The Rest of the Story

A/N: Thanks to everyone who's been reading these. If you're still reading, I'll warn you we've got a brand new arc coming up in the story, nearly enough to be a story of its own. This piece features Nina/Nicholas/Victor. Yes, they are a threesome now. It takes place about 2 1/2 years after she propositioned them.

Mistake

Nina woke up feeling very rested, which was surprising since she had gotten home fairly late the night before. She had both of her boys with her, one at either side and she smiled at how clingy the two could be, not that they would dare to admit that aloud. Two and a half years now, they’d been her boys, and she wouldn’t change it for the world.

Craning her neck to look at the clock on the bedside table behind Nicholas, she blinked a few times when she read that it was 7:45.

“Shit!” she cried out, accidentally elbowing Nicholas in the ribs.

He woke up immediately while Victor, who slept like the dead, rested on. “Geez, Nina,” Nicholas said, stretching. “That’s a hell of a way to wake someone up. Especially when he spent all night making sure you were properly exhausted for bed.”

“The alarm didn’t go off,” she said and gestured with her head to the still-silent clock.

Nicholas rolled over. “Oh, damn,” he said, hopping out of bed and running around the bedroom getting ready. He grabbed a pair of uniform pants, but saw they were too short for him—most of Victor’s height was in his upper body, where Nicholas was mostly legs—and promptly threw them at their owner. “Hey! Sleeping beauty!”

Nina pried herself from her other lover as she went to get dressed. She would have smiled at how completely confused he looked if she wasn’t running as horribly late as they were.

“Wazwrong?” he asked in a slurred voice.

“No alarm.” Nina said.

“Going to be late,” Nicholas finished.

Victor yawned and stood from the bed. “I haven’t been awake long enough for you two to start finishing each other’s sentences.”

He began searching for a pair of boxers while Nina was busy putting on her bra. “I swear the two of you are complete slobs without me here.”

“Yes!” Nicholas said, then looked up from the pair of pants he had finally found that were his own. “I mean, no, we’re not. Yes, right pants.” He shook them a little as though to emphasize what he’d meant.

“You’re defeating the argument,” Victor said. “And I’m not a slob. I’m neat but disorganized.” He pointed at Nicholas once he had his boxers on. “He’s the slob.” Nicholas was fastening his pants as he stuck his tongue out at Victor. “Put that thing back. I know where it’s been.”

“You weren’t complaining last night,” Nicholas said with a smirk.

Nina paid little attention to them as she was getting dressed. She was still nervous about what had happened yesterday on the train back to Central, and knew that she would likely have to explain her actions to someone as to why she gave a fellow soldier a massive concussion when they were returning from a fairly successful mission. Why did the scout/spy/whatever they decided to call her for the day end up attacking on of her own men? And why did the commanding officers allow it?

“Nina?” Nicholas said, offering her one of her uniform coats. “Here.”

She put it on over the black t-shirt she preferred beneath the uniform—she hated the white dress shirt.

Together, the three of them ran into the bathroom. It would have been comical, watching them try to alternate brushing teeth, brushing hair, if they hadn’t all been so frantic to get it done.

Nina was finally ready and was dragging the two men out of the house and to their car. Victor got in to drive, with Nina in the back and Nicholas in the passenger side.

“It’s so good to have the triad all back in Central again,” Nicholas said as he pulled out his pocketwatch and looked at its face. “Even if we’re all running horribly late.”

Victor rolled his eyes. “Dear lord, Nicholas, you’ve spent too much time in politics. ‘The triad?’ We’re lovers, not a military triumvirate.”

“I think it’s appropriate,” Nicholas defended.

“He’s going to pout,” Victor said with a laugh.

Nina smiled when the blond glared at the other man, even as Victor was trying to back the car out of their driveway. She enjoyed their life together, even if she hadn’t entirely expected for the two of them to originally take her up on her offer. For her, she had observed them, thought there might be the slightest possibility, and that if she didn’t at least try to see if that was true, she would likely regret it forever.

“You okay?” Nicholas asked, turning in the seat to face her.

“Sure,” Nina said with a smile, though even she had to admit the smile felt forced.

Nicholas nodded, but she could see he was doubtful. She could lie to Victor easily when she needed to, particularly about her feelings, but never Nicholas. After dealing with Aideen for all those years, Nicholas had become a master at knowing when someone was hiding something. He was like her dad in that way. While her father could be absolutely oblivious to the world around him, at least in regards to Nina’s moods, her dad would just pick up on the minutest detail.

Victor had them make it to headquarters in very little time, but they were all about ten minutes behind.
The instant Nina was speeding down the halls after saying goodbye to her boys, a lieutenant stopped her.

“The fuhrer wants to see you,” the young woman said. Nina nodded and headed to her sort-of-in-law’s office. She knocked lightly on the door.

“Come in,” came the deep baritone from inside. She opened the door and saw that Roy—as he insisted she call him—was alone in the office. “Shut the door.” Again, Nina obeyed. She walked in front of his desk and sat in one of the chairs there. “You know why I called you in.”

She nodded. “Because I punched Second Lieutenant Powell on the train.”

“Would you like to explain why?”

Nina straightened her back in the chair and met the man in his dark eyes. “He made obscene comments to me.”

“Obscene how?” Roy asked, face softening just the slightest. “This is Nicholas’s father asking, not the fuhrer.”

“He asked if I wanted to have ‘a go’ in my compartments. He said that obviously being away from the boys for the last three weeks would have me wanting something. Made some comments about me having an obviously insatiable sexual appetite, and when I rejected him, he called me a whore.”

She watched as man’s hands balled into fists on his desk. It was odd, but she felt something she didn’t quite have a name for at the fact that her lover’s father was so angry she’d been treated this way. It left a sort of warm feeling in her chest and stomach.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked. “Maybe it’s something I still don’t understand. I mean, I’m ten years behind the learning curve for my age, so maybe it’s something I just don’t get. But why is there such a double standard for men and women? Why is it the reporters and rumor mongers still report that Nicholas and Victor are the ones in the relationship and I’m the one they screw on the side?”

Roy winced at her harsh words, but it was how she felt and didn’t stop her from continuing. “If that was the case, I wouldn’t have it. I mean, maybe I would have, but not now, not knowing how good it feels to be an equal in the relationship with them. I love them, have long before I started dating them, maybe before I even knew what it meant. I might have settled for anything to be with them, and I wouldn’t trade what I have with them both for anything now, but… why am I the whore and they’re just adventurous?”

“Because the double standard is very wrong, no matter how commonplace it is. Because women are held to a higher standard sexually than men are, and the higher standard is usually unrealistic.”

Nina watched as the man rose and finally put a hand on her shoulder. “Well, the second lieutenant will learn not to make comments to a first lieutenant of that nature, and he’ll suffer for doing it to a member of my family.”

The young woman looked up at him, and despite the mixed emotions, smiled.

********

When Nina arrived at the front door at the end of the day, she saw two very angry men waiting on her.

“You didn’t tell us,” Nicholas said.

“We’ll kill him,” Victor added, darkly.

Nina just shook her head. “It’s been taken care of by both me and the fuhrer.”

“I deserve the right to use him as a punching bag,” Victor said, wrapping an arm around Nina.

“I already did. He’s still in the hospital with the concussion,” she said, not wanting to add just how little effort it had taken to do that damage to him. It was a reminder of how strong she was, inhumanly strong. No matter how human-like she became, there were still some things that weren’t…

And then she realized what she’d forgotten, what she’d missed sporadically over her time on the scouting mission.

“Nina?” Nicholas asked her. He was too damned perceptive. “What is it?”

She considered fibbing, saying it was nothing until she knew for certain. But considering her track history, one very early and one somewhat later miscarriage, it could very well be that the two of them found her in her own blood. “I forgot my pill.”

She saw the two men frantically look at one another and then at her. They’d agreed to adopt, to not go through this all again, and she’d forgotten. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Nicholas shook his head. “No apologies needed. We’ll figure this out if we need to.” He kissed her lightly on her cheek. “At the moment, I’d like to introduce the second lieutenant to my automail and my glove.”

Victor just rubbed Nina’s shoulders. “The press are outside,” he said. “They caught wind of it all.”

“Oh.”

Nicholas put on his pyrotex glove and stood at the door. “I dare them to mess with either of you.” He opened the door ahead of them, looking every bit the son of his parents. With Victor’s hands protectively holding on to Nina’s shoulders, she felt so very human at the moment. Very loved.

And she had seen the determination on Nicholas’s face. If her small mistake amidst everything else resulted in another pregnancy, he would help her make it right. However they could.