She caught his eyes, shoulders shaking, held them for a long while. Before she was forced to move her hands, snuffling uselessly, to knuckle away pinkened tears. Her fingertips wicked them away in clear frustration at herself.

"Of course I want them. With... Just, dizzyingly, I want it. I'd always... in the back of my mind, the way we all have fool's hopes and dreams, imagined a future, a one day when I might again, and time just... had just crept on and on and on. It was... fuck was..." She snuffled again, more delicately brushed tears from her thick lashes. "Was nights after I'd first risen like this, stumbling from one realisation to the next. Didn't hit me 'til those nights after, like someone had reached into me and pulled out my heart, I'd never have a family again. Not the same way. It was..."

Hard, she wanted to say, though her tear-tightened throat couldn't croak the word. And hard wasn't what she meant. Who could measure the worth of dreams forever lost?

"I want this," she whispered instead, hoarsely. "I want this. I'd determined weeks ago if not the children you'd sired, then some others needful of mothers."