Felicity woke to warmth on both sides and lay very still for a moment, cataloguing the specific comfort of being held from two directions simultaneously, Victor a broad steady wall at her back with his breathing slow and deep, Voss half-curled in front of her with one heavy arm across her waist and his hand resting warm and possessive on her stomach even in sleep, and she thought this was not in any plan I ever made and felt, despite everything, entirely fine about that.
She let herself exist there for exactly as long as responsibility allowed, which was not long, because the cubs were upstairs and she had promised, and so she began the careful process of extracting herself from two very large, very unconscious men who both tightened their grip the moment they sensed her moving without waking, and it took considerably longer than it should have.
She gathered what she could in the dark, a stuffed mouse with frayed stitching, dried fish strips in wax paper, a little jingling ball she'd fixed so it actually chimed, and balanced everything against her chest and climbed the stairs with her heart thudding in the way it always did when she was about to see them.
The broom closet door creaked and inside the cubs were huddled together with their tails entwined and their eyes too bright and too aware for bodies that small, and the silver-furred girl scrambled forward and threw herself against Felicity's legs and said "Felly, you came back" with the relief of someone who had been genuinely uncertain, and the boy stayed back with his eyes on the doorway, trying to sound brave when he said "we thought maybe the bad ones got you."
"They didn't," Felicity said, crouching, handing them the water and watching them drink eagerly and pass it back and forth, and when they finished, the boy looked up with eyes far too old for his face and said, "You smell scared, but you still come back," and she felt her throat do something complicated.
"I am scared all the time," she said, because lying to children had always seemed pointless. "But I will always come back for you, I promise."
He nodded with the gravity of someone accepting a vow and tucked the water bottle carefully into their little pile of treasures, and the girl hugged her fierce and sudden and said "don't go, Mummy," and the word landed somewhere in Felicity's chest she hadn't known was empty until something filled it, and she held the cub and kept her voice steady through sheer force of will, and when she rose the girl pressed a chipped glowing marble into her hand and said "for protection" in a whisper and Felicity closed her fingers around it and nodded because she didn't trust herself to speak.
She leaned against the closed door blinking hard until the sting passed and when she turned Voss was standing at the end of the hall in bare feet, having followed her with the silent tracking of a man who had decided that wherever she went he was going to be close enough, and he didn't say anything, just opened his arms, and she walked into them and felt his hand settle between her shoulder blades and his chin rest on her hair while he breathed her in like he was reassuring himself she was real.
"You okay?" he rumbled.
"They're so little," she said into his chest.
"I know," he said. "You did well."
Victor was already awake and armoured when they came back down, and his eyes lifted the instant she stepped through the door and tension eased from his shoulders in a visible wave, and he crossed the room and touched her shoulder and then her cheek, quick and checking, and she said "I didn't wake you" and he said "you did, you just didn't know it."
Four days moved like that, and one night over food she said "I was an orphan" almost apologetically and explained the foster carer who hadn't been cruel just busy, who hadn't had room for a child who took up space, and said "so when people need me I like to help" with the earnestness of someone who hadn't quite figured out she was allowed to be needed back, and Victor reached for her hand under the table and held it without saying a word and Voss's jaw tightened in the way it did when he was filing something away under things that were going to matter later.
The survivors' resentment fermented quietly the way it always did, and Felicity felt it in the eyes that tracked her at the stairwell and the hands that lingered near her when she restocked supplies, and she tried to be smaller about it and helped where she could and Rose muttered "she's too nice" when she was out of earshot and Voss agreed silently and Victor said nothing, which everyone present understood was worse.
The breaking point came when Tommy tripped the internal alarm and Snow Team rose instantly and they found three beastmen in the lower vault corridor with Felicity's satchel on one shoulder and a hand half-raised toward her wrist, and Rose was already snarling with vines coiling at her feet when the rat said "she heals, we just needed to borrow her" and Felicity opened her mouth to de-escalate the way she always did and Victor stepped forward and the room contracted around him and the boar scoffed and said "you can't just" and Victor hit him with his hand, not magic, not fire or ice, just his hand, and the impact drove the boar into the wall hard enough to crack the tile.
The other two ran and didn't make it far, Voss moving like something tearing free from the wall, and Rose's vines snapping around the last one's ankles yanking him upside down while he screamed, and then Tommy panicked and flooded the corridor entirely and the water slammed the rat into the ceiling hard enough to knock him cold and Tommy stared at his hands and said "I helped?" and Kai said "yes, you helped" in the tone of a man choosing his battles.
The survivors gathered shouting and Victor stood at the centre of it with Felicity behind him and when the wolfhound matron said "you tried to take my healer" Felicity flinched, not because it was wrong but because she didn't want to be only that, and Victor felt it and reached back without looking and closed his hand around hers and said "she is not a service, she is not communal property, she is not staying anywhere she isn't safe" and Voss simply said "you're leaving" and that was the end of it.
They were gone by dawn, and Felicity watched them go from the balcony with her tail curled tight and said, "I wanted to help them," and Victor said, "You did, until they made it unsafe", and Voss leaned on the railing and said, "Kindness isn't weakness, but it does attract idiots," and she snorted despite herself because she was tired and it was true.
By midday the bank was behind them, Sarge with the maps, Kai with the routes, Rose burning what couldn't be taken, and Victor found Felicity at the vault door tying off her bag and said "we're heading east, coast settlement, Tidehaven" and her ears perked and she said "the one with water power?" and he nodded and she smiled, small and hopeful, and said "okay," and Snow Team moved out before sunset with the cubs tucked between Felicity and Voss, Luna holding her hand and Frost pressed against Voss's leg with the absolute confidence of small creatures who had already decided where they belonged.
Felicity walked with the marble in her pocket and the warmth of both her husbands close on either side, and thought about the word mummy and felt something settle in her chest that she suspected was not going to leave.
She was right about that.