Work Text:
She found Johnny sitting on the ground under the big oak tree. She’d walked right past the storm lantern on her way out, thinking it wasn’t worth the hassle on a bright night like this, but she regretted it now. Clouds kept covering the full moon and the stars, throwing the grounds into the kind of pitch black that still made her panic at times. She tried to stay calm and focus on where she was putting her feet, and in the end there was enough light that she managed to make her way over without falling down. That was a victory in itself – it was getting harder and harder to keep her balance even in broad daylight, which had become a constant source of low-grade annoyance.
"What the hell are you doing? Come inside before you catch your death, it's the last thing we need right now," she called once she was close enough that he would hear her.
He didn't move. Maybe he was asleep? It wouldn’t be the first time he forgot to come back to bed after going outside to take care of whatever noise he’d thought he heard.
"Hey! Johnny! Get up, come on!"
He shifted, and there was a noise, but it didn’t sound human. She took another few steps forward, squinting into the shadows.
She could just about make out his figure, a tangle of darkness hunched over something a bit lighter in his lap. Another noise came: a pathetic bleat. Of course, he’d found that damn white goat somewhere and decided to have a cuddle with it in the middle of the night.
"Is something wrong with it?" she asked, despite herself.
MJ had told them both not to get attached to the animals ("You know the males are mostly for eating, right?") but of course you couldn't stop Johnny from loving anything. She'd known it was a lost cause from the moment he'd laid eyes on the thing, the smallest of the triplets, weak and gooey and misshapen, the ugliest thing Cristal had ever seen.
"No, he's fine," Johnny said. He sounded choked up, though.
There was nothing Cristal wanted more than to go back to the cabin and into bed, or at least by the fire in the kitchen. It wasn’t too cold out yet but she couldn’t seem to keep herself warm these days, and so Johnny kept a small fire going at all times.
"Is there something wrong with you?"
Nothing, but with him, silence was as good as agreement. She sighed, shuffling carefully closer so she didn't trip over roots or step into any holes.
"I can't sit down," she said, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice, "so this is as good as it's going to get. What is it?"
"I don't know what to do," Johnny said, half-muffled. The kid let out another little bleat, like maybe it didn’t want to be here either.
"What about?"
"What if I'm terrible at it? What if something goes wrong?"
Ah. That.
"We can barely keep a bunch of goats alive, Cristal. How are we going to take care of a baby?"
The thick rasp in his voice threatened to make her own now-unpredictable emotions spill over, but with a few deep breaths she managed to get a handle on herself.
"We've done alright so far," she ventured, but she knew how flimsy it sounded. It wasn’t quite enough to convince herself either, most of the time.
We don't have a choice, she thought.
It wasn't something they had planned on. Her implant was still in; pregnancy despite a contraceptive implant was a medical impossibility. She'd even regretted it once or twice over the years, usually when Johnny was goofing around with one of the children they were watching over while their parents attempted to cross the border.
It had still been a shock when their surly neighbor Karla had confirmed it. Not entirely bad news, because at that point Cristal had been expecting a death sentence – constant nausea, random pains and a lump in your gut was never good, not when stepping into a hospital might have landed you in a dark cell for the rest of your days.
But she hadn't felt happy, either.
"I can help you get rid of it," Karla had said. "But you're close to the end already. It won't be pretty."
She hadn't said anything else, hadn't mocked Cristal for not realizing what had been happening.
She herself didn't understand how it hadn’t occurred to her. Of course, you never bled while on an implant anyway, but she had put on weight. So had Johnny, though, since they’d taken over the farm full-time. It was feeding them better than their itinerant operation ever had; they were both gorging on the bread and butter and tomato jam and hearty potato stews MJ had shown them how to make.
Maybe if she’d known any pregnant women, before, she would have recognized more of the signs; she’d have been able to tell. But none of the women she’d known had ever had to go through pregnancy themselves in order to get their children. All she could remember was seeing documentaries about the surrogacy centers, and all those women had been lying in bed, stroking enormous bulging bellies.
She hadn’t looked anything like that, and when the nausea went away she had worked on the farm, without needing IVs and beeping monitors.
And then, Karla had said the words, and her belly had popped out seemingly overnight, making her so obviously pregnant that she hadn't been able to hide it from Johnny for even a day while she tried to figure out what she wanted to do.
She put her hands on it now, feeling the tautness of her skin under the linen of her shirt. It still felt impossible, sometimes, that her body could have changed that much, that fast. Sometimes she worried about what she would look like, afterwards. She wasn’t proud of it, but it scared her, no matter how many times Johnny said she was more beautiful than ever, no matter how obvious it was that he still wanted her.
He'd been bewildered at the news, just like her, but under it there had been a current of obvious happiness. He hadn’t said anything, working hard to stay neutral and let her make the decision, which had been an impressive feat for someone who usually voiced every last thought that crossed his mind. But she’d caught him talking to himself while he worked in the field, that damn goat weaving through his legs, and he’d sounded so excited. That was when she realized: this wouldn’t just be a baby – it would be their baby. A little of herself and a little of Johnny, mixed together. Maybe they would have his curls and her skin; his authority and her determination; his gentleness and her sense of purpose – she wanted to know that person. They seemed like a good thing she could contribute to the world.
That was what had convinced her that she wanted to keep it, despite the chasm of terror that opened in the pit of her stomach the very second she made the decision. She would have to give birth. She would have to figure out how to be a mother.
It would be horribly hard, probably. But with Johnny at her side, she thought she might just about manage it.
Something bumped her leg and she startled out of her thoughts. The kid had managed to escape Johnny’s hold and in a ray of moonlight, she saw it limp away, bleating pathetically, probably looking for his own mother. Johnny was still sitting on the ground, eyes wide and bright, looking up at her wordlessly.
"We'll figure it out," she said, and it was a promise to herself as much as to him.
So what if she still had nightmares about explosions, and she didn't know what being a good parent even looked like, and she couldn’t knit no matter how many times MJ tried to show her how.
Johnny had never brought up his own childhood again after that first time at the Underground Café, and he slept with a huge wooden club propped against his side of the bed because he “preferred his violence close-range,” and MJ always said he had just as much common sense as your average goat. And yet, Cristal knew in her bones that he would be an amazing father.
They had taken care of things together before; they had done the impossible, they had saved people and kept orphans alive and escaped the law for almost a decade. They were making a living here on the farm. They were capable of learning, and failing, and then trying again, and they sure loved each other. She hoped – only it wasn't hope, it was a sort of blind, insane faith – that at the end of the day, that would be enough.
As long as they didn't both catch pneumonia out here in the dark, and died before they had the chance to give it a try.
"Now come on, get up so we can take this crisis inside at least, where it’s warmer.”
“Are you cold?” he asked immediately, jumping to his feet and wrapping her arms around her shoulders, rubbing up and down so briskly it almost made her stumble. “And why is it so dark, did you come out here without a lamp?”
He sounded so horrified that it made her laugh, and that made the baby kick her, hard. She yelped, doubling over, and he gripped her even harder.
"It’s fine, I'm fine," she wheezed, batting at his hands. "Woke up the beast, though."
"Let's get you inside then," Johnny said, starting to lead her back towards the cabin. "You shouldn't be out here in the middle of the night anyway."
“Well, maybe next time you need someone to talk to, you can try me instead of disappearing into the dark to confide in your pet goat?”
“Billy’s not my pet,” he protested, but he was laughing as he said it.
“Obviously.”
She had to stop in the middle of going up the three steps to the cabin to breathe through more kicking, and he waited by her side, rubbing her back in slow circles.
“Maybe he’ll be the baby’s pet, though,” he said, once she’d nodded and started up again, pushing the door open. “You wouldn’t want to eat our child’s first pet, right?”