AN) So I finally updated again, after having no ideas for this chapter for ages. Hope you enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I am very possibly a wizard myself, but even then I can't claim any rights to this story, sadly enough.

It was Tom who first suspected something was up.

The now twenty-nine year old Lexi had been out hunting, as she often did when the meat supplies were running low, while Tom had stayed at home, peacefully picking apples from their apple tree and singing an old Nekross song that Lexi had taught him a long while back. If you lived for nearly twelve years with someone, you got to know their habits - and more than often sing their songs as well. It probably sounded better when Lexi sung it, her native tongue folding around the tricky Nekross language much easier than he can, but no one's listening to him sing here, apart from the birds in the trees who didn't really care - and make enough noise themselves at dawn anyway, for that matter, so they could hardly complain about his singing.

A slight rustle in the undergrowth from behind him signified Lexi's return, and Tom turned to greet her cheerfully. Oddly, the woman was pulling a face as she made her way back into their clearing, her bow and sheath of arrows hanging over one shoulder, with her long blond hair tucked over the opposite one. Another odd thing was that her hands were otherwise bare; she wasn't even carrying any of their usual diet component this time of year of three-legged birds, which were basically the easiest thing to catch due to their woeful incompetence in running terribly fast, apart from in circles or tripping over each other.

"Nothing going in the woods today, Lex'?" Tom wondered aloud, noticing the apparent lack of prey she had managed to catch.

Lexi swung her long bow off her shoulder and placed it carefully, as she always did, by the wall of their home, before sitting heavily down on the bench next to it. "Not really..." she said slowly, not really elaborating, but looking troubled even so.

Something else you learn from twelve years of living with someone is when they're acting out of the ordinary, and Lexi was definitely not normally like this. Tom approached her, sitting down beside her on the seat and casually passing her an apple from the basket that he held over his arm. Lexi shook her head, declining the offer. Another unusual occurrence - she loved the apples from their apple tree. Tom still remembered the time when they had first grown ripe enough to eat for the first time, and the look of almost rapturous delight on her face still stayed with him today.

"What's up?" he asked in slight concern. She was normally a very stoic person, and when she wasn't hiding something from him she was usually fairly upbeat.

"Nothing," she was quick to reply.

Tom rolled his eyes. Typical Lexi. "And now the truth?"

Lexi smiled despite herself at his frankness, leaning slightly into his shoulder. "I just feel a bit nauseous," she admitted after a moment. "I guess it just put me off my game today. I managed to miss that squirrel by miles, and I tripped on something hidden when I was trying to creep up on a purple spotted deer."

"Maybe you're catching a cold," theorised Tom. Lexi was very rarely ill, but occasionally it had to happen. Plus Lexi always took her hunting so seriously, and any mistakes she made during her couple of hours out in the forest would usually make her grumpy, however much she would deny it later. Now she just looked tired, her characteristic tiny frown creasing her forehead in thin strands. "You are allowed to be off your game sometimes, you know. Go have a lie down. I'll go see if I can catch some fish for tea."

Lexi looked slightly less worried at Tom's confident words. "I can help you fish," she offered. "I don't feel too bad any more."

"You don't feel too bad any more because you're sitting down," pointed out Tom wisely, gesturing to the ramshackle bench that they currently shared. "It wouldn't help you getting up and wandering around again. Go lie down, Lexi. Seriously. Anyway -" a small smile alighted on his features as he leant and pressed her lips lightly to her forehead. "You still can't fish for your life, even after twelve years of me trying to teach you."

"Okay." Lexi finally agreed after considering it for a while, sharing his smile and standing up with a slight intake of breath. She didn't even pick up on his casual insult to her admittedly less-than-perfect fishing skills, so Tom knew she must be distracted.

The second clue came later that evening.

"Tom?"

They were sitting around their brightly burning fire finishing off the last scraps of meat from their winter stocks, their usual routine as it got dark every day. Lexi was looking at him hopefully, the remains of her meal left on the wooden place pushed away from her. Unusually, she had left nearly half of it on the plate, though he dismissed this to her possible illness.

"Are you feeling okay?" he asked in slight concern. "You haven't finished your meal. Do you still feel sick?"

"I'm feeling better now," she replied straight away - her normal reply, even if it was a lie. "Just... would you mind rubbing my shoulders? I just... " She stopped, probably to try and justify her request with an explanation.

Immediately Tom moved closer to her, positioning his hands just above her shoulder blades and beginning to press his fingers gently into the muscle. "Anything for you, Lex'," he replied softly, just audible by her ear. "You don't need to ask."

Lexi sighed and he could feel some of the tension dropping from her body as she relaxed into his firm grip. "Thanks Tom," she murmured. "My shoulders were just really aching. The rest of my body too, actually, but them most of all. Maybe I was holding up the bow for too long today, or something."

"Yet you still managed to catch nothing," Tom chuckled, hiding his slight worry about her condition behind a smile, and Lexi joined him in her characteristic quiet laughter as he continued to massage her stiff shoulders by the flickering firelight.

It took the third clue, early the next morning, for the penny to finally drop.

Lexi woke up, yawned widely and promptly fell asleep again beside him. Tom, who had already had to get up as normal to perform the morning spell, and had been sitting there idly sharpening a few arrows that he had stacked by his bed, looked at her oddly when he realised that her breathing had returned to slow and regular breaths again. "Lexi?" he asked quietly, waiting until the girl's eyes flickered open again and she gave another long yawn.

"Oh God, I'm tired," murmured Lexi under her breath, rubbing her eyes as she slowly returned to consciousness.

"Bearing in mind you just slept for like, twelve hours, um - why?" Tom wondered aloud.

Lexi fixed her serious gaze on him, blinking away traces of sleep. "I don't know," she lamented. "I just feel really tired all the time now. Mentally as well as physically. Just - drained."

"Maybe you are coming down with something," Tom confirmed. Something hidden in the very back of his mind was politely trying to get his attention, but he ignored it.

"- And another odd thing is that yesterday I felt really randomly emotional. I haven't wanted to cry about anything for months, even when I managed to stumble into that ditch and hit my head on that stupid tree," Lexi continued obliviously. "And that was painful. Yet, suddenly, I seem to feel like crying over nothing, or running and dancing around for no apparent reason. I mean, you - us humans are unpredictable at times, but surely not that unpredictable? We do have some degree of control over our feelings, after all."

Random emotions. Exhaustion. Aching. Loss of appetite. Feeling sick. Warning signs suddenly popped up in Tom's head, though he didn't dare to even think -

Could she be -?

Could she really be -?

"Lexi..." he said slowly, not daring to say any more.

Lexi, - who had been trying to snuggle back down into the rough linen sheets of her bed with her eyes closing comfortably - suddenly sat bolt upright in the bed, staring at Tom, the same realisation evidently jumping into her mind as him at exactly the same time. "What - you think -?" she asked, her voice low and disbelieving.

Tom's expression matched her own as he swung his legs from the sheets, getting up from bed. Lexi followed him a moment later, wincing slightly at the blast of cold air as they both stood up in the chilly cabin. "It's all the signs that I learnt about back in Year 10 PSHE," he said slowly, almost fearfully. "You were feeling sick yesterday, weren't you? And you're feeling achy, like last night, and drained all the time. And the random emotions - that's the hormones, right?"

"Actually, I've felt a bit sick a few times this week," admitted Lexi, deciding not to inquire into why Tom had remembered the early signs of pregnancy from that long ago. "Not for long or anything, and I put it down to maybe having eaten something weird early in the week."

"But all the other stuff -" Tom pointed out, his thoughts racing faster than the wind across the Neverside moors.

"I know. Is it too much of a co-incidence?"

"We can't be sure yet, obviously..."

"But maybe ..." Lexi trailed off, both of them falling abruptly silent.

"I don't really know all that much about pregnancy apart from those possible signs," Tom confessed after a moment. "I know you get weird food cravings for stuff, and feel tired a lot of the time, and you get morning sickness later on..."

Lexi made a sour face at this last piece of news. "Oh, wonderful."

"Oh God, I'm going to be a dad," Tom suddenly realised in shock.

"We're going to be parents," breathed Lexi, Tom's shocked features mirroring her own as they took it all in together for a long few moments.

Tom stared at her stomach almost reverently. "Is it in there?"

"Well that is traditionally where babies are grown," mused the girl. "Though I don't think staring at it will make it grow any faster."

Tom still seemed apparently unable to take his eyes off Lexi's stomach. It did make you slightly uncomfortable, having someone staring at you, and Lexi grabbed both of Tom's shoulders after an awkward few seconds, shaking him slightly. "Tom. Seriously. Chill. We have months to prepare for it."

"I'm going to be a dad," repeated Tom hauntedly.

"I'm having a human baby," Lexi pointed out. "A Nekross having a human baby. And you think you're unprepared for this."

"Lexi, I'm going to be a dad..."

AN) This chapter had me typing into Google Search 'Early signs of pregnancy' for research. If anyone sees my search history, they might be wondering just a little... XD