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“You did what?” Roxy’s voice was incredulous as she stared at the baby carefully cradled in Dave’s arms.
John fidgeted nervously. “We… well, we’re not really sure. Yet. Something happened in the lab, a machine went nuts or something, some kind of time shenaningans – but Dave definitely didn’t do it – and, well…” he trailed off. “You get what happened.”
“Uh, kind of not. All I see is that my Mom-kid-whatever is way smaller than she’s s’posta be. Like way.”
“Like ‘baby.’”
Roxy nodded enthusiastically at Dave. “Yeah, that. Baby. Rose def was not a baby last time I saw her which was like an hour ago before you all went to the lab to do weird stuff.”
“We’re really sorry!” Jade burst out. “We don’t know what happened, but we can fix it. I’m Science Girl, and John knows these labs pretty well, and Dave is a Time guy so he might know how to fix it.”
“I said I didn’t do it, Jade, I always told you not to push random buttons in an alien space lab –”
“Nobody’s accusing you, dummy, you just might be able to help us get Rose back to… well…”
“Rose.”
“Yeah. Rose.”
“’Cause that is definitely not Rose.”
John sighed. “Well, it kind of is. Something happened and now Rose is a baby. And we need you to take care of her.”
Roxy gaped at the Heir. “Me? No way! I can’t do babies! I don’t think I’ve ever even held a baby like ever not even a carapace or anything are you crazy John I never even met another human being before this dumb game started how do you expect me to take care of Rose-baby –”
Jade broke in. “Roxy, we need you to do it. We can’t leave Rose unsupervised in a laboratory, she could get hurt. The three of us need to figure out how to turn her back to normal-Rose, and the only other person around to take care of her is you.”
Roxy looked from Jade to Dave to John to Rose and back again, and then sighed. “If I gotta. But don’t blame me if you come back and both of us have exploded or something. I can’t do babies.”
Dave handed baby-Rose to Roxy, catching her again when the older girl nearly dropped the entire bundle on the floor. “No, look. You have to hold her like this or she’ll be uncomfortable and start crying or something.” After making sure that Roxy wasn’t going to drop Rose again, he stepped back. “Just… be careful. Sit down or something. Hope she doesn’t get hungry, ’cause I have no idea what we’d feed her.”
“Wait, feed? You guys, I can’t even hold a baby right, I –”
“Yes, you can.” Jade smiled encouragingly, although it didn’t quite feel authentic. “You’ll be fine. We’ll get this fixed in no time.”
“You could try to google ‘how do I take care of a baby’ or something,” John suggested as they left. “See what the internet has to say.”
“But guys –”
Too late. They were gone. And Roxy was alone with her mom-slash-daughter, who stared up at her with the same lavender eyes out of a very different, much smaller, face.
~ ~ ~
Don’t get her wrong, Roxy liked babies. Mostly. Usually baby animals. Especially kittens. Cats were so great wow she loved cats.
Baby humans were okay, but she preferred watching them from a distance. A distance of at least not in her arms right now. Which Rose was.
Babies were even more okay when they weren’t kind of technically her mom. Also kind of technically her kid. It was complicated. And weird.
And now Rose really was a baby. “Of all of us, of all the immature idiots in this place, it had to be the only actually kind of mature one of us who got baby-ified, huh, Rosie?”
Roxy muttered, still staring at tiny-Rose, who was starting to shift around restlessly. Uh-oh.
A while later, Roxy had managed to wrangle both herself and Rose into her bed. She leaned back against the wall, propping the baby up against her chest, and dragged out her laptop for some research. Rose fussed a little at the movement, enough to get Roxy so worked up that she almost dropped the computer, but she calmed down once everything was settled.
“Babies,” Roxy muttered as she booted up the laptop. “Why a baby, Rosie? Why couldn’t you turn into a nice little kitten instead?” Rose gurgled happily and Roxy sighed. “Okay, okay, fine. Baby it is. Now for the google.”
~ ~ ~
Twenty minutes later, Roxy was ready to set her computer on fire. “Stupid internet,” she muttered. “Stupid words. Stupid dyslexia.” She thunked her head against the wall, over and over until she was stopped by a dissatisfied squawk.
“Oh no,” Roxy sat up hastily. “No no no, be a good baby, don’t cry Rosie I can’t read the internet to fix it please don’t cry, come on, pretty please…”
Having Roxy’s full attention, Rose settled again, a smile on her face. “Okay, okay. You want me to talk to you, I’ll talk to you. But don’t complain just ’cause you don’t understand the big words, ’kay, Rosie?”
And so she talked. About cats, about gaming, about hacking, about martinis. About carapacians, about Dirk and Jake and Jane, about loneliness. Roxy talked and talked and talked, longer than she ever had with a live, actual human being. She had talked to the carapaces, of course, but it wasn’t like they really talked back much, or that they understood half of what she was saying (and although Rose probably didn’t either, it was still different). She had talked to Dirk and Jane and Jake, but mostly online, and even once they had met for real there hadn’t been much time for just talking.
Hours passed, and Rose and Roxy talked. Well, Roxy talked, and Rose watched her and cooed occasionally. Rose didn’t cry or fuss once, and Roxy had never gone so long without wanting a drink.
It was almost disappointing when the non-Lalonde kids burst into the room to announce that they had figured out how to reverse the baby thing. Roxy handed Rose to Dave and off they went, leaving Roxy feeling alone again, but also not quite as alone as she had been used to being.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Rose doesn’t remember much about the episode other than what John, Jade, and Dave tell her. There are faint memories, the feeling of being held, a voice, wordless but soothing, the comfort of being with another human being one trusts wholly and entirely, in the way that only children can.
She doesn’t remember much, but she remembers enough. The next time she can’t sleep, when the shadows are loud and her heart feels empty, she knows what to do.
Roxy doesn’t take very kindly to being woken up at three in the morning, but she only grumbles a minimal amount before sitting up and scooting over to let Rose into the bed. She talks, incomplete sentences and barely-coherent ramblings, the talk of someone who is more asleep than awake, and Rose falls asleep almost instantly, the sound of human words louder than the darkness’s whispers, the warmth of another living being beside her stronger than the cold in her heart.
Roxy talks, and Rose sleeps.