Work Text:
Greta woke up alone. She took a moment to squint into the blue-tinged darkness of the room before the pressure on her bladder forced her up, a process requiring more effort than she cared to consider. It was hard, sometimes, not to be more frustrated with the new limitations.
When she flicked the bathroom light back off she made her way through their small house by muscle memory, through the hallway, past the kitchen, across the sitting room, and out to the porch. The spring on the screen door creaked when she pulled it open. Mike tore his eyes away from the sky long enough to acknowledge her. She scrutinized his profile. The moon was full, the light it reflected caught on the edges of his face and the hollows of his eyes. She couldn't tell how much of the wan, haunted look was a trick of the light and how much was Mike himself.
"Mike," she said. Her voice was quiet but it cut through the stillness of the night like a stroke of lightning tearing the sky.
He was silent, but Greta didn't miss the small hitch in his shoulders.
She crossed the threshold and the door banged sharply into its frame behind her. The hard-packed dirt was cold under the soles of her feet; she crossed her arms in front of her and rubbed at her exposed skin.
She said, "Shove over," with insincere playfulness. He slid down to the other end of the bench and wrapped an arm around her when she settled against his side. His other hand caressed her burgeoning belly. They sat together in a silence that weighed between then. Greta rested her head on his shoulder and counted the stars.
Finally Mike spoke. "Please let me do this."
She closed her eyes as if to block his words, but the arm around her shoulders tightened and the motion of his palm on her belly seemed all that much more noticeable. She dropped her hand from her own skin to his, stilling the movement as though it was unbearable. "Mike."
"Please."
"We're partners," she whispered. "I'm not letting you go up there without me."
"We're parents," he declared fiercely. "I spent years up there just fine before I met you."
She folded her hand back in the crook of her elbow. "You're not going without me."
"Only one of us is being recalled. Why push it?"
She sat up straight so she could look at him. He had his head turned toward her; his expression was haunted by the darkness under his eyes. She chose to believe the inky blackness was a trick of the light. "Put yourself in my position, here. Why does it have to be you? The departure date's after the birth. I've clocked more hours than you in orbit. I'm the stronger agent."
"You're the stronger person," Mike agreed quietly. It made the words die in on her tongue, sour and sharp. "I can't, Greta. If something happened to you I don't know that I could live with it."
"And if something happened to you? You think I could live with that? You're being selfish, Mike." The edges of the words were dark and ferocious.
"Wanting the mother of my child safe is selfish? Fine, I'm selfish." He darted upright and it was all Greta could do to not try to force herself after him with similar speed. He paced the beaten dirt angrily, as if every step of his shoes could make a difference. "I can't fucking believe they're recalling one of us at all."
She sighed heavily and rested her elbow on her knee, her chin on her palm, watching his progress like a tennis match. "At least that we can agree on." Her body still ached where the scars of their last mission were still reshaping her skin, and Mike still didn't have full range of motion in his left arm. They were supposed to have been discharged from the service completely, not put on inactive duty, but they didn't find out until the order came and once an order was given it didn't matter how many bureaucratic hoops they jumped through, there was no undoing them.
Her words made him stop again. From that angle there wasn't much of his face that she could really make out, but she didn't need the light to imagine his expression anymore. Her mind automatically filtered one over his shadowed features like a mask sliding into place. His mouth would be tugged down in an unhappy frown, with his forehead collapsed into the wrinkles that were starting to become a permanent memory of worry on his face.
It was the eyes that gave her mind the most trouble. It was always Mike's eyes that did her in. She was glad she couldn't really see how haunted they must have been.
He fell to his knees before her. He took her hands in his, and his skin was ice cold. She wondered how long he had been sitting out there. "Greta, please," he said. His voice was so quiet it was like it had been sucked into the night to become part of the dark. "I know it's everything you hate, I know I don't need to protect you and -- everything. I just. Please let me be the one to do this."
She turned her hands in his to capture his palms, to twist their fingers together until the two of them were as bound as she could make them. "We could both go," she said even though she knew she couldn't, couldn't leave their baby in the care of someone who wasn't one of them, especially not two months after birth.
Mike shook his head. "Do you really mean that?"
"No. Of course not." It was more defeated than she had been willing to sound.
"Please," Mike said again.
Greta brought their hands to her mouth, kissed each of their fingers where their knuckles were lined up like knobs of a spine because she couldn't tell which were hers and which were his. She brought their hands to her belly, to the spot where the baby was making itself known.
When she spoke the words came out in a low pitch, like they clawed at her throat to make themselves known. "At least we'll have two, maybe three months after the baby's born before you launch." She refused to wonder if that would be all the time they would have.
Mike surged forward, kissing her sloppy with relief. "Thank you," he said against her lips. "Thank you for letting me do this."
"Michael Carden if you don't come home to us, so help me—"
"Hey, don't. They could send me to the farthest fucking stars and I'll always come home to you."
Greta closed her eyes tightly against the tears that threatened to spill. "Come on," she said instead. "Let's go back to bed."
She led him back through the house and laid awake in his arms focusing on the same spot on the wall. It felt like she was staring down a clock ticking down to doomsday.