I hope you're having a good day (other than your ask thing :( ) Since you're still taking requests, and if I may, what have you envisioned for Mitsuhide and his MC in the future? I know he worries about having a family of his own, but how do you see him reacting if mc tells him she's pregnant? If not that, then anything Mitsuhide (the THIRST!).
Ah thank you so much for waiting on me <3 you’re fab! So I’ve been chewing this one over since I headcanon that MC is on norplant or something similar (and for fictional convenience it’s 100% foolproof) and doesn’t have to worry about babies for the three month time frame of the game.
Warning: This got angsty, buuut I can’t show the *actual* future without spoiling things ;D
She was stretched out beside him in the dim lamplight, her features relaxed, a dreamy smile on her flushed face. She looked over at him with a raised brow, and flashed a grin at catching him studying her.
“Something on my face?” She asked, with laughter in her voice.
“That look of contentment is a curious one, little mouse. Pardon my indelicacy, but most women don’t seem quite so unworried after--” He replied, but she cut him off with an airy gesture as she rolled to face him, reaching up to tap the tip of his nose with her fingertip.
“Women in my hometown have a way of handling things.” She said with bemusement, adding “We can’t afford to be careless.”
“That’s interesting on both counts. That sort of knowledge is usually exclusive to courtesans.” He said, and studied her more intently. There wasn’t the faintest trace of a lie in her expression or her eyes.
“Yes, well. I like to have a plan. I suppose we aren’t so different in that regard.”
“That turn of phrase-- you can’t afford to be careless, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it couched quite that way.”
She cleared her throat, and looked slightly flustered. “Am I being interrogated? While naked in your arms? That’s low, even by your standards.”
He reached out to run his fingers through her hair, and down her back gently.
“If I wanted to interrogate you, little mouse, I wouldn’t have bothered with anything so drawn out,” he paused, and stretched laguidly, “as this. Besides, your face is a book that literally cannot close. I shudder to imagine how you’ve survived.”
She blew out a mock huff at him, and ran her hand down his arm affectionately.
“But it is a curious turn of phrase.” He added. “You might worry about what your family would say, about being disowned, about the wars, or even about dying in childbirth. But money? You’d have all the leverage you needed to extort me.”
“It’s an innocent figure of speech, I promise you.”
“You have so many of those, I’m left intensely curious about this hometown of yours.”
“It’s peaceful. But life is expensive, and you have to be cautious about bringing a child into that kind of world. A lot of us have to work for years before we can even think about it, if we ever can.” She answered, with a distance in her eyes that seemed to be looking further than he could measure.
“I see,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s hard to imagine a place where people have to plan as meticulously for the natural course of life as I do for war.”
“I never said it was fair, but whatever kind of future we wish for, we have to deal with things as they are.” She answered, with a note of sadness in her voice.
“What kind of future do you wish for?” He asked, trailing fingertips down her cheek, lost in all of the unanswered questions in her eyes.
“I...” she trailed off, lost in thought. “I suppose I want the same things most people do. Meaningful work, someone who loves me, a family of my own someday. I’d wish for a future where those things weren’t so hard for so many people to have if I could just change things with the wave of my hand.”
“Where on earth do people do meaningless work?” He asked, with amusement at the idea. “Work that you don’t enjoy I can understand, but everyone can see the purpose of their work, or what would compel it.” He added, thoughtfully.
“You’d be surprised.” She said darkly. “But it’s past time for me to turn the tables. What kind of future do you wish for?”
“Hmm.” He sighed thoughtfully looking out the window over her shoulder at the faint glimmer of the stars through the trees. “I don’t wish for things I can’t achieve. A strategic marriage, an end to the wars, and some kind of prosperity for the people in my fief. If I’m being fanciful, I’d like all of my children to survive to adulthood.”
There was a gentle sadness on her face now as she twined her fingers in his in the flickering lamplight. “I hope you can have all of that, truly.” She said, sweetly. “I hope you can marry someone who loves you, just for good measure.”
He laughed quietly at that. “Love has no part in that kind of decision.”
“You never know. It would be hard to spend your life and have children with someone you feel nothing for, wouldn’t it?”
“What a naive idea. If we don’t hate each other, that’s more than enough. Wives live in their own sphere, we lead separate lives.” He replied, adding “you speak as if you have a choice yourself. Your family must be strange indeed to send you wandering off alone and be unconcerned with choosing you a suitable match.”
“I suppose they must be. Even so, I can’t imagine living in such a lonely way. I’d rather not have children at all than have the children of a stranger.” She said, as she pushed his hair out of his eyes.
She wasn’t backing down from her strange ideas, and it left him with a bittersweet feeling in his chest, to think of the kind of life she described, where desire and affection weren’t confined to the floating world of courtesans and mistresses. It was so far beyond the borders of his imagination that it was hard to map onto his known world, hard to think of fitting to the contours of his life.
She snorted in amusement and interrupted his reverie. “You know, this entire conversation does make me wonder what you’d do if I did end up pregnant. Some kind of perfectly staged accidental death, I assume.”
The jest cut him to the quick, even knowing she meant nothing by it, it was like a hot knife in his gut. “Whatever else you might think of me, little mouse, I’d never hurt my own child.” He answered quietly.
“I’m sorry,” she said with genuine regret in her voice. “It was a joke in poor taste. We’re just so different sometimes...” she trailed off, searching for words.
“I’d take care of you both, you know, for the rest of our lives.” He said, his voice very low to hide the emotion in it. He hadn’t even allowed himself to recognize the depth of that impossible wish.
“I wouldn’t want to put you in that position, or myself. I want to be a joy to someone and if I ever have children, I want them to be a joy too, not a liability or a hidden shame.”
He buried his face in the top of her head, inhaling her scent to cover his shaky breaths at the thought of with someone else, with someone else’s children, at the center of someone else’s life.
He had known that he needed to cut off the impossible feelings that she brought out of him, for so many reasons-- to keep her safe, to keep himself focused, and now, she had twisted the knife by laying out with such simple honesty, the terms upon which she intended to live.
He had no right to take that away from her.
“If I could wish for any future, I’d wish for one where you and I weren’t bound to live such different lives.” She said, like a soft prayer into the long night.
