"Maybe, sure, and absolutely not, that sounds like a great way to traumatize your kid!" he calls back.

"You cannot fix the ultimate human experience of agony with story time," hisses Yvette venomously.

Okay, singing it is. He takes a couple of second to find his singing voice and enough emotional steadiness but he does get there and he chooses—and old English song, in actual Old English, about someone whose lover went away but will come back, and the pain of waiting with the anticipation of their return.

She has no idea what he's singing about, but she decides after thirty seconds that she hates it, and starts screaming like a banshee accordingly, apparently just to piss him off.

This... turns out to be a bit of a theme. The painkillers, predictably, have no effect. James will probably not be surprised to find out that he mated to and then married a woman who is a spiteful gremlin filled with hatred and scorn when she is in this much pain. The only thing she can seem to make up her mind about is trying to figure out new and exciting ways to be as annoying as possible. She wants him to go away, she hates him; she wants him to come back, he should never ever leave her; she wants him to die in a fire, she wants him to live in suffering exactly like she's suffering now; she wants him to go away so he doesn't have to watch her make such a complete ass of herself and bring the total percentage suffering of the world down. It varies quite a lot. Yvette flips between broken sobs and shouting expletives and calling him names and whimpering that she loves him and somehow coming out with treatises on such topics as 'Why vampirism is dumb' and 'The many ways their plan to save their daughter was flawed, and how James in particular could have done better,' and 'Why am I screaming in the woods here, take me to a basement you moron.'

It is going to be a long three days.

She's not alone. He was, when he turned. He was alone and in pain and terrified, he thought he'd gone to hell, but she's not, and he will stay with her. There is nothing she can do to drive him away, he will love her always, and he will stay with her. He has songs, and stories, he has ways to pass the time and try to pass her time, and he will stay by her side.

If this is a comfort to her, it's not immediately obvious. She definitely cannot seem to make up her mind about it.

It takes her about a day to start getting more creative about being a spite gremlin.

"You could instead be spending time with our daughter," she wheedles, eventually.

"—but—"

HISS.

(She can make that sound now. Progress!)

"My love... the moment I step away you will ask me to come back."

"Well now I won't out of spite go away!"

"...Blair, do you think you could, ah, spend a minute or two with her?"

She may be able to hear that pitch, now.

"Yeah, sure," says Blair.

It's not clear if Yvette can hear that pitch or not, but she's back to hissing anyway. So much hissing. Apparently she shares this trait with Blair, he was very hissy when he was mad, too.

Well, so it goes.

As soon as Blair shows up he... goes to see his daughter.

"Hello there, dearest sister of mine," singsongs Blair, taking James's place at her side.

"Be eviscerated and burn in a volcano."

Elsewhere: here is his daughter! She is very little, and yet also much larger than she was a day ago! She has a mouth full of sharp teeth and a head full of red curls and looks at him with a startling level of intelligence for an infant.

"Da!" she says, with a sharp and toothy smile.

Oh.

"Oh, hello, you beautiful princess," he coos, zipping to her to pick her up. "Aren't you a sight?"

She gives an affirmative and slightly smug sound, and then very politely takes his hand in her little infant ones and leans forward to chomp on him. Nom.

... It's clearly not hostile, she just. Wants to be biting him. Apparently.

Oh no.

"You are so pretty, you are, you look just like your mother. And so smart!" He doesn't pull away from her bite and just grins at her. "Your mom will be so happy to meet you, we have to wait a bit because she is feeling very ill right now but in just a couple of days we can take you to her."

Aurene gives another affirmative sound, slightly muffled by his hand in her mouth. She settles in to cuddle him and looks very pleased.

He rocks her back and forth a bit, a grin wide enough to almost split his face in half. "Has uncle Blair been treating you alright? He can be a handful, I know, but he means well, and I adore him."

That is apparently something worth unbiting for!

"Birds!!" she announces, bouncing in his arms a little. "Birdsbirdsbirdsbirds!"

"Oh? Are you hungry, little princess? Should I get you some blood?"

She gives an unhappy negative hum and then repeats, "Birds!"