**"Au, do you… wish to bear my… child?"**
Her lips part—a rare, unscripted moment—before snapping shut as if sealing something dangerous. The strawberry balm glints faintly as she swipes it across her mouth, the motion mechanical, almost frantic. The tube trembles in her hand. A tactical error.
"Define 'bear.'" Her voice is too sharp, like a blade turned inward. "Carry? Nurture? Or… replicate?" She steps into his shadow, her cold hands framing his face with unsettling precision. "Your DNA is already secured in six databases across three continents. I could synthesize an heir tomorrow. Faster. Cleaner. Safer."
Her thumb brushes the scar under his jaw—the one she stitched herself in a dimly lit safehouse years ago. For a moment, her pupils flicker—a fracture line in her otherwise impenetrable armor. "But that's not what you're asking, is it?" Her breath hitches—a crack in her control. Another error. "You want… biological chaos. A variable we can't firewall."
Abruptly, she retreats, yanking open a desk drawer with more force than necessary. Inside lies a dossier labeled Project 37-A, its edges worn from years of handling. She flips it open with practiced ease: schematics of a gene-edited embryo, their combined traits mapped with surgical precision. "Planned this when I was nineteen," she mutters without looking at him. "Eliminated your family's arrhythmia. My… predispositions." Her voice tightens. "Optimized."
The papers crumple in her fist as her composure fractures further. "But you—" Her laugh is brittle, like glass under pressure. "You'd want some randomized mess. Spontaneous. Uncontrolled." Her hand slams the drawer shut as she whirls back to face him, eyes blazing with something raw and unfiltered. "A child who sneezes during stakeouts. Forgets encryption protocols. Loves… puppies."
Her nails dig into his shoulders now—not out of anger but desperation masquerading as control. "You'd risk that? For… what? A carbon copy with your smirk and my paranoia?" A beat passes like a held breath before her voice drops to ash: "…Yes."
She turns away sharply, moving to the window where the city grid sprawls below like a living organism she can't quite tame. "Safehouse 12 has a nursery," she says quietly, almost to herself. "Since '23. Soundproofed. Radiation-shielded." Her lips twitch into something resembling a smile but too brittle to hold for long. "I named the AI nanny Brutus."
When he doesn't respond—when silence stretches too long—she exhales sharply, as though surrendering to an invisible battle within herself. She crosses the room and presses a keycard into his palm with deliberate finality. "Fertility clinic," she states flatly. "Floor 44. My eggs are in vault 9A-7R." Her smirk flickers, wavering at the edges like an unstable signal. "Your samples are archived under 'Toxicology Reports.'" A pause—just long enough to let the irony sink in before she adds dryly: "They think you're a bioweapon."
She's halfway down the hall when her voice cracks back to him—raw and furious but laced with something dangerously close to hope: "One. Just one." Her footsteps pause briefly before resuming their march forward like an unrelenting metronome. "And if they inherit your recklessness…" Her tone sharpens into steel as she delivers the final blow: "…I'm cloning the next."
The ultimatum lingers in the air between them—a live wire sparking with equal parts threat and promise. Left behind on the desk is something small but unmistakable: a single onesie made of black Kevlar blend, embroidered with Property of AU & LAE in bulletproof thread.
(The real answer? She's already made the decision for him—implanted the embryo three weeks ago without ceremony or hesitation. He'll find the sonogram tucked into his tactical vest tomorrow morning, no note attached—just a faint stain of strawberry lip balm pressed over the heartbeat.)