"We are going to need another cradle," Bane whispered, grinning as he spoke.

"We are going to need another of everything," Gina pointed out with a quiet, tired giggle of her own.

Warm and pure sunlight poured through the bedroom window on the picture of a family, newly a family of four. Gina and Bane were bent intently over two matching blue bundles that squeaked and cooed every few minutes, their faces enrapt with the joy and bewilderment often found on the faces of first time parents. Together they touched the tiny noses, traced the lines of sleepy concern and smiled over the fragile yawns of each of their sons.

"What will we name them?" Bane asked quietly as the boys slept, each turned toward his brother for comfort in this new world they'd entered only that morning.

"Ben and Malcolm, - for each of our brothers, my dear," Gina answered after a moment's thought, then glancing up at her husband, she waited for confirmation. Bane swallowed past a lump of deep emotion in his throat and dropped a kiss into his wife's hair as an answer. Closing his eyes he breathed her in, the scent that had become so familiar he could find her anywhere. Blood beat through her veins, pumping past the scar tissue that had damaged her heart from Louisa's knife only a year ago. She was healthy, she was whole, and she would be his forever.

"And what will Mal say when he discovers we've replaced him?" Bane asked, smirking at the thought of telling his little brother that he now had a namesake. Malcolm had moved home to the mountain permanently now, so it would become a hazard of confusing the two as the child grew older.

"We will have to find proper nicknames for each of them, I suppose," Gina admitted, tilting her head as she considered.

"Of course," Bane laughed, touching his wife's face with tender affection, "Can't have people mixing them up, now can we?"

The End

Thank you so much for reading 😍🙏🏻