Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Any day Caitlyn was home before the sun came down was a good one. Friday afternoons were her favorite days, when the week’s worth of grueling work was finally put away for another day. Saturday tribunals were occasionally invoked but one had not been arranged and Caitlyn took her weekend home with her early. 

The home that greeted her in turn was one far to still and quiet for her comfort. The grand space was always off-putting, she reminded herself each evening. The ground floor was mainly for entertaining, something the new branch of Kirammans didn’t partake in often. Even the warm and cozy dining room they took meals in had been redistributed to the main level. It was up there she could expect to find reassuring signs of life. Though, on a day like that, with the sun gleaming so warm and high in the sky still, she expected to find her family in the garden. 

She did not. 

A lilting, chipper voice spoke in a broken monologue from behind the lounge door. If for some reason the tone of the voice was lost on Caitlyn, which it never was, the choppy breaks and passionately sounded-out words would cued her toward the voice's identity. 

She nudged the door open a crack, content to watch her entire world unfold before her. 

Her father sat reclined on the sofa, an arm held around the small, hunched shoulders of his granddaughter, a book nearly twice as large as her torso spread between their laps.

Her tiny, delicate finger traced the line of text, freezing whenever she reached an unknown word. She reached one and fumbled for a minute before correctly pronouncing saucer without needing Tobias to say it for her first. 

If Caitlyn could melt into the walls of her home to keep constant eyes on her loved ones, she would. Not knowing wasn’t enough. She needed to be with them with every molecule every minute of the day. Now more than ever. 

How thoughtful her whole world had gathered up to meet her as one; her Father, once so quiet and heartbroken he felt like a puzzle piece bent out of shape in his own home, her daughter, such an unexpected and all-encompassing dream she’d never thought possible, and her…

A piece of her world was missing, breaking Friday night tradition. Tradition had crumbled in the rapidly unfolding chaos of the past few weeks. It was welcome chaos, but took a great deal of adjusting nonetheless. 

Caitlyn brushed the door open a sliver more, but as it parted to reveal to her an empty room, it creaked and two heads whipt to look at her. 

Her father smiled at her softly as he did every time she walked into a room. She understood now how reflexive that gesture was. Her daughter held a tradition of her own and squealed a joyous greeting, clambering up on the sofa and gripping the back of the seat before going over it. She hit Caitlyn’s kneecaps a moment later, staggering her legs, but Caitlyn knew it was coming and plucked her off her limbs to hoist her onto her hip. 

Caitlyn was forever grateful she was still small enough to do that with ease. She had missed so much of her daughter’s life before she entered it. She’d cling to every moment she got with her now. 

“Hello, sprout,” she murmured into her ear and squeezed her tightly. 

She giggled a precious and crippling flick of laughter and peeled out of the hold. 

“Måe!” she squealed her own greeting. Caitlyn planted a kiss on the side of her head at that name, a holdover from her mother tongue, ironically enough. Soft, unbrushed blue-black hair parted for her lips and she found the curve of her ear, earning another giggle from her daughter. 

“How was school?”

Caitlyn did not return her to the ground. Instead, she rounded the sofa and sat beside her father, at last resting her tired feet. Propped in her lap, her daughter bounced, on top of Caitlyn’s semi-full bladder. She’d been so eager to reunite with her family that she’d neglected the finer details. Lips pursed, she shifted her weight and listened to the enthusiastic retelling of another day of Primary school. 

“I see that you’ve gotten some reading hours in with Pa,” Caitlyn interjected when the retelling became babbling. She smiled at the initially unceremonious name bestowed upon Tobias, another Ionian holdover.

Her daughter bounced again, a bit harder, and Caitlyn squeezed her legs shut in a hurry and thanked her lucky stars a six-year-old wasn’t that heavy.  

“I learned four new words!” Her daughter exclaimed, holding out four fingers to count them out, except she hesitated and looked to Tobias for backup, “what were they?” 

Tobias held up his own hand and recited them, “Skate, blade, familiar, and blue.” 

Caitlyn frowned, but only for the show of it. “Blue?” She asked incredulously. "If that’s a new word then what do you call this?” She tugged the hem of the dirtied blue playsuit she’d already worn out to the garden. 

“Not blue the color,” she corrected, “blue like sad. Like ‘I’m blue.”

Caitlyn poked again, “Who’s blue? You’re blue?”

Her daughter moaned in protest, “No! Mr. Wimble was blue because all his birds left for Winter.” 

Caitlyn scanned the large titular text of the now abandoned book on the cushion beside her. “Ah, Mr. Whimbles Winter, that’s one of my favorites when I was your age and just learning to read. Did Pa tell you that?”

Tobias shook his head. “It’s true. I must have read it ten times over to you to get you off to sleep at night.” 

Caitlyn had no memory of being such a difficult child, but she did remember the story of a lonely old man who lived in the woods and cared for the birds of the forest.

“Don’t take after me in that regard, sprout,” Caitlyn instructed. 

“Regard?” Her daughter’s bottom lip tucked under her teeth in her confusion, the way Caitlyn’s had a thousand times before. She hadn’t noticed the quirk passed from Måe to daughter yet. 

“Oh, that’s a big boring nothing of a word, isn’t it?” 

She got a put-out nod in response. 

“It just means to think or talk about something.” She wrinkled her nose, “Don't worry about remembering that one just yet.” 

Her daughter was put at ease and shimmied off Caitlyn’s lap to retrieve something off the floor by the unlit fireplace. Caitlyn knew what she’d grabbed before she stepped into the light. 

“Can we play?” She asked, holding up the little figures, “before dinner?” Like any Kiramman, she knew tradition and expected it to be followed. 

Caitlyn hummed, “Aren’t we missing someone to play pirates?” She waited but her daughter gave no indication of understanding, or perhaps no willingness to divulge the answer. “Where’s Mommy?” 

Her daughter wobbled on tiptoes as she walked the outline of the carpet rug on the floor, “Doing big, boring nothing of a paperwork,” she explained, not quite parroting the slang Caitlyn used correctly. “She’s in your room.” 

Caitlyn swapped quick and subtle looks with Tobias. He confirmed her immediate suspicions. 

“Well I should go change out of my work clothes, and you should go clean up for supper. I’ll check on Mommy. Then, maybe, if we’re lucky she’ll let us go on a walk to Killigans while she finishes that paperwork up.”

Her daughter bolted across the room shouting her approval. The night was young and the whole world could be accomplished in it. 

Caitlyn roused herself from the swallowing sofa cushions and left her father on watch duty once again.

It was now more than ever Caitlyn was thankful he’d agreed to stay at the residence. He’d protested initially, insisting Caitlyn had the right to both the estate and privacy, but Caitlyn had lost so much of her family and quickly found it so small and lonely that she desired to have whatever was left of it with her. It was no surprise Vi felt the same way with such losses of her own. It hadn’t taken long at all for Tobias to take to Vi like a second daughter. He sometimes still didn’t know what to do with her—how to handle her undercity edges and her brashness, but having a granddaughter so similar sure had taught him much the past couple of years. Most of all, Caitlyn loved having him in the home for her daughter. She loved being able to watch them bond and loved to see her Father reclaim the family they’d lost. The household was so lonely for a small girl, but Tobias was a wonderful friend to her. 

Up another flight of stairs was the wing of rooms both occupied, held, and unused. Solely to check all available options, she first checked inside the room closest to hers—the spacious, previously unused, and recently emptied-out spare bedroom. Vi teased Caitlyn about jumping the gun when it had all still been a vague hypothetical and then when months crawled by with negative after negative. Caitlyn defended her actions. She’d needed something to do with herself during that time or else the guilt and the anxiety and the plain old desperation would’ve eaten her alive the way it nearly did Vi. Besides, the room was not hard to clear. However, the staff needed the lie of turning it into a home gym not to turn their heads. 

It sat empty when Caitlyn checked it. Not that there was anything in there to rest on, but she’d caught Vi contemplative in there once or twice before. 

Again, she heard the proof of life before seeing it. The sharp whine of their two spaniels urged her into their bedroom. The silky black dogs rushed at her when she entered, yipping and whining for her attention. She pet them each once on their silky heads and ordered them to sit, making straight for the closed bathroom door they’d been pawing at a moment earlier. 

With great relief, she found the last piece of her world inside. Well…two pieces, she thought with some glee. 

It was no relief, though, to find her wife half-sprawled on the bathroom floor with her arms outstretched to cushion the side of her face she had turned toward the toilet bowl. 

She barely acknowledged Caitlyn’s arrival, eyes too heavy and preoccupied with maintaining a frustratingly delicate balance. 

Delicate as it was, Caitlyn brought in a phantom wind of triggers, and Vi twisted to heave into the bowl with a disheartening moan. From the sounds of it, nothing came up, though that had proven worse in some ways than simply ejecting that which made her sick and moving on with her day. When there was nothing left to evict and the nausea remained, Vi struggled to remain functional—hence the sanctioned bathroom floor time. 

“Oh, love,” Caitlyn murmured, “this late in the day still?” 

In an ironic twist of the morning sickness myth, Vi was consistently sickest in the evenings before and during dinner and when they were trying to sleep. 

Caitlyn bent and ran her nails softly over Vi’s back until she cleared whatever heave of air she’d needed to release. 

“Fuck,” Vi coughed into her forearm as she buried her head in it once more. “This is fucking ass.” She leaned into Caitlyn’s touch as she came down from the surge. Caitlyn kept her hand at its post. 

“Think it’s passed?” She asked when Vi’s back stopped heaving. 

She shook her head and settled back into her resting spot on the lid.  

Caitlyn had seen Vi through worse, through more troubling and disheartening physical woes, but she hated seeing her so wholeheartedly put out by it all so soon. The nausea was constant and Vi had a near-impossible time keeping anything down which was concerning enough without the fact that it got people asking questions they weren’t ready to answer yet. 

No matter the degree of suffering her wife experienced, Caitlyn didn’t like it. She wasn’t sure how she’d make it the full 10 months when that suffering would only grow and evolve. She’d put her whole back behind trying different tactics. She ordered the supplements, made the ginger tea, followed their doctor’s advice, and stuffed as much food into Vi as she could when she was given moments of respite. It was all one circumventing tradition that reminded her how useless she was for anything other than moral support.  

“If nothing’s going to come up you might as well lie down,” Caitlyn decided, seeing up close how dirty she’d let their bathroom floor become. “I’ll bring you a bowl just in case.” She searched the cupboards for the bedpan Tobias swiped from his hospital floor following the loss of her eye and the subsequent vertigo and nausea that plagued her for months. It had been revitalized in the past month. It was a return to form for the old puke bowl. 

Vi made no effort to move. She could make herself comfortable in the most unforgiving places, and the toilet had proved no different. 

Bending down to retrieve the bedpan had constricted the waist of Caitlyn’s trousers, revealing the selfish motivation she had to get Vi off the floor. 

“Why are you standing like that?” Vi regarded her with one quizzically open eye. Somewhat unintentionally, Caitlyn’s knees came together to keep her thighs flush. The gesture was genuine, but she played it up to achieve her objectives. 

“If you don’t get yourself off the floor I’ll piss myself right here,” she threatened, pointing an ominous finger at her feet. “I’ll do it.” 

That did it, pulling Vi onto her knees, and then slowly onto her feet. “The throne is yours,” she grumbled, sliding past Caitlyn to the sink. She flicked the handle out and held a finger under the stream of water while it warmed. 

Caitlyn shucked off her stifling pants so fast you’d question her intentions, especially when she left them crumpled on the ground—a cardinal sin as far as her household rules went. 

“I mentioned to Louen I might take her for ice cream after supper,” Caitlyn admitted as they existed in adjacent functions around the other—Vi washing her face and rinsing her mouth, and Caitlyn, stripping on the toilet. Domestic life had its perks.  “If you need to rest tonight.” 

Vi lifted her face out of the water cupped in her hands and blinked the moisture off her lashes, “At this rate, I won’t survive dinner.” She switched the water off but didn’t leave. Planted in front of the spotless mirror, her hands slipped under her top and mapped out the growth unfolding there. It wasn’t noticeable to anyone but her. She insisted there was a change but Caitlyn saw no deviation in her perfect abs. “Isn’t this supposed to be getting easier soon?”

Caitlyn reached behind her back and popped the hooks of her bra off. “Soon. Not just yet, though. Dad says a few more weeks of all this hormone craziness.” 

“Weeks.” Vi fake gagged then real gagged. Caitlyn held her tongue and sucked in her stomach as cold air blew down from the vent at her exposed skin. Vi’s hands went from under her shirt to the outside hem of it and lifted it clear to her shoulders. Caitlyn wasn’t expecting full nips so soon, but she supposed she took hers out first. “They’re definitely bigger, right?” 

Caitlyn laughed, nudging to get at the sink. “I don’t know, bitch, you’re always smashing them flat.” Caitlyn honestly couldn’t tell, but objectively the answer was probably yes. 

Vi let go of her shirt and kissed her teeth, “Bitch? ” she sniffed. “Long day?”  

Caitlyn dried her hands on a towel. “Don’t let me get started.” She watched Vi turn in the mirror and reach for something long and blue. She held the housecoat out for Caitlyn to thread her arms into. Warm, soft fabric hugged her. She hummed, pressing the folds of silky fabric to her chest. “When did you turn that on?” She meant the towel warmer in the corner behind the door Caitlyn always hung her housecoat on whenever she took it off in the morning. 

Vi’s hands slid down her arms, finding an actual pocket of warmth to leech in the pockets. “Knew you were coming home sometime soon,” she answered, “It’s Friday.”

Caitlyn melted against her wife, her heart paradoxically tight and gooey in her chest. “Oh, I love you,” she whispered into that jaw. Vi only peeled away, her mouth making another unsavory shape. 

“Ugh, you smell like ink.” 

Caitlyn smelled her own skin and smelled nothing but her subtle fragrance. “How do you smell that?” 

Vi leaned over the sink and gagged. As usual, nothing came out. “It’s a blessing and a curse,” she mumbled, propping her elbows against the smooth granite. 

“Alright, soldier,” Caitlyn didn’t bother touching her again, not until she’d showered the day away, but she waved for her attention in the mirror. “Dinner?” 

Head cradled in a single hand, Vi considered the question at length. “Not dinner,” she settled on and caught the next question in Caitlyn’s expression, “Yet , but I’d like to do ice cream tonight. We haven’t made the walk to Killigan’s in ages.” 

“Louen will be thrilled.” Hand brushing Vi’s elbow, she urged her out of the bathroom. Reluctantly, Vi followed, grabbing the bedpan on their way out. 

“I’m worried she might think I’m ignoring her,” Vi confessed as she sank onto the edge of their bed. “Telling her I’m working has been landing alright, but, I know she doesn’t understand fully. I don’t want to make her sad.” 

“She isn’t blue,” Caitlyn assured, chuckling at the new phrase Louen was bound to spout on repeat. She flicked the shower on and let it warm as she got a spray bottle of cleaner out from the cupboard and sprayed down the toilet seat and the floor around it. “She’s got way too much energy to keep her mind from wandering.” She caught Vi’s look through the open door. “Of course she misses you.” She wasn’t sure if that was the most comforting route she could’ve taken. “But you’re right. It’s easier this way, and it won’t be too much longer we have to keep her in the dark.” 

Vi mumbled a half-response. Looking up from her cleaning task, Caitlyn saw she’d shifted to laying flat on her back, stomach rising and falling with each rhythmic breath. Her shirt had ridden up a bit, giving Caitlyn an unblocked view of the minuscule curve right along the waistband of her shorts. It wasn’t real yet, or more so it was still deniable. Caitlyn knew that bump wasn’t real, just water and bloat but someday soon it would be—real, more noticeable, and impossible to hide or deny. Then it would be real, the happiness they were carving out for themselves piece by piece. Her heart was solidly liquid and trickling out her ribs as she finally climbed into the shower. She kept the door open and the glass unfogged throughout the quick rinse. She knew before she was fully under the water that Vi was already asleep, hardly the watchdog she normally was during Caitlyn’s showers, but seeing her was enough, seeing the open doorway and her wife at rest just beyond it was comfort enough. 

Her whole world was outside that bathroom, a world that was rapidly and miraculously expanding. Change had once been a source of great contention for them. The threat had once been crippling. It occasionally still crippled but change was no longer just a threat of loss. The change Caitlyn knew was coming would only bring them more, and it had only just begun. 

Chapter Text

Their little window of uncertainty, the period of fear and high hopes, and their stretch of anonymity lasted longer than either of them had expected or prepared for. Vi’s abs held together so well the middle of the second trimester was acting more like the tail end of the first. The extended anonymity was addictive. They were well past the safe to tell others benchmark, something Caitlyn couldn’t wait to do, despite having a rather small and depressing list of people she wanted to know, but at Vi’s insistence, they waited for things to shake out a bit more. She knew it still didn’t quite feel real to Vi. It barely felt real for Caitlyn and she didn’t even have the benefit (or detriment) of experiencing the changing growth in her own body. 

Everything had continued to feel unreal and too good to be true until Caitlyn stopped by the precinct one day to steal Vi away for some proper lunch now that she could stomach a consistent meal, and Vi met her in the hallway with a look so sharp she could cut glass and a persistent hand demanded Caitlyn shed her blazer and give it to her. There was no world in which Caitlyn’s tailored suit coats fit over her broad shoulders but Caitlyn gave it up anyway and Vi held it bunched over her waist with one hand and scrambled with the other to unsnap the button of her trousers that had very much fit comfortably earlier that morning. 

Caitlyn watched wide-eyed as Vi held the jacket there, slung over one arm as if Caitlyn had simply gotten hot and hadn’t wanted to carry it. She waved goodbye to the co-workers milling around on their way to the front door. 

“Thank fuck,” she’d hissed once they made it onto the street, “I didn’t think I was going to make it.” She cited the deep red line left around her lower stomach from the restrictive waist of the unsuitable pants. When she looked behind the blazer, Caitlyn saw it with perfect clarity—the persistent swell of her pelvis that up until then had been easily sucked in and hidden with a pair of trousers or a loose enough top. It was about time Vi had something to show for all that hell and hard work she’d slogged through. 

“I take it lunch’s off?” she teased, finding Vi’s hand to steal behind the blazer. 

“Unless you’ve got a more forgiving pair of pants hidden somewhere on you.”

“So a working lunch then?” Caitlyn hummed, “We should get you some proper clothes before you’ve exhausted your whole wardrobe.”

They’d put it off again and again. At first too sick, then too tired, then too busy with Louen home from school for the warmer months. Sure, Vi was working with a limited rotation of outfits, but they made it work, and still, it barely felt like a real thing they had to take care of. 

“Mhm, but I’m starving,” Vi protested. “You’re not trying to starve us, are you?” 

Caitlyn rolled her eyes, “You’ll need a better waistband to bloat into if we’re going to stuff our faces. Shop first, food later.”

“Someone’s definitely going to notice us. The maternity section isn’t exactly as vague as the gyno.” 

“Then I’ll just grab a few things and I’ll order the rest to the townhouse under a false name.” 

Vi grinned, “Clever.” 

Secretly, Caitlyn took that straight to the ego. She may have never carried a detective’s badge but she never lost the qualifications. She reminded herself of that from time to time. 

Three pairs of soft, forgiving pants later, they slid into a humid, sticky booth at Jericho’s new, above-board joint. It had been a while since Vi had the stomach to visit the spot. Several lunch meetings with Ekko and Scar had been hastily rescheduled or moved to other locations during the first, crippling months when the smell took her out a block away. Speaking of, she was due for another meeting with them soon and she still hadn’t decided if she was ready to tell Ekko. 

Telling him before her own kid felt a little cheap, but Louen had to be the last to find out. She had a big mouth incapable of holding back secrets. Even during the summer break when most of her time was spent at home, her runaway mouth couldn’t be trusted. Despite the betrayal of her favorite, most reliable pants, Vi felt that time was still on her side. She felt that she, reasonably, could last a few more weeks before it became glaringly obvious. The secret wasn’t that she was ashamed, or upset at the evolving shape of her body, but she dreaded the attention. Vi had one female coworker in her HR department. She was currently out on her own mat leave and during her entire pregnancy no one ever shut up about how she was pregnant. It was all a bit de-humanizing, the two of them agreed, and Vi was not eager at all for the questions, the looks of surprise, confusion, and finally judgment she feared she wouldn’t be able to escape. She wasn’t ready for all the opinions she knew she’d be subjected to the moment anyone other than Tobias knew. Her body was her own. She didn't like the idea of anyone giving it more attention than her.

She was contemplative about that as their usual server slid two diet sodas across the table in front of them. Vi didn’t have the courage to deny the cup, even though the carbonation would wreck her if she drank it now. 

“You two are a sight for sore eyes,” the kid said in greeting. He plucked two straws from his apron pocket and set them across the rims of the cups. “I was beginning to think I offended you somehow the last time you came in with your little one.”

“Not at all,” Caitlyn assured, skimming a sip of fizzy soda off the top of her glass. “The summer’s just been absurdly busy for us. We haven’t had the time to make it down here.” 

“Soon you won’t have to,” The kid, whose name Vi inexplicably could not remember, said. “Jerry’s got the deed to a prime spot topside. Right on the water. Renovations are underway.” 

“We’d never give up this place,” Vi said, not breaking his gaze, determined to pluck the name from her memories. “We’d miss you too much.” 

“Awe, well, thanks for the ego stroke, loves,” he patted his heart, “just the usual today?” 

Vi considered if the actual reason she might have avoided Jericho’s for so long was because she couldn’t stand parting with her usual. Most things were easy to give up; Coffee she never much cared for, cold cuts? Prosciutto was stringy as fuck and raw fish was something she could go usually go without unless it was Jericho’s original number seven. 

“No, actually, we were thinking we’d try the sliders. We’ve never had them before.” 

The hand that stroked the server’s heart clapped it dramatically. “You’re turning against the octopus?” 

Vi grimaced, “Today we are.” She picked at the paper slip the straw came in. She was parched but she really did not want to drink the soda. 

“I hope they’re everything and more then,” the kid grinned, jotting the order number on the back of some receipt paper. He hadn’t needed paper to take their order in so long that he’d come unprepared. “One to split?” He asked in accordance with tradition. 

Sipping her soda, Caitlyn nodded. 

“Speak for yourself,” Vi swatted her with the straw. “I’m hungry. Bring us two,” she told the kid, her tongue knotting over dead space as she continuously flubbed the name that escaped her. 

Caitlyn laughed into her straw, an air bubble popping up the rim of the glass and overflowing onto the already hopelessly sticky table. “You heard the lady,” she said softly with her hand in Vi’s lap. “Bring two.” 

The kid laughed with them, biting down his initial remark as he scribbled a two in front of the number 4 he’d jotted down. “Two it is. Anything else?” 

“No th—”

“—A water, please,” Caitlyn cut her off with a squeeze of her knee.  

The kid tapped the pen on his temple in salute and headed toward the open kitchen. 

Caitlyn squeezed her knee again the absence of conversation. “You’re cute,” she said slyly, ready for the impact of Vi’s fist on her bicep. 

“Shut up—”

“You look like you’re teaching yourself first-grade math,” Caitlyn teased, citing the near breakdown Louen’s arithmetic worksheets incited. “What are you thinking about?” 

Vi slammed her fist down on the table so hard the cups rattled. “What’s his name?” she asked, angling toward Caitlyn’s good side. She raised her visible eyebrow. 

“Who?”  

They’d been going to Jericho’s new joint since it opened three years ago, and that boy had been their go-to server for two of those years. Vi knew he was a student at Aquana U studying hospitality management, knew he had two semi-aquatic pet birds named Ronnie and Rita, and knew his girlfriend did hair and nails out of her basement and sometimes came in and sat at the bar to distract him during the slower hours. They’d shared a plate of calamari skewers with her once. Why the fuck couldn’t she remember his name?

An ice-heavy glass of water slid across the table. “There you are, loves,” he said then retreated behind the bar. 

“Ah.” Caitlyn placed the water in front of Vi. “Axel,” she answered. 

Vi put both hands over her mouth and nose and breathed into them. She was so off-base. She’d leaned toward Harry or Henry. She caught Caitlyn’s mirthful eye. “Don’t look at me like that.” 

“The only look I’m giving you is one of love,” Caitlyn baited in a perfectly even tone. 

Vi huffed down a groan and drank half the glass of water in one sip. “My head’s in the fucking clouds lately,” she muttered. “Did I tell you the other day I told Percy Louen was 9?” She wasn’t going to mention the time she’d signed an entire stack of reports with the wrong date and had to send them all back to be re-written or the time she gave Tobias a cup of tea with a spoonful of salt instead of sugar. 

“A lot is going on,” Caitlyn excused, “and besides, isn’t it somewhat of a common phenomenon to be a little scatterbrained?” 

“My brains feel a bit more than scattered,” Vi confessed, “between work, all the appointments and the list making, keeping Louen busy, keeping this under wraps…” She stuck her stomach out and poked the persistent swell. The hand went flat on the second poke and hugged the underside of the curve. Her other hand plucked Caitlyn’s off the table and brought it to hers. Caitlyn felt nothing but the semi-hard squish of Vi’s disappearing abs. Vi repositioned her hand higher, but nothing changed. “Damn,” she muttered, reading the disappointment off Caitlyn’s face. “Thought for sure you’d be able to feel that one. It was so…forceful.” 

“All in good time,” Caitlyn assured, letting her hand linger under the table where no one would spot it. Vi held the slightly paradoxical and highly delusional opinion that the hotly contested “bump” was both minimal and easily hidden and comparatively massive and obvious. The truth was a bit of both—obvious during their morning workout when all they favored were sports bras and shorts to combat the summer heat, and slightly noticeable layered under boxy clothes. Her father, reading from his medical texts the other morning, said the baby would be the size of a mango. Caitlyn was having an awfully hard time figuring out where a mango-sized fetus was hiding in Vi's pelvic region. 

“If you feel scattered, why don’t you take one less thing off your plate?” Caitlyn rolled up the paper straw casing and flicked it against her glass. “My Father is dying to tell his book club, and it’ll be way easier to relax at home if you aren’t worrying about concealing it.” 

“I think I have a few more weeks in me,” Vi said, only half believing it. When she truly couldn’t put it off anymore, she’d give the go-ahead to tell people no strings attached, but she wasn’t ready, not yet, and Caitlyn understood that. She smiled slyly as the kitchen doors swung open and Axel came out with a tray of two stacked plates. “We’ll see how many weeks these new trousers give you.” 

Vi flicked her arm right as two trays of food sat down in front of them. “Hey, don’t fight in front of the french fries,” Axel scolded as he dropped two ramekins of sauce in addition. A dreamy halo of greasy french fries sat around the fat-stacked pork slider in the center of the plate. Vi spotted sauerkraut, red onion, mustard, and a thick slice of cheese in the tower of toppings. It was a bit of a depressing thought to realize she hadn’t looked at a plate of food with such desperation since the day she walked out of Stillwater. 

“Thank you,” Vi exclaimed loudly, holding the kid’s gaze, “Axel.” 

The kid, cute cheeks and sparkly eyes pushed his fucking luck, “You’re welcome… Violet?” 

“Eh!” she snapped her fingers at him and cut her hand under her jaw disapprovingly. He held his hands up in defeat and looked instead to Caitlyn, who was deep in some mental calculations about how she was going to fit the sandwich into her mouth for a single bite. 

“I’d offer you a knife and fork, Counselor, but that wouldn’t help you any.” 

Vi remembered why she liked the kid so much and why they asked for him until the hostess started seating them in his section unprompted. 

Caitlyn picked off a floppy French fry and swiped a glob of sauce off the sandwich with it. “You’d need to own utensils to give me one,” she joked back. 

“More water?” 

Vi was already mid-bite when Axel answered his question and reached down to swipe the glass of ice from in front of her. 

“Well,” Caitlyn said into the paper napkin she used to wipe her lipstick off, “Is it everything you ever dreamed of?” 

A glob of sauce splatted onto her new pants in answer. Vi pulled her face out of the sandwich long enough to swallow, “It tastes like dreams.” One-handing a definitively two-handed sandwich, Vi thumbed a glob of sauce off the corner of her mouth. “But I miss seafood.”

Caitlyn braved her own first bite and lost half the sauerkraut to her plate. “I’ll have Jericho on standby to cook you your first meal after you push this kid out.” 

“Ooh, bribery,” Vi swallowed another half-chewed bite, “I respect it.” 

A grapefruit-sized sandwich and half a pound of fries later, Caitlyn fussed over the glob of sauce lost on Vi’s black pants. She wet another napkin on the condensation on her glass and scrubbed the inside of Vi’s thigh until the napkin came back clean.

“You don’t think your co-workers will find it weird you changed trousers?” she asked, folding the napkin into squares and then placing it beside her unfinished sandwich. 

Vi shook her head and cleaned up the last of Caitlyn’s fries, “Nah, their heads are in the gutters. They’ll just think we got freaky in your office aga—”

Caitlyn snatched away her plate, “Do not say again like there’s ever been a first time,” she scolded, her eyebrow bent and surly. 

Vi wiped her fingers one by one on a napkin, “The first time begs to differ.”

“That doesn’t count,” Caitlyn insisted stubbornly, “We stopped it. I stopped it.” 

“You didn’t stop shit. Your secretary nearly walked in on us.”

“And I was clothed before she managed to.” 

Despite the teasing, Vi quieted, ripping her greasy napkin into smaller and smaller strips. A clear nervous tick if Caitlyn was asked to spot one. She poked her with her straw. 

“I don't think I want to go back to work,” Vi said with minimal prompting. 

Cait smirked at the very visible bulge brushing the underside of the table, “After that pound of meat we just smashed? I don’t blame you.” 

Vi conceded their individually impressive appetites, “I mean…yeah, that too, but I meant, you know, once we tell people.” 

Caitlyn prompted just a bit. “Why?” 

“My coworkers are all old men. I don’t think they’ll get it.” 

“Get what?” 

“Why I wanted to do this. Why I wanted to carry or why you didn’t want to."

Caitlyn made sure her face remained an undisturbed blank slate. Her fingers picked up Vi's napkin shredding habit. Desire had never been her blockade, but Vi didn't know any better by Caitlyn's own design. Vi wanted to, and that had been enough.

"It's our decision and our family. I'm not sure I want to have to share that with anyone.” 

Under the table, Caitlyn rubbed her arm. Tobias had a similar misunderstanding. Not a hill he tried to die on or anything, but he’d been thoroughly surprised and then a fair bit confused when they told him Caitlyn had an abdomen dotted with needle marks for an egg retrieval only. Caitlyn didn't appreciate being saddled with that expectation any less or more than Vi did her own.

"Then don't."

Vi raised an eyebrow.

"This can be as private of a time as we want it to be. I'm not sure normal people have to defend their choice to have a baby. I hope the same goes for us." Caitlyn had defended it to herself more times than she could count and she knew, despite it all, Vi did the same. She supposed she shared Vi's aprehension to open themselves up to the opinions, or worse, criticisms of anyone with eyes. She also intimately understood Vi's discomfort with all the imminent attention about to be paid her and her body. The spotlight was a miserable thing. "Percy’s willing to have you working from home after your leave is up?” Vi nodded. “And you work mostly behind a desk and case by case anyway. So why not see if he’d be willing to let you start early? You can do all the boring paperwork at home with us, comfortable and relaxed, and when you have to go in person to straighten out bad behavior or de-escalate misunderstandings you only have to deal with shitheads for a few hours at a time.” 

Vi considered. “Huh. That's…a really good idea. Why haven't I always worked from home?” 

Caitlyn shrugged, catching Axle’s eye from across the room and nodding once when he traced a signature in the air. 

“I’d certainly like having you home more, even If I still won’t be there as much. Louen will be thrilled about this arrangement.” 

“Father too,” Vi chuckled. “It’s a thankless job being her nanny.” 

“He loves looking after her,” Caitlyn corrected, “but so do you.” 

“I’ll ask Percy about it today,” Vi declared, finishing off the second glass of water. “Hopefully, all this,” She gestured to the bump she was hiding beneath the table, “stays put until I can transition out of the office.” 

Caitlyn would indulge her as much as she wished, even if keeping her tongue tied about it was eating her up, “Sooner or later we’re going to have to start telling people.” 

“Shh,” Vi whispered as Axle set the bill down. “Keep it our little secret just a little longer.” 

“Oh, love,” Caitlyn tisked, removing a crisp bill from her wallet. “It’s not little.” 

That got her another swat on the arm and another comment from Axel about their lovers’ quarrel. They got the cash back, even though they always left him the change, with the itemized receipt wrapped around the fold of smaller bills. Scribbled on the bottom beside the total cost was a single word. 

Congratulations. 

Chapter Text

Exactly two weeks later Caitlyn awoke to their alarm and the shifting of the mattress as Vi swung her legs over the edge and stayed put far longer than she was known to dawdle in bed. 

“What is it?” Caitlyn asked her pillow as her eye struggled against the early morning sun. 

“Nothing, I just…” Vi’s groggy morning voice trailed off, “—feel really pregnant.” 

Caitlyn flipped so her good eye was facing her wife but Vi sat with her back to her, entirely out of sight. 

“Don’t know if anyone’s told you this, yet,” she murmured, reaching out to graze her nails over the skin visible under the hem of the T-shirt Vi wore to bed. “But you are really pregnant.” 

Vi reached behind her and planted both hands above her tailbone. She hadn’t complained once but Caitlyn knew her back was starting to bother her. She crawled forward and rubbed the tense muscle there. “Come on, let me see you.” 

Vi shook her head, “Mhhmn.”  

“Come on,”

She grabbed Caitlyn’s hand and repositioned it slightly higher. Caitlyn pushed onto her knees and kept one hand rubbing small, firm circles. With the other, she breached Vi’s shoulder and wrapped her arm around her waist. 

“Oh. You weren’t lying.” 

“I have that meeting with Ekko today,” Vi groaned, finally allowing both of Caitlyn’s hands to map the expanse of her suddenly outward stomach. 

“Mhm,” Caitlyn hummed between sleepy cheek kisses, “Writing’s on the wall, babe.”

“Do you have Louen’s book ready yet?” 

“I’ve had it ready for weeks.” 

Vi leaned back into Caitlyn and released the ball of tension knotting at the base of her spine. 

“Then we’ll read it tonight.” 

Caitlyn made sure to hide the grin that took over her face as she buried another kiss into her neck. She made a target of the center pin of the gear tattooed there. Some traditions would never be broken. 

Something brushed against Caitlyn’s palm. She froze. Vi did too, but the sensation repeated. Caitlyn didn’t need to be told what it was. She came from behind with both hands hugging her stomach in search of that brush of limbs once more. 

“No!” She exclaimed when nothing else followed. “That was cruel—just a tease only to deny me again?” She’d been done dirty by her child in utero. 

“Shit’s brutal,” Vi laughed, poking her stomach to coax more movement out. “Get me a glass of cold water. It’s worked before.” 

Caitlyn scrambled out of bed so fast she almost face-planted and hurried into the bathroom. She ran the tap until it was icy and filled their tooth-brushing cup to the brim. She perched directly beside Vi on the edge of the bed and waited with both hands outstretched for her to chug the glass. 

A quick, fluttering jab gave her hand a one-two. “Ah!” she exclaimed like a child on a sugar rush. “There you are,” she said without realizing she’d spoken to a person she couldn’t see and had never met. Meeting Louen had felt like finally reuniting with a part of her soul. She felt the same now. She didn't know this person who would soon become another sliver of her world, but just as she'd felt all her love for Louen rattling around inside of her before they ever met, she felt her love for that baby settling over her like a second skin. It felt real, blissfully, remarkably real. “Finally found you.” She paused, waiting to see if it would be permitted. They hadn’t gone that far yet. Vi nodded once and welcomed the skirting kiss Caitlyn planted on the crest of her abdomen. She felt that tiny flutter on her lips. 

Vi’s blunt fingernails found their way into Caitlyn’s hair,  “Are we working out?” She asked her hairline, “Or are you going to grope me all morning?” 

Caitlyn slid her arms from Vi’s stomach beneath the loose shirt that wasn’t so loose anymore. Her hands climbed higher and higher until she found her targets. Bigger, she could answer with certainty now, they were definitely bigger. Through the shirt, she kissed each one. She looked up sweetly at Vi’s tucked lip, the firm set of her eyebrows. She smiled. 

“You decide.”

***

Ekko ended up not saying a goddamned word over lunch. Neither did Scar. Neither did Vi. 

She wasn’t a coward, she decided in retrospect. She’d worn an outfit appropriate for the hot, dry August weather, made no attempt to conceal the growing fetus lifting out of her pelvis, and shown up to the restaurant visibly winded from the walk down, but Ekko barely looked at her the whole meeting, eyes glued to the slew of papers he brought with him—reports, case notes, business models, blueprints and itemized receipts all to be reimbursed by the council. If he did glance at her when her eyes were elsewhere and caught her profile from the side, if he didn’t assume the extra miscellaneous weight was just that—weight, he made zero indication of it. The topic of the meeting—the development of the new neighborhood above the fissures kept them yapping for hours. The longer she sat there with nothing being done about it, the more her nerves got out from under her and actually having to say those unbelievable words felt farther and farther away from her. She hadn't scripted anything out, hadn't needed to yet, but now she wished she'd given any thought at all to the specifics, anything at all she could fall back on in her indecision. 

She ordered a lemonade because she wanted something sweet and a grilled fish basket from Axel because it was such a departure from her usual order but still Ekko and Scar said nothing. They ordered happy hour drinks and didn’t bat an eye when she didn’t. Being sober for seven years covered a lot of bases for her. She’d appreciated it in the early weeks, but it was boxing her options in a bit lately. It seemed so obvious to her. She wasn’t sure what else she could do besides outright say it, and she realized right then and there she wasn't going to say it. Not to Ekko--not yet. Not for a lack of want, but for something more unsettling bubbling in her gut.  

Telling her boss, her coworkers, their few household staff, and now restaurant staff had been easy. Easier than she'd worried it would be, of course. She was looking forward to telling Louen that night more than anything, but Ekko was a can of worms she didn’t realize she hadn’t opened yet. Ekko could wait, she decided when Axel asked how she was feeling on their way out and Ekko kept walking straight out the door in time to miss her answer. 

So maybe she hadn't worked through all her shit. Telling Ekko was proving to be a level of intimacy she hadn't mentally prepared for, even if she didn't understand it. He could wait until she did, of anyone in her life, he could wait the longest. 

She'd see him in another month, and whatever odd-second trimester anxiety was haunting her would be well on its way. 

She'd tell him in a month. 

Chapter Text

Caitlyn sloshed a perfectly good mouthful of tea onto the saucer when Vi made what she thought was an innocuous, and more pressingly, obvious statement. 

Vi blinked, then looked from her to Tobias to Louen running off her breakfast in the gardens with the dogs. 

Tobias looked somewhat puzzled but not spooked as Caitlyn did. 

“I…I’m sorry, what do you think I just said?” She must have mispoken, that was the only thing she could think of. Only she hadn’t misspoke, she knew that. Caitlyn must have misheard her. 

Caitlyn pushed away her tea and fixed her with an unsubstantiated frustrated expression. “We’re not having the baby here,” she said like it should have been obvious. 

Vi rapidly caught up to the same page Caitlyn was on. “Obviously, I didn’t mean in the garden. I meant in our bedroom, or a guest one if you don’t want to risk the mattress.” 

Caitlyn pushed her mouth into her hands, “Oh, Father, she’s serious,” she said as if Vi was longer seated at the table with them. Tobias opened his mouth but shut it just as quickly. Caitlyn turned her attention back on Vi. “You can’t deliver in our bedroom," she repeated the same claim in a different arrangement. 

Vi ran through a list of all the rooms in the house. She was fairly certain the bedroom was the place to do it. 

“Then where?”

Caitlyn gaped at her as her hands fell onto the table, “At the hospital. Why in the world would you want to have it here?”

Vi suddenly lost all appetite for the sausages she’d permitted herself, in a moment of weakness, to cover in syrup. 

“I didn’t realize that’s how it was done up here.” 

Caitlyn took immediate note of Vi’s tell-tale surly tone. She tried to speak but Vi was not finished. 

“Where I’m from everyone did it at home, or someone else’s home if you had to. A lady who knew her shit would come or a family member would help. That’s just what was done.”  

Her mother had Powder at home. Vi remembered with such aching clarity at five years old her mother waking her with cries of pain and fear. Everyone else was at work in the mines or the bar. It had only been Vi and her mother in the house. Vi was old enough to listen to her mother when she sent her up the street for their neighbor. They weren’t particularly close with her but she was the only woman on the block and had five children already. She made Vi stay in the room and hand her things while her mother labored. More than anything, she remembered how her screams evolved from sharp whimpers to full on war cries and how Vi couldn’t do anything apart from watch. Her father, Vander and that cyclops returned finally but the neighbor insisted they stay outside and wait. Vi held her mother’s left leg while she pushed and held Powder, tiny, fragile, and loud as hell before even her father did. 

Caitlyn’s look softened, but the determined set of her jaw persisted. “That doesn’t mean we should follow the same tradition. People did that out of necessity, but even Zaunites go to hospitals now. It’s safer.”

The dark wedding band on Vi’s finger was tight like a handcuff. She twisted it around and around until it got caught on her knuckle. “I’ve been operating under the assumption we’d do it here. In our home. Just as my mother did.” 

The past few years, bringing Louen home, cleaning up the streets for the next generation of Powders, Mylos, and Claggors, and now embarking down the road to expand her family again, had brought Vi closer to her mother than she’d felt since her death. Her mother was her only frame of reference she had to cope with all the uncertainty and the fear she otherwise had. She could give her father, Vander and Powder credit for teaching her how to care for a child, how to shoulder those responsibilities, but only the memories of her long-dead mother gave her any knowledge of how the specifics of it worked. Only the knowledge that her mother had done it all before, that she’d been in Vi’s shoes and made it out the other end brought her comfort in an otherwise cripplingly stressful time. If she was suddenly in situations her mom never had been, that peace of mind was gone, even in hypotheticals. 

Caitlyn tried to find Vi’s hand across the table, but Vi evaded her, her eyes contemplative in some distant, far-away place. “Father,” she implored, rising out of and falling back into her seat.  “Tell her.” 

Tobias took a measured sip of tea, “It isn’t so unheard of. Many women topside delivered at home until hospitals began offering pain relief. You were born at home.”

Caitlyn snapped her head to look at him, “What?”

“Your mother felt safe doing it because of my medical training.” He smiled nervously, “I was quite worried because of my medical training. Because I knew what could happen, but she wanted it that way and the most important thing was keeping her calm and comfortable during the delivery.” He looked directly at Vi, “Would you feel more at peace delivering at home?”

“Father!” 

He looked again at his daughter. His flat line of a mouth suggested she hold her tongue, “We live very close to the hospital, Caitlyn,” he reminded her. “It’s a five-minute sprint, and I, of course, will be here.” 

“You aren’t an obstetrician,” she reminded right back. 

Vi wished her chair would swallow her up. She hadn’t meant to open that can of worms in front of the whole family unit. At least Louen had run out of ear-shot. Maybe she should join her. 

“No, but I delivered my fair share of infants during my career,” Tobias continued calmly, “and we could arrange for a midwife to come. So long as your doctor suspects a low-risk delivery I see no reason why we shouldn’t accommodate this request.” 

Caitlyn opened and closed her mouth like a fish. Vi spotted it on her face—something instinctual was going to spill out in one, two…

“We can talk about it,” Vi spoke back up, fingers back to fiddling with her wedding ring. 

Caitlyn appeared to find the foot in her mouth, “No. If…if it’s what you want. That’s more important.” She didn’t believe it. The lie didn’t reach her eyes, but the panic did. “I—I…”

Vi stretched her arm across the table. It didn’t reach but Caitlyn took the bait. 

“We can discuss it later.” 

Caitlyn’s eyes were elsewhere. Vi followed them easily to Louen laughing and chasing after the dogs between the molting azalea bushes. 

“I’m done with this.” Her plate was empty. She pushed forward her now-cold cup of tea. “I think I’ll check on her. She has karate soon.” 

Remedial karate did not start for another two hours. Caitlyn left the table anyway. 

When Vi grew bored of watching Caitlyn play with their daughter, she poked at the cold sausage on her plate. 

Pushing aside his own finished cup of tea, Tobias cleared his throat. “It’s because she’s afraid.” 

Vi stabbed the sausage with her fork without eating it, “I know.” She did know, it wasn’t like Vi wasn’t afraid. There were so many things being thrown at them—advice, personal stories, statistics, unfortunate medical realities. If she let them, they’d cripple her psyche too.

“It’s hard to be the other parent,” Tobias continued, rotating the cup in its saucer, “not in the same way it is for the birth parent. I would never try to compare the two, but I will suggest that our society doesn’t much acknowledge the struggles of the other parent. It’s easy to feel unimportant and that makes you feel helpless. She’s afraid because she feels helpless.” 

Vi knew what was coming next out of his mouth, knew because she’d already thought it in the reverse-hypotheticals she entertained late at night tossing and turning. 

“Because she has already lost you once and the thought of losing you in a more permanent manner terrifies her more than anything.” 

That was, again, nothing they were unfamiliar with. They’d almost lost the other on two hands-worth of occasions and it never got any easier.

“It’s not that I'm unsympathetic or without my own anxieties,” Vi dreaded the ‘but’ she was setting up, “ but …people have been doing this—having kids and shit since—forever. My mother had—” words cut off abruptly in her mouth. Bringing her sister up wasn’t forbidden, she’d come up an awful lot that past year, but it didn’t seem like the right time to speak her name. “—Both her kids in her own home. Everyone did. It’s just what I know, and what I’m comfortable with.”

Tobias slid his nail down a groove in his blue china tea cup, “She'll come around. she's worried, but she'll come around."  

It took a solid string of several minutes until Vi impaled the sausage again and stalked off into the house. She had an energy high from a good nights’ sleep and a hearty breakfast, so even though she wanted to curl up and crash out, she prioritized productivity. She read her inbox of reports, flagged the cases that needed handling, returned the ones that could be dismissed, read and underlined, and copied down notes, anything to keep her from circling back to what Tobias said. She didn't know how Caitlyn could feel at all unimportant. She'd been pretty crucial to the actual baby-making from the very begining, and was doubly important when Vi was too sick to lift her head out of the toilet, and Vi let her know at every possible moment how greatful she was to have her support. She supposed it wasn't a matter of rationality, though, and that, she understood well. She battled her own irrational fears, and she hadn't even attempted to process most of them, she knew. She was on such a loop she didn’t notice the clock when it chimed twice or the soft knock on the office door. 

“Mom?”

That name was a sharp pinch to her ribs. Louen was growing so fast it was often blind-siding, and, selfishly, Vi wished she’d stay little a little longer. Sweeter terms of affection like Mama, or Mommy, had been short-lived. Vi had the rest of her life to be called “Mom”. She’d miss the sweet, childish cadence she’d known before. 

She abandoned her work and got to the door as fast as possible. Louen stood outside in the correct white clothes, though the buttons were off and the pants were possibly on backward. Her hair was tied back with a long navy ribbon that got lost in her messied hair. Vi grinned down at her. Already, the surly ache in her jaw melted away.

“Did you dress yourself?” She asked, leaning forward to assess finer details. The pants were facing the right direction. They were only bunched unevenly at the waist. 

“Yup!” Louen beamed the same look as when she read from a new passage of text or correctly remembered an English word she’d forgotten. That look melted Vi at every appearance. 

“What a good job you did,” she told her, tugging the right pant leg a little lower. Louen giggled and shook her leg out till it was even. Hair that missed the ribbon slipped over her cheek and caught on her lips. She spat out the long and unruly hair with a disgusted face. “Would you like me to tie your hair back?” 

Louen’s head bobbed in answer. Using the corner of her desk, Vi knelt in front of her, still unused to wielding her rapidly changing center of gravity. She pulled the ribbon loose with the smallest tug and regathered the hair with a few passes of her hands. 

When they first brought Louen home, her hair had been an uneven, choppy bob dusting her earlobes. She hadn’t yet allowed them to cut it. As such, she had outrageously long hair for a six-year-old, almost to her elbows, but it was the most gorgeous hair Vi knew, so similar to Caitlyn’s in texture and color. If Louen ever did want it cut, Vi suspected she’d be sad to see it go. She tied the ribbon tight around her fist of hair and tucked the loose ends into the knot. She couldn’t help but smile at the cheery grin skirting her daughter’s bottom lip. 

“There,” she pulled back, “all ready for karate?” 

Louen pulled at her arm, “Yes, yes! We’re going to be late!”

A glance at the mantle clock proved her right. They had time still to salvage their perfect attendance but they’d need to get moving. She gripped the desk corner and pulled upright, horrified, suddenly, at how awkward it was to return to her feet. She dismissed it as food for thought for later, much later. 

“I’m sorry, Lou, I lost track of time. Where’s Måe? Is she ready?” 

Louen frowned, “Måe’s working.”

Vi matched the frown. “Well, let’s go find her and tell her to get moving.” She herded Louen toward the study door. 

“She left,” Louen pouted, nearly stopping Vi in the doorway.

“She what?” 

“She said she needed to do something important and left.” 

If that something was blowing off steam, Vi would allow it. They were becoming rarer as the weeks flew by, but Vi herself was partial to a good, cathartic, jog or stroll through the city to sort through overwhelming emotions. 

“Then the two of us better get on with it,” she squeezed Louen’s shoulders and directed her to the front door with a stop each at the bathroom before beginning the walk in earnest.

Louen, Vi quickly realized, didn’t know what to do with her other hand. When they walked, they traditionally walked all together, hand in hand with Louen in the middle. It was the Saturday afternoon tradition for the three of them to leave Tobias at home for a change and make the short walk to the dojo a few blocks over. Walking over without Caitlyn was equal parts unsettling and relieving. 

She wasn’t mad at Caitlyn, only a little miffed, but the time apart was doing wonders to piece perspective back into her line of sight. 

Louen ended up demanding to hold Vi’s water bottle and the walk continued as usual with her happy chatter and Vi’s occasional interruptions. 

In the dojo, Vi waved to the proper person, wrote the proper initials in the proper place, and turned her kid loose with a quick peck to the top of her head. “Bye, Baby,” she murmured and set her free, only for Louen to whirl back around and throw her arms around Vi’s waist. 

“Bye, baby!” she parroted then darted over to the other children gathering in the center of the room. Vi stood a little frozen like that for a solid minute or so, arms held away from her sides the way they’d been to accommodate that hug. Louen had been over the moon the instant they told her she was going to be a big sister, but she was a bit clueless too. Vi was nearly the same age when Powder was born, a bit younger, and she hadn’t truly understood either until she was made to hold her wrinkly, flimsy little sister, but she remembered what her parents had told her leading up to that, and what Vander had said coaching her into her new role as a big sister and she’d said that, as much as she remembered to Louen. They’d had the talks with her too. The explanations were slowly watering the seeds, but Vi wasn’t sure how much she’d truly processed until that moment. 

She had to hold herself back from reeling Louen back in to hug her again, tighter, and kiss her face a little firmer. She watched her talk excitedly with the other children a moment more, then slowly pulled herself away from the scene. 

She found herself increasingly reflective on the way back, over-shadowing even the worst of her self-consciousness. She hadn’t quite gotten used to navigating public spaces visibly pregnant from every angle, and the added eyeballs on her only tightened the sentimental knot in her stomach. She was clingy, that much she already knew, but the solo excursion was enough to make her crave her wife’s company.

The walk there and back felt good in the moment, but the second she made it home, she knew she needed to sit her ass down and drink some more water, even though the chug she’d downed before leaving was already constricting her bladder. Against all instincts, she listened to her body and plunked into her favorite chair in the study with a book rather than paperwork. She didn’t read it, though. She got distracted by the weight of…everything. 

That’s where Caitlyn found her twenty minutes later, still staring at the opened book she’d maybe skimmed one or two paragraphs from. She didn’t look up, unsurprising, considering her eyes were half-way between sleep and dissociation in equal measures. Caitlyn sat across from her and grabbed her idle hands to hold in her own. The kicked puppy look about her did the trick in pulling Vi out of whatever la la land she’d been floating in moments ago. She tried pulling her closer to kiss her knuckles, but Caitlyn wouldn’t relent and she had to settle for squeezing them instead. She hoped it had the same effect. Caitlyn didn’t give her any indication of being comforted by it. 

“When I was a rookie,” she said in an impossibly small voice. “We were called to escort a laboring woman to the hospital. When we got there her young daughter, even younger than Louen, was waving us in from the street.” Tears were already pooling in her eyes. Vi wasn’t particularly in the best head-space to hear a story of a pregnant woman dying horrifically, but she saw the turmoil in Caitlyn that was desperate to release. “One moment she was alert, talking. She was holding my hand…” She squeezed Vi’s then, almost painfully. Vi allowed it. “The next there was so much blood and she was gone, and that happened here—in Piltover.” Vi could choose to focus on that, to take the occasional and subconscious digs to heart but that never did them any good, and Caitlyn’s subconscious made a point with that one. It didn’t matter who or where you were. Tragedy happened everywhere. 

Vi had lived around tragedy her whole life. Determindly, their baby would not be another one to add to her expansive list.  

“I know you’re afraid,” Vi acknowledged. She refused to part with Caitlyn’s hands, and to Caitlyn’s credit, she gave up after the first resistance. “I won’t pretend that I’m not, but this is our home. I feel safe here.” Vi had never once felt safe in a hospital, whether she was the one in it or not. They unnerved her, brought her back to the utter joke that was Stillwater’s medical ward. “I feel safe here because you live here. I can't do this without you." Vi felt the infamous third trimester creeping up on her like an oncoming train. Just behind that, stalking her at a slower pace was her own dreaded uselessness. Shoes she had to bend over and tie were already disheartenly bothersome. If Caitlyn felt useless, that would imminently be up for debate, "I can't do it without you," she repeated, promised. "But I would like to do it here. My mother delivered at home and I want to…” ‘Want’ didn’t encompass the magnitude of her desires. “I think I need to share this experience with her. I feel so close to her. Closer than I’ve felt in so long.” She ran her thumb along Caitlyn’s. It no longer quivered beneath her own. “We’ve got everything we need to do this. We’re going to be okay.”

Caitlyn dispelled whatever devils were battling for dominance on her shoulders, and like it was the first breath she'd taken since, breathed into their hands, “Okay.” 

Vi tilted her jaw so Caitlyn would kiss her. Caitlyn obliged and for the first time since that morning, Vi felt that suffocating weight lessen. She made room for her in the comfy chair. Caitlyn leaned into it, sliding arms around her broad shoulders. So often, hugs and kisses evolved downward in worship to the bulge immovably between them, but Caitlyn didn’t stray that time. 

“I was talking with Father,” she said softly into the side of Vi’s jaw. They no longer delineated whose father Tobias was. They’d become a family somewhere undefinably along the way. No one thing brought it to fruition. Simply, one day, Tobias had gained another daughter and Vi had found herself a father again. It helped to remind Vi that she belonged and that she was not a removable branch of the family tree. “He told me how the first time he’d ever heard my mother cuss was when I was born…in this house. So I think…” her breath got hot and scratchy. When it became clear she wouldn’t continue, Vi matched the hand along her jaw. 

“Maybe you need to feel close to your mother right now too.” 

Caitlyn laughed then with some water-logged constricting of her vocal cords. 

“I’m sorry I was such a freak.” 

“It’s a big decision,” Vi reminded, “It was unintentional on my part, but I sprung it on you in a less than intimate setting.” She stroked the calloused skin of Caitlyn’s sniper finger. “Honestly, that was one of your better crash-outs.” 

Maybe a month ago, Caitlyn would’ve hit Vi’s arm in retaliation and Vi would’ve given her grief about beating up a poor, defenseless pregnant woman and Caitlyn would’ve laughed her off. That joke got progressively un-funnier the more Vi became genuinely fragile, and even harmless swats lost their charm; so Caitlyn only made a funny squawking sound, one that stopped abruptly when her fingers traced each of Vi’s knuckles. She pulled away, taking Vi’s hand with her. “What happened to your ring? Did you lose it?” She was slightly confused for a moment until she found it resting on a chain around Vi’s neck. She touched it with hesitant fingers. “You took it off?” 

“Easy, girl.” 

If Caitlyn looked any less gagged, Vi couldn’t know. Meeting her eyes was physically impossible. She stared at her hands instead, once surprisingly nimble, but still plenty scarred. “My hands are swollen,” she grumbled. “Father told me to take it off if I didn’t want it cut off.” She’d done her best to take her changing body in her stride. She wasn’t without her moments, but generally, she was at peace with herself. Until she’d had to take that damn ring off. 

Caitlyn slid her finger through the ring on the chain. Vi caught the bottom half of her face and the grin she was fighting. 

“You’re cute,” she hummed.

Caitlyn might be too chicken to swat Vi, but the reverse was not true. 

“Shut up,” 

Caitlyn planted kiss after kiss along her jaw. Vi allowed it. “Shut up about what? Complimenting my beautiful wife?” She dodged the next strike, grinning proper. “Never.” 

Chapter Text

Vi wasn’t quite sure how a month had gone by since she’d last seen Ekko, and where all that baby had come from in the meantime. There was absolutely no chance of Ekko not noticing unless he’d gone blind in the past month, but she wasn’t sure that even blindness could kick that can any further down the road; between the constant bathroom trips, getting winded from a single flight of stairs, and her unmistakable silhouette—she still, very much, had a hugging relationship with Ekko. 

Against all efforts, being pregnant, very pregnant, had quickly become her one personality trait and all anyone ever wanted to talk with her about. It was the inevitable time to add Ekko to that list.

She’d meant to do a whole lot of soul-searching the past month about Ekko and the role in her life he’d slotted into at some undefinable point of time, but the second trimester had hit her, like the first, like a second, heavier, sack of bricks and it quickly became easy to get distracted by everything else she had to think about. Ekko wasn’t a priority when all she could focus on was the disorienting bastardization of a body she’d once felt so comfortable in, and it was even harder not to think about all the finer details—what crib should they order? How many clothes were too many? Would Louen cope well with the change? Were they doing enough to prepare her? Were they working too much? Not enough? Was she active enough? How was she going to get through another 12 weeks and how the fuck was that baby actually going to come out of her? 

Ekko hadn’t crossed her mind once. Telling him didn’t feel any less daunting, so she gripped Louen’s hand tightly under the assertion the streets were busy and easy to get lost in. That was true, but having a hand, even that of, or maybe especially, of her daughter was a comfort she clung to the entire walk down. She’d been outwardly elated when Louen insisted she go with her that morning. Scar and the other remaining Firelights’ kids would be at the tree and with summer well and truly gone and the school year underway, she needed the dedicated time to run off some of her abundant energy. Vi was happy to have her with her regardless, but having her with her was a constant reminder of the why and what she’d been so unwilling to tell Ekko before. 

If she found herself floundering, she’d need only to find Louen’s happy face in the crowd of happy children. 

It was unusually cold for October, but Vi counted it as a blessing as the coat swallowed some of the bump. Anonymity, even to strangers she passed on the street, was exhilarating. Louen was less than pleased with her own coat, so Vi held it in the crook of her arm until she was begging for it near the bridge. Vi made them pause to button it up, taking the moment to catch her breath. She was out of that and sweaty with her winter coat, but she couldn’t be a poor example for Louen now. Lucky for her, the tree wasn’t too much farther. Far enough, but not much farther. 

Ekko was ripping weeds out of the garden beds when they pulled up. When he saw Louen bouncing at her side he snapped a leaf of kale as big as her face off a thriving bush and handed it to her. Without any prompting, she bit into and tore half of it off in a single bite. 

“Feral child,” Vi said, mystified, under her breath. Poverty had made Vi a garbage disposal of a kid, and even still she didn’t come across much she didn’t like, but Louen had the luxury of being picky with her vegetables, and she’d never had kale before, even if she tore into it like it was her favorite snack. Apparently, anything Ekko gave her was trustworthy and would go straight into her mouth. Vi would remember the next time she refused to eat green beans. 

Ekko held his hand up high so she had to jump to hit her palm against his. “Hey, little lady, how’s it cooking?” 

Word association was a magical thing for an almost seven-year-old. She jumped up and down, high-fiving his palm each time. “I’m cooking in school on Monday! We’re making miner’s treats like the miners of the old fissures ate.” 

That gave both of them pause. Ekko met Vi’s eyes and she, distractedly, thought he’d clocked her and she was done for, but he was only baffled that their, horrifically, somewhat distant past was now the topic of a second grader’s history lesson. 

“Are you now?” he asked, raising his arm higher and higher to test her jump. “What are you going to put in yours?”

She failed his highest hand and gave up in favor of counting her fingers. “Everyone’s bringing something. Ms Heminger said we can bring dry peas, corn, birdseed—”

“Birdseed?” he interrupted, catching Vi’s eye. She waited, again, to see if he’d spot something, but he didn’t, or again, stayed quiet about it. 

“Sunflower seed,” she corrected, a hand moving inside her coat to her still-pounding heart. It was official—her lungs were too crowded to make the journey bottom side. “Does Mae know about this?” she asked her kid with a sinking pit of dread. She was sure there’d be something of use in their pantry, but the lack of notice agitated her.

Confirming her point, Louen shook her head. “Pa helped me get powdered orange.” 

Vi’s heart beat a little slower. 

Ekko checked his watch. Vi knew she’d taken longer to get down there than what was rational. The two breaks she’d required put a dent in their timetable. There was about to be a bigger dent, she was sure. 

“Well, Riv is over there,” He pointed across the courtyard to the gaggle of boys tossing a ball between them. Louen grinned. Vi braced for the crash. Her daughter swallowed the rest of her kale and threw dirtied hands around Vi’s waist, cinching the coat. 

“Bye, Baby!” she chirped and ran off.

Ekko’s head lifted to attention. He stared and stared. Vi kept her face neutral as she unbuttoned her coat. She’d worn a pre-pregnancy pair of overalls that, by some miracle, still fit, but left little to the imagination. She met his eyes, only to find his own neutral expression mirroring hers. 

“I was wondering when you’d say something,” he remarked, casual hands in his pockets. 

“You fucker,” she scoffed, “you absolute troll.” 

Ekko scoffed back, matching energies as well as expressions. “Well, what was I supposed to say? The last time I saw you you just looked a bit chubby. No way in hell was I pointing that out.” 

“I was going to tell you then,” she reasoned, arms folding over her chest. “I thought it was obvious, but your silence psyched me out. I can’t believe you let me think I got away with that, you ass.” There was no bite to the remark, only a flustered laugh that Ekko returned point-blank. 

“Says the woman who waited like…six months to tell me a damn thing.”

Vi ducked her head, “Seven.” 

“The fuck—”

“—Almost,” she corrected herself, “twenty-eight weeks on Monday.” 

“The fuck!” Ekko repeated. In the absence of any other sane reaction, he laughed. Vi did too. She deserved a little good-natured mocking. 

Her hands found the curves of her stomach. She realized she didn’t know what to do with her hands anymore. The constant centerpiece was kind of the free spot on her bingo board. 

“Well, what did you expect?” She referenced the stretch between her hands. Ekko stared disbelievingly, but not in a way that ogled her. 

“Based on the last time I saw you? Not this, but for your information…I was letting you tell me in your own time. I certainly didn’t imagine you would have taken quite this long…” He stopped, finally realizing how sweaty and out of breath she still was. “You good?” 

She sucked in a shallow ice-cold breath of air and savored it, “Yeah. Could we sit? The walk over kind of wrecked me.” He looked at her then, as if she was a stranger and walked them to the mural bench across the courtyard. Ekko, bless his big stupid heart, had no filter. She brushed his arm, “It happens to the best of us, kid.” She had to laugh at herself because the other option was just depressing. She squeezed his arm again, “Hey, be honest. Cait keeps lying to spare my feelings. Am I waddling? I feel like I’m waddling.” He stopped to watch her close the distance to the bench. 

“Oh yeah. Definitely.” 

“Damn.” She sank onto the bench and did her absolute best not to man-spread. He joined her and made no such effort. She let her thighs breathe—no small task. 

“For the record? Not surprising,” he clarified, “You were always taking care of us shits back then, oldest daughter and all that,” he smiled humorlessly. “But I get it. You probably never saw yourself in these shoes back then.”

True to form, Vi didn’t know what to do with her hands. “Hell no,” she admitted, forcing them flat on her knees. “I never thought this would ever be my future. Not that I was thinking about it at fifteen, but even then I knew there would always be kids on the street who needed places to go, and it was never really a debate for me if I’d give some of them that place. I just expected it, and then after…it all…I didn’t think even that was possible.” There had been a time in her life so dark and stagnant she assumed it was over. Coming back from that was harder than anyone would expect. She wondered if that was what Jinx had been doing the past seven years, trying to walk herself back off that ledge. “Seven years is enough to make you lose hope. I didn’t think that I’d ever walk out of that cell, and even after I did, I didn’t truly leave it for a long time, so no. I never let myself think like that.” 

At the shrill shriek of a little girl, Vi’s eyes flew to the group of kids across the courtyard. Louen was on the ground, but pulling herself up and squaring her shoulders in spite of the split fabric over her knees. She smiled, content to watch her daughter throw herself headfirst back into the sprawl. 

“It wasn’t until Louen came so unexpectedly into our lives that made me realize I could have that, not just that, but I could choose it. I guess I’ve wanted this for a while now, but it took me maybe too long to realize it wasn’t…I don’t know, selfish?”  

“I don’t think it’s selfish,” He decided, “not any more than having kids inherently is, but you’ve got it good. You don’t have to worry about that like our parents did.” 

She didn’t answer, because, against all efforts, it did feel selfish to choose her happiness over everything else—over Jinx, if she could be honest with herself. There was nothing to be done about it either way. Jinx was gone, severed entirely from her life. She couldn’t choose her even if that’s all she ever wanted, but choosing herself would always feel traitorous. 

“I miss her.” 

The pronouns were sufficient. He drew one leg onto the bench and hugged it to his chest. 

“I miss her so much it hurts to breathe sometimes. I miss making her laugh and catching her on rooftops…drawing silly things with her. I miss her in the color of the fucking sky.” 

Their eyes snapped up in unison but she’d picked the wrong day for that metaphor. The sky was a solid blend of dismal grey clouds. 

“I miss having someone to take care of. Having Louen has been a taste of that. I see so much of myself in her it drives me crazy.” 

She hadn’t looked away from Louen running across the courtyard, laughing and screaming with the firelight kids, two dark blue braids whipping behind her as she ran. 

Ekko nodded, “It’s honestly scary sometimes,” he agreed, “I see a lot of you in her. She’s a great kid.” 

That was a sure-fire way to get Vi to start crying, but she put her heaviest foot down on that and stamped it out. 

“I want her to have what I had and what Cait never did,” Vi admitted, her heart so heavy and fast still. “I want her to have it better than we did. They’re going to have it so good. I’m going to make sure of it—I’m going to try my best.” 

“Of course you are.”

Her chest was still tight. Thinking about it in the presence of a man, who had once been a little boy she loved like her own blood, she realized what she hadn’t voiced with anyone else. 

“Alright, maybe it is selfish, but I want someone who’ll love me like she did once.” Fuck, she was going to cry after all. “Before Louen I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to love me like that again.” Her eyes found him in a flash, catching his gaze and hoping she could impart all her desired meaning in a single look. She didn't have the words to spell it out for him in its entirety. “It’s not to replace her.”

“Of course it isn’t.”

“Good,” her voice warbled, “because this is the happiest I’ve been in so—and I could never have you thinking—”

“I would never think that.”

Fuck it, she was going to cry and hold her stomach. She could do whatever she wanted. 

Ekko patted her now-free knee. “I’m really happy for you guys.” The hand got heavier the more of his arm went into the gesture. “And I know she would be too,” he murmured. “She’d be happy you’re passing on all this love you’ve got in you. You can’t pour it into her, so it’s gotta go somewhere, and I feel in my gut that she knows that, and she hopes you find all the happiness in the world.” 

Her hands had to abandon her stomach in favor of scrubbing the tears out of her eyes.  

“Do you think she’ll ever come back?”

She hadn’t meant to say it—hadn’t realized she had until she’d said it. He got stiff behind her. She matched the tension in his spine, her back groaning at the strain. 

After a period of time that definitely put a dent in their timetable, he said, “I don’t know if she can.” 

She, she, she…the vagueness was driving Vi mad. It hurt her heart to relegate Powder and Jinx to the shadows.  

“I was so much of what made Jinx Jinx,” she admitted, padding knuckles under her eyes to redirect quiet tears. Ekko’s arm found her shoulders, but he said nothing. She crashed into them. “I just wish I could’ve been a part of making whoever she is now.” 

He rubbed her shoulder. He hadn’t been that little boy she needed to protect for so, so long. She didn’t have to protect him anymore. Her duty was to her family now, her children, her wife, and her father. The whole world wasn’t on her shoulders, just her world. 

“It will never replace her,” he affirmed with a voice heavy down to his bones, “but you’re going to be everything that makes this kid who they are.” 

Oh, fuck that kid with no filter and the biggest heart she’d ever known. She curled a bit as she bent in a strangled sob that cracked her lungs open. His arm froze around her, quickly joined by the other arm. 

“Woah, I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t take it personally,” she pleaded, burying her fingers into her closed, gushing eyelids. “I mean, yeah, that was brutal, but just yesterday I cried over my in-law buying the wrong hand soap.” 

“Holy shit.” 

She dried her eyes on her sleeves. She wasn’t quite done but knew the worst of it had passed. “Yeah, shit’s brutal.”

“So...you got a name picked out?” He asked in an obvious effort to distract her. It didn’t take much to pull her attention elsewhere. She cried a little more as she shrugged. 

“Depends. We’re in agreement if it's a boy. She doesn’t like my girl name, but I am not naming my daughter anything else, so…”

“What doesn’t she like about it?” 

“It’s a C name. She doesn't want Louen to feel like she isn’t a true Kiramman because of a naming scheme. I think it’s a harmless tradition, but I don’t even care about that, I just like the name. Makes me think of Pow.” 

It was written on his face that he couldn’t think of a single name that checked those boxes. Vi took a tiny, evil, amount of glee in keeping simple, harmless, secrets like that from everyone, Tobias most of all considering he was the most exasperated and was half of the namesake in the event of a boy. 

“When are you due?” 

She grimaced. “Not soon enough.” He humored her joke but he wanted an answer. “December 22nd.”

“What are the odds that it comes on your birthday?” he teased, but the possibility was very, very real. 

“No complaints from me if they wanna come early.” She patted her face dry. With any luck, she’d reached her cry-quota for the week. “Alright, we can’t keep yapping or I’ll probably start crying again and If I don't get Louen back early enough to finish her schoolwork, Caitlyn will have my head.”

He grinned at her as he stood, “Not with that precious cargo she won’t.”

She rolled her eyes at him but sobered up the instant he offered his hand to help her up. It was even more sobering to realize she needed it. She took a step back to reorient, aware of Ekko grabbing her coat for her and brushing, gently, at her arms to direct her into the adjacent buildings, but she didn’t move, her eyes on the mural overhead. The paint on the oldest of faces was faded and chipped. Her own youthful face had been painted over years ago. She’d asked Ekko to replace her with Isha, that sweet, brave little girl she knew for only such a short time. She’d made him craft sketch after sketch before he finally got the face right. The painted girl was right beside the faded face of a little Powder, side by side forever. 

Wherever that little girl was, whoever she was, Vi hoped she was safe. Safe and so, so happy. 

Chapter Text

Marissa, Magdalena, Mara…Caitlyn turned the page lacklusterly. She sucked luke-warm, overly milky tea between her teeth and nearly spit it out at the first name on the next page— Madeline —maybe M names should be off the table. 

Nathalia, Natasha, Naomi…she flipped the page again, directionless. What good would perusing the book be if she didn’t have it in her to read an entire consecutive page. It had been a good-natured gift from a fellow counselor, an older Zaunite woman Caitlyn held endless respect for. She'd been given it one random afternoon after Caitlyn had helped rewrite the addendums to the bill she was angling to pass. She’d appreciated it then and read each page with consideration, jotting down a few she favored…a few Vi swiftly shot down. Somewhere along the way the deluge of options blended into one daunting choice. Nothing sounded right. She couldn’t imagine saying any of the names every day for the rest of her life, and it would be a lifetime commitment. Their daughter would live with the name they gave her for the rest of her life, and whether she wanted it to or not it would define her. 

It wasn’t that she disliked any of the names Vi suggested. She even thought the one Vi was so set on was rather pretty, but they were all so distinctly Zaunite. There was nothing wrong with that. The baby was half Zaunite and the great strides taken in recent years to weaken that cultural divide between the two cities were slowly working, but Caitlyn worried she’d be mocked for it. Kids were cruel, and Piltover was still snobby as hell in many regards. She couldn’t imagine such an obviously Zaunite name married to the Kiramman moniker. The sentimental part of her said that was silly because they’d already done that—successfully, and more importantly, who gave a shit—Caitlyn. Caitlyn gave a shit. She just wanted to give her daughter—if she had one—the best start to her precious, treasured life. 

When it came down to it, Caitlyn had no expectations for their child. Personality or accomplishments seemed unimportant, and gender seemed entirely superfluous, but she did hope for a boy. Not just to have one of each and check off that mental box; she knew if it was another girl she’d never stop wondering about what it would be like to have a son. Having a daughter scared her, if she was entirely honest with herself, because she was a daughter, and she was a woman and she knew what came with that. Being a woman, a Kiramman woman no less, was a great struggle sometimes. The expectations were astronomical. Even if she tried to have as little as possible herself, the world would be full of them for a daughter. The same was true for a son, yes, but Caitlyn would not wish the mantle of a Kiramman woman on any of her children. Louen was her blood. She was the lines in her palm. She was a Kiramman down to her DNA, as far as Caitlyn cared or was concerned, but she did hope she’d be spared some of Piltover’s lofty expectations. Caitlyn would do all in her power to shelter Louen from those burdens. If the baby was a daughter after all, she’d do her best to protect her too. 

“A bit early for light reading, I’d say,” her father spoke suddenly into the room. He caught her contemplative, unconcealed. She choked on the bit of tea she’d yet to swallow. A glance at the mantle clock alerted her to the devastating hour of the early morning. She’d only turned a few pages of the book…

He stepped out of the dark corner of her vision, bundled up in a heavy black robe and shiny leather slippers. He belonged by the fire, she decided, wishing she’d lit it. She was rather cold herself. The blanket she’d draped over her legs did little to fight an ancient house’s draft. 

His next movement was lost to that same dark corner, but clinking china betrayed his actions. He’d no doubt felt the cold shell of the teapot. 

“What’s got you so captivated at four in the morning?” he asked, taking the book in her lap and scanning the spine. “Ah,” he hummed, flipping a few pages for himself, “I think Nadia has a nice simplicity to it, or maybe Claudia, if you wish to honor that silly tradition.” When she didn’t speak, he surveyed her stony expression. “No,” he shook his head, “if that were the case you’d be reading the Cs.” 

He’d caught her without her patch and gotten nothing but its undisturbed ugliness. It looked rather underwhelming seven years removed, her eyelid droopy over the jagged scarred socket incapable of hosting a prosthetic without extensive facial reconstruction. Caitlyn had no desire to submit herself to a lengthy procedure for aesthetics, but she also knew even if some miracle would return her sight to her she wouldn’t take it. She liked the reminder, the constant, every second conscious thought of what that missing half of her vision meant. It was important for her to have a mirror of her soul on her face. It was only fair that others saw it too from time to time. 

“I hope it goes without saying,” Tobias continued, settling into the seat opposite her, “that you may name this child whatever you wish regardless of tradition or societal expectations.” 

She hummed indifferently. That was naive of him. Though he likely was unaware of the burdens a name could bring when her mother and he were expecting her, he should know now.

“Caitlyn, my dear, what’s eating you?”

She looked uninterestedly at her toes or what was visible of them inside her slippers, “Vi hasn’t been sleeping,” she landed on, dodging his question somewhat. “My insomnia kept her up more, so I thought I’d move to a guest bed, but then I was up and just laying there was pointless.” 

Tobias nodded, “You’ve never been one to waste time sitting still.” He flipped another page of the book, “But that isn’t what you’re thinking about now.” 

She tucked her jaw into her chest, grateful the blanket over her lap hid her anxiously picking fingers. 

“Do you want to tell me?” 

She didn’t know what she would tell him even if she wanted to. Some burdens were hers alone to carry.   

He reached across the space between them and she peeled away from the trajectory of his hand. Although he paused at her quiet answer, he continued on, picking up the tray of cold tea. 

“I’ll make a fresh pot.” 

She listened to him pad softly down the hall to the set of staff stairs leading straight into the kitchen. 

She touched a skirting hand over her shapeless eyelid, well acquainted with the give it gave into the empty space beneath it. She was grateful it was a physical trait she could not pass on to any child of hers. She only hoped the same could be said for the combination of characteristics that had lost her the eye in the first place.

Any daughter of hers would be at risk of following her own weary footsteps, of filling her own, ever-expanding hole. Did she really have what it took to keep her children off that path? Could she protect them from all that would seek to drag them down to the depths of her failure? 

The name was only the start. 

From the same dark corner, a new, steaming pot of tea was set down. She looked, but Tobias had returned with only one cup. 

“Do try to get a little rest,” he told her, kissing the sculpt of her head. 

Her hand found his in a moment of physical and psychological betrayal. She twisted to shift her line of sight and frowned at him. He smiled back. “How did you name me?”

He took a step back, then, on quiet feet, poured her a fresh cup of tea. By color alone, she knew the milk was well-balanced. He handed her the saucer. 

“It was an easier process than you might want to hear,” he admitted, choosing to sit beside her instead of across. Their only separation was the inch of heavy blanket wrapped around her hips. “You were always meant to be a Caitlyn, but your mother and I were in disagreement for many months.” 

She tilted her head, pushing the question. 

“She was set on Constance.” 

Lacking control, she wrinkled her brow. 

“It was a popular name when she was a girl,” he offered in explanation, “and she liked to think of you as her anchor. From the moment we knew we were expecting, she cast every vote and proposed every motion with you in mind. I won’t pretend she made only the best decisions, far from it, but every decision was made with your future in mind. She liked giving that sentiment a physical reminder, but I was set on Caitlyn from the beginning. It means pure.”

“I know,” she said dryly. At the suggestion of his palm, she took a sip of tea. “Why did you ever think that was a good choice?” 

He startled, a once-gentle hand firming up atop her knee. 

“It’s naive, arrogant even, to think that your child will remain pure and innocent all their life,” She continued, unable to stop now that she’d begun. “If you truly wish that, you wish your child to die young." She thought miserably of the little girl she'd once aimed a riffle at. Imagined, as her dreams suggested so often what she would've done had that little girl had Louen's face. "What assurance did you have that I would be the one, the one of a thousand—hundred thousand—to live up to her name?” 

Her father was quiet for much less than she was like he only needed to sort through a few files to find his pre-recorded answer.

“None,” he admitted brightly, “but the why is easy. You’re right. No one should ever expect their child to remain untouched by life’s unfavorable parts. This child will be perfect in your eyes, but not the world’s. That’s true.” 

Caitlyn watched for shapes in her swirling cup of tea, “Then why set me up for failure?”

His hand went quiet on her knee.

“You haven’t failed anything,” he promised, though it sounded empty. “Even before you were born, you were all that was good and pure in your mother and I’s world.” He padded her leg affectionately like she was made of glass but could take the hit. “You still are.” 

“I am not,” she refused, looking pointedly anywhere but at him, “I have redefined myself in every possible corner of my life, but that cannot undo what has already been done. That, I must live with, like my name, like this child and whatever name we saddle them with.” She padded beneath her eye, but it was surprisingly dry. She wasn’t normally one for crying, but like she was the hormonally explosive one, she cried often lately. “I am glad Louen doesn’t share our blood,” she whispered as if Louen might hear it, or worse, Violet. “I am glad she has none of me in her because I don’t know what I’ll do if this child takes after us in all the bad ways.” 

“Caitlyn?” Her Father’s voice was heavy and resigned, but in a tired way. There was not a drop of malice or bruised ego to be found. “Stop speaking.”

She did. Years removed from childhood, that tone of her Father’s voice still put her in her place. 

“It will do you no good to think like that. That isn’t how any of this works. You will adore this child, as any parent does, and they will adore you because you have proven such a capable mother already. Why should it be any different now?”

She still did not speak. She told herself she was following orders. 

“You are good enough for this,” he promised her, “because you are good. You are good, my love, as is anything that comes from you.” 

He stayed with her until she finished her tea, then remained as she faded softly into the sleep that for so long had evaded her.  

She woke to the sharp and heavy smell of a cup of black coffee steaming where the tea had once been and Vi’s unmistakable hand sliding down her arm. 

“Morning, sunshine,” she teased. It was still dark out, and November promised them uninterrupted gray skies. “Is this where you go when you say you’re moving to a guest room?” 

Caitlyn held that hand and twisted her stiff back to get her wife in view. It was still so foreign to see Vi’s muscled, boxy frame round and soft in ways she’d never seen and dressed in slouchy tops and trousers with absurd waistbands. She never did get tired of seeing it, though.

From the moment the decision was made, and another child entered their hypotheticals, Caitlyn was overjoyed Vi wanted to carry. At first, she’d believed it was because of superficial things: a busy season of must-pass legislature, a healing abdominal scar from a somewhat recent appendectomy; then she’d insisted she was just happy to see Vi passionate and hopeful about something and excited for her to have that experience, hoping it would be a healing one, but soon she’d come to understand the true reason for her relief. She was grateful their baby would do all the growing with Vi, hoping she’d pass on all her goodness, convinced that if the opposite were true, the prolonged proximity inside Caitlyn’s womb would only spoil them. 

Now she wasn't sure. She was certain about Vi and all her goodness, that was never in jeopardy, but perhaps she was wrong about herself at the end of everything. She had, for so long, been convinced their children could return her goodness to her, or expose it buried deep inside her, dormant after many years. Maybe they already had, and that’s what she felt now, welling up in the space between her ribs, or maybe, she’d never lost it, even at her worst. Perhaps she had goodness in her to pass on after all. 

Chapter Text

Of all things, Vi never thought boredom would bother her the most. There were so many things to bother her, all things she was constantly hyper-aware of, but the boredom of the sluggish third trimester crawling by would be the thing to take her out, she was certain. 

The worst of it was, it was completely unavoidable. She did what she could, and kept herself as busy as she could with work, a bit of activity, playing with Louen, and prepping all the little details around the house she could think of. She’d already washed and sorted all the outrageously tiny and adorable clothes they’d collected from friends and their own splurging, tested all the new toys and equipment, and assembled any remaining piece of furniture despite Caitlyn and Tobias’s protests that they’d get to it and for her not to worry about it. She quickly exhausted herself of all outlets. 

She was grateful to still be as active as she could, but the whole not being able to breathe thing put a damper on most of her usual daily activity, even the modified stuff. At some point in the recent past, everything shifted downward in a vague directional sense and finally freed up space for her lungs to take a deep breath again, which was wonderful, except now everything down there was miserable with the pressure suffocating every nerve between her legs. Walking was a simple misery, though she kept up with it anyway. It was one of the only things she could do with the endless amount of time she had on her hands now that Percy was sending her less and less paperwork to review. Either enforcers had been on their best behavior or he was going easy on her. She’d call him up tomorrow and yell at him for it…Or she would if she wasn’t still contracting. 

She knew it was nothing—the routine tightening of her stomach and pinching of her nerves. It was her nightly little tradition, starting up sometime after dinner and calming down later in the night. It was practice, she knew, for the real thing, and she knew it wasn’t the real thing because if she wanted to, she could shift her hips or pull herself to her feet and the tightness would dissipate. She didn’t want to all that much—the routine was annoying but not particularly painful and she was more exhausted than she was uncomfortable. Even her feet and back hurt worse than the contractions. Keeping up with her mental clock, she knew she had a minimum of ten more minutes to lounge ass-down and feet up until Louen finished with the bath Tobias drew for her. 

“She’s ready for you.” 

Or perhaps, she did not. 

She used every muscle to rise from the chair that had become the epicenter of her life and gripped the back of it when the contraction not only persisted but was joined by the needle-sharp pains jumping from hip to ankle. She never knew her asshole had so many nerve endings.  

“You alright?” Tobias asked from the doorway. Mid-hip-flex, she waved him off, gripping her chair until her core softened once more. “I can do bedtime tonight,” he asserted in that fatherly voice he knew could melt her at unexpected moments. “If you’d like to go lie down.” 

It was only eight PM. Hardly an advisable bedtime if she wished to not wake up at the crack of dawn, though, she should probably accept that was inevitable so late in the game. 

“It’s your turn to sit, Father,” she told him, directing him by the shoulders to the sofa and the crackling fireplace. “The pregnant and the elderly have to look out for each other.” He gaped at her, but his white beard and blue hair so pale it was almost periwinkle proved her point for her. 

He sat down without argument and she left him to his books. Louen was upright in her bed in a pair of pajamas waiting for her. She hadn’t washed her hair, but with as much of it as she had, some had inevitably fallen from the knot and now curled wet at her elbows. 

Louen retrieved her chosen book from the bottom of the bed and held it out for Vi to see. She smiled tensely at the familiar cover of Mr. Whimble. It was somewhat beneath her reading level and too memorized to truly improve her reading comprehension, but Vi was not in the habit of policing pedantic crap like that, even if she was sick as shit of that book. Caitlyn might have if she were there, but only for a moment, and then she would’ve given up. “Sit comfy so I can do your hair before bed,” she instructed, patting the space between her knees. Louen obliged, folding her little legs beneath her and opening the book to recite its front page. Getting the right leverage to lean forward and brush the knots from Louen’s hair was no small feat, but Vi worked quickly. She put little effort into the braids. Louen was just going to sleep on them and her fingers lacked the dexterity to grab the sections of fine hair with grace. When she finished, she had Louen snuggle up beside her in the usual spot and finished the book when her little voice got sleepy as it inevitably did. 

“Mommy?” she whispered when Vi turned the last page. Her slender face squished against Vi’s collarbone which she used as a pillow. Getting out from under her would be a struggle and a half, Vi knew, but she’d worry about that later. She smoothed the fly-away hairs that escaped the braids away from her eye. 

“Yes?” 

Louen raised a tiny hand, walking it up Vi’s stomach two fingers at a time. 

“I know why you don’t like Mr. Whimble now.” 

Vi joined Louen’s walking fingers with two of her own. “What do you mean?” 

“I know you don’t like Mr. Whimble, but it’s my favorite.” 

“Who says I don’t like Mr. Whimble?” Vi hated Mr. Whimble. She hated the silly prose and the uncanny art and the stupid ending page, but her daughter loved it, and therefore so did she. She wouldn’t beef with a children’s book. 

“You read the other books much better,” Louen reasoned, and Vi couldn’t fault her deductive logic. Like Måe, like daughter. 

“So why don’t I like it then? She asked, certain Louen’s childish perspective would shed genuine light on the matter. 

“You’re like Mr. Whimble. All his family and his friends left him.” 

Read to filth by a seven-year-old…Vi might never recover. 

“Sure,” she admitted, play-kicking Louen’s fingers with her own, “but all of Mr. Whimble’s friends come back in the spring.” 

Louen burrowed her face deep into Vi’s chest. “Yeah,” she agreed. 

Vi’s face was suddenly overwhelmingly hot. 

“Oh. I see what you mean. I’m like Mr. Whimble before the last page.” 

She nodded, “Uh huh.”

“Well, I’m not exactly like Mr. Whimble,” Vi challenged, rubbing the soft patterns of comfort on Louen’s back she hoped would put her out sooner rather than later. “I had a lot of family leave and not come back, but all that means is I had to make new friends, and I’ve got lots of those now. Måe and Pa, Scar, and Mr. Steb…” She thought of Axel, the sweet and familiar young man she always thought of whenever she tried to think of Mylo. He was everything she could've hoped her brother would grow up to be. 

“Uncle Ek?” Louen asked, her voice so languid it threatened to drift away. 

“Yeah, Uncle Ek stayed around, didn’t he? If anything, Ekko is Mr. Whimble and I’m his returning friend.” 

“Then why are you blue?” 

That was the first genuine pause Vi wasn’t able to coast through. In perfect timing, the muscles across her abdomen snapped taught and her brain power had to go to breathing through the pinching needles. Louen knew what that look meant, she lifted onto her elbows and poked her mother’s rock-hard abdomen acusitorily. “Stop it, baby,” she commanded. Vi picked her hand up off her and held it to her heart instead. Louen giggled at the steady thumping she felt beneath her palm. “Why is she hurting you?” 

Vi had explained it all before, but she’d do it again, it would seem. 

“Doesn’t hurt, it’s just uncomfortable like when you stub your toe or pinch a finger.” She fully processed Louen’s question. “So you think you’re getting a little sister, do you?”  

“I don’t know if I am, I just want one,” Louen dismissed, snuggling into Vi’s side once more. 

“A little sister?” 

“Yeah.” 

Maybe Vi wished she’d fallen asleep after all. 

“Why is that?” 

“I already have Riv. He’s pretty much a brother, right?” 

Vi would say cousin, but she wouldn’t get pedantic about that either. 

“I just think a sister would be nice. Or maybe one of each.” She was back on her elbows, leaning over to meet Vi’s eyes up close. “Can you have two babies at once? That would be cool.” 

Vi considered how much more of a pill she’d be if she was carting around twenty-four pounds of baby and placenta. 

“You can, but you’re only getting one or the other out of this.” She pushed Louen’s hand flat against the center of her stomach. 

She appeared lost in thought as they lay there, only for her to wriggle onto her back and say to the ceiling, “Then I still want a sister. Do you think my sister wants a sister?” 

“Anyone would be so lucky to have you as their sister. Being a sister is a very important thing to be,” Vi told her softly, reaching for the lamp and flicking them into darkness. “Big sisters protect their little siblings, teach them the lessons they learn first.”

“I’ll be like Ms. Heminger?” Louen challenged. Vi wasn’t sure if it was the age range or the language barrier that made Louen take everything literally. She was a smart kid, that was for sure. 

“Yes, in a way. A sister can be a teacher. You can teach the baby how to play with your toys, help teach them to walk and talk, and then when they get a little older, you can teach them how to read Mr. Wimble, and we can teach them how to play all our games. Would you do that?” 

She grinned, “We can play pirates?” 

“Yes, love.” Vi traced a finger down the dark line dividing her stomach. Even in the milky darkness, she saw it. She had a memory, clear as any other, of climbing onto a lumpy mattress not much bigger than her own and curling up beside her mother late at night when her father was still at work deep in the mines. Her mother had a similar line on her swollen stomach, but she didn’t let Vi touch it, promising her it hurt. She’d told Vi a similar thing when she asked all the questions that seemed to burn her own daughter’s curiosity. “But you know what? Being a sister is fun too, so much fun. You know what little siblings are?” 

Louen tilted her jaw. 

“A life-long best friend. Sisters are good for that.”

Louen pushed her nose against Vi’s shoulder and was quiet for so long Vi thought that might have done it. She was content to stay a little longer though, because she was miraculously comfortable, and getting back on her feet sounded like absolute hell. 

“Mommy has a sister?” Louen whispered, heavy eyelids fighting sleep but very much awake. Vi startled beneath her but refused to feed another knee-jerk reaction. Louen didn’t remember much of anything from her life in Ionia, let alone a mother and a possible family. Vi wasn’t sure what—it hit her with another, smaller, knee-jerk. She nodded slowly so her jaw wouldn’t quiver with the effort.  

“I used to have a little sister,” she agreed, her voice horribly scratchy in the back of her throat, “How did you know that?”

Louen didn’t answer, not directly. She lifted another sleepy hand and made silly shapes with her fingers. “Used to?”

A year ago she wouldn’t have picked up on the past tense. She was growing so fast and Vi couldn’t stop it—knew she just had to enjoy it. Even as her heart stung in her chest, it swelled with pride.

“Yeah,” she asserted, taking her hand out of the air and returning it to her side. She was supposed to be sleeping even if they both were putting that off. Vi sat up a bit so the inevitable snot and tears wouldn’t wash back down her throat. She peered down at her daughter. “She’s gone now.”

Louen processed the words. She was an intelligent girl who had seen death. “She’s dead?”

Vi found that it was harder to shake her head. “No. She’s just gone.” 

“Can she come back?”

Vi tapped the tear off the ridge of her cheek, her thumb straying over the abraded skin of her tattoo. She thought of Ekko’s mural, of the now faded bright-eyed girl. 

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” Louen asked with childish curiosity. What Vi would give to ask that question with that good-natured naivety... 

“If she was ready to come back I think she’d already be here.”

Louen’s face was slackening. Vi knew the look well and knew sleep was coming, but she kept the train rolling, perhaps despite her best interest. 

“What’s her name?”

Vi froze. In a moment of weakness, she feigned a contraction and took the extra thirty seconds to crash out. 

She reached over and flattened the wispy blue hairs clinging to her hairline. “I don’t know.”

That intrigued Louen, she opened her eyes a little wider, but Vi ran that hand over her hair again and she settled back in. 

“My mother named her Powder,” Vi whispered in the soft, fluttery voice of their bedtime secrets, spoken when Caitlyn was on her way to scold them both for staying up so late. Louen tuned into her words with brightened enthusiasm. “When she was older, she went by another name. Now she probably goes by another name too.” Vi wondered what that name might be, if it fit her, if she wore it proudly. She kissed the ridge of her daughter's hair and pulled away. “I hope she does.”

Louen rolled sleepily into her pillow, satisfied, at last, with her collection of answers. “Goodnight, Mommy,” she murmured into her pillow. Vi pulled the sheets up to her shoulder and treasured the warmth beneath them. 

“Night, love.” 

On a simpler night, Vi might have returned to the lounge and conversed a bit with Tobias about his day, maybe ask what he’d served to his book club, or sat with him in comfortable silence as they read their books, but she returned to her room with the dogs and let them onto the ottoman of her second favorite chair before she sank into it. It was a bit cold in the room, and the pair of them warmed her feet. 

She checked the time—8:30, not very much time at all to host whatever breakdown she needed to have before Caitlyn returned home. So she didn’t have one, she hugged her stomach and braced for another awkward tensing of all the muscles in her abdomen, but, as usual, things seemed to have settled for the night, there was only the matter of the tiny foot finding its home repeatedly against her ribs.  

“Work with me, little guy,” she chided, falling into the instinctual nickname that had felt ungendered until fifteen minutes ago. “Or little girl…Whoever you are, can you ease up on the organ grinding?” They listened, to her complete surprise, offering her enough reprise to lean back into her second favorite chair and melt a bit, maybe a cry a bit, all she knew was she woke up sometime later to the dogs spring-boarding off her legs and the mattress flopping back into the frame. She half-startled but stilled once she saw it was only Caitlyn, a bundle of sheets in her arms. She smiled softly at Vi—their little wordless greeting that observed tradition. 

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she confessed, “but you would be pissed if you fell asleep like that for long.” 

Vi checked the clock—fifteen minutes felt like the most sleep she’d gotten in weeks. 

She rubbed the exhaustion from her eyes with minimal success, “Why are you washing the sheets now?” she grumbled. 

Caitlyn disposed of the pile on the floor and turned her attention to the dogs, balancing both their demands for scratches to the ears and neck.

“I’m not. You weren’t in bed like I thought you’d be so I figured I’d put on that protective cover they gave us at the last check-up. 

With her half-lidded eyes, Vi saw their once comfortable bed topped with a rubber sheet. Caitlyn picked up a fresh fitted sheet and made to lift one edge of the mattress. Vi pulled her legs off the ottoman to rise and help her. 

“Sit down,” Caitlyn chided with a furious glare Vi knew better than to fight. Instead, she tried her best to fall back asleep while Caitlyn redressed the bed with fresh sheets and blankets. “There,” she padded the now uninviting mattress. “Now you can go into labor at any time with no risk to our mattress.” 

Vi considered the more attractive ways she could go into labor. Waking up in a hot puddle was low on her list. 

“You think I’d wake up if my water broke while I was asleep?” 

Caitlyn undid the corner of blankets on Vi’s side of the bed, a clear invitation that she was meant to climb in and crash. Instead, she followed her into the bathroom to brush their teeth. 

“You’d have to,” Caitlyn said around the handle of her toothbrush, “It’s like wetting the bed. It just smells better.” She took out the toothbrush and talked in a funny voice to keep the mouthful of toothpaste in, “I’d wake up. I promise you that.” 

Vi wet her own toothbrush but didn’t use it. “What if it happened when I was in the shower? I’d just assume it was pee.” 

Caitlyn rinsed her mouth clean, “I think you’d know. It’s supposed to be quite a lot.” 

Gripping the corner of the counter, Vi spat in the sink, remembering a time she’d gagged into it instead. That felt like a lifetime ago. It was less than a year ago. Caitlyn seemed to follow her there because she appeared behind her, arms sliding under arms to hold the circumference of her heavy stomach. Recently, the skin there, stretched so thin it itched non-stop, had become quite sensitive, but Caitlyn had gentle hands. 

“Would you rather be 10 weeks or 36?” she asked, leaning down to rest her cheek atop Vi’s shoulder.

Vi didn’t waste any time contemplating her answer, “Absolutely 36. No debate.” 

“Oh? Why not?” 

“I’d take being huge and sore over being sick 24/7 any day. At least now, I’m not vomiting hot coffee out of my nose. At least now it’s almost over. At ten weeks the only thing you do know is that it’s just beginning.” 

Caitlyn hummed, her hands shifted lower, holding more of Vi up with just the strength of her arms. “Makes sense.” She offered her own shoulder for Vi, which she gratefully took. Caitlyn was even better than her second favorite chair. She was the perfect surface to melt against. 

“Any chance you can do this for three more weeks straight?”

“As long as my arms let me.” She brushed her lips along the curve of Vi’s ear and let out a shaky breath. “Are you nervous?” The tone of her question betrayed her fraying nerves and gave Vi the space to air her own. 

“I’m freaking out,” she admitted, citing the absolute truth, “but at the same time I don’t even care anymore. I think your body does it on purpose—make you so miserable you don’t care how it comes out so long as it comes out asap.” 

Caitlyn’s mouth soured, “Is it that bad?” 

Vi wanted to laugh, no, what she wanted was to tell Caitlyn to take a good look at her and ask that question again.

She did neither of those things. “What? Are you preparing yourself for your turn?”

Caitlyn laughed humorlessly. “Well, it’s certainly eye-opening, but no. It’s just pretty much all I think about at work…if you're in pain, how much pain, is it that kind of pain…I zoned out for half the council hearing this morning just thinking about what you were doing.” 

“Assembling the bouncer,” Vi answered honestly, citing the nasty ache in her back she’d gotten sitting on the floor for an hour assembling the gravity-defying contraption. Caitlyn’s jaw parted involuntarily. 

“Violet!”

“What? I had time. I have so much time. I’m going crazy, Cait.” 

Cait must understand that much. She knew how crazy a rainy day drove Vi when she wasn’t pregnant and miserable, a combination of all three spelled doom. 

“With any luck, things will stay put another week, and then we’ll have an early, healthy baby.” She’d meant it as a comfort, but both of them knew having the baby was only the beginning. “Of course, maybe you’ll be wishing for this after you’re three nights no sleep with ten stitches holding you together.” 

Vi made a face, “Oh, good vibes only please,” she scolded, not immune to the squeamish details she saw in her not-so-distant future. She humored Caitlyn regardless, “I’m totally talking out of my ass here, but I sincerely do believe I’d rather have my vagina in shreds, my nipples sucked raw, and run on an hour of sleep than whatever this shit is.” 

Caitlyn couldn’t blame her one bit. Her wife was the strongest person she knew years ago when they first met. Everything that had transpired since and the past nine months had proven that to her ten-fold. That said, she couldn’t blame her for being antsy and a little bit delusional. 

“We’ll revisit this conversation in a month,” she decided, pressing her hands firmly against the bulbous shape of a foot—definitely a foot based on the position—trying its best to escape through the skin. “Stay put,” she told that foot, “just a little longer.” 

She hummed into the shaggy side of Vi’s hair. She needed it cut again. If she had so much time on her hands, surely, Vi could clean up her dead ends, though she did recall that Vi stopped weightlifting a few days ago because it had gotten too difficult to lift her arms above her shoulders. Maybe Caitlyn could arrange for her hairdresser to visit sometime before the birth. She’d reach out to her tomorrow. 

“I’m going to make some tea. Do you want some or are you still boycotting beverages before bed?”

Vi refused even an inch of give in Caitlyn’s waning arms. “I’m alright, but…” she planted her hands over Caitlyn’s, “stay here just…just a little longer. “

Chapter Text

Caitlyn blinked awake, again, as the mattress dipped and the rubber sheet crinkled, making that the sixth time that night. It became evident a while ago that if Vi couldn’t sleep, neither could Caitlyn, and that was finally catching up to her. It took just as much effort to turn herself in bed as it did Vi. She managed it, lifting her head off the magnet that was her pillow and attempting to peel open her eye. 

“Vi…”

The rubber sheet bunched as Vi rearranged.

“Vi.” Caitlyn reached across the space between them. It had also become clear a while ago that when Vi couldn’t sleep, she did not want to be touched. In standard fashion, Vi recoiled away from her blindly searching hand. 

Caitlyn opened one sleepy eye in the dark. She couldn’t see a goddamn thing, but she heard Vi rustling about to find that perfect, non-existent, angle. 

“You aren’t sleeping.”

The hot, explosive huff she got in answer threatened physical retaliation. 

“I only mean that tossing and turning like this is miserable. Let’s do something.” She lifted onto her elbows. “Tea and a book? We can also get up. We can listen to a record in the lounge if you’d like, or I can draw a bath.” The darkness softened her wife’s features as Caitlyn’s eye adjusted to the streaky moonlight entering through the crack in the curtains. Vi’s whole face was tense, and she was almost completely still, like she was holding her breath. “Oh,” Caitlyn blurted dumbly. “Are you contracting?” The bothersome practice pains didn’t commonly persist that late into the night, but they had become more common in the past week—all normal and expected—their doctor promised. Their presence still made Caitlyn jumpy. She didn't want to be so sleep-deprived for the birth of her child.

Slowly, Vi shook her head but did not speak. She reached blindly for the pillow lost in the space between them. Caitlyn quickly pushed it forward and fit it under her hips. 

“They’re crushing my organs,” she finally admitted, settling into place at last, “and I already have to pee again. And I’m nauseous?” She breathed thinly into her hand. 

Caitlyn hummed, stroking the sheet in place of Vi's taught back. “So would you still rather be thirty-six weeks?” 

She got another dangerous huff, “I’d rather be fucking forty.”

Caitlyn’s heart hurt listening to the exhaustion in Vi’s voice. She reminded herself they were in the worst of it. Both on the macro and the micro. The post-dinner to bedtime stretch was rivaled only by the early-morning restlessness, and the crawl to late December would be an unavoidable misery for both of them. Her only comfort was the finish line well within sight, with only 21 days to go—yes, Caitlyn was counting, but so was everyone else. 

When Vi made no effort to move, Caitlyn broke tradition and skirted her hand along her spine in sleepy patterns. She was burning to the touch, even in their ancient drafty house. That was another thing that kept them divided in sleep now. Caitlyn was chronically cold, especially so in the winter, and while Vi always ran hot, she'd been a furnace since week twenty-five, meaning for a while now they'd been physically separated by the heavy blanket Vi avoided like plague. Sweat hugged the back of her neck, and Caitlyn blotted it away with the sheet, laying her frozen fingers against her sweltering skin. By some miracle, Vi didn’t immediately pull away, which told Caitlyn she’d found an at least somewhat comfortable angle.

Caitlyn shed the heavy blanket, well aware she'd regret it later, and inched closer till she could press her cold body into Vi's. One hand stroking like how she used to soothe Louen to sleep, the other wrapped around her waist and found a home in the dip of Vi's hip. Her legs curled in too, and she clung to the immovable warmth cozied beside her. Vi felt so good in her arms, like a puzzle piece. Sleeping had become such a sordid affair lately that Caitlyn had almost forgotten what it was like to hold Vi like that. She wasn't entirely sure she was capable of letting go. 

As if to crush her dreams on cue, Vi groaned into her pillow, "Five minutes," she mumbled, lips uncoridinated and melted a bit onto her side. Caitlyn said nothing, but stayed at her post, one hand soothing and the other sturdy. Five minutes became ten, but Vi served no eviction notice. Ten minutes graduated into thirty when, finally, Vi’s shoulders relaxed and the disgruntled huffs quieted. Caitlyn didn't dare move, taking the moment to soothe herself with the rhythmic motion of Vi breathing evenly against her chest, and the quiet, open-mouthed snoring she knew would increase in volume the deeper she got into her hard-earned sleep. Cait pushed her luck disturbing it though to shift her hand from under Vi's hip and rest it over the swell of her stomach spilling out between her ribcage. From how Caitlyn was positioned, she couldn't reach entirely over the bump, but she rested her hand somewhere in the soft center right below Vi's popped belly button. Cait had no clue where Vi's abs went, but she couldn't say that she was in any hurry to see them again, not when Vi was so beautiful, so remarkably soft in ways she hadn't ever been allowed to be. It was additive, seeing Vi so happy, and it was a cruel twist of fate considering how miserable Vi had become underneath all that happiness. 

It had to be exhausting to balance so much joy and excitement with such taxing physical and emotional burdens. No wonder Vi was so particular when it came to her sleep. 

The softness under Caitlyn's palm firmed up, and suddenly she was cradling a flesh-wrapped rock. She held her breath and listened, but Vi made no noise, no evidence of discomfort. Her breath didn't even hitch, and in a matter of seconds, her abdomen relaxed again. Vi had gotten a few nasty practice contractions the past few days, enough to make her roll her lips inside her mouth and contort her face, but it comforted Caitlyn to know there were easy ones still, so gentle she slept right through them. 

The foot that thumped against Caitlyn's hand was hardly as gentle, spooking her out of her own half-sleep. There wasn't really the space for such a maneuver, but the determined limb struck again, with less of a kick and more of a stretch that elongated the entire lower half of the bump. Caitlyn couldn't stop herself from pushing back a little bit, awed at the realization of just how close they were. All that separated her and her baby were 21 days and a couple of inches of muscle and flesh. 

"Poor little sprout," she whispered, so terrified to make any noise and dash the moment. "You don't have any space left in there to play, do you?" The foot answered back with another lazy flex. "That means it's time to come out, you know." That thought scared her—a lot, if she could be honest, and she was always honest that late in the night. "Of course, you can take your time, sweet pea. However you need to get to us is perfectly alright. I'm impatient, but I have waited my whole life for you." She let her lips find the pocket in Vi's shoulder and kissed it. She'd waited her whole life, unknowingly, for that moment right there; her wife soundly asleep in her arms, their baby safe inside of her, her daughter asleep next door, and her father after that. It was all she could have ever hoped for, so why was she still so uneasy? "—I can wait a little more." Like it disagreed, the foot pounded with three consecutive hits that most definitely would've crushed organs if not for trying its luck with Caitlyn's hand. "Hey, easy, you're going to wake your—"

"Fuck." Vi barely breathed out as she tensed along Caitlyn's embrace. Exhaustion and a fair bit of rage laced her exhale as her sleep-addled brain processed her consciousness. Her hips wriggled, and she found the constraints of Caitlyn's arms quickly and fought against them. "Fucking...get the fuck—" 

Not to upset the balance, Cait withdrew her arms in a swift but gentle exit, swooping in for one last parting kiss to her shoulder. "Guess they just missed you too much," she murmured, grinning to no one but herself. Vi didn't return to joke, already sagging back into loose-limbed sleep. 

Vi was propped up and cushioned like a fragile object in the mail, a pillow slid under every curve or dead space, yet she still looked uncomfortable. She didn't move, though, and soon the signs of sleep returned to her, her back rising and falling with each shallow breath.

They’d both been sleeping on their left sides for so long that Caitlyn forgot what Vi looked like asleep. Almost as much as she missed cuddling, she missed waking up to Vi’s face every morning and only having to curl inward to kiss her. It would be one thing if Vi could stand to be touched. Caitlyn wouldn’t mind big-spooning, but that was firmly defined in concrete as a forbidden faux pas. 

She had a hard time imagining it, but it comforted her that Vi must finally look peaceful after a day’s worth of tension on her brow. In trying to picture it, Caitlyn ruffled the mattress, sliding back onto her side so her good eye pressed into her pillow—her suddenly lumpy, scratchy pillow. She fluffed it with a twisted hand, grimacing at the sound it made against the sheet. She settled, only to find she was alert and twitching on her half of the mattress. The clock was illegible in the dark, but she knew it was impossibly early. There was still time to power down and get a salvageable rest, but a five-minute trial proved her brain far too active and her thoughts far too vast to shut it off. 

They’d been in survival mode for so long that she hadn’t taken much time to process their coming reality. Before she knew it, she would be a mother of two. 

She had been Louen’s mother for just shy of three years. There were vast amounts of milestones she would get with the baby that she’d never gotten with Louen. She couldn’t mourn something so far in the past and out of her control, but she couldn’t help but focus on it. She’d missed all those baby milestones and therefore was entirely out of her league. Every parent was, her father reminded her daily. Just because she was already a mother didn’t mean she was prepared at all for the next couple of steps, and she felt that the most late at night when her thoughts hit the ceiling unchecked. 

In just a few short weeks, their baby would be a reality. She’d hold them in her arms, and every single effort to get them there would be worth it. She’d get to see their face, touch their hair, and kiss their fingers. She’d meet that missing part of her family. That was too much to contemplate when trying to power down for the night. It was clear to her now that it was no longer a possibility. She wasn’t in the habit of doing pointless shit. 

She flopped and immediately regretted it. If she woke Vi up now, she’d never hear the end of it, and she’d never forgive herself either. 

It took a great deal of maneuvering to get her upper half off the mattress and swing her legs onto the floor. She rarely slept in socks, but she was grateful she’d neglected to take them off that night as she crept around the bed on the icy wood floors and eased into the chair pushed against Vi’s bedside. She understood why Vi spent so much time in one chair or the other. It was a ridiculously comfy chair, with the added bonus of reclining, just enough to get a bit of horizontal tilt. 

Reclined as far as it would go, Caitlyn had that full view of Vi she wanted. She did not look at all how she expected. She’d imagined limp, peaceful features, maybe a bit of adorable drool on the pillow or even a little snoring. She didn’t think Vi would look so haggard even in sleep. The shadows of her tired features were staggering in comparison to her pale winter complexion, and the jaw that never stopped clenching was tensed even as she slept.

Caitlyn wished there was a single thing she could do to lessen some of her discomfort or ease some of her anxieties. They’d taken the classes and read the books, but she knew Vi was still anxious as all mothers, returning or new, were. Caitlyn was a mess herself, she couldn’t imagine being in Vi’s shoes, the ones that still fit anyway. Her Father told her the best thing she could do was remain a calm, comforting support, but that was harder and harder to do with each passing day as Caitlyn grew more and more rattled.

She wished her mother could be there, not even for her own sake, though she would move earth and sky to have Cassandra for even a single minute more. She wished Cassandra was alive for Vi, so Vi would have someone she could lean on, someone to air all her worries and concerns to, and get real, meaningful answers. Vi deserved to have a mother while she had a baby of her own, deserved that support, that understanding that came with the knowledge of having walked in those shoes before. It wasn't the same for Caitlyn, her Father understood her entirely...well, in all the ways she could expect him to. He knew what to tell her to ease her anxieties, had advice to give her on how to support Vi, how to care for her and their children, but Vi had no one she could receive that from in turn. No wonder she was so scared. That wasn't fair, Vi needed the support of another mother more than Caitlyn needed the reasurance of her father, Vi was the one doing the damn thing—had been doing the damn thing for thirty six weeks and six days now, and she had Caitlyn, of course she had Caitlyn, and Tobias, and their doctor, but...Caitlyn knew that wasn't enough. Tobias and her didn't understand what she'd been going through, and their doctor spoke only in professional counseling. It broke Caitlyn's heart again and again to realize that, like most things in Vi's life, she'd had to do it alone. 

It wasn't going to be like that for much longer. Soon, she'd finally be able to share some real, tangible burdens and Caitlyn wouldn't let her be so alone. As soon as the baby came, they'd be back to being in the same boat, kind of, but it was going to be fine. They were going to be fine. They simply had to get through the next twenty-one or so days. Caitlyn would do whatever was needed of her to get Vi through the last hurdle, and then their baby would come, safely, on time, and perfectly healthy in that exact room, right, and then everything would be so hectic and challenging, and so treasured. She had to tell herself that or she never would sleep again. 

She didn’t remember losing sight of Vi’s sleeping face, but her chin dropped quite suddenly, and she awoke to a brightening room and an empty bed. She checked the clock in her scramble to soothe the sharp pinch in her neck. It was late—too late. She rose from the chair, confronted with the full-body ache sleeping in a recliner at her age got her. She found her robe on the towel warmer, switched on a ten minute-on, ten-minute off schedule. There was not enough time in enough lifetimes for Caitlyn to ever do enough karmic good to deserve the goodness that was Vi, especially not now; having her baby put her in life-long debt to that remarkable woman. Caitlyn blotted her weepy eyes on her warm sleeve and hurried to the hall.

Louen’s bedroom door was open, and her bed was empty, so Caitlyn had limited options of places to look.

It was no surprise when she found Louen seated at the little kitchen table they had assembled in a bit of dead space in the corner, kicking her legs and shaving peeled potatoes into a bowl with confident motions. Somehow, it was even less of a surprise to find Vi up and functional at the stove, fiddling with the gas. She looked over her shoulder at Louen’s enthusiastic greeting, and Caitlyn saw just how tired she was. 

“There she is,” Vi greeted, turning back to the pots she had assembled on the burners. “We were just discussing if you’d come down eventually or if you’d needed to be woken up.” 

Caitlyn ran an inexplicably nervous hand through her hair as she bent to give Louen her good-morning kiss. 

“Well, when you turn off the alarm, I don’t have much of a choice but to keep sleeping.” She reached the stove, slotting a hand to the small of Vi’s back. She brushed the hinge of her jaw with another good morning kiss. “Why didn’t you wake me?” she scolded, reaching across the open flame to pluck an out-of-season blueberry from a bowl of rinsed fruit. 

Vi swatted her hand away. “It was way too early to wake you up arbitrarily. No sense in us both being sleep-deprived. Besides, you looked so cute passed out in that chair.”

Caitlyn hummed, pulling Vi closer to her by the hip, not expecting her to genuinely stumble into her. Even after nine months, she was still unused to Vi being so unsteady. She steadied her, mindful of the open flame she hadn’t yet covered with a pan. Vi raised an eyebrow but allowed Caitlyn’s arms to linger. “Down girl,” she whispered, then continued fiddling with empty pans. Holding her tongue, Caitlyn slyly took another berry before extracting herself from swatting range. Vi chose peace over retaliation, but Caitlyn caught the extra weight she leaned against the counter while waiting for the pan to heat. She waited for the tell-tale rotation of her hips, but it never came. Just as well, adding morning contractions to the mix would be premature and cruel. It was just the usual aches and pains, which, morbidly, were a great deal of comfort for Caitlyn. She reeled back in, hands dusting Vi’s shoulders, and gave them a not-so-delicate squeeze. 

“Sit,” she willed. 

Unsurprisingly, Vi refused with an unhelpful, “I’m cooking!” 

Caitlyn pushed the agenda once more, “I am more than capable of poaching eggs." 

"Nuh uh. You'd burn my kitchen down."

Not entirely unlikely, but Caitlyn stood her ground, "Sit.” 

Vi flashed a very prickly look. “No, I gotta—It’s better on my feet. I just need to stand for a bit.” Her words didn’t match the hairline quiver of her jaw. But, fine, if she wanted to play games with Caitlyn, she’d stoop to the same levels.

“Then go stand by Lou. She’s going to slice her finger off.” 

“Am not!” Louen cried indignantly. Without looking, Vi agreed. 

“She knows how to peel potatoes. Don’t ya, kid?” 

Caitlyn grimaced, “No, she—no, other way.” She hurried over to slot her hands over Louen’s and rotate the peeler. “This way, away from you.” She guided her through the last of the potato nub. “This enough?” she held out the bowl. Vi didn’t look for an aggravating stretch of time, only to barely glance at it and nod distractedly while all her attention went to the swimming eggs. 

Louen popped to her feet and ferried the bowl over. “Can I?” she asserted as more of a statement than a question. Vi answered with a half smile and stepped aside, giving Caitlyn a “you’re up” look. Vi was stubborn, but even she saw the harm in hoisting up a seven-year-old with a back as strained as hers. Caitlyn grabbed Louen by the waist and held her up high enough to dump the soon-to-be hashbrowns into a pan sizzling with oil. She held her in view of the stove, planted on her hip as she smashed the potatoes into the pan. She was so immersed in answering Louen’s…thoughtful suggestions, she didn’t even realize she’d won. She turned with a serving plate of poached eggs and hashbrowns to see Vi spread in one of the tiny kitchen chairs with both her elbows on the scratched lacquer. 

They exchanged no words as Louen helped her set the table, but she kissed her shoulder at the earliest convenience and slid into place beside her so she could pass her the best pickings off each dish. Louen returned to her previously abandoned, now lukewarm tea and chatted endlessly about the expectations she had for the school day. 

It was a Friday, Caitlyn remembered—thank god it was a Friday. That meant a light day she just had to power through to reach the weekend. They had Saturday plans to pick up a winter tree. It was slightly premature for festive decor, and would probably drop all its needles and die shortly after the holidays, but putting it off another week or two seemed risky and downright foolish. Caitlyn knew if they wanted any holiday decor, they had to get it done and out of the way before the baby came. Although their last doctor’s appointment had done nothing but assure them things were high and tight and going nowhere, Caitlyn was not eager to risk it, and more than willing to knock one more thing off their plate early. Plus, she'd bought some really adorable fleece-lined overalls for Vi and Louen on account that both of them no longer fit in their old pairs. She'd bought herself a pair too, but she wasn't so excited about that, just the photo she was going to ask her father to take of them in their matching coats.

Amid Louen’s excited retelling of the books recently read at guest story-hour, Caitlyn spared a glance away from her gorgeous daughter to her gorgeous wife, only to find her with a mouth pinched tight and jaw still clenched. Vi’s lockjaw had to be unbearable, she thought miserably. Her hand found Vi’s knee under the table and let it linger. She couldn’t help but jump when Vi gripped it back and squeezed with a foreign ferocity. 

Louen’s chatter became white noise as Caitlyn asked the question with nothing but the brush of her second hand. Vi didn’t open her eyes, but she shook her head slowly, then relaxed into the back of the chair. 

“Nasty one,” she whispered when Caitlyn remained unconvinced. “It comes and goes...It’s fine now.”

Her jaw was slack once more, so Caitlyn dismissed it. Their chatter picked up again, Louen going on about the Story hour; she would not talk about anything else. "Johanna doesn't believe me that you're having a baby," she perked up, pulling Cait back to center. "I told her you are, but she said I was lying. Mrs. Heminger and I both told her that two moms can have babies now, but she still doesn't believe us. She's going to be embarrassed and wrong when she sees you today," she surmised with a truly evil grin. 

Caitlyn turned, subtly to Vi to ask the question with a wag of her eyebrow, but Vi had beaten her to it, setting down her fork and asking, "When she sees me...today?" She did the same thing to Caitlyn, but Cait had no answer to give. 

"You mean after school when Mama comes to pick you up?"

Louen's face fell, but only in confusion. "No...for story hour." She cocked her head and added, "Mr. Whimble..." as if that should clear it all up. 

"Did you—"

Vi shook her head, "I did not."

"You did..." Louen whispered, eyes wide as the untouched eggs on her plate, "You're on the schedule...you said you'd bring Mr. Whimble." 

Realization dropped like a bucket of water, and Vi brought both hands up to her mouth to hide the grimace pulling there. 

"You don't have to read Mr. Whimble," Louen sniffed, "You can read something you like." 

Caitlyn's eyes jumped between her daughter and her wife, both looking fully mortified. She leaned over, "Why would you sign up for that?" She asked, then winced and amended, "right now. Why would you put something else on your plate?" 

Vi only shook her head, "I agreed in August," she murmured, somber, "at the f—Ice cream social...I, Louen, I'm so sorry, I forgot completely that I said I would do that. Silly me. Thank you for reminding me. You saved the day." 

The flair returned to Louen's temporarily trembling face, but Caitlyn pushed back, "Hang on—"

"I will be there," Vi asserted, shooting Caitlyn an unshakable look. "Is it still at ten?"

Louen, emboldened and grinning, shook her head. "Eleven. Right before lunch."

Vi's brows angled inward again, but she plastered a smile on, "Then I will be there at eleven," she straightened out her brows, and raised one playfully, "with lunch." 

Put at ease, Louen shovled some more breakfast into her mouth before sliding off the chair and all but running her plate to the sink. She fed the last two bites of slimy egg whites to the dogs, then stood on the tips of her toes to reach the bottom of the sink. She turned, beaming eyes gauging her mothers' and nimble fingers tugging her messy braids. She opened her mouth. 

"Sprout, go upstairs and get dressed, okay?" Caitlyn instructed, scraping her plate clean. Louen listened, carefully tucking the bottom lip under the top. "And brush your teeth!" Caitlyn called after her into the house. 

When her footsteps cleared the stairs, she turned in her chair. "Vi," she sighed. Vi was slumped on the kitchen table, her barely picked at food pushed away, and her forehead in her arms. "Vi, you do not have to—" 

"—I'm going to be ogled by a bunch of seven-year-olds." Vi lifted off the table and did a one-eighty, reclining against the back of her chair, legs spread out in front of her. "They're going to ask me so many damn questions, and all the teachers are going to fawn over me like the did at the last parent conference and call me a trooper or something equally patronizing, and—oh my god, Ms. Hinter's going to try to fucking touch me again." 

Planting her hands on Vi's knees, Caitlyn put a portion of her weight into the touch. "You do not have to go. You barely slept. No one will begrudge you taking it easy these last few weeks."

Vi looked at her sharply. It wasn’t that she didn’t like being nerfed—of course, she hated that, but she was routinely slighted at the traditions Caitlyn suggested they retire in favor of ease or comfort. "It's reading a storybook to primary schoolers, not running a marathon, besides, I told Louen I would, and I did say I would," she grimaced. "I signed up for it, naive and...delusional as that was. Why did no one tell me I'd be so insanely pregnant in December?" 

Hiding her own grimace, Caitlyn patted that knee. "You knew," she teased, though she wasn't feeling very understanding in that moment. She wished she understood why it was impossible for Vi to give herself even a moment of leeway. She was obviously miserable.

"I didn't think it'd be like this," Vi confessed, an arm around the backside of her hip and shifting uncomfortably in the seat. "I didn't expect...any of this. My mom never—ugh!"  She smacked her thigh so hard it clapped. "What do I know about what my mom went through? I was five. She probably did feel like—" She closed her mouth around an invisible shape, swallowing audibly.  

"Feel like what, darling?" 

Vi waved her off, jaw tight, brows down, but her lip trembled. Caitlyn moved from kneecaps to shoulder blades, turning her in close. "Talk to me, please. Help me understand."

Vi tapped her cheeks with the back of her fingers. They came away dry, so she pressed on. "I just wonder if she felt so useless." 

Caitlyn wasn't disciplined enough to restrain her splutter, "What?" 

Vi jumped to course-correct. "Don't misunderstand me. Growing an entire human life is important, and fucking hard, and I'm so, so grateful to have them here with me, but..." a single tear came in full, and she jumped to knock it away. "I just feel like it's all I'm good for lately. I can't do shit—literally I cannot do fuck all without being reminded of it by my own body, not even breathe," she stopped abruptly, chest heaving while she caught her breath, "—And heaven forbid I go anywhere and talk to someone. They only want to talk about the baby, or how I'm feeling because of the baby. They're just being kind, I know that. They're excited, but I hate it. It makes me want to hide away from everyone all the time." 

Caitlyn wondered if she was included in that column. 

"I just want to be able to do anything for myself right now. Like go to story hour for my daughter, but I can't even do that without everyone freaking out and telling me to go home and sit and down and do what? Just do nothing until I'm magically in active fucking labor?"  Her face went back into her arms, and she released a long, thin breath like a string.

Cait's hands firmed up on her shoulders, serious in an instant.

"I still have a life I have to live, I can't just shut down these last few weeks. My mom couldn't do that—most people don't get the luxury to just longue around resting all day. They have to work, provide for the family, take their kids to school, and everything else. My mom was pouring drinks in Vander's bar right up to the last possible second to get food on the table, and I just get to skip out on whatever I want? That isn't fair." 

Her tense shoulders softened, allowing Caitlyn's hands more purchase down her spine. "This isn't about fairness," she murmured into Vi's ear. "You're allowed to have things easier than other people. Yes, maybe that's not fair for them, but not because of anything you did. You don't have to punish yourself for that. You're allowed to have good things—naps, cooked meals, days off...a support system, really, that isn't much to ask for. Everyone should have that. Just because some might not have it doesn't mean you deserve it any less." 

Vi didn't extract herself from the table of her arms, but her back gave in fully to Caitlyn's touch. "I know," she whispered, and Caitlyn did a miserable job of not laughing at her. 

"Then act like you do. Listen to your needs. You can go to story hour if you like, but remember what you're getting into. It's not just reading a book. Morrison won't be in until two today, so you'd have to walk there, then be on your feet for probably a good half hour after, and on top of that, be around a bunch of germy kids and well-meaning but pushy teachers, then you have to walk back too. If you don't feel like you're up for it, that's entirely okay. No one will blame you."

Vi's lips curled in the shape of an L, but Caitlyn beat her to the punch. "Louen is old enough to understand that you need rest. Don’t make yourself miserable for one story hour out of many.”

Vi remained unconvinced. "She's gotten so little of our time this last year," she said regretfully, "and she doesn't have much more time with just us left. The routine is changing. She deserves whatever time we have left."

Caitlyn nodded. That much, unfortunately, was true. She'd done her best to assure Louen didn't feel like she was being replaced, but had she done enough? The last thing she wanted to do was make Louen anxious for the little sibling she so desperately wanted. "Then do something special with her after school, just the two of you."

"I signed up for this thing. Her teacher's expecting me to show," Vi groaned. 

"Father is very capable of reading Mr. Whimble. He's an expert."

Vi straightened up. Her eyes were dark and swirling. "He's taken on so much, though, and so have you. I don't want him to have to—"

Lacking more effective means, Caitylyn snapped twice in Vi's face. "Stop being delusional! You have taken on more than any of us."

Vi only nodded miserably, "Yes, exactly, and I've already missed so much shit because of that; her fall recital and her class play, and I didn't do any field trips this year, and last school year too I missed her graduation throwing up in the bathroom. We don't play pirates or go to the arcade anymore. We don't do any of the stuff we always used to do together." Her lips wobbled, and the tears came properly, dripping off her downturned face into her lap. "She must think I hate her."

Caitlyn released a breath that was hot from laughter and a bit of irritation, too. "Okay, and this would be the exhaustion and the progestrogen talking." She tapped Vi's temple teasingly, but Vi glared at her with another round of tears. 

"No! It isn't!" she demanded, "I—fuck, it probably is! But I still feel this way. I'm not just some irational, hormonal pregnant lady."

"Of course not," Caitlyn assured around the ache in her chest that was coming up her throat. "Of course, how you feel matters. You matter so much to all of us, our kids especially. You still hang her moon and stars. One missed story time won't change that." 

"It's not just this story time," Vi went on, her whole upper half trembling. "I feel like I'm drowning." Her hand pushed firmly against her pounding heart. Either the anxiety or the extra pints of blood made it feel like it was bursting out of her chest. "I don't know how I'm going to balance it all." She tucked her fingers under her eyes, boring them into her puffy eyelids like she wanted to gouge them out. "I was always going to have to do this without them—everyone, I knew that going in, but it's really hitting now that none of them are going to be here, and that terrifies me, because I don't know how I'm going to do this without them all." 

"Then it's a good thing you aren't balancing it all alone," Caitlyn reminded, daring to reach forward and wipe away the freshest of the tears, "I'm balancing it too, so is Father, Ekko, Mel...Would it be wild of me to say Sevika?" She smirked. "Anyone who loves us is here for them as well, and that goes for everyone we've lost too. They're still here, just...in us." Her hands drifted down to the bump separating Vi's legs. "You are doing this alone, and I'm sorry, I don't know what it's like. I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologize," Vi blurted, her head shaking out like a wet dog. It only made Caitlyn tearfully laugh. 

"Both of us," she insisted, hanging her head, "We're done apologizing for stupid shit right now, okay? We need sleep, both of us."

Vi padded her eyes in resignation, "My brain's mush; exhausted, hormonal mush. I really am not thinking level-headedly and that's pissing me off. I know I'm blowing everything out of the water." 

"You are," Caitlyn agreed, "but you're right, it doesn't mean you're not actually feeling these things. I promise it won't feel like this for much longer, and you won't feel so alone. You're going to have all of us right here." She leaned forward in her seat, hands moving from Vi's hips to her back. "So let us help today. You’re exhausted, and you’re wrecked. You didn't get any meaningful sleep until after three. You’ve got to let yourself slow down and rest.”  

Vi glared with the fury of an army at her, but the exhaustion in her eyes betrayed her. With a firm hand, Cait guided Vi’s head onto her shoulder and held it there. She was expecting a bit of resistance, then eventual surrender, but Vi instead crashed all her weight onto Cait and hung suspended by her arms as a hot exhale pressed against Caitlyn’s shoulder. “Vi…” Cait murmured, twisting her arm to pat her back. “Will you please just take care of yourself today?” 

Vi trembled a bit at the sound of her name, and her next reply came out sharply pitched.  

“Okay.” 

Cait beamed. She’d, again, expected more pushback, but Vi was content to hang her weight against Cait and rock. "I'm tired," she muttered, her forehead dragging against the top of Cait's shoulder. 

"I know."

"I'm like really tired." 

Cait chuckled, "I know that too. That's why I'm trying to get you to take it easy today. You wanna set up in our room or the lounge?"

"Room. I wanna get dressed." She detangled herself and tugged the stretched end of her T-shirt lower. 

"It's Friday," Caitlyn reminded, pulling the pair of them toward the stairs. "I will be home early and I'll bring some dinner home too, so don't worry about anything today other than recharging. You'll need your energy for the weekend." 

Vi deflated, shoulders plummeting and stomach sucking in. "I don't want to go get a tree," she confessed, gripping both stair rails as she mounted the first step. 

Unfazed, Caitlyn dismissed her dreams of a cute matching photo as collateral. "Then don't. Louen, Father, and I can manage. Just don't be picky about the one we bring home." Caitlyn was very particular, about everything really, but Vi was especially picky when it came to their winter tree, especially the placement of all the ornaments. It was well known that no tree was ever perfect in her eyes.

Winded on the fifth step, Vi shook her head. "I don't want to do any of that shit. At most, I will park my ass on the sofa and say higher or lower when you hang an ornament." 

As they passed their bedroom, Caitlyn patted her shoulder, "Deal." 

Curled forward on the ottoman and pulling tight socks all the way to Vi's kneecaps, Caitlyn hoped that was the first domino in a growing trend of Vi cutting herself some slack. There was simply no way they could continue full force for another three or, gods forbid it, more weeks. 

With Vi properly reclined, Caitlyn made her way toward the door. “I’ll go make sure she’s presentable and break the news.” 

Vi wiped at her eyes again, "Oh, bring her in for a cuddle before you go." 

Caitlyn paused in the doorway, "Planned on it." 

All things considered, Louen had done a passable job dressing herself. She’d gotten all the pieces in the right order, only struggling with the buttons of her sleeves and the intricacy of the adorably tiny tie. Caitlyn righted both for her, holding her small hand in hers once she was finished. "Mama doesn't feel good today, sprout," she led with, and instantly, Louen's eyes doubled in size. Caitlyn jumped to soothe them. "It's going to be alright, though—"

"She said she'd come..."

"Plans change sometimes, even if we don't want them to, and Mama needs to rest today."

"B—but we can't not have a storyteller. We always have one on Friday. Mrs. Heminger already told everyone Mama was coming, a-and Johanna's never going to believe me now!" she cried, bottom lip dancing beneath the top one. "She's going to call me a liar." 

"It doesn't matter if she does because you aren't one," Cailyn assured, removing the ties from her slept-on braids and brushing them loose with her fingers. "You know the truth, and I know the truth. I'll tell her."

Louen paused, arching eyebrows, asking the question for her. 

"I'm going to come instead," she promised. "Eleven o'clock sharp, I will be there." 

Louen frowned, tugging Caitlyn's sleeve, "But you work?"

"I'll get the morning off. I wouldn't miss this for the world." She smoothed back a full head of inky blue hair and pushed it away with a headband so the longer sections framed Louen's conflicted face in soft, brushed-out curls. "And afterwards, you and I will go have lunch someplace nice and special just the two of us." 

Eagerness flared in her smile, and she bounced idly on her heels. "Jerry's?" She asked with eyes that brought Caitlyn the moon and sun. Curse her if she were incapable of giving in to her every wish. 

"What a fine idea. We'll take the tram and visit his new spot. It'll be our little date; one last hurrah before our baby comes." 

Louen beamed, leaning into Caitlyn's hand that dusted her cheek, but her excitement faded, and with her big dark eyes dancing at her feet, she asked in a tiny voice, "Is Mama upset I picked Mr. Whimble? I meant what I said. She could've read a different book."

Caitlyn flashed a smile, turning Louen around by the shoulders to force a toothbrush into her hand. "Of course not."

Mouth forming around the toothbrush, her shoulders hunched smaller, "I heard her crying and shouting. Is she mad?"

Caitlyn’s heart broke at the quiver in her little voice. She pressed a kiss to her silky hairline once and once again. “Not at you, sweet girl,” she promised, trapping Louen in her arms with a squeeze. “And no, she isn’t really mad. She’s just tired. You know how frustrated you get when we've been working on a math problem for ages and you just want to be done with it?"

She spit in the sink, her head bobbing.

"Well, Mama's been feeling like that for a long time, and remember what we talked about? What hard work it is growing a baby? It’s very hard on her right now, so do you remember what we have to do?”

“Be gentle and kind."  

“Yes,” Caitlyn confirmed, “we have to be patient when she gets frustrated and help her when she needs help and not bother her with things we can do ourselves.”

Louen sniffed, “So...no story hour?” 

Caitlyn flinched. “No, not that at all. Mama really wanted to come, but she couldn't today—Oh, darling, you’ve done nothing wrong.”

Tears broke in her dark eyes, and she curled face-first into Caitlyn’s chest. Caitlyn kept her face buried in the curve of her suit coat to keep the brunt of her tears off her uniform. 

“It’s alright,” she assured, rubbing her arm along her back. Louen clung to her, hanging on her in a way not dissimilar to Vi, only lower, more fragile. Flighty but firm, like Caitlyn was the one at risk of flying off. “Everything’s getting moved around and changed lately," She whispered, "You feel a little lost, don’t you?” 

Louen nodded once and sobbed a little louder. 

Caitlyn had been so focused on not allowing her anxieties to plague Vi, she’d failed to mask them for her very perceptive, intelligent daughter. She was so independent that it was easy to let her slip under the radar when that was the last thing they should be doing to ease the transition for her. Vi might punch her for it, but she was grateful they still had the time to impress upon Louen all the things that wouldn't be changing. 

“It’ll be alright, you’ll see. Things won’t be like this for long. Soon, all five of us will be a family, and you're still going to have us. You're still going to have this house to live in, your bed to sleep in, and a grandfather, two mothers, an uncle, good friends, a caring teacher, and a little sibling who loves you very, very much." She held her face in her hands, remembering a time she was so thin and frightened and fit so poorly in their home. She imagined what their lives might be had they never brought her home, how indescribably empty her life would be. That little girl had made her a mother, had made her fall in love with life all over again. She'd taught her how to love in entirely new ways, ways she never knew were possible. She wanted to sob at just the thought of it all, but she forced a smile through. From her childish perception of her mother, she remembered Cassandra's brave face most of all. She wanted Louen to remember the same of her. “Hey, I know what’s the matter. We haven’t done our affirmations in a long time. Do you remember what we say?” 

“I’m kind,” she said it like a question. Caitlyn kissed her again in emphasis of her point.

“Yes. You are kind. You are brave and loving, and you are loved. So loved, sprout.” Her heart burned in her chest, citing the hapless way Jayce used to mess a hand through her hair and liken her to a growing plant. Louen was growing fast, like a vine. It made Caitlyn's heart full. She cleared her throat, comforted by the lack of phlegm she found there. “Should we go tell Mama we love her?” She dried her eyes on her sleeve, comforted by the good-natured smile so instinctual to children only. Louen nodded, brows firmly set, and darted out.

Caitlyn remained a moment more, mourning the face in the mirror. That same brave face she remembered as a child was now her own. She looked so much like her mother. She wondered if the baby would, too, or if they'd take after Vi's genes more. That was only fair, and Caitlyn wasn't certain she wanted to see her mother in her child's face. It would be like a cut on her finger that never healed. Just thinking about it was enough to undo her.

It would never stop being unfair to her, who got to see her children and why. Who lived and who didn't. Jinx was alive. That was neither fair nor unfair, but she was alive, and she'd never see her sister's children, their family's new generation, their fresh start, and that was unfair. None of it was fair. That's why it hurt so much. 

Their children didn't take away that ache, but they made it easier to focus on what they did have. 

She took a second more to grieve that mirror, that unobtainable future, then set off toward the end of the hall where the world was waiting for her. 

Chapter Text

For the first time in thirty-six weeks and six days, Vi missed her morning walk through the gardens. She always insisted on a light walk, even if she was too sick, exhausted, or miserable to work out in a greater capacity. That way, she'd always have a bit of activity under her belt, but Cait left to take Louen to school, and with her, took all of Vi's desire to do...anything. She didn't typically let herself wallow like that, let alone lose her mind so completely. She knew complaining did nothing but make her more miserable, but she'd woken up impossibly early that day and just...lost it. Lost her energy to keep doing it—pregnancy, and lost the desire too, in one fell swoop.

She'd noticed it more in the past couple of days, setting in slowly with each passing day. She'd always been an expert at exhaustion and pain, but pregnancy was different on every account. With every other physical injury, she could sleep it off, take it easy, and her body would put itself back together with time, but time only seemed to make everything worse; make her more tired, and the more tired she got, the harder and harder it was to bounce back. Her body was in a slow decay, not dissimilar to her time spent in a box underground. She felt like she was still there a lot lately: physically deteriorated, emotionally numb, and...stuck; stuck in place, or time, just waiting for her life to blow up in another, crueler way. Being in prison had felt like she was drowning, but she never drowned. Lately, she felt that way all the time, and every second was another second her head was forced underwater. 

That morning was the first day she'd woken up and thought that, maybe, she couldn't do it after all. 

She'd woken to half her body numb, the other half burning, and a terrible stiffness that permeated her back through all layers of skin down to the fluid in her spine, and she'd had to pee, of course, but could barely manage to get to her feet to rescue herself. It was a mercy Caitlyn had, for some reason, made it to the rocker to sleep because Vi certainly would've woken her log-rolling out of bed. She'd had to pause to catch her breath and brace herself for lift off, and had taken the moment to watch Caitlyn. Her wife was not a small woman, not in physicality or spirit, but she looked small in that chair, her limbs drawn up and her arms tight around a pillow, a hollowed, tired face limp and deliciously peaceful. Vi couldn't help but compare her to Louen curled up like that—another ball of nerves. 

Caitlyn worried too much and always did. She was doing everything she could, beyond what Vi expected her to do. She'd been a textbook partner for the past nine months, and the preamble leading into it. Just when Vi was set to lose her marbles, or perhaps her very will to live, Cait had picked her back up and physically held her together. It broke her heart in strange new ways to learn Caitlyn doubted herself and the relief she brought Vi every day without fail. 

In hindsight, Vi saw it coming and should have done a better job proactively keeping those thoughts at bay. Cait was a chronic worrier. Leave her alone in a room for two minutes and she'd probably worry a hole right through the floor. She'd been anxious from the start, before they even got the two confirmatory lines, before they'd even discussed having kids. They never intended to bring Louen home when they did, and that had worried Caitlyn to no end. She hadn't felt prepared, but she admitted to Vi then that no amount of time would prepare them; they just had to jump in and figure out how to swim. So they did, and brought home a daughter and permanently changed their lives. With something so simple as a signature, they became Mothers. For a while, being a mother to one little girl was enough, but dreams of more, of giving their daughter the life Vi always wanted for herself, began to eat her. It was Vi's idea—having a second one—having one—and it had been her idea to carry. Caitlyn worried, of course she did, but she'd given Vi everything she wanted. How could she think that wasn't enough?

Caitlyn worried so much it was suffocating sometimes, but most of the time it just felt like love, and in the past nine months, Vi had felt very, very loved. 

That was supposed to be enough. Vi was supposed to be able to tough everything out because what could she possibly have to want? She had it all: the supportive family, the cushy schedule, the kind, attentive doctors...she didn't understand why everything felt so wrong now. There'd been a time not too long ago when she would've done anything to get pregnant. Now she'd do anything to get un-pregnant. She didn't want to reverse time or take anything back, no, she knew she wasn't in any drought of love for her baby, she'd just love them a hell of a lot more outside of her than in. She was more than ready to live her life with her baby in it. Somehow, she'd have to make it through the next couple of weeks (days?) until that was reality. She knew how she was going to do it now: keep herself grounded, lean on her family, and take things day by day. 

For the first day of what could potentially be a long, hellish final month, Vi dedicated herself to regaining as much strength as she could. It wasn't just the mental load, she really did feel infinitely worse than any other day of pregnancy so far. By any means necessary, she had to get back on the bandwagon if she didn't want to get left behind. 

Resting worked for a solid seventeen minutes before she was back on the verge of losing her shit. She wished Caitlyn was there to suffocate her some more. Needing something gentle to do with herself and keep her brain occupied, she settled into a ten-minute up, ten-minute down routine. She found she only got a consistent ten minutes of relative comfort before her bladder complained or her hips moaned for a good stretch. She made herself useful during those ten minutes she was up, attacking the mound of laundry hidden in their closet, one shirt at a time. Most of the time, though, she ended up just pacing around and stretching everything out. She felt properly ridiculous walking windedly from just one end of the room to the other, given the hips-forward, side-to-side tilt of her gait, but things felt the smoothest when she was in motion, so she waddled, leaning into each step to lengthen her hip and feel that good burn in her upper thigh. If she stayed still for too long, a nasty pressure formed at the bottom of her spine and spilled into her hips, but constant motion exhausted her, making the ten minutes off imperative—hence the balancing act.

She supposed this was her life for the next little bit—exhaustion, pressure, waddling, and a couple more breakdowns, give or take. She'd better get used to it.

She was in the latter half of her ten minutes on her feet and really feeling it when someone knocked on her bedroom door. Tobias stuck his head in and his neutral expression hardened, lips rolling sternly into his mouth. Vi didn't stop what she was doing. She intended to finish the rest of Louen's shirts before her ten minutes were up. Instead, she just looked at him expectantly. 

"I'm not sure I'm supposed to let you do that," He smirked, "but I won't tell her if you don't tell her I broke my glasses again." He held up a crunched pair of spectacles. 

Vi laughed at him, though it came out closer to a huff. She nodded in agreement, fixing her attention back on the tiny shirts. She dropped a sock and kissed it goodbye forever. "So you're headed out then? To get replacements..." 

"I was just popping in to see if you'd be alright with it."

She raised her eyebrow, but didn't turn her eyes away. "I don't need a babysitter." She laughed, again another winded huff. "I am the babysitter." She patted the side of her stomach she had propped up on the dresser. It was the only way she was getting close enough to the clothes to fold them, and the pressure it took off her back was a welcome bonus. 

"Yes, of course, but uh..." he trailed off, and Vi felt his eyes assessing her in that clinical way. She kept doing exactly what she was doing—folding laundry and rocking the tension out of her hips. She wasn't exactly conscious of the latter. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah—no, I am," she promised, catching his quizzical expression at last. "It's just less...everything on my feet. I'm trying to take advantage of that."  

He was still looking at her, swinging from side to side, or she was. She dragged herself to a halt with her fingers gripping the dresser's edge. She held on with a bit more ferocity than was needed. The edge felt runny and hot in her throbbing hands—that was a new one as far as symptoms went. He stepped inside, the door clicking shut behind him. Vi braced herself for interrogation. 

“Well, then. I promise not to be gone long,” He said confidently, but immediately grimaced in a way he wasn’t able to hide completely. “If you need anything, Ana should be here in about,” he checked his watch, “about now, actually.”

Vi made a face and felt bad for it almost immediately. She liked Ana—well, she didn’t have a problem with her—well, not a serious one. The young woman who came around about once a week to manage the various pieces of the estate’s upkeep was kind, good at her work, and also nervy and awkward as hell in front of Vi post baby bump and Vi had lost her damn marbles with her twice now. She clammed up and started stammering whenever she saw Vi now. If Vi miraculously went into Labor while Tobias was out, she would sooner deliver herself in the bathtub than ask Ana for help. Poor, naive girl probably didn’t even know which hole to look at. 

“I shouldn’t be more than an hour—hopefully. An hour and thirty minutes at most.” 

“Go fix your eyeballs,” she insisted, remembering her laundry. Somewhere along the way, she'd planted her elbows on the dresser and rested her weight against it. Her ten minutes were pushing fifteen now. She needed Tobias out and her ass down stat. "I promise I'll get off my feet soon." 

He waved her off. “Ah, do whatever makes you comfortable.” He shifted in the doorway, his mouth a muddled line, “Can I do anything to make you comfortable? Before I leave?” 

She pointed to the door, “Go. ” 

“Hold on. Meet my eyes,” he said with sudden seriousness. Not thinking twice, she did, and was met with the caring eyes of not a doctor, but the man she got to call her Father. It instantly disabled her. “Say it again. You’re good?” 

She tried to glower at him, but her lip quivered instead of hardened, and suddenly her eyes were more than a little wet. "Uh..." Her voice came out thin and ragged as she used every muscle in her body to keep herself from full-on tears. "I..." She shook her head and shut herself up. Everything was wrong, she shouldn't...let herself think like that. "I don't know," she settled on, wiping her face on the clean hem of a small shirt. She hid behind it a little as her bottom lip made some more unsavory shapes.

He entered the room and crossed it in a few swift steps. "What is it, dear?" His hand grazed her back, and it took all her power not to melt into it. "Caitlyn mentioned you had something of a rough morning." 

She kept her posture firm, and when she trusted her voice not to shake, answered, "I don't think it is anything." She winced at her contradiction. She didn't want to get into it with her Father-in-law. Laying herself bare for her wife was one thing, but Tobias was another level of intimacy she'd never achieve, not when her own father(s) weren't there to hear it instead. That being said, she had at least somewhat of an idea of what Tobias might say. Her father: She had no earthly clue what wisdom he could give her, and Vander? She'd fall to pieces in his arms, and he'd let her while doing his best to build her back up, but would he know how to help her either? Tobias, at least, might have a word or two from his own experiences in the baby department. She still didn't want to talk about it. "Just...these damn hormones." 

He deepened his hand on her back, right on that nest of pressure. She sank into it then, as much as she dared.  "Hormones or not, what's bothering you?" 

What wasn't bothering her? There wasn't any one thing, she was just...drowning under everything there was to drown under. "I guess, I've just—for a while now, but today in particular felt like..." His hand nudged her on. "Did Cassandra ever feel like...like there was an elephant on her chest? Like she couldn't do it anymore, like maybe she never could?" She added a sheepish, "When she was pregnant?" 

She was grateful to have her back to him, and was intent on keeping it that way. She didn't want to see his face. 

"Yes," he said simply, and Vi couldn't help but whip around and catch the sincerity of his expression. As always, he was straightforwardly honest. "She did. She had a lot of anxiety her whole pregnancy, and especially so in her third trimester." He made a somber face then, and Vi felt guilty for bringing Cassandra up, but if talking about her was difficult, he didn't let himself stop. "She didn't want..." He corrected himself. "We didn't want to have a baby at the time. We were young, successful, and freshly in love. We didn't want a baby, but we felt like we had too, family politics and all, and that's our mistake." He looked mournfully at his shoes. "We shouldn't have let expectations dictate our lives. We should've waited until we were ready. Our lack of preparation stole a lot of joy from the experience. It was a lot for Cassandra to make peace with. She was an accomplished, learned woman with great political aspirations, and the physicality of it all, the mental burden of having to bring a little girl up with the Kiramman name weighed on her greatly. She didn't feel prepared for it. She spent much of her pregnancy wishing she wasn't, but we loved our baby girl, and I know now why she happened to us so young—So Cass could get as much time with her as she could." 

Well, that in itself was enough to get Vi crying, and wondering if she'd waited too long—of course she hadn't. She'd needed to live her life and get her shit together before raising a human being from scratch, and she had the rest of her life to live with them—should she be so lucky. What Tobias explained, though, wasn't it.  That wasn't what she felt now, and it made her feel like even more of a freak show. 

"But I did want this. I still do. I want it so badly." She'd wanted it so completely, she'd gone out of her way to make sure it happened to her. She was there by no accident, and that felt like the worst betrayal of her body thus far. "Why does it feel so...pointless?" 

He didn't answer right away, and in his silence, more spilled out. 

"I've been in a lot of dark places in my life, but this one doesn't make any sense. It shouldn't be dark at all, and yet it's like I'm trapped under it. How can that be?"

"Violet," she startled at the quiver in his own voice. "Admittedly, I don't know as much as I probably should about antenatal depression, but I do know it is incredibly normal." 

She shook her head. He still wasn't understanding. She was still the strange one, the one who didn't fit. "I'm not depressed. I've been depressed before, and it..." Didn't feel like this? It felt exactly like this, just with more reason. "I'm happy, I'm really happy that I get this chance." 

"One can coexist with the other," he promised. "I don't know the statistics, but I know you are not the only one to feel these pains. I did my research when Cassandra was struggling after Caitlyn was born, and I remember that the largest part of it is, well, hormones, as you said, and predisposition, and you've been exposed to a lot of heartbreak. It's not a reflection of you or your desire for this baby." 

Was he crying? Certainly, she was crying. 

"How, though? Biologically speaking, how do these unruly hormones not make you crazy, stupid in love with the whole thing?" That sounded smart, evolutionarily speaking. It seemed like an apt adaptation for the success of the human species because who in their right mind would do it again and again for all of time? She wished that were the case. Even if the feeling were inauthentic and manufactured by chemicals in her body, she wished she could be in love with pregnancy again, or at least...excited for life in general. She wished she could feel anything other than desperation and shame. 

"I don't know," He swiped at his eyes. Vi supposed it was a good thing he'd broken his glasses, or else he'd fog them up. Either way, he probably couldn't see her tears. "I just know you aren't alone in feeling like this, and eventually it does get better."

"You said Cassandra struggled after Caitlyn was born? It didn't go away? How long did it take? Until she felt like she could breathe again." 

"I don't entirely know," he repeated like a broken record. Vi swore, if he told her one more time she wasn't fucking alone... "But time did the trick eventually, or maybe it was her support system." That was a funny way of referring to himself, Vi thought. "Her mother wasn't a very caring woman, but she opened up to us a lot during that time."

Vi buried a sob into her arm, "My mother's dead. She's been dead for so long, I have no idea what she'd say to me if I could say these things to her, and Caitlyn...Cassandra's gone too." 

"And that's what it is, isn't it?" He murmured, soft as snow, "You're heartbroken about having to do this without all those people you love. It scares you."

Her shoulders collapsed. "Caitlyn said the same thing, that I'm not alone or whatever. I believe it in the moment when she says it, but then I'm on my own again, and this awful pressure in my chest makes me feel so, so alone, except for my ghosts, maybe. I want you all to be enough, for me and the baby, but...It's so hard to get out of my head. And there are so many other things in my head than just that, too. Stupid things that shouldn't matter." 

"I know, my dear, and I wish that were something I could fix for you. I know..." He paused again, but not for lack of something to say. "I know I can't fill the hole they left, but I hope I've been something close to what they were to you."

"Father," she whispered, and that one word said it all. 

Hand shifting from her back to her shoulder, he held her tightly. "I was a doctor for the body, not the mind, and my own mind...well, I've been in dark places too. I should know what to say, but I'm sorry, I don't know how to make this better, but I promise, no one in this house will let you suffer with this alone. Things will shake out after the baby gets here, and you can find some normalcy again. I don't know when, exactly, but I'm certain it will. You'll get to the other side."

"By doing what?" she murmured, unconvinced. "Doing nothing? Just waiting? I'll lose my mind—again." 

"Time doesn't heal all wounds," he agreed, "but for this one, it might do the trick. You're so close to the end, you are. You can see the light at the end of this, even if you don't feel it."

She shook her head, an ungrateful voice(s) still back talking his assurances. "I don't want to do this anymore. I'm sick of being so terrified and sad all the time. It's exhausting..." 

"I think you are very entitled to be over the whole experience. You've gotten your joy out of it. I think it can't do you any harm to acknowledge that, certainly less so than trying to pretend like everything's great."

“Yeah, I'm over it," she blew hot air through her lips, "I'm antsy and ready for my baby. I'm going stir crazy, and now I feel all worthless and depressed.  She peeled her waistband away from her hips, grimacing, "And also like a water balloon,” she laughed tearfully into her hand. There was a general...wetness to her that was its own kind of overstimulating. “Although," She made herself laugh, because the alternative was striking something with deadly force, "if one more person says, ‘wow, you’re about to pop,’ I’m going to hit them.” She would never understand what gave absolute strangers the balls to say that to a clearly miserable, despondent woman. People lost their filter around pregnant people, either too uninformed or uncomfortable. Whatever the reason, Vi had no patience or sympathy to deal with it. She was dead serious with Caitlyn earlier. Barring doctor's visits and emergencies, Vi would not leave the house until she had a baby in her arms. 

Tobias only smiled at her, which she took as him giving her permission to do just that. "You know, Cassandra once said something similar, and do you know what I said to her?" 

Her jaw parted, "You did not." She shook her head disappointedly.

Red-faced, he nodded, "So I know firsthand how unsolicited such a comment is."

"See, I was gonna say rude, but, yeah, it's unsolicited too." 

Something in her lower back agreed and pinched to show its support. She winced, shifting left to right once more. Somehow, her ten minutes had spiraled into almost thirty. He must have read her body language loud and clear because both hands returned to her back, firmly set against that pressure. "Right here? 

She nodded. 

"That's a good sign. Baby's getting lower. It might mean things are gearing up," he caught himself, "in a long-term sense that is. I can pick up some lidocaine patches while I'm out." 

Right, she'd probably held him up getting to his appointment with, oh, only her second breakdown of the day. 

"Yes, please. Get me the good drugs." 

"I know the best brands," he assured cheerily, then paused, "but I...I don't have to go. I can stay here a while longer if you want someone to sit with you. Cassandra liked that, sitting with me. She didn't like me touching her, but she liked it when I was close."

Vi was not the slightest bit in control of her face and not at all prepared for the smile that would coax out of her. "Thank you, but no." She brushed his arm, apologetic and thankful in one touch. "Just get me the drugs." 

He smiled back and took his first step toward the door. "I promise it won't be long," he repeated, and Vi didn't quite know what he meant. "You can have a good cry if you'd like; it might release some pent-up anguish." He paused in the doorway. "Or not. Whatever you're feeling is just fine. Don't let any voices tell you otherwise. 

Her heart ached in her chest, but she didn't have to fake her smile as she waved him off, “Okay, go on,” she dismissed, stacking the last of the shirts and untangling herself from the dresser. “I gotta sit down.” The weight of her stomach crashed back down into her pelvis, and she winced. “Scratch that, gotta pee. Get out.” 

He obliged, and her room returned to calm quiet once more, too quiet. Too empty. Vi thought about where the dogs were. Maybe she was a bad dog mom, but she didn’t exactly care. Lately, the sweet, affectionate pair had been clingy and hyper and were bothering the shit out of her at any given moment. It wasn’t their fault; they weren’t getting enough exercise, and Vi had been giving them the run around ever since bending down became worth less than their affection, but she did not have the stamina for their high-energy antics anymore. She’d make sure to give them an extra long walk that night and let them onto the bed before she went to sleep for some cuddles, if only to assuage her dog mom guilt. 

She couldn't remember the last time she'd walked them. She hadn't had much motivation to do much of anything lately. Given her remarkably active pregnancy thus far, she'd felt justified in being a vegetable the last few weeks, although now she wondered if that was a part of the whole...blah she'd been stuck in. Under normal circumstances, if she hurt herself badly enough to require a break from working out, she would get a little down on herself. Physical rigor kept her body going, and therefore her mind too. Losing one undoubtedly bled into losing the other, but regardless, she wouldn't hold it against her pregnant self, not when baby-building was a strength training all on its own. She fucking earned those thirty pounds, of which at least ten, she’d recently learned, could be expected to be fluid; then a fraction more of it was all the extra blood, and placenta and, at minimum, six pounds from the baby themselves. It wasn’t so crazy when broken down like that. Maybe ten, max fifteen, were actual fat stores, which had their purpose too, she knew. Her body was kind of fucking incredible, fat hands and all. 

After using the bathroom, she threw both her pants and her boxers onto the top of the mound of dirty laundry, opting for an entirely fresh set that wasn’t so sticky. The sweat was no joke. Despite the freezing temperatures outside, she was so ungodly hot that her asshole was sweating. She dressed lightly and, finally, sank back into her chair to recoup. 

Somewhere in the last twenty minutes, exhaustion had come for her in a fierce, sweltering wave. Whatever energy high she’d gotten from her few bites of breakfast and the half cup of coffee she’d awarded herself that morning had entirely depleted, so even though there was a terrible pressure on her hips, she couldn’t make herself get back up, content to ride through the uncomfortable tightness that hugged one side of her stomach. She hugged it back, probing her fingers into her side. It had been at least thirty minutes since she last felt the baby move. She was supposed to be keeping track, but the little notepad on her nightstand was embarrassingly scarce. She felt a lazy little roll in response, and since it was on her mind, actually made the effort to tally the movement and the time on the note. As the movement got harder and harder to detect behind her hard stomach, she found herself wishing for the reassuring little slides, or even the elbows to her groin, even if they were plain uncomfortable at that point, she liked having the reminder they were in there alive and, well, kicking. It reminded her how close she was to them. She was the closest she could possibly be to her baby, and yet…she felt so far away, separated by all the fatigue and anxiety. It was so easy to forget that at the end of everything, she would have a baby, a little human being she grew brick by brick out of the building blocks of her own body. She’d had a lifetime to consider it, a year to hope for it, and nearly ten months to process it, but it still felt surreal, too good to be true. On good days, it felt like a dream, or a mercy that she’d been given the chance at all. On bad days, she felt like an incubator for something not fully hers, and on days even worse than that, she felt like a thief. 

She hadn’t stolen anything, except maybe her own happiness from a life that stole it from her first. There was no precedent for her life as she lived it—an undercity girl who lost everything, gaining it all back tenfold? That happened by no accident. She had to go out and rip that happiness out with her own two hands and, like her baby, build it from scratch. 

“You’re mine,” she reminded herself, rubbing the base of her stomach where she was convinced she’d made contact with a shoulder blade, “and fucking worth it.” It was, of course, it was. Everyone told her that, from start to finish, she’d be grateful for it once all the discomfort was gone and she had the finished product. Well, she was grateful for it—always had been. It still sucked and she wanted to punch every delusional old woman or chipper nurse who unsolicitedly promised her that for almost convincing her there was something wrong with her for feeling that way.

She lifted her shirt over her stomach and stared down at herself. It was no understatement that pregnancy made her an alien in her body, and yet…

Fucking incredible, she told herself over and over. She’d done something fucking incredible, and was about to do something more incredible than that even, and what could be more incredible than her baby, home at last? 

She ignored the hot, tight pain in her back and focused on the good for a change, because there was so much good, even if she had a hard time seeing the forest for the damn trees.

She’d had a mere three months of waiting and nerves, then those wonderful double lines as a reward when some couples had years of no success. She had serious, but textbook nausea that went away and stayed away for the most part after the first trimester, and she had the energy and the means to stay active throughout the second, which wasn’t something everyone got. She’d had no complications, apart from averagely low iron she took a supplement for. She’d gained a healthy excess of weight, but had the self-confidence to take it in her stride. She’d been spared mostly from stretch marks other than a few under her bikini line, a couple of new ones that sprang up on her breasts as her colostrum came in, and probably a good few on her thighs she had no hope of seeing anytime soon. Her hips were permanently widened, and her stomach perhaps permanently stretched, and yeah, all those things added up in a dysphoric grand finale, but deep down, she didn’t really care about any of it, not more than she wanted her baby, and most importantly, she had the most loving family to lean on, when she pulled her head out of her ass from time to time and remembered that.

So yeah, those annoying-ass ladies were right and it was all fucking worth it, and she’d probably do it all over again if it meant finally meeting her baby. Her little second chance. 

Well…maybe her third, or fourth. She’d had a lot of second chances at happiness. 

If only she’d had a second, third, or fourth chance with Powder. Maybe everything would be different. Well, maybe she finally wanted things exactly how they were. 

Maybe not exactly. 

She didn’t hear the dogs whine from the hall, nor did she hear the door when it opened and the footsteps that followed, only pulling out of her thoughts when hands she knew on an intimate level slid down her shoulders to the small of her back where a great pain had only intensified. Case and point—she had the perfect support system exactly when she needed it. A kiss found the ridge of her cheek a moment later. 

“Look at you,” Caitlyn murmured warmly, something hot and spicy on her breath. “—getting some rest and—” she stopped abruptly. Vi realized why immediately when Caitlyn pulled away, and cold tear streaks pooled on her collar. “Are you crying?” 

Vi laughed. She was so out of sorts that it sounded like a cry. “When aren’t I crying?” She lifted her shirt to dry her cheeks. “Happy tears this time, I promise.” She didn’t give Caitlyn the pause to push back. “How was Storytime?”

Caitlyn huffed, settling her hands back against Vi’s tailbone. “She said that even you are better at reading Mr. Whimble than I am.”

Vi burst into laughter again, even though it pinched all her ribs, “Aw, did you clam up again?” She teased lovingly. “Those big, scary seven-year-olds are a tough crowd.”

Caitlyn didn’t deny it. “They all have very cold stares. And they didn’t care much for my critter voices.” She softened, “They did, however, love the store-bought cookies I brought them.”

“Good use of bribery.” Vi settled into Caitlyn’s firm hands. It had been roughly ten minutes, and her hips were starting to hurt again, but exhaustion had finally come for her. She knew that soon neither sitting nor standing would relieve her, and she’d have to throw in the towel and lie down. "Why are you here?” She checked the time, and no, she wasn’t delusional; story time was well and truly over. 

Caitlyn came around the side of the chair, plunked herself where Vi’s feet had been, and after setting a paper bag on the floor, began rubbing small, intense circles on the arch of her foot. Vi very nearly let out an open-mouthed groan of relief. “Just wanted to check on you.” She smiled gleefully, and Vi nearly fainted from the serotonin it gave her. “Despite those folded clothes I very easily could’ve started tonight, you seem to be taking it nice and easy.” 

Vi let herself blush, or rather, didn’t try to hide it, nor did she ignore the heat that was back in her pants. She wanted to lie down, a pillow between her legs, or maybe a fan. 

“I had the energy,” she assured, then yawned, “I just wanted to make sure Louen had a clean set for karate tomorrow.” Her nose twitched at the same time her stomach did a tiny roll, and not from any baby-related movement. She pointed to the bag, “Is that—”

Caitlyn held it up, “Compliments of Jericho himself.” 

Vi dropped her jaw and refused to pick it up. She accepted the bag and eagerly looked inside. A clear plastic dish sat at the bottom, and inside it was slimy, fresh out of the sea, teal-green tentacles swimming in a molten orange sauce. An original number seven. Hand to her stomach, she frowned.

“Hey, the kid’s cooked,” Caitlyn reminded, matching Vi’s hand, “You can eat some raw fish if you want.”

Warily, Vi cracked the lid. “Oh, I love you,” she whispered, mouth puckering, “but I don’t want to eat this.” She swallowed so thinly Caitlyn tracked the bob in her throat. 

“Are you still nauseous?” 

Vi handed the bag back, eager to get the incredibly tempting offer far away from her. She definitely wished that she wanted it. “A little,” she confessed, “but mostly I’m just not hungry.” She patted a hand roughly where her stomach should be, if it wasn’t likely squished up between her ribs. “Not much room here, even with their head on my mother-fucking pelvis, I swear…” She arched her hips and immediately regretted it. 

Caitlyn simply folded the bag and held it in her lap, where it stayed, unaddressed. “Would you like me to make you some of that ginger tea?” She stopped herself, shook her head, and backpedaled. “No. I’m going to make you tea. Is there anything else I can get for you while I’m downstairs?” 

Hand glued to her back, Vi shook her head. She hadn’t really processed what Cait had said, and before she thought to ask, she was gone. That little head Vi swore was sitting squarely on her pelvis shifted. It was the most bizarre feeling, but she tracked the movement, equal parts awed and horrified at how low the baby was sitting now. Two days ago, she’d been zero percent dilated and zero percent effaced, so she was probably going to have to live with that low, low head for a few days at least, probably more, knowing her luck. She definitely needed a good nap if she was going to walk that baby out anytime soon.

In Caitlyn’s absence, Vi hit the bathroom again, changed her underwear, and crashed lengthwise in bed with a very large pillow separating her knees. The baby’s new cranial placement sent a tight band of pain diagonally across her hips and into her thighs, which was just unfair. It settled just as another wave of exhaustion came for her, and soon it was hard to keep her eyes open, until she, again, got startled by Caitlyn’s quiet feet. 

“I know you just made me tea,” Vi mumbled sleepily into her pillow, fresh, zingy ginger biting her top nostril. “But I am taking a fat pregnant nap.” 

“Good,” Caitlyn beamed, “some sleep should do you good.”  A glass met with the bedside table a moment later, “and it’s alright. I iced it so it’ll keep. Look at you: you’re way too hot for warm tea.” 

All the blankets peeled away like an orange, dressed in thin cotton pants and a tank, and misted with sweat, Vi painted a certain picture. “Oh, so you think I’m hot?” she asked her pillow, and a moment later the mattress dipped, and seeking hands wrapped around her complete circumference, then long legs tangled with her own. 

“Always have,” Caitlyn murmured, spicy crab still on her breath. “Always will.” Those hands went not for Vi’s stomach, as they usually did, but for her breasts, marvelously heavy in their own right. Caitlyn managed to cup each one under her bra and, with a bit of practiced patience, stroked both nipples at once. An ice-cold wave washed over Vi and sent a body-wide shiver down her spine.

“Oh, fuck that,” Vi coughed, the shiver stiffening into a clench. “Fuck you. Stop that.”

Cait smiled into Vi’s shoulder as she kissed it. “Stop what?” she asked evilly. Vi buried herself in the mattress and forced her eyes shut. 

“Don’t make me so damn turned on when I need to sleep.”

“So sleep,” Cait whispered, running soothing circles over Vi’s nipples with her thumbs. Another intense, full-body clench flushed through her. “Get nice and rested for me tonight, and we’ll see if we can’t get some good contractions rolling the old-fashioned way.”

Vi snorted into her pillow, her body loosening up one nerve at a time, “Pretty sure that’s a decidedly new-fashioned induction technique.” 

“Mhm, nope. Old as time, I think.” Cait pulled her hands away, and Vi instantly missed the ice packs. She nestled against Caitlyn’s chest, finding an absurdly comfortable pillow in her at that particular angle. 

She hummed contentedly, “Stay.”

Caitlyn was not impressed. “Uh…fuck you,” she grumbled, but noticeably did not move an inch. “You want to cuddle now? When I have to go to work? Asshole.” 

“Quit,” Vi suggested cheerily. “Stay home and take care of my pregnant ass all day and then we can tell the rest of the world to fuck off and go raise our babies together in some goddamned peace and quiet.” 

Caitlyn side-stepped her plea, “I already got the morning off. I have to work.” She didn’t move a muscle. “But I can speak to my temp and see if he’s willing to start Monday.” She pulled her arm across Vi’s stomach and tucked her in close so she fit against her snugly. Somehow, the flush embrace wasn't suffocating anymore, or maybe Vi was so desperate for the feeling of another person beside her that she didn't care. “Unless you wanna go into labor right now. Then I could screw them all and stay right here.

Vi groaned, "I'm trying." 

Arm shifted gently around her, creating a gentle, perfect suction to her hips. "Even so, I could probably stay a little longer.” 

Vi melted completely at that, momentarily forgetting all of the gnarly pressure building in her as she comforted herself on Caitlyn’s cool stability and comforting scent. Yes, she definitely wanted things to stay how they were, even if that meant being pregnant for another fucking day. 

“Vi?” Caitlyn stroked the inside of her elbow. 

Almost fully out, Vi grunted in response. 

“Where’s Father?”

"No clue."

Chapter Text

Caitlyn was gone by the time Vi blinked awake. Their bed was far from cold, so either Vi was keeping it warm enough for the two of them or Caitlyn had only just left. 

She woke not from any discomfort, but from an odd sensation between her legs. It was warm and faint, just barely detectable through the grogg she was fighting. As the room solidified around her, she identified the wet trickle creeping down her thigh. The crotch of her pants was already damp with it, as were the sheets beneath her—fuck that rubber sheet. If Caitlyn were there, she’d laugh and gloat about how she was right, which, yeah, she was, and yeah, Vi should probably get up and get on that. 

She layed there for a moment anyway, contemplative…confused. Had it really happened?  Had she imagined it? Definitely not. Her hand certainly didn't smell like urine. It didn't smell like anything

It was…unexpected for certain. She’d been mentally prepared to stick things out another few weeks. A day shy of thirty-seven weeks had not been her plan at all, which, yeah, was on her for trying to make one in the first place.

Despite her immense desire to be anything but pregnant, the thought of actually not being pregnant anymore was equally overwhelming. Was she actually going to have a baby by the end of the day? Probably not by the end of the day. The first time was supposed to be stupid long, and she hadn’t had any…well, now that she thought about it…

She had thought nothing of them, but she had a few contractions earlier. She’d woken up to some light pinching that morning and ever since, they’d been irregular and unimpressive, nothing more serious than usual, but the pressure in her back…that had been new in intensity at least. Had her body been trying to tell her all day? 

She didn’t understand what her body was telling her, but she knew just lying there was the dumbest possible thing she could do. 

She rustled to her feet, and the trickle became a downpour. She stood frozen and disoriented while liquid pooled at her feet. When her doctor said it would be a lot of fluid, she hadn’t anticipated quite that much. For a nauseating moment, she imagined the abundant clear fluid was blood, and her burning body went cold at the realization that if it were, she’d be in a great deal of trouble.

Whether it was blood or amniotic fluid, it was the writing on the wall. Whether she was ready for it or not, it was happening. She took a minuscule step, somehow still leaking, and dismayed at how little her legs would move while her body amped up to tackle something monumental. 

She made it only as far as the bedpost when it hit. She put her whole body weight on one corner to ride it out. One hand gripped the post while the other hugged the bottom of her stomach where the pain had shifted. It was still in her back, but had spread out like a system of roots. Somewhere in her sleep, she’d missed the transition from achy cramps to full, dynamic contractions. She hung her forehead on her forearm until the contraction broke and her body felt lighter for it. 

“Fucker,” she scolded as she caught her breath. “You couldn’t have hurried this up and let me know while your Mae was right here. Now someone's gotta go get her back and I gotta deal with you using me like a stress ball on my ow—” She stopped wasting time. If it was the real thing—who was she kidding, that much amniotic fluid wasn’t a false alarm—She would waste no time in getting Cait back to her. 

She sucked up her pride and called for Ana then, when she finally trusted her voice not to break. As it turned out, she wouldn’t rather deliver her baby herself in the bathtub. She made it to the doorway and called into the quiet house for the woman she hoped was near enough to hear. She yelled her name only twice before she appeared from the lower level, her face scrunched in harmless concern. 

“Yes, M—oh shit,” she gasped, slapping a hand to her mouth in either shock or shame at her own profanity. “Are you—”

“—Fine,” Vi dismissed, policing the nerves out of her voice. “Please tell me Tobias has come home.” 

Ana nodded, “He returned some time ago. I’ll get him. Do you need—”

“—Just go get him,” Vi pulled herself off the wall and forced herself to remain composed. “Please.” 

Ana retreated down the steps, leaving Vi on her own to make it back to the chair, or the bed, anything she could use to hold herself up. She was rapidly losing the faculties to do that herself.  

She only just made it to the base of the bed when another round shattered down her back and across her stomach. She was so unprepared for it that she cried with it. The pain was startling; noticeably sharper and longer than the last, which had barely been a five-minute difference, and she knew that meant big things, which scared her, even with the promise of Tobias nearby. She didn’t know much, but she knew Caitlyn was supposed to be there for a contraction like that. She couldn’t hold herself up because Caitlyn was supposed to, couldn’t calm the prickle in her chest because Caitlyn wasn’t there to soothe it. 

It was okay, she told herself. The intervals of her contractions couldn’t be that indicative when she still didn’t find them particularly unpleasant. Sure, they were bad, but they weren’t that bad. There was still plenty of time for them to get worse. Knowing her luck, she’d be stuck with back-to-back category five contractions all night long. In the meantime, Ana, or Morrison, the driver, more likely would go out and bring Caitlyn back, and the whole thing could begin in earnest. Vi would need her by her side if she were to truly fall apart. 

She was biting down on her arm to dull the pain when Tobias entered. His hands were on her back in an instant, grounding her through the worst of the last little stretch. When the dust finally settled, her head dropped onto her forearm, but her eyes found Tobias appraising her as he took in the scene. 

“Violet,” her murmured in that voice very capable of shattering her. She nearly did. “When did this start?” He was a doctor, he knew the signs and knew the time that had to have passed to lead there, only she’d lost track of time some ways ago. 

“Can’t say.” She rocked against his palms. “Maybe early, maybe around 10.” She didn’t have a clue about the current time. “It was so hard to tell at first. They weren’t consistent, and they barely hurt.” They fucking hurt now. She took pain well but if she was only in early labor, she was fucking screwed. “It didn’t feel like contractions. It was all in my back.”

His hand met exactly with that tender spot above her tailbone. “And how are they now?” 

“Not pleasant,” Vi shrugged, “Can’t say it’s worse than getting stabbed or breaking a bone.”

Tobias squeezed her hips together. A groan of relief fell out of her mouth as she clung to his grounding touch. 

“Rate it.”  

“Maybe a six?” she guessed. A bead of sweat ran between her eyebrows and rolled down her nose to drip onto her arm. She was hotter than she was in pain.

“How close?” 

She winced, “Pretty close.” She held up all the fingers of one hand. She missed the slight angle of his eyebrows burying her face in her arms. 

“When did your water go?”

She held up five fingers again.

“Alright.” His hands traveled to her arms, “On the bed for me, dear.” 

She instinctively pulled against his strengthening grip, her brain a little behind the rest of her. “No…let me stand. Please, I need to stand…”

He didn’t relent his firm hold on her, inching her toward the bed, “I need to assess where we’re at. That’s it…” 

The mattress swallowed her when she sank into it, damp sheets rubbing against the soaked pants she still wore like a pair of leg cuffs. She was aware, vaguely, of all her limbs locking in a quiet, looming dread.

She could not imagine being cuffed right now. She’d heard the stories from other inmates and guards trying to scare her. Women who fucked around and found out got to have their babies alone in their cells if they were lucky, and chained by the foot to a table in medical if not. She couldn’t breathe, her thoughts so lost between her ears in the despair of a hypothetical that had never crippled her before. She was out. That place was defunct and empty. That evil place didn’t hurt a soul anymore, and hadn’t for years. She was out and safe in her own home, with her family—not all of it, but a pretty alright chunk, but she couldn’t shake the terror of what would become of her if she was still in there, or what was becoming to all the women who were in chains somewhere else, doing the same thing while she labored on a soft bed in her home with a doctor at her side.

“Vi? Vi, just breathe through it.” Tobias’ hand gripped hers as she slid against the headboard. “Squeeze my hand when it hurts.” 

It didn’t hurt, not because she was telling herself it didn’t, but because another contraction hadn’t hit so soon; she was just a basket case of nerves. She dropped his hand and moved to fumble with the stiflingly tight waistband of those damned, soaked pants. Tobias gripped them more deftly than she could and eased them over her hips when she lifted off the mattress. 

He left them bunched at her ankles. “Feet to bottom, please,” he said, sounding so damn clinical. She knew he wasn’t in dad-mode or Pa-mode. He was in full doctor-brain. Like a doctor’s, his hand was cold between her legs, but she hardly felt his probing fingers. The boiling pressure gathering there was far more overpowering than a doctor’s practiced hand. What she did notice was the strange tilt of his face when his fingers stretched the measured distance. He looked at her disbelievingly, and she wrestled her gravity to rest on her elbows. “What is it?” 

“Ana?” he said calmly. The woman appeared from the murky edges of the room. “Please send Morrison to retrieve my daughter from Council Hall. Quickly.” 

She nodded and vanished. 

Vi reached for him, for his anchor, but he was back to parting her legs with a professional touch. 

“Vi…” he murmured, mystified by what he found the second pass through, “rate your pain again, and be honest.”

“I…I don’t know,” she stammered, equal parts bewildered and terrified by his strange reaction, “a six!” She felt his hand then and wanted little else than for him to get it out of her. “That last one was a bit sharper, but, I mean—fuck, I didn’t even notice them until I gushed.”

He shook his head incredulously. “You continue to astound me,” he said more so for himself than her, but then purposefully sought out her eyes. “You’re nearly eight centimeters.”

She blinked and felt some cog in her jaw jamming out of place. She wanted to laugh. It came out sharper than a passable chuckle. “No,” she denied. “Two days ago, I was zero and zero; My doc couldn't even get a fingertip in!” 

“A lot can happen in two days.” He grimaced, “or…two hours. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left this morning. I could tell that you were…uncomfortable.” 

That was mild; she’d been properly wretched the past…well, two days, come to think of it. She shook her head, unwilling to entertain such hypotheticals. “No…” She didn’t know why she was arguing as if she knew better than him or, hell, her own body. “I thought I had more time. I mean, for a little bit, I thought maybe something was happening, but then it calmed down like it always has. They were nothing…I even fell asleep." She’d been so unbothered, or rather so accustomed to their presence, she’d fallen asleep in Caitlyn’s arms without either of them noticing a thing. She clamped a hand over her eyes. Was it the damn nipple stimulation that had done it? “It can’t happen like this…It wasn’t supposed to…” Sneak up on her? Catch her unprepared and panicked? She thought she’d be a bit more level-headed during labor, figured she’d know roughly what to expect and get eased into the first little bit at least, but she was already losing her mind with worry. 

“Violet,” he returned her name with unmatched certainty in his tone. He held her gaze as he worked, placing some listening device on her bare stomach. “Everything is happening as it should. We just need Caitlyn here soon if you want her here when this baby comes.” 

He was speaking, but his words didn’t connect. Soon? It was too soon to be soon. Weren’t these things supposed to take hours or sometimes even days? She refused to rationalize how quickly and suddenly things had run away from her. She had time, she knew she did.

“It can go this quickly?” she asked stupidly. She tipped her head and groaned with the next crashing wave of pain. She experienced in a new light how painful it really was. The knowledge that that was it—that the brunt of labor had come and gone so quickly opened her eyes, or perhaps more importantly, her pain receptors to how fragile her equilibrium of control was. 

Tobias talked her through the duration of it, offering her a hand she felt too stupid to squeeze. “Every birth is different, but yes, it can go very, very quickly. It can take even the most attentive of us by surprise.” 

Her hand found her sweaty forehead. She hid her shame behind her arms. “Stupid,” she muttered. “Stupid—should’ve realized what it was earlier.”

“You are not stupid,” he corrected sternly. “No birth goes according to plan. There’s usually a hiccup, and if this is it, it’s a very good hiccup to have. You and baby both sound good, so all we need to do is take it easy until Caitlyn arrives, which she will. She's not far.”

“How much longer?” She quivered, crashing, “Do I have?” 

He didn’t answer right away, and she took the silence as his answer until he calmly reassured, “Enough time. I can’t say exactly how much, but you have enough of it. You might feel the contractions get worse rapidly, so whatever you need, do it.” 

“Caitlyn,” She blurted, her brain leagues behind her body in terms of realization. “I need her, she has to be here—and Mila, I can’t—without them.”

He shook his head, “Caitlyn first, then we’ll send for Mila.” From the tight-lipped control he had over his solemn look, she knew that he knew their midwife would not be arriving in time. She trusted Tobias. With her life, she trusted their entire family in his hands, but he had always been the backup, never the plan. None of this was her plan. She should be grateful, overjoyed she was already so far into it, but she couldn’t help it. Amidst the pain and anxiety, she was disappointed so much of it had already sped by without Caitlyn there to share the moment. Had she taken that experience away from Caitlyn by being so stuck in her own head that she didn't realize what her body was trying to tell her? If Caitlyn did miss it…

“Hey,” He squeezed her hand, pulling her back to center. He beamed at her—far too cheerful for the circumstances—and stroked comforting patterns on her palm, each brush of his hand grounding her. “Cheer up,” his smile shifted then into a smug little grin. “You’re about to pop.” 

She was in zero control of the face she made at him in that moment, stuck somewhere between disbelief, mortification, and elation. She looked down at the soaked sheets. “Just did.”

“There’s a smile!” His hand moved to comfort her shoulder expertly. “That’s it, darling, we got this; It’s going to be okay,” he promised. She tried to focus on that, on believing him, but her body was falling apart, and Caitlyn wasn’t there to catch all the pieces. “We’ve got it—the two of us. Your body knows what to do, and so do I.” 

It did. With great certainty, her body knew what it needed. 

“I need to stand. Please let me stand,” she whispered, blindly shuffling to her feet with Tobias’ scattered assistance. 

“Standing is good—if you can maintain it,” he told her, balancing her until she found her footing. “Keep doing what you’re doing. Whatever strategy you’ve got, it's working well for you. You’re taking these contractions well. Not many are so conversational at this stage.” 

Vi barked out a humorless laugh. “I thought this shit was supposed to hurt,” she gritted through her clenched jaw. Her shaking upper half betrayed the agony unfolding in the bottom half. Tobias refused to comment, only offering his arms out in quiet comfort. 

She tore away from his support to pace circles around him. The pressure on her hips was immense. She could barely keep up the habit, but she persisted in slow, stubborn circles. She was a sight and a half in her too-small tank top, bare thighs, and long black socks. If she had any time to spare between contractions to laugh at herself, she would’ve. 

“Don’t think about the pain you’ve experienced before. Don’t focus on this pain. Just let it happen.” 

Hands on her knees, she rocked with the contraction rolling through her body with monumental strength. She disregarded all the hits to her face and organs in her youth, all the bloodied and broken knuckles and limbs, the multiple concussions, the two separate stab wounds, the near-snap of her spine at fifteen and the subsequent constant hell for seven consecutive years, and even the slow, agonizing deterioration of her body under the months of lost fights and constant alcohol...whether it was all nerves, or even part nerves she couldn’t say, but nothing was comparable to the pain that ate her alive from inside. She'd never felt anything like it. “Fine,” she admitted when it all flooded out, “This is really fucking awful.” 

“That’s all to be expected. Let go of everything else and take everything minute by minute.” 

An egregious downward shift passed from her spine into her pelvis. Tobias caught her just as her knees buckled. The pain was too hot, too heavy, too everything for her to coast through. She clenched every muscle from her jaw to her toes. Eight centimeters was a solid four too many. It was all too fast for her to follow. Without Caitlyn at her side to anchor her thoughts, she had none except the never-ceasing tide of pain and pressure rolling through her. 

“Don’t fight this,” he told her as she folded into herself. “It’s going to happen as it will, whether you help it or not. Just let it happen.” 

She must have hung there on his arms a solid three minutes waiting, willing, and begging for it to break. Her legs chaffed against her socks. They were unbearably tight on her calves, and pinched her toes, and the wet material scratched her with every minute movement. 

“Tobias, get these fucking things off me!” 

She cried into her next sob, but the pain did not break. Tobias’ hands were on her calves a moment later, worming the stiff fabric down to her toes. She was on her knees before she knew they’d given out, bent over the bed, and pleading into her arm. She needed Caitlyn. She couldn’t keep it up without her. 

Tobias fumbled the sock over her heel, turning her whole left foot sideways in his hand. He’d stopped removing the other sock. Vi was going to fucking lose it if he didn’t get his shit together and remove that one too. 

He finally managed to take both socks off. His hands were at her shoulders next, grazing the straps of her top.

“Do you want to change? He set something beside her. She wasn’t sure at what point he’d gotten up. “I’m going to change the sheets.” 

Drawing back onto her knees, she pushed whatever it was he’d given her away. It felt too heavy, a thick cotton with too many snap buttons and folds of fabric. She hooked her fingers on her sleeves and tugged. Her fingers lacked the control to pull her shirt over her head, and her arms froze at shoulder level as her muscles burned all the way down her spine. She persisted, but only managed a grunt as her arms burned with the effort of holding them aloft. A woman’s hands held her then, soft and long-fingered like Caitlyn’s, but they lacked the callouses on the tip of her trigger finger, and the nails were too sharp. 

Ana slid her arms through the strappy sleeves with intentional motions. Reading the damn room for once in the past nine months, she took the article of clothing Vi refused and folded both the old and the new in her lap. 

Unrestricted, Vi felt marginally at ease, and not the slightest bit concerned to be newborn naked in front of a clammy twenty-something girl and her father-in-law. She was way past the point of caring about anything other than having Caitlyn at her side. Being bare seemed easiest anyway. That way, there was easy access to her chest for the baby, or easy access to her heart and lungs…she tried not to think of that, even if it was squarely impossible not to think she was dying. She understood now, the screams her mother had not been able to keep in, and she’d done it all in a grimy shack that festered disease, without a doctor or her husband, all while trying to keep a brave face for her daughter.

At the rate everything was flying past her, the baby would come before Louen made it home from school. Vi was most comforted by the knowledge that Louen wasn’t home to hear her. She would be spared that core memory. Screams like that stuck with little girls. 

“Lean back,” Ana urged, before climbing to her feet to assist with the changing of the damp sheets. Vi tried to listen, but back was impossible to maintain. A fire burned along her spine the more she tried to ease herself against the ottoman. There was not one position she could take to find relief, but she settled for her hands and knees like a dog. She didn’t care. Again, there was little else she had the strength to care about. 

Hands came for her eventually, returning her to the edge of the bed she could grip her fists around and soothe herself with the natural gravity attempting to do the brunt of the work for her. She was bent over the edge of it, clenching her legs together and crawling through each contraction as slowly as she could, when a different pair of hands found her at last. Calloused fingertips grazed her elbows. 

“That’s it,” Caitlyn whispered, soft as a breeze, into her ear. “Good. You're doing so good.” 

Vi crashed with every muscle and ligament in her body, finally allowing the bed to catch her instead of push against her. Caitlyn’s arms did some of the catching, and she melted, almost entirely into her as the contraction rolled out. 

Wordlessly, Caitlyn reversed their direction and pulled her upright onto her chest, so she hung partially extended and immediately rocked the pair of them in and out of motion. All the cries were stolen from Vi the instant Caitlyn touched her. They’d been mostly fear, she realized, swaying in her partner’s arms, hands fisting in her long, silky hair.

“Oh, baby,” Caitlyn whispered, her voice tinny and soft and her hands even softer. Someone else’s hands were on Vi too, squeezing against her hips in a way that made relief crash over her in a wave. “No wonder you were so miserable this morning.” She kissed the bony cartilage of Vi’s ear. It felt like a shot of adrenaline directly to her chest. “Had it started then?” 

Vi opened her mouth to answer honestly, but not a sound came out. Caitlyn’s hands firmed up on her back, squeezing with the strength of her whole body. Vi felt a bit like an orange getting juiced, right down to the ripping of membranes. She tried to stop it, but the force was too great.

“Vi?” A hand left her right hip to rub her shoulder. “Vi, Caitlyn’s here now,” Tobias reminded her, like she could have forgotten with her wrapped up in her like a tangle of string. “You can stop fighting this.” 

She cried. With a flood to rival the fluid she’d knelt in moments ago—at some point, it was mopped up with the old sheets—she sobbed, burying her face into Caitlyn’s chest as the fear rapidly fell into relief. And sorrow.

“I’m sorry.” She barely had it in her to speak. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” 

Caitlyn’s grip tightened around her. “What on earth are you sorry for?” 

Busying himself with stocking the bed with only the necessary pillows, Tobias interjected. “Well...we knew this, but Vi takes her pain a little too well.” 

Caitlyn laughed, clear and elated. Vi clung to it like a lifeline buried in her gut. 

“Of course, you have the pain tolerance of an ox. It’s alright, I'm here anyhow. Let yourself feel whatever you need.” 

Tobias knew what she needed. “Help her into bed.” He spoke directly to Caitlyn now. Vi didn’t need any telling what came next. The force of nature was doing all the talking. 

“Give her a minute,” Caitlyn said back, talking distinctly over Vi’s head. “Let her catch her breath.”

“Caitlyn,” Tobias said in a calm, emotionless voice. “We don’t have a minute.”

Going off of the tensing, then trembling of her arms, reality finally seemed to clear for her. She held Vi a little tighter then, not ready to let her go. Vi wasn’t ready to be let go 

“What?” 

“Things are moving quickly,” Tobias explained, “as they so often do.” 

“No!” 

Vi startled at the loud sound in her ear. She was aware, only vaguely, of Caitlyn’s pounding heart thudding against her shoulder. 

“Morrison’s only just left to get Mila.” The panic in her voice was enough to break through the padlock of pain clouding all of Vi’s thoughts. Caitlyn was terrified, as Vi had been moments earlier, but she was without fear now. She felt the shift and knew, in her bones, there was no stopping what was coming. “She needs to be here,” Caitlyn insisted. “You can’t—”

“—I can,” Tobias said firmly. It was his dad-voice he used. “And I’m going to. Get her on the bed. The edge is fine.” 

At the grave tonal shift of her father’s words, Caitlyn listened. She lifted with her whole body to get Vi turned around and inching toward the bed, but she only made it a step before Vi was clinging to her once again. 

“Wait! Wait…Louen,” she whispered. 

“What about her?” Caitlyn’s voice still shook, but she calmed enough for Vi’s sake. 

“School’s out.”

If Morrison was in, it was past two, likely closer to three or maybe even four. Truthfully, time was meaningless in the never-ending ebb and flow of contraction after contraction. It seemed neither Tobias nor Caitlyn had the forethought to think of the mundane amid the scramble. 

“Ana’s already gone to collect her,” Tobias assured. “She’s going to keep her busy. Everything’s taken care of.” 

“But…but she’s never not had one of us get her from school,” Vi said helplessly. “She’ll be scared.” Louen was a child who thrived on tradition. When the routine was broken, so was she. 

Caitlyn laughed again, more frazzled, but more genuine. “Are you seriously worrying about that right now?” she murmured, arms lifting from below once more. “I promise you she’ll forgive us.” Vi meant to fight, but the contraction thought otherwise. She went limp, the muscles in her body acting and thinking for her like an organism of its own. It was a half lift, half roll that finally got her onto the edge of the mattress. Caitlyn was behind her a moment later, easing her backward against her chest. 

Vi had lost her voice. When she tried to call out, nothing came. She needed to be upright—on her knees, as torturous as that was to maintain, she needed gravity on her side. She couldn’t do it alone, not even with Caitlyn at her back. There was no way she could ever push hard enough to clear the immovable weight bearing down on her, but she couldn’t speak, couldn’t ask to be moved or scream her distress, she couldn’t even take control and move herself into a more forgiving arrangement. 

She had only been so paralyzed entirely once before, when her world was ending in front of her and everything was on fire. She was so warm, warmer than just warm, she was burning. She was the one on fire. A metal beam rested on her spine, pushing her down and holding her under its molten weight. Her brothers… 

“Breathe,” Caitlyn whispered soft and low, “if you can’t do anything else, breathe. It’s going to be alright. We’ll get you up soon.” The panic hadn’t left her voice, but the sheer effort in saying those words was enough to convince Vi of their sincerity. She went limp in the soft space between her legs. 

All the fight was gone from her body as she let the contraction run its course. Her voice escaped her, but she did not need to scream. She matched her lungs to Cait’s and poured all conscious thought into the same methodical exhalation as her. When it crashed, even for a brief moment, Tobias was at her heels. “Save your strength,” he instructed, hands brushing her knees. “Are you ready? For me to check?” 

She wasn’t sure why he was even asking. She couldn't quite get the words to come out, but she floundered enough for Caitlyn to press a hand flat on her chest. Vi focused on the weight it held.

“She’s ready.” 

Vi did her best to heed Tobias’ instruction. As the next contraction burst, she put no effort into traveling through it. Her body did the work for her. She found a second to breathe in a clean burst of cold air. Tobias pulled his hands back on the exhale. His calm and contemplative mouth was a source of confusion.

“Not quite ten,” he said solemnly, breaking something cleanly in the gooey center of Vi’s psyche. How could she not be ready? She felt ready, or felt readiness barreling toward her anyway. How much more could she be expected to last through? Ten minutes? Twenty? An hour or more? She didn’t have the strength for that. He stood, and she wanted to reach out for him to make him stay. He couldn’t leave her side. She needed him there just as fiercely as she needed Caitlyn exactly where she was. “I’ll give you this time to be together.” 

Caitlyn nodded her thanks. Didn’t she understand how badly Vi needed it all to end? Didn’t she realize that without Tobias, it never would?

“I’m going to step out, just to grab some supplies. Call if you need me.” 

A not-quite-silence followed the clicking of their bedroom door. Vi found it in her to cry a little at that—more whimper than moan, but it got Caitlyn’s mouth on her in an instant. 

“This is good. You have the time to gather your strength, and maybe even enough time for Mila to get here.” 

“Do not,” Vi growled, words finally escaping the buried scream in her throat, “tell me that…” she panted through her next inhale. It was impossible to get a clean breath with all the pressure building on her spine. If she didn’t focus, spots danced in her vision. The corners of the room were growing fuzzy regardless. When had the lights dimmed? Were they? Was she the one dimming? She cried out, “I can’t…” 

“Oh, I know, darling,” Cait whispered. Liar, Vi wanted to scream. She didn’t know. “I wish this could all be over for you.” Her mouth pressed firm, grounding kisses down the length of Vi’s jaw. It wasn’t enough to unlock it, but it was enough to focus on. “It will be over soon,” Cait assured between kisses, “Not soon enough, I know, but it will be soon, and they’ll be here. Just breathe with me. Breathe and picture them—their face. They’re going to have your hair, I know it.” 

“Blue’s dominant,” Vi grit. “They’re gonna look like Louen.” 

Cait slid her arms to Vi’s hips and held her there, “How’s that?”

Vi swallowed down the moan she’d planned on letting out. “'Cause they’re gonna look like you.” 

No one would doubt their children were siblings if they both had the dark Kiramman hair and similarly narrow Ionian features. There was nothing Vi wanted more than to see her wife in their child’s face. She figured the same was true for Caitlyn. Perhaps they’d luck out and their baby would be a perfect blend of them both. Vi still hoped for blue hair. 

“Well, we’re going to see who’s right,” Caitlyn hummed, “Real soon.” 

Vi couldn't keep her eyes open—not from exhaustion, but from the sheer effort of holding herself together. There was a sound coming from the base of her throat, one she was neither aware of nor capable of stopping. She sank into Cait’s arms and lost all sense of time and reason. They stayed undisturbed for a nebulous stretch of time. Hours or minutes, Vi still wasn’t quite sure, but each minute built into something greater, pushing her closer and closer toward the threshold of no return. She welcomed it. Even if she could turn back time and make it all vanish, she had less to go than what she’d already gone. She was at the crest of the bridge, the peak of the mountain. She just had to coast down from there. 

She rested at that peak, some grit leaving her as she settled into the new, never-ending contraction she knew would take her all the way. 

“I wish she were here,” she blurted, her jaw chattering around the words. “She would've known what to do.” How had she ever done it? Twice? Not that she or Vi had any further choice in the matter. 

“Jinx?” Caitlyn asked, her name shooting off like a spark, “Or Powder?” 

Vi would never, in a million lifetimes, be able to lean against the strength of her mother again, but there was a world, one so different from her own it might as well be separated from her by all of time and space, that she might be able to brace against Powder’s slender, flighty frame and hug her with all she was worth. There was a reality in which it was Powder’s hand she clung to, Powder’s name she called out to an empty house. It was not her reality. It could’ve been, but it wasn’t, and it never would be. 

She cried and cried, the unrelenting sorrow of their absence masking the crescendo of her body. Her whole body shook so violently that the mattress trembled. Cait’s hands reached around her to steady her, but the shivers were bone-deep and unrelenting. Vaguely, Vi was aware of Caitlyn calling out for Tobias.

“Fu…I’m gonna—” she gulped, bile burning up her throat and down the outside of it. Caitlyn caught her vomit in her bare hands, thighs snapping tight around Vi’s to reach her quickly. Vi fought frantically against the constriction of her frame. Caitlyn got the message, or perhaps was eager just to empty her hands. She scrambled off the bed and wiped her hands on the abandoned wet sheets to the left of the bed. 

“Cait—” Vi barely got out in a desperate plea before her voice was stolen from her—her entire face contorted in a silent cry. With her hips splayed open in their recent freedom, Cait saw with unobstructed clarity the cause for the upheaval. 

“Father!” She called, torn between her wife and the door. One look at the suspended agony on Vi’s face decided for her, and she was at her feet a moment later, screaming louder than Vi ever could. “Father!” 

The door popped open like a gunshot the exact moment blood and viscera squirted, as if from a firing rifle, into Caitlyn’s frozen face, and a head slid partially into her waiting hands. 

“Father!” she pleaded, her eyes so wide they ached. He took in the scene with a doctor’s speed and precision. He stepped forward slowly, as if time were their best friend in the world. 

“Caitlyn,” he murmured, “stay exactly as you are.” 

Cait shook her head, “I can’t—I—” 

“You can,” Tobias affirmed, drawing closer with appropriate haste once he was sure Cait wasn’t a flight risk. “Violet, let gravity do all the work here, just let go.” 

Gravity did quite a bit of work, but telling her not to push was the biggest joke of the shiny new century. There was absolutely no stopping what had begun, no coasting through the flood of pain and fluid alike. 

“Hold your breath and give a little push.” 

She listened, and clarity hit her like a brick to the skull. The release brought a wash of relief. The first moment of genuine reprieve was over and gone in seconds, replaced by an unstoppable wave of a marrow-deep push with every muscle in her body. 

Tobias had a hand on each of them, one steadying Caitlyn’s shaking arms, and one guiding Vi by the wrist to reach down and meet her fingers with the bloody, soft gauze of hair. Brash, loud, pinkish hair, if her dancing vision could be believed. Her whole body shook too greatly to make sense of what she was seeing. He released her gently and then, with a strength paradoxical to his age and build, grabbed her by the ankle and hoisted the leg high above his shoulder as her body ramped up for the second surge. 

“Don’t push,” he said again, and every conscious molecule inside her roared. 

“Fuck you!” she cried. His hand was crunched to the bone in hers a moment later.

Tobias only smiled, ducking his head as he adjusted his attention downward. “Yes, fuck me all you’d like, dear. You’ve earned it,” he said, and Caitlyn gasped. She nearly let go in her shock of hearing her father cuss. She laughed, breathy and tearful and elated all at once, and then he was laughing too, and they were both trying their best to hold it in. 

Vi wasn’t laughing. Quite the opposite, she decided right then and there she’d never let either of those fuckwads forget how they’d laughed in front of her with their child and grandchild hanging out of her ass. 

She’d secretly forgive Caitlyn for it later because that laughter quickly turned to tears as little by little, the weight in her hands grew. 

“Heads out,” he told her pointlessly. “Rest just this once. Then on the next wave, give it all you’ve got.” 

Truthfully, Vi couldn’t exactly remember the how or really even the when; she only knew it was perfectly quiet until quite suddenly, it wasn't. She wasn't even aware of what had come to pass, even though she was staring right at them—Caitlyn and the impossibly tiny thing in her hands as it startled, took a sharp breath, and wailed. 

Cait stared at the shrieking little person, eyes wide and empty until they snapped up to meet Vi’s—Vi, who shook so badly she could barely see, but was trying, with great desperation, to get that perfect first look. It was then that Caitlyn’s tears turned into a proper sob, and with Tobias spotting her every movement, lifted their screaming baby to reunite with Vi. 

Separated by only a few seconds, she was hysterical to have them back, to have them in the flesh, to feel the curve of their little body settling into hers, and the peachy fuzz of hair brushing her chin as she strained to look at them, perfect as they were. Tiny nose, squashed, puffy eyes, a familiar little mouth. 

Tobias was laughing again, this time triumphantly, as he followed close behind with a clean, warm towel to scrape away the gore. “There’s the birthday girl!” he cried, brushing the towel on every visible surface of baby available.

Caitlyn and her both were too hysterical to process things like genitalia, so the pair of them startled at the declaration that they had a daughter. Another one as perfect and destined as the first. 

Tobias scruffed the back of her tiny, fragile neck with the towel. The towel came back red and watery and left her head a shock of blue. 

Powder blue. 

Vi didn’t have to look up to know Caitlyn’s blood had gone cold just as hers had. She could barely see through the sheets of tears and the shakes, but she saw what she saw at five years old, ancient and grainy as that memory was. She saw Powder, wrinkly and squirmy and crying for her mother. 

Vi did too. She cried a bit for everyone who’d never meet that girl, that integral, immovable piece of her world. Her love for all of them had existed in a void for as long as she could remember, starting young with her parents and going on strong with the recent passing of the old stray cat they’d taken in during his old age, but she found it finally settling on her girls’ shoulders. They’d love her. Everyone of them would love her just as much as she did, even the old and grumpy one-eyed tomcat. 

She saw it all in seconds of real time. Her mother would stay for a few weeks to help them adjust. She’d do their dishes and wash their laundry and scold them if they ever tried to help. Her father would stop by, claiming to be lonely in their empty house, and he’d stay for welcome hours at a time, playing with Louen and soaking up baby snuggles whenever Vi or Caitlyn could bear to put her down. Vander would hang back, not wanting to intrude on the delicate balance of their new family, but Vi would beg him to come, and he would. He’d hold his honorary grandchild in a single, massive hand of his, and they’d all get a kick out of it. Then he would cry—tears, snot, and the works and Vi would cry too, and someone would have to pry her daughter out of his hand so he could hold Vi and cry with her in his arms. He’d say something devastating, like he’d come to see his baby, meaning her, and she’d cry for weeks whenever she remembered that. Mylo and Claggor would be all riot, running around to keep Louen busy and making blunt remarks comparing their new niece to a worm until she started to retain some definable features of her own. When she grew a little bigger, they’d swing her and Louen around and roughhouse with them. Mylo would teach them how to pick locks. Claggor would give them the best piggybacks. She wasn’t quite sure what Powder would do. Jinx would be nervous to hold her. She’d stay far away, and everyone would have to work hard at chipping away her armored shell until she trusted herself enough to be around the girls, and then she’d open up her heart, and whatever void was left by that sweet little girl years ago would collapse, then fill. 

What Vi would give to be able to tell Jinx she’d managed it after all—happiness…choosing life. She thought, selfishly, that maybe her children would’ve inspired Jinx to choose the same.

The mattress beside her dipped under Caitlyn’s weight as her forehead found Vi’s. She was back to laughing, still mostly tears, but definitely joyous ones. Vi wondered if Caitlyn was thinking the same. Her list was smaller, but no less full. She had her own cast of loved ones to mourn in the face of their daughter. 

It was quite obvious now. The only person Vi needed to see in her daughter more than Caitlyn was Powder. 

“I guess blue is dominant,” Caitlyn choked out, a nervous hand moving to skirt over that fine sky-blue fluff. Vi hadn’t had the time to consider whether Caitlyn might see her mother’s killer in their daughter's face, but she knew in that instant she never would. She’d see Powder and their baby as Vi saw her, and as nothing other than their own creation. 

Vi meant to laugh, but it came out as more of a whimper as the spark of residual contractions passed the aftermath. She caught a glimpse of it all between her legs, the blood and the chunks and literal organ matter…she thought about Caitlyn’s face, still flecked in unfortunately colored fluids, and wondered if any had gotten in her mouth. 

Tobias seemed to have a similar thought as he took another towel from the nearby stack and handed it to his daughter. Oblivious, she used it to touch up the cursory clean-up he'd performed on the baby. Vi laughed properly when she dabbed the towel on Vi next, scraping away transferred fluid off her collarbone and blotting her tear and sweat-streaked neck and forehead with the opposite end. 

“Baby,” Vi whispered, teeth clattering, but Caitlyn didn’t look away from the literal baby between them. Perhaps a change of pet names was in order. She brushed Cait with her shoulder and finally monopolized her eye contact. “You have vag-juice all over you.”

She blinked, as if it were the first she was hearing of it, and maybe it was, maybe adrenaline had blurred her senses together too. 

Vi laughed so hard her abdominal muscles groaned in protest. She cut back with a hiss, but maintained the smile she had for Cait and only Cait. “Unless you like it there.” 

A good half-minute behind Vi’s remarks, Cait slowly wiped her face, reluctant to pull her eyes off the bundle settled on Vi’s chest,  

“So this is her?” she led with, easing herself half into the position she’d held behind Vi before. “This is Clover?” 

They’d said many names out loud as they tested the feel of each one. They flipped through options, switching from girl to boy to either, but hearing the winner, Vi’s obstinate pick, said to her face, to their daughter’s own ears, sent Vi to a cloud nine where pain and exhaustion were only vague and lackluster detractions. 

“It is,” she whispered, distantly aware of Tobias fiddling to fit a blood pressure cuff around her arm and cooing softly at the name. “Hello, Clover.”

Clover wriggled at her name, two midnight blue irises slanting open and finally, at long last, settling on her mothers. 

“Oh,” Caitlyn said into her palms. Vi said nothing about how badly they needed a wash. “She’s here.” She clung to Vi’s arm, chin tucked against her shoulder like she'd only just believed it. Newborns' eyes were routinely blue, she’d learned in her father’s medical texts. She wondered if they’d stay so dark, or if they’d lighten to her own cyan, or even to Violet’s cloudy blueish-grey, or if they’d darken like Louen’s. No matter how they shook out to look, she loved them already. “I can’t believe that just this morning I was hoping you wouldn’t come so soon.” 

“You’re lucky I can barely lift my head right now,” Vi told her sternly. As off-guard as Clover caught them, Vi was so, so happy she had, and so relieved.

Clover’s eyes drooped shut once more, and she settled down, her little body hunkered against Vi’s for the warmth. A second warm, clean towel slid over both of them.

“Oh, don’t go to sleep already, little one,” Caitlyn protested, but lifted no muscle to rouse her. “I want to see you some more.” 

“I think you have a sleeper on your hands,” Tobias predicted, skirting the edge of their happy little bubble. “Early term babies often are.” 

“Is she going to be alright?” Cait asked. She’d done a plethora of research and concluded that the full 40 weeks of cook time was preferred, but she’d also been told to prepare for surprises such as their own. 

“She seems to be perfectly healthy,” Tobias determined, somehow seamlessly wedging the flat end of a stethoscope between Vi and Clover, flush as they were. He liked what he heard, expertly tilting it the other direction to measure Vi’s heart rate. She’d steadied, the shaking little more than a few shudders here and there. “Your nurse can give you both the full check-up when she arrives. Speaking of, I think I’ll step out to receive her.” 

“Don’t you want to hold her?” Caitlyn asked. She didn’t know it, but if Caitlyn thought anyone, even her, would be prying Clover out of Vi’s arms anytime soon, she was sorely mistaken. 

Tobias recognized that. He knew the look of a mother in love. “Absolutely, I do. All in good time. You two have earned this moment of solitude.” He rose from the edge of the bed. “Mila will re-trim the cord. Watch for excess bleeding or adverse reactions in the meantime.”

Caitlyn curled in protectively at that. Her furious heartbeat was oddly comforting to Vi. 

Tobias cleaned his hands in the bathroom and stepped back into the light. “If Louen and Ana return while I am waiting for Mila, should I tell her the news?” 

Caitlyn and Vi exchanged looks. 

“No,” Caitlyn decided, “I would like to tell her myself.” 

He gathered the dirty sheets in his hands on the way to the door. Caitlyn jerked when his hand brushed the knob. 

“Father!”

He paused, then turned to her as lovingly as any parent should.

“Yes, my love?”

Caitlyn cupped her palm around her baby’s soft and tender head. “Her name is Clover Constance Kiramman.” 

The smile that tore across his face was blinding. Caught in a ray of four o’clock sun, his whole face sparkled. “Of course it is,” He agreed, “That’s her name.” 

He closed the door behind them, leaving them in sun-kissed silence. Vi couldn’t part with her yet, the glue of the new, incapacitating bond too strong to budge, but she felt Caitlyn itching beside her with idle arms. She occupied them as best she could, hugging Vi, smoothing hair, both pink and blue, whispering lovely affirmations to both sizes of ears, but it was a nervous tick just as much of a genuine outpouring of love. Vi nudged her back and got her flat against the headboard. “You ready?”

“No,” Caitlyn denied, holding firm to Vi’s arm, “the hour’s not up yet, keep her as long as you can. Soon, everyone’s going to be scrambling to take her from you.” 

“Just hold your arms up,” Vi instructed, angling her elbows out to shift Clover gently onto her back. Despite her protests, Caitlyn stripped down to her bra and matched her arms alongside Vi’s. One arm each cushioning Clover as she slept, they held her perfectly between the two, not daring to even blink, like if they did, she would disappear like a practical joke or a dream too good to be real, but she was real. Finally, she was real.  

Chapter Text

Caitlyn was in the midst of a great turmoil. Wake up her wife and daughter, or leave them entangled but asleep. Vi's face was finally, miraculously, relaxed and as close to peaceful as they could get for the foreseeable future. They were entitled to some sleep, the both of them, but they shouldn't sleep like that—Vi slumped upright against the headboard, and Clover half sprawled on Vi's chest and half tucked in the crook of her arm. She'd fallen asleep mid-feed, and Vi hadn't had the courage to unlatch her and wake her up. She didn't have the stamina to keep herself awake either. Caitlyn would've found the scenario rather silly if it wasn't so anxiety-inducing. 

That settled it; she was waking them up. Vi would get better sleep on her side anyway. 

The door nudged open just as she was reaching out to stroke Vi's arm. Tobias slipped in quietly. He was smiling softly, if not a bit awkwardly, and he was very red, all things considered. 

"What is it?" She quickly pulled back to ask. He only waved her off, tucking his eyes to his shoes. 

"I just feel a bit scolded, is all." 

"By Louen?" 

"By your midwife," he blushed, toes squirming in a very uncharacteristic manner. The scolding, however, sounded very like Mila. "She told me it was a good thing old men like me don't practice anymore." 

Caitlyn scoffed into her hand. "Oh, Father, disregard her. It was such a tiny tear. I'm confident Vi can recover." 

If the human body could grow an entire new human from scratch, it could certainly repair a muscle. Vi had a lot of experience with that.

"Oh, no, I admire her high standards. Admittedly, I'm quite old-school. I'm going to have to brush up on obstetrics before the next one." 

Caitlyn must have made a face because he caught himself immediately and went a shade pinker. "Sorry, darling, that was a joke. It's too premature for that discussion." 

"It certainly is," Caitlyn tutted, turning back to adjust the covers over Vi's legs. She looked so uncomfortable, but in such desperate need of sleep because of that. "Let us figure out how to handle two before we go and make things harder for ourselves." She watched Clover's chest jump with a tiny hiccup. She was so adorable, and not remotely worm-like as so many newborns were. Maybe Caitlyn was biased, but she felt confident in their daughter's cuteness. "Speaking of two...How's the other one?"

Tobias hung respectfully at the edge of the bed. “She’s eager.” He grinned, “and mad at me for keeping secrets.” 

Caitlyn joined in his soft laughter. That could only be expected when they told her not to keep sneaky secrets of her own. 

“She’s also a bit tired.” 

Caitlyn checked the time. Somehow, it was almost eight at night and rapidly approaching many bedtimes. She looked perplexedly at the tangle of Vi and Clover.

“Go,” Tobias decided, sinking into the nearby chair. “I’ll stay.” 

Cait picked the worry out of her lip. “You're not supposed to sleep with them in the bed with you.” 

“I’ll be watching,” he promised. “Taking her now would only wake them both up.” 

Caitlyn relented. She withdrew herself from her girls and stretched her stiff and aching limbs. 

As she passed him in the chair, she bent low and hugged his shoulders with a delayed desperation. “Thank you.”
 

He reached up and squeezed her fingers. “Thank you,” he returned. 

“What for?”

She heard the smile in his response, “For this beautiful family you have shared with me.” 

Someone was missing from that beautiful family, someone Caitlyn missed with every bone in her body. She parted from her Father’s embrace and slipped quietly out the door.

In the room at the front of the hall, Ana sat on the floor holding a toy horse whose hair Louen was busy braiding. When the door creaked open, she looked up from her task and grinned. She leapt to her feet and collided with Caitlyn’s legs a moment later.

“Mae!” She tugged on her sleeve until Caitlyn bent to retrieve her. She did, holding her firmly in both arms to lock her in a deep hug. “Baby?” she asked without preamble, sleepily too. Stroking her hair, Caitlyn nodded. 

“Yes. Mommy had the baby, and guess what? She’s got all the fingers and toes and bright blue hair like your Auntie Powder.”

Caitlyn did not know what Powder looked like as a baby, but she did know from the look on Vi’s face that she must have looked painfully similar to Clover. Caitlyn was glad for it. Vi deserved to see her sister’s face again, even if it was only in the face of their daughter. Selfishly, she was glad for it because perhaps, finally, she would make peace with that face too. The second she saw Clover, she knew she already had, just as she knew the opposite was true too; that if Clover came out looking like herself, she would’ve fallen in love just as fast. Between making peace with Jinx’s face or her own, she was surprised to realize she’d made peace with both. Jinx had been such a pretty young woman, a face she was now anxious to be reacquainted with. A face she was eager for her daughter to grow into. 

“She?!” Louen squealed, her eyes as large as the moon visible through the large windows of Caitlyn’s childhood room. “I have a sister?”

Arms hooked around her thighs, Caitlyn squeezed her once more. “You have a sister, my love.”

Louen buried her face in Caitlyn’s chest, right against her heart. “I wanna see her!” 

Caitlyn stroked the knots from her long, messied hair. “I bet you do, but she’s sleeping and so is Mommy. They’re both very tired and need to rest.”

“I’ll be real quiet,” she whispered, “Just a peek.” 

“I’m sure you would be,” Caitlyn promised. There was nothing she’d like more than to sneak Louen into their room to steal a look, but taking that moment away from Vi, she knew, was nothing short of evil. Like all good things, she’d have to wait. “She will still be here tomorrow morning, and it’s time for bed anyway. All of us need sleep tonight.” 

Caitlyn knew already she’d not be getting a wink. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” Louen pouted, “I’ll be too happy to sleep.” 

“You know, that makes two of us. How about I stay with you until you get sleepy? Why don’t you pick out a book?” She returned Louen to her feet, dismissing Ana with a nod and settling into Louen’s bed while she dug through her bookcase for the specific one she had in mind. She returned with a handcrafted one with thick, handbound pages and a stiff cardstock cover. Caitlyn smiled at her choice. It had been quite some time since she’d selected that one. 

She crawled over Caitlyn, squishing the semi-full bladder she’d neglected in the chaos of her unexpected afternoon. Luckily, she laid down next to her instead of on top of her. She handed Caitlyn the book, which pulled a question out of Caitlyn’s mouth. “Do you not want to read it yourself?” 

Louen shook her head, using Caitlyn’s shoulder as a pillow. “You read it,” she willed. Caitlyn was never much for saying no to her. 

She flipped the first page and wrinkled her nose at the silly little drawing she’d done there, “I am kind,” she read aloud, flipping the page to the next goofy sketch done by Vi. “I am brave.” The next page had a doodle from Ekko, asked for under a false pretense. She wondered if Vi ever told him what it had gone to use for. “I am smart.” She went on, “I am playful, I am happy, I am loud.” 

Louen giggled at Caitlyn’s sideways look. She shared in her laughter. Caitlyn was certainly loud when she lost control, something she realized she shared with Louen, but her daughter’s loud cadence had never been a negative characteristic, and she’d never once worried she’d one day become a quiet woman. Her voice caught on the next page. 

“I am loved.” 

Louen curled forward, clutching Caitlyn’s arm slightly in anticipation of the next page. 

“I am a sister.” 

She looked down at her daughter, now at last a big sister in her own right. Her daughter was all of those things, chief among them she was her daughter, as Clover was, and they were both so, so good. 

It stood to reason that Caitlyn must be at least a little good, too. 

With eager hands, Louen flipped to the next page—a collection of empty pages with the text I am… in the center of each one. A scribble of different answers listed down the first page, whatever Louen felt in that moment was added after finishing the book. There were a lot of “I am happy”s and “I am sleepy”s as she so often decided after reading the book for her bedtime story.

“I think tonight I’m thankful,” she declared, burrowing into Caitlyn expectedly. Reaching for the pen, Caitlyn paused. 

“What a good thing to be tonight,” she acknowledged, “I am too. I’m thankful Mommy and the baby are healthy and home with us.” She was genuinely happy they’d done it in their own home. Everyone could sleep (if they were so lucky) in their beds and wake up in their home as a family. If they hadn’t, she wouldn’t get the time with Louen she now so desperately needed. “And I’m thankful you are here with us, too, sprout, because you belong with us, okay?”

Louen giggled, “Okay.” 

“Do you mind if I add something to the book tonight too?”

Eagerly, Louen nodded. 

Caitlyn’s fingers were stiff around the pen as she wrote in the center of the page:

I am good.

“Mae…” Louen murmured, like Caitlyn had done a math problem wrong. 

“You are, my sweet girl,” Caitlyn promised, willing herself not to cry. A futile pursuit. “You are all that is good in your mother and I’s life. All that's good and loving.”

“No, I’m not,” Louen challenged, sitting up with her arms crossed. 

Caitlyn shook her head, “Of course you are.” 

“Not all, ” she corrected, “my sister's good too.” 

“Yes,” Caitlyn laughed, pulling her into another deep exchange of arms, “Both of my girls are so good.” 

“I am good,” Louen declared, only following tradition. “ Mae ,” she grumbled, “you didn't say it.” 

Caitlyn allowed herself no hesitation as she read the newest addition allowed. 

“I am good.”

***

Vi cried the first time Caitlyn hauled her out of bed and onto the toilet several hours into that first night. Caitlyn held her up by the shoulders and squeezed her hands until her muscles stopped burning. Then she promptly woke up Tobias to confirm that the deluge of blood in the basin was the normal, expected deluge. Not slighted at all for being woken to inspect blood and urine, he confirmed it was normal then returned to his room unfazed. 

The second time went similarly, except no one got Tobias for a second opinion. Vi walked back to bed that second time, already attuned to the sharp, pitched cries like a hungry puppy Clover made when she wanted to eat. 

“This little thing’s eaten thrice now, and yet you haven't had a bite since yesterday morning,” Caitlyn observed as the two struggled to find that sweet spot for feeding. “Aren’t you hungry?” 

One hand holding her left breast and the other cradling Clover, Vi considered. “Actually? I’m starving.” Food hadn’t been much of a priority for Caitlyn either, but if she was peckish, Vi must be famished.

“Well, would you look at that? I did have Jericho’s on standby for you.”

Eyes closed, Vi hummed, “Impressive, really, but I still don’t want that.”

“What would you like?”

Not much would be open at five AM on a snowy Saturday morning, but Caitlyn would raid their pantry for all it was worth.  

Vi folded her lips inside her mouth and thought for a long, thorough moment before settling on, “A drink.” 

Caitlyn choked, “What?”

Vi gulped, “Oh, kill me, vodka sounds like heaven right now.” 

There was not one hint of a funny bone in Vi’s very worn-down, exhausted body. 

“Vi…”

“Caitlyn…” Vi moaned back in a mockingly similar tone, “I have been sober for seven years straight...”

Caitlyn opened her mouth.

“Okay, not straight, but I didn’t know you freaks put liquor in gelatin up here, bunch of weirdos.”  

Caitlyn laughed breathlessly into her hands. If she didn’t know Vi so well, she’d have to assume she was joking, but she very much wasn’t. 

“ Vi… We don’t have liquor in the house.” 

That burst whatever train of thought Vi was riding, knocking her back a few cars into reality. She sighed, “Good. I’m too dehydrated for that right now.” 

Caitlyn proded her with the glass of water she kept topped off. Both hands firmly occupied, Vi opened her mouth and skimmed off the top when Caitlyn held the glass to her lips. 

“You can drink whatever you’d like. World knows you’ve earned it,” Caitlyn said, hiding her smile, “On any other day but today.” 

Vi shook her head, “Next time we make it to Jericho’s, you’re buying me a margarita. I’ve never had one of those frozen little shits but they look delectable.” 

“They are,” Caitlyn agreed, “but it’s December.” 

“So? Blenders don’t work in December?” 

Caitlyn broke her straight face, “Like I said, you’ve earned the right to drink or eat anything you want. So what do you want?” 

“I will eat quite literally anything you spoon into my mouth right now.”

“ Vi! ” Caitlyn exclaimed exasperatedly, “what do you want?” She grinned, “I will make whatever you desire, or I’ll go out and get whatever’s open—”

“—Can you make oatmeal?” Vi interrupted, her expression back to dreamy, or delusional, depending on the angle. 

“Oatmeal?” Caitlyn repeated, underwhelmed. “You want me to make you prison food?”

Eyes closed, Vi nodded wistfully, “Yeah, I…I don’t wanna think. I know I’ll like oatmeal, so just make some of that—real simple—oats, milk, honey, and so thin I could drink it through a straw.” 

Caitlyn would’ve gagged, but she wouldn’t dare to incur that wrath, so instead she nodded and visited the dark and cold kitchen to make them both some oatmeal.

***

They cycled through seven different swaddles deciding which one to present Clover to Louen in. She didn’t care at all how much they disturbed her rest and stayed asleep through all of it until they settled on a soft cotton one with little pastel clouds in different shades of blue. They both cried at the cuteness and ended up having to separate for a moment just to calm down. 

Vi was determined to shower and insisted she could do it alone, so Caitlyn held Clover and anxiously counted minutes until Tobias would return with Louen, and perhaps, more importantly hot breakfast that wasn’t glorified gruel. 

Vi emerged from their bathroom damp and as freshly pink as Clover. Unsurprisingly, she’d returned to pants, a cozy, forgiving pair that disguised the already deflating curve of her bump. So far, the only thing she’d complained about was the squishy, undefined bloat of her empty stomach.

She didn’t sit down right away, holding onto the base of their bed and stretching out the ligaments in her stiff legs. 

Watching her squirm and grimace, Caitlyn’s intrusive thoughts won. 

“Is it worse than being stabbed?”

“Way worse.” 

Caitlyn knew the pain of a dagger parting intestines and a blade cleaving optic nerves. She wondered what could be worse than that. 

“I know this is…such a premature conversation to have, but…” 

Vi noted the shift in her voice and stopped stretching, “Oh?” 

“Do you think you’d want another one?” 

Vi lowered onto the bed beside her, “You’re right…this is a very premature conversation, but…I’d never say never.” Hand sinking into her abdomen, she made a tight, puckered look. “I don't know if I could ever be pregnant again, though,” she confessed. Caitlyn would never, could never blame her for that. She knew they were both grateful they’d done it, and there’d been magical moments, of course, but it had been very hard on them both, and hard on Vi in ways Caitlyn might never understand. Was it dangerous for her to think that she might want to understand someday? “I mean, I probably should make that call now, but I don't think it would be a good idea. I was pretty upset this morning, and I had some scary thoughts that still terrify me if I'm being honest. I'm definitely going to have to work through some shit, but..." she shrugged and for as conflicted as she looked, there was hope there too. "There’s always going to be kids who need a home. Maybe we’ve got a son or another daughter out there we just haven’t met yet. I’m alright letting life decide.” 

“Me too,” Caitlyn agreed, unsuccessfully brushing down a persistent cowlick of bright blue hair. While her eyes were occupied, Vi’s hand snuck up on her, skirting through her own hair to run her blunt nails along the curve of Caitlyn’s head. Smiling instinctively, Caitlyn leaned into the touch. “What are you thinking?” she asked, not pulling her eyes off of Clover. She was too captivating already. How would Caitlyn ever manage to do a single thing again when she had such gorgeous women to look at for the rest of her life? 

Vi hummed a non-answer back, but kept her hand threaded in Caitlyn’s hair. “How do you know I’m thinking about anything?” 

“'Cause I hear you,” Caitlyn smirked, “you’re thinking.” 

“I…” Vi trailed off, and not in a mesmerized, smitten way, but the way that furrowed eyebrows and made flat lines of mouths. “I’m just relieved—happy.” 

“You don’t sound happy.”

“I am happy,” Vi repeated, and that time she almost sounded sure of it. “I just have a lot of other feelings too.”

Caitlyn snuck a sideways glance, but Vi’s sleepy smile was unchanging and unreadable. “Like what?”

Vi shook her head, “Ask me another day. I just want to be happy today.” 

Caitlyn held her stare, searching for cracks or false flags, but whatever was stewing below the surface, Vi didn’t let it bubble up. Looking at her, Caitlyn would never guess she was anything other than totally, overwhelmingly in love. Caitlyn was in love, both with the baby in her arms and the woman who had given that baby to her. 

So, hopelessly in love.

It was like ripping open stitches to put Clover down, but Caitlyn set her on the mattress between them. Vi instantly curled forward to touch her hand to Clover’s chest and drink up her warmth through her palm. Caitlyn admired only a moment, then dug through Vi’s bedside table with a purpose. She found it quickly, kept safely away but close by. She slid Vi’s wedding ring off the chain and caught it in her palm. The metal was cool, smooth, and just as comforting as the day she first slid it on that finger. They’d both been such entirely different people then. 

“Give me your hand.”

“Huh?” 

“Your hand,” Caitlyn repeated, her own already shaking. She was equally nervous as the day she proposed, scratch that, doubly so. “Give it to me.” Vi obliged, and successfully hiding the ring, Caitlyn took that hand and held it like it was a delicate flower, objectively laughable, given how solid Vi’s hand truly was. She judged those fingers lovingly. Yes, Mila was right, the swelling did go down almost immediately. 

Vi chuckled as Caitlyn turned her palm over in her hand. “What are you—?”

Caitlyn shook her head, silencing her with a reverent look. “Vi?”

“Ah, come on, don’t give me a speech. I’m too dehydrated to cry anymore.” 

Caitlyn’s smile only widened, “ Vi, I have fallen in love with you a lot. Honestly, I’ve lost count, but these last four years, watching you become a mother…I have fallen more in love with you every day.”

“ Cait, ” Vi whispered, something instantly aquiver in her jaw. “Watching you become a mom…that’s something more beautiful than I ever imagined.” 

Caitlyn ignored her fully. She knew if she stopped and allowed some reciprocation, she’d never reach the end of what she needed, so desperately, to say. “You wanna talk about beautiful? Just when I thought you’d shown me all there was to know about you, you go and do this…” Her eyes drifted off to Clover, and her resolve trembled. “This…this thing that’s…” 

“Fucking incredible?” Vi suggested, a hint of her usual charm ghosting the words. 

“Yes!” Caitlyn exclaimed, “fucking incredible. What you’ve done is incredible, and all over again, I fell in love with you every single day.” She revealed the ring, hidden deftly between her thumb and her palm. Vi startled at the sight of it. She knew what was coming, and she lost a whispered swear in answer. Caitlyn didn’t humor her. She turned over that hand and slid the ring back on. It caught on her knuckle, just like it had that first time, and rested perfectly in the little indent of flesh that waited for it. “I love you,” she kept it simple, because what more did she need to say than that? Except, maybe, for, “I love our family even more. You gave me that. You gave me this life. Thank you for giving me my family back.” She kissed her then, as long and slow as she dared, padding the seconds until life would keep on moving and bring them somewhere else. 

It was Vi who finally pulled away, holding that hand to her heart and stroking the cold metal. “I thought I was going to have to get this resized. That would’ve been fine, but…” She shrugged, and there was something terribly sad in her eyes for a moment, “It’s nice to know I’m still the same.” 

“You are not the same,” Caitlyn refused, pulling her in dangerously close. “You are infinitely more beautiful than you have ever been to me. You and our girls are the most beautiful thing I know, and Vi?” She got her looking at her long enough to coax a smile from her tired mouth. “Nothing could ever change how beautiful I find you.” 

Vi dragged a finger under her eyelids. Her teary eyes were elsewhere, but she nodded despite it all. “Trust me,” she chuckled, “I know that very well.” The hand on her ring moved to Caitlyn’s knee. “If you ever…” she shrugged, “decide you want to go down this path yourself, well…” 

Caitlyn gulped. It really was a conversation too premature to entertain. 

“Well, I’ll fucking get it, won’t I?”

“Language,” Caitlyn teased.

“Excuse you,” Vi grumbled. “I just pushed out your seven-pound child; I can cuss however much I want.” 

Caitlyn let her head drop against her arm, grinning. “Yes, you’ve sure earned it.” 

“We earned it,” Vi said earnestly, all the humor gone from her voice. “We did earn this, didn’t we?” 

In a blink, Caitlyn considered all that had them there—on the bed, with their baby waiting for their other daughter to come complete the picture. She considered what they’d had to do to ensure they survived to see that moment, and just how fast she’d go back and do it all again if that’s what it took to bring them here. The flashes of loss and hardship were infinitesimally less important than the joys—the triumphs. 

One arm under their daughter, the other around her wife, Caitlyn nodded. “Yes, love, we earned this.”

Chapter Text

“That’s a terrible spot for the carrot,” Vi remarked disinterestedly, eyes drifting from the half-dressed tree to her lap with a noticeable twinge of boredom. 

Half extended, Caitlyn sighed. “Then you get up here and place my carrot.” She left the clumsily blown glass carrot, made in some insane Piltover Academy arts elective, hanging on a high, precarious branch of the tree. “If you have so many opinions.” 

“Sorry, too busy providing your child with nourishment.” Vi adjusted the squirmy infant on her arm and ignored the horribly placed wooden deer entirely obscured behind a large branch. She’d move it later. 

“And how is my child?” Caitlyn kneeled on the sofa to get a new vantage point and swiped another unpacked ornament from the ottoman. “Is she actually nourishing or just lying here looking cute?”

Vi slid her finger under Clover’s tucked chin, unsuccessfully rousing her. “She’s falling asleep on me. For someone so insistent that they need to eat every three hours exactly, she sure gives up quickly.” 

“She eats a lot,” Louen said from the corner of the room, tucked behind the tree and dotting the branches with tiny, differently colored bells. 

“And?” Vi slid her finger back and forth with no results. 

Louen overemphasized her point with one of the bells. “She eats so much, but she’s still so little.” 

Passing her a box of glass icicles, Tobias chuckled, “Well, that’s exactly the reason. Did you know that when she was born, her stomach was only the size of a cherry?” 

“A cherry?” Louen held up her fingers in the tiny shape of the little fruit, jaw slack in disbelief. “It’s bigger now?” 

Tobias nodded, “A bit, yes, but still very small compared to our stomachs, so she needs to eat more regularly.” 

“Yeah, well, she’s about to get evicted,” Vi grumbled, “She’s not appreciating how good things are over on the right…” She pulled Clover off, who, previously fast asleep, awoke finally and shrieked loud enough to rouse the dead. Halfheartedly, Vi attempted to soothe her. She knew it was a waste, as there was only one solution. “Ask yourself, my dear, have you ever not gotten the other side?” She tisked, settling Clover on her left. She quieted instantly and closed her eyes again. Vi sighed at the ceiling. Such was the routine. Clover followed her own, impractical traditions.

“All I ever do is feed this girl,” she murmured to Cait as she pulled away, “By the time she finishes, another two hours will have passed. How am I supposed to get anything done?” 

Caitlyn considered, “I don’t think you are—supposed to get anything done. That’s why you have the rest of us to do it. Speaking of…” She tested how full the water on the table beside them was. Adequate, which was also a bad thing that meant Vi was not drinking nearly as much water as she should be. No wonder she felt like shit. “Do you need a snack? You haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“Yes, please, I'm starving.” She opened her mouth, and Caitlyn understood, guiding the straw of her water in for a long sip. 

“I will get you something…” her eyes found something set out on the ottoman. “—In a moment. Lou, look what Mama found for us.” She set aside the ornament she’d picked up and retrieved a shiny silver flower with a sparkly blue gem inlaid at its center. It was a simple thing, easily crafted despite its ornate look. A relic of their trip to Ionia, the one that brought Louen back with them. Louen cheered when she saw it, scooping it right out of Caitlyn’s hands and whirling to appraise the mostly naked tree. 

“Where should it go this year?” Caitlyn prodded. 

Louen studied the tree, examining each quadrant before pointing to the top. “Under the carrot,” she said determinedly. 

“Very well,” Caitlyn hoisted her into her arms and held her up to the top branch. She clipped the little flower beside the carrot, but instead of smiling, her face grew dark and contemplative. “What? Need to move it around?” Caitlyn asked, but Louen dismissed her, turning to look at Vi, as if she should know. 

“What?” Vi prompted curiously. 

“Clover doesn’t have anything for the tree. Mae has the carrot, you have the wolf, Pa has the bird, and I have the lily, but Clover doesn’t have anything.” 

“No, she doesn’t,” Cait agreed, returning Louen to her feet, “but she will. I had something commissioned, but it’s not supposed to arrive until the new year.” She wrinkled her brow, “I guess Clover was very determined to set up this tree with us.” Caitlyn was proud of them for committing to a tree at all, with a three-week-old and the physically strongest of them out of commission, but they’d managed it, determined to honor tradition. Vi had only wanted the tree up and pretty for her birthday, insistent that it would be worth it, even with the holidays looming so close already. Cait was convinced Vi’d only wanted the house to herself for a few hours. She got both, if that were the case. 

Instead of reflecting that wonder and mysticism Caitlyn felt, Vi made a strange face and covered half of it with her free hand. “The fact that I could’ve still been pregnant right now is sickening,” she shuddered. 

“It’s a little sad that she wanted to decorate with us but doesn’t have anything yet…” She mashed her lips together and set her sights on a little knit rabbit with long, floppy fabric ears about the size of her hand and fastened it with a hook. “I’ll put this on for her.” She hung it front and center and beamed. Vi did too. She would not be moving that one, content to see it at every glance toward the tree. 

Louen scurried back to her corner behind the tree and gasped. “Uncle Ek’s here!” she shouted, peeking out the half-drawn curtain. She frowned. “Who’s that with him?” 

Caitlyn snapped the curtain open behind her, but her face gave nothing away. “That’s Scar, honey.” 

“Oh…” Louen’s eyes narrowed. “He’s bald!”

Caitlyn laughed finally, straining to make the two figures out in the courtyard. “That’s only a hat, dear, but yes, it looks a little like he’s bald. I wonder why they didn’t bring—oh, there he is.” She pointed River out, a yard ahead of them, waving his arms excitedly under the hang of the grand front steps. 

“Took him long enough,” Vi mused. “I thought she was gonna be crawling by the time he made it up here.” She supposed it would have been karma to keep her waiting as long as she kept him. 

“We'll let them in,” Caitlyn declared, threading Louen by the hand from out behind the tree. “How long should I tell them?”

Vi blinked, “How long what?” 

“For them to wait until they can come in.”

Vi made another face, confused instead of disgusted. “Oh, they can come in. It’s Ekko. He can see my boobs.” 

Caitlyn grimmaced, “Can Scar and River see your boobs too?”

Vi shrugged, “they’re less boobs right now and more utensils. It’s fine.” She scowled somewhat, sliding her finger back under a squishy cheek. “Besides, she’s asleep again. She's done. I say so.”

Caitlyn and Louen made themselves scarce before the screaming came, but miraculously, Clover stayed out like a light as Vi peeled her off, adjusted her shirt, and shifted her onto her chest, her sleepy little mouth drooling onto the cloth draped over Vi’s shoulder. 

“Was Cait expecting anyone else?” She murmured, her hand a soothing pattern on Clover’s back. Tobias frowned from his spot beside the tree. 

“Not to my knowledge.” 

Vi watched him suspiciously. “So, no surprise birthday visitors? Because I don’t want anyone else here breathing their nasty germs on her yet.” With Mel still away in Noxus, Vi couldn’t think of anyone else she’d want there anyway. 

Tobias nodded reassuringly, “We wouldn’t dream of it, dear.” 

Footsteps sounded rapidly in the hall, followed by Louen’s cheery little voice, “Her stomach’s the size of a cherry! A cherry!” 

Vi was all smiles at that, just in time for the door to pop open and Louen to rush in, dragging River by the hand. Twice her size already, he followed her around like a puppy. He stopped when she did, eager and alert for a glimpse. Vi held a finger to her lips and prolonged his curious eyes. 

“Shh, I’m trying to convince her she doesn’t need to eat.” 

He shrank back at that, backing right into Caitlyn as she peeked inside the room. 

“All good,” she said over her shoulder, brushing River aside with a gentle hand on his arm. 

Clover squirmed then, Vi having finally managed a small hiccup out of her. Vi was caught in the sudden movement of her and the rush to settle her. When she looked up next, Ekko was beside her, lips rolled into his mouth. He met her eyes briefly, but lost the connection and fixed them back on the tiny side-profile snuggled against her chest. 

Vi only smiled at him, nervous to break the quiet wonder of the moment. She hadn’t expected the moment to feel so much like how she imagined introducing Clover to her brothers might have been. Maybe the same was true for him in reverse, because he didn’t move either, captivated. He was the one who broke it eventually, though, leaning forward to tap the top of her head in a surprising peck. Something plopped into her lap. 

“Happy birthday.” 

She eyed the oblong parcel curiously. “Why’d you get me a birthday present?”

“I didn’t. It’s for my cute as shit niece.” 

Caitlyn scowled but kept quiet, other than a slight murmur to Scar beside her. 

“Why’d you get her something?” Vi repeated, unfazed. “We have so much crap for her.” 

He grinned, sinking onto the sofa beside her to share eye-levels. “Again, see here: cute as shit niece. I reserve the right to spoil them.” He reached into his bag and tossed Louen a similarly wrapped parcel. She dropped River’s hand and caught it like a crocodile leaping from the water. “That’s for you, big sis.” 

She eagerly tore into it, unveiling a little tiger patched out of strips of white and black fabric and stuffed with something fluffy. She squealed, throwing her arms around it and then Ekko himself a moment later. He pulled her into his lap and gave her a squeeze. “How’s your sister treating you? Not beating you up or calling you names?” 

She laughed at his absurdity. “Of course not!” Her hands stroked the little tiger, but her eyes found Clover. “She’s perfect.” 

Ekko caught Vi’s eye, “Yes, she is.” 

Almost choked up at that, Vi busied herself with the easily pulled strings of the parcel in her lap. The wrapping was the parcel, she realized, as a chorded ribbon pulled away and revealed a quilted blanket in sharp black, white, and dashes of purple and blue. Vi wondered if he knew those colors were about all Clover could see at the moment, or the distinction of them at least. The fabric squares were old, well-loved, and ragtag, but also soft and seamlessly blended. Vi ran her finger over the fine stitching. There was a chaos to the pattern, but there was something dangerously comforting about that chaos. 

“Did you…” Her lips puckered slightly. “Did you make this?”

His mouth matched hers, narrowly pursed around… something. “Yeah.” 

She broke that look off her face. She didn’t like how that look made her think. She cracked a smile instead. “You can sew?”

Again, he mirrored her, wagging an eyebrow. “Excuse you.”

Vi excused him and spread the little blanket out in her lap. In the center were a few threadbare pink squares stitched together in the shape of a heart: ancient and once horribly stained but cleaned and cleaned until some original color bled through in a familiar old fabric.

“Is this…” her voice caught. He intercepted it with a nod. She didn’t understand. “How did you…”

“I pulled it out of the wreck, years ago. It was in rough shape, and things were crazy then. It sat in pieces in a box, and I forgot about it.” He fumbled through the explanation like it was a bulleted list he hadn't quite memorized. He looked at her with the face of a nervous little boy with a secret to tell, or maybe with some guilt that had no place to go. His expression fell. “Sorry.”

“No! No, this is…” Her fingers took in the well-memorized fabric of a childhood comfort. “Perfect.” 

Louen leaned forward, curious eyes assessing the gift. “What is it, Mama?” 

Hands glued to the carefully preserved center of the blanket, Vi continued to shake her head in disbelief. “It’s from a toy I had when I was your age. It got lost a…while ago, but…now it can be Clover’s to keep safe.” Or keep Clover safe. It was a beautiful blanket. Vi wouldn’t let it get lost in the surplus of blankets they’d amassed. It was going straight over the edge of the crib until Clover was old enough to sleep with something in the crib with her. “Hey, baby, come here,” Vi bid, gesturing for Louen with her chin; her hands, otherwise occupied. 

Louen hopped off Ekko’s lap and raced around the other side of the sofa. 

“Spread this blanket out for me.” 

Louen listened, spreading the blanket out completely on the empty sofa cushion. Vi laid Clover in the center. She was a small drop in the center of a swarm of fabric. “Do you remember how to swaddle her?” 

Louen nodded and got to work folding in a deliberate order. Her hands worked with an expertise shocking for their size, but like she’d done it a thousand times already, she wrapped her sister up in the blanket and tucked the ends in neatly so only her head peeped out of the opening. Vi had thought there was nothing she could love more than watching her wife become a mother, but everything paled in comparison to her daughter becoming a sister. 

She’d worried about the age gap. Seven years were enough to permanently tilt the ball of responsibility into Louen’s court. Of course, Louen would always have certain responsibilities as the older sister, regardless of the gap, but Vi dreamed of something a bit more equal for her daughters. She’d raise them differently than she had been. She had the freedom, the ability, to keep certain "responsibilities" away from both of them, and someday, when Clover was old enough, they could share those duties and strive to love and protect each other with the same loyalty. 

Her daughters were going to have it good. Exactly the way they deserved it. 

She leaned forward, fixing a kiss to the back of Louen’s head, “Hand her to Ekko for me.” Louen did with a proud smile on her face, holding her baby sister in a stable arm and holding her out with an equally sturdy hold. 

Ekko received her with two firm hands and held her lengthwise on his lap. Louen dashed off to rope River into hanging ornaments with Tobias. Scar hung back and continued quiet conversation with Caitlyn, but she didn’t reciprocate much, her eyes equally affixed on Ekko and their daughter. Vi watched her watch them, watched her lips roll inside her mouth, and her eyelids blink rapidly. Ekko raised his head then, not to look at Vi, but back at Cait. She met his eyes, and before Vi could read either expression, the pair nodded. 

The unspoken agreement settled on them as the tension bled slowly out of their jaws. Cait returned to conversation with Scar, and Ekko returned to admiring the baby in his hands. He finally gave Vi a second look, and in place of a tight-lipped grimace, a smile had formed. 

“I can’t believe how tiny she is,” he murmured in adorable disbelief. She was deceptively smaller, scrunched up in a swaddle, admittedly, but Vi agreed wholeheartedly. 

“She was even smaller two weeks ago, if you can believe it.” 

His face fell then, all awe and elation slowly ebbing out as he examined her a second, closer time. He nodded slowly. “Yeah…” 

Vi looked away. She let him have whatever moment he needed to have. Clover had that effect on everyone, or maybe that was just babies in general, but so far, no one in the household had escaped a contemplative, melancholy look at her.

“Look at this hair…” he said like he’d rehearsed it. “It’s about time that family tree has some variety.” He jerked his chin to Caitlyn, who rolled her eyes good-naturedly. 

“Look at this nose,” Vi agreed, gently tracing the familiar, tiny slope. Clover wrinkled that nose and fussed, but settled almost immediately from Ekko's soothing. All those kids running around the Firelight base must have trained him well. He looked so natural with her. Despite his big age, Vi couldn't help but go mama-bear on him sometimes, and she was well and truly battling a fierce desire to bring him into a crunch of a hug and never let go. He was going to be around for her kids. They couldn't have their aunt. Vi'd had to make her peace with that. They couldn't have all the uncles they should've. They'd lost three already, but they would have Ekko. Vi would make sure of it. She was never losing touch with him or anyone else again. 

"I spot the Kiramman," he noted, a fingernail brushing her chin up to her eyes. "From this angle. You see it?" 

Of course, Vi had seen it. She had seen every inch of her daughter from every angle a thousand times over. She looked anyway, giddy for the excuse. 

Ekko tilted his arms, peering down at Clover with that kind of melancholy made all the worse by happiness. In the face of her daughter, Ekko was mourning something too. “She would’ve loved you, kid.” 

Vi caught a corner of Caitlyn's expression. There was a noticeable streak in her eyeliner. A chill washed over the room as Vi tucked her chin into her chest, nodding. Jinx would've loved Vi's kids if she'd ever gotten the chance, and for as much as Vi had learned to live with that truth, she didn't think she could ever accept it. Some aches weren't meant to be healed, she knew. There'd never be a bone in her that didn't mourn her sister. That wasn't going away any more than her love for her family was, but she could live with it, because Vi had her life, after all, in thanks to the sister she couldn't keep, and she was going to fucking live it. No matter the ache or hardship, the good was still good, and the good was enough.