

"Sit with me for a bit?" Aurelia asked. 

"Of course."

They sat on the edge of the docs, legs dangling off above the sea spray. 

"So I've been thinking," she began after a moment of comfortable silence. "Maybe we should stage a coup and you can take the throne from me."

He gave her an amused look.  "We already rule together."

"I know," she pouted. "Maybe my brother will overthrow me..."

He chuckled. "Always so dramatic."

"Hey, coming from the most dramatic person I know!" She stared at the horizon, ablaze with the sunset. "So remember when we went on our Sicily adventure-"

"-The one that you dragged me on against my will."

"Oh come on, you enjoyed yourself. At least eventually. But remember when you were telling me about saving yourself for when you were married and what a good husband you wanted to be?"

"Yes..." She was clearly confusing him by bringing all this up all of a sudden, but all would make sense very soon. 

"And later you told me you liked kids and wanted some of your own?"

"Yes. And you thought so little of me back then."

"Actually you were definitely on my better side by that point." She remembered those conversations so clearly, because they had changed the way she saw him and had struck something deep within her.  

"Have you had any girlfriends?"

"I've always been betrothed." He didn't need to add 'to you.' "I felt like being romantically involved with anyone else was a betrayal of that. I will be fully committed to the one I love. Unlike my father, who cheated on my mother many times. Theirs was not a happy marriage, nor a good one, it goes without saying. But I want mine to be."

"Well then she'll be a lucky woman, whoever she is." 

"I hope so." 

 And later:

"You like kids?" 

"Yes, I do. Why?"

"Hmm, just didn't associate you with that. You keep surprising me."

"I would like to have children of my own someday. Do you want children?"

 "Not sure, haven't really given it much thought."

She hadn't known it then, but she was falling in love.

"So, full disclosure, that  totally melted me learning all that about you, and you said that since we had always been betrothed - still pissed off that that was done without any discussion with myself, one half of said betrothed, but don't mind that now - and that if you were with anyone else it would be betraying that betrothal and me. And that you would be 'fully committed to the one you love'. I couldn't stop thinking about it. That was when I really started to see you differently. And I couldn't stop thinking about how lucky your future wife and kids would be."