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Kate stares at the stick in her hands and tries to feel around her mind to see if she’s already succumbing to Mother’s influence. She doesn’t think she is, but that doesn’t change the fact that…
She wants this, but she can’t. There is no way she can, not now. There’s too much at stake.
Kate puts the stick in a plastic bag and washes her hands, then gets up and paces to the door of the bathroom. She takes a steeling breath and exits, making long strides down the hallway to the cockpit. She passes Billy on the way, but something on her face must warn him away from talking to her. Kate’s relieved that he doesn’t glance down at her clenched fist at all.
When she gets to the cockpit, Noh is there, but so are America and Loki. Kate knocks on the door frame and hides her other hand behind her back, and they all turn to her. She puts on a smile and asks, “Hey, I need to talk to Noh for a bit. Alone, please. Do you mind giving us the room for a bit?“
Loki pulls the kind of face Kate expects from a kid that was just confronted by the idea of his older friends having sex with one another, but America’s expression is closer to suspicion. She gives Kate a nod as she leaves, one that Kate isn’t sure how to translate, but they leave, so it’s enough.
“Kate?” Noh asks, sounding rather worried as she sits gingerly in the seat next to him. “What’s wrong?”
She wordlessly holds the pregnancy test out to him, and he takes it. The worry on his face turns to confusion, then comprehension, and then a mixture of wonder and fear.
“Kate?” The question is in his voice; he’s figured it out, but he wants confirmation.
“I’m pregnant.” Kate answers, trying to keep the words steady.
Noh goes back to staring at the test for a few seconds, and then at her abdomen, and then finally at her face again. “What are you planning to do?”
Kate bites her lip. “I want to keep it, even if the kid’s an accident and we’re kind of young, but… with the Mother parasite still running around…”
Noh-Varr nods. He understands. “I’ll support whatever you choose to do, Kate.”
“Even though it’s your kid too?”
“It’s your body.” Noh says, “and it’s your mind that Mother may come to control if you keep it. Your choice is the only one that matters.”
Kate feels her heart drop. She was hoping for more. She doesn’t want to be the one responsible for this decision. She loves the fact that Noh-Varr respects her choice in this, and knows that so many of the people back home wouldn’t, but she doesn’t want to make this decision.
It isn’t much of a decision, but she’s still the one that’s going to make it.
“I’m needed in the fight. I can’t risk Mother getting any control over me, whether I consider myself a parent by that point or not.” Kate’s hands are clenched into fists. She’s doing her best to keep herself emotionally distanced from the little bundle of cells in her uterus. The little bundle of cells that could grow to be so much more. That can’t be allowed to do so. “I can’t risk it.”
“I know.” He’s in the same boat; if Kate keeps the child, both of them are parents and risking Mother’s control.
Noh-Varr reaches out and puts his hands on Kate’s, the little bag with the pregnancy test lying forgotten next to him. His hands are warm on hers, calloused and big and better at centering her than any of the techniques that she’s trying to use. “Do you have anyone you trust that could do this for you?”
Kate’s mind touches around on a few people and discards them in turn; all are adults, bar one. “I think we can ask David.”
“We?” Noh asks, not judging or joking, just wanting some kind of confirmation.
“I’m not doing this alone, and you’re just as involved in this as I am.” Kate turns her hands over and holds Noh’s in hers, tighter than she’d dare with someone more fragile. “I’m going to need someone there, and while I’ve known Billy and Teddy for years…”
“This isn’t their child.” Noh-Var says quietly. “If you still want a child after the Mother situation is taken care of, I wouldn’t mind… trying again.”
“I don’t think I’ll try again until I’m at least twenty-five, but thanks.” Kate tries to smile at him, but it’s broken. She’s always been ready to make life-and-death decisions in the heat of battle or in the planning of strategies, but that was always part of being a hero, balancing the likelihood of survival and giving it a shot anyway. This decision isn’t. This… isn’t the kind of thing she wants to decide.
“Okay.” Noh pulls Kate’s hands up to his mouth and kisses them, a warm press of lips that calms her down, if only a bit. “Would you like to go talk to David about what we can do?”
“No, I just…” Kate doesn’t finish the sentence, just gets out of her seat and sits down on Noh-Varr’s lap instead, pressing her ear to his chest and comforting herself to the sign of the double heartbeat pounding away below his skin, heavy and warm and familiar. “Let’s just stay like this for a while.”
Noh-Varr wraps his arms around her and rest his chin on her head, humming a melody she doesn’t recognize. After a few minutes, he asks one last question. “Are we going to tell anyone else?”
Kate considers the question for half a second, and imagines the horrified look on Billy’s face if he starts blaming himself for this on top of all the other pain that the Mother parasite has caused. She hadn’t been planning on telling anyway, but that just cements the plan.
“No. Just our little secret. You , me, and David, since we need him to… yeah. No one else.“
“Just our little secret.” Noh repeats, and this time Kate hears a note of pain in his voice, one that she realizes has been their for the entire conversation.
She can guess why it’s there.
It changes nothing.