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It wasn’t atypical for Cargo to find Echidna awake, sitting out on the hill overlooking their resistance camp. Her knees hung over its edge, she stared out into the dim, momentary lights; night watch patrolled from the border scaffolding, while most of the civilians below slept soundly. Only a handful of the latter remained up and about otherwise, taking care of the morning’s chores in a fit of insomnia, or simply taking the time to appreciate the dark and quiet.
Neither Cargo nor Echidna were straight-sleepers, and that was only half on account of the war. Cargo could count the nights she slept a full eight hours straight in a row on one hand. Echidna had been forced into military life all her years, so she’d never been asked to build a healthy habit. Most often, Echi tended to patrol the camp itself, checking on her people like a hulking guardian. The nights that she kept her distance were either because she and Cargo were having fun, or…
“What are you thinking about, love?” Cargo asked, drawing her wife’s attention.
Echidna rumbled quietly. She leaned back, as much as her hunch would allow, slumping her shoulders. Cargo approached her, sat next to her, rested herself against her. Echi lifted her hand and wrapped it around Cargo’s waist.
“Thinking of her, is all,” Echidna replied.
Cargo didn’t need to ask who Echidna was talking about. Her heart sank a little bit, an old scar aching across its center.
“She’d be all grown up by now, wouldn’t she,” Cargo commented.
During the invasion, before HQ fell, Echidna’s water had broken. It’d been the first warning, despite Dr. Vahlen’s various tests and examinations, that Echidna had been pregnant. In all fairness, why would they assume an alien POW to be up the duff? No rational military commander would knowingly send out a pregnant soldier. Of course, the Elders were uncaring, selfish bastards, but at the time, it still seemed unthinkable. And even Hawking, watching from his cell, had been shocked. He’d claimed berserkers were medicated as to be infertile. Echidna's sobriety during captivity could not have changed that, considering she would have needed to be impregnated prior to her capture.
Echidna would explain to Cargo later that she’d been doing her best to dodge the Elders’ medical abuses during her time in service to them. If the combat stimulants were supposed to sterilize her, then skipping doses probably opened the window for her to conceive, in the quiet, crowded sleeping quarters where she and her kin sought any comfort they could get. She doubted she was the only berserker to ever do so.
Unfortunately, there were layers to the Elders’ cruelty. Muton girls were subjected to genetic and physical torture to turn them into brutal killing machines. The same hormones that were pumped into them to facilitate this were supposed to stunt their sexual capacity. Even without the forced, perpetual overdose, the damage to her body was already done. If she did have a child, behind her masters’ backs…
Dr. Vahlen, Cargo, the research team, they’d tried their best. Echidna’s daughter fought to breathe and lost. It was a miracle she’d even made it to term, and in the 20 years since, Cargo had never stopped wondering or fantasizing solutions that could’ve saved her. She knew full well the weight of the loss had been far, far heavier on Echidna herself— that no one had known about the pregnancy beforehand had been deliberate, if the Elders had ever found out about it, Echidna would’ve been forced to abort and then been executed for ‘breeding without decree’. She’d had to be both courageous and clever to keep her psionic superiors from catching her out. She’d had to be extremely careful with her own body amid combat without letting on that she had anything to hide. And, ultimately, she’d had to forgive herself for the times when she couldn’t avoid taking risks that contributed to her daughter’s death.
The worst of the grief had passed, lingering now in those moments of fantasy. Cargo could imagine that half-berserker helping with the camp’s physical labour; chatting with other young adults like lifelong friends; still cuddling up to her mother once in a while. She imagined that girl would’ve taken a lot after Echidna. After all, Echidna made a natural maternal figure to the children of the camp, she’d have certainly done just as well with a child of her own.
Echidna thoughtfully set her free hand over her lower abdomen, as if she could still feel her daughter’s little kicks. “All grown up. Wonder what she’d do.”
Without the Elders’ influence, that would’ve been uniquely up to the kid to decide. She could’ve become an engineer, a scientist, a builder, a farmer, a soldier— Cargo suspected, though, that Echidna would’ve discouraged her little girl from entering combat. Yes, mutons were genetically coded to be favorable towards high-intensity physical activity, but there were other ways to accommodate that. Echidna would’ve hated to let her daughter risk her life on the field, or even on guard duty. Considering everything, Cargo both agreed and sympathized.
“Maybe she’d be a leader type,” Cargo suggested, stroking Echidna’s arm. “Like you. I think she’d turn out a lot like you.”
Echidna’s face tugged in what was roughly equivalent to a smile. “Would be feisty. Was feisty when growing.”
“Yeah?”
(Echidna described it sometimes, what it was like to be pregnant. Cargo had only ever been curious about the experience in the most distant way before all this, and had never wanted to experience it for herself. Pregnancy always sounded like an abject nightmare to her. And that was without considering all the ways it could go wrong, and the immense pain she had witnessed as an EMT to two separate pregnancy calls. She’d never have Echidna’s strength.)
“Especially about food. Some she didn’t like. Kicked more.” A small laugh entered Echidna’s voice. “Was almost sick sometimes. She would’ve had big tantrums.”
Cargo giggled a little. She could imagine as much.
The ache of loss underlined even the thought of what could’ve been.
“She’d mellow out as she grew up, I’m sure,” Cargo said. “Still feisty, but the tantrums would taper off. You’d know how to guide her out of that.”
“Yes.” Echidna’s thumb made an arc across Cargo’s side. “Hope so. Maybe she’d want to build. Think she’d like to make a home.”
Cargo hummed agreement. She closed her eyes to appreciate Echidna’s warmth, the sound of her rough, semi-quiet breath. Her wife sat calm and steady despite the topic. Despite everything she’d been through.
Last time they’d spoken about this, Cargo had asked if Echidna would ever try again to have a baby. After some thought, Echidna had grimly and sadly decided that she couldn’t. Her body was configured by force, for force, and she couldn’t put another child through that. Cargo understood. Not personally, but because she understood Echidna.
Echidna had asked if Cargo would ever try it. Cargo had told her honestly that she wasn’t willing to go through the hells that pregnancy put on someone. Even though Echidna recalled her own experiences with fondness— up to and including the chronic exhaustion, the occasional pain and the bouts of nausea— Cargo knew she would dread and stress out over even the least of the symptoms. She’d known from the time she’d even learned what pregnancy was that she didn’t want to go through it. Echidna accepted that answer.
Tonight, Cargo asked a different question: “Would you ever want to adopt?”
After a beat, Echidna turned her head towards her.
“War creates a lot of orphans,” Cargo explained. “Kids without parents. When that happens, others can come in. Choose to be their new parents. Would you want to do that, if you met a kid that needed you?”
Echi mulled the idea over. Cargo let her think about it.
Frankly, it was something she had to ask herself, as well. Since she chose to marry Echidna, any kids she took in, Cargo would obviously need to co-parent. She’d known from the start of the relationship that she wanted to support Echidna in anything and everything. She’d had two decades, knowing that motherhood was something Echidna had striven for, to grapple with the potential of taking that role too. Pregnancy being off the table for her didn’t negate that question.
At first, Cargo had believed that she’d be loathed by any child she interacted with. She’d already failed miserably to connect to kids back when she’d been one herself. There was no reason, back in the day, for her to think she’d do any better as an adult.
But as the camp had been established and grown, and families came in with their own kids, and the orphans of strangers, Cargo had needed to throw herself into the deep end. Her insecurities had to take a back seat, so she could do right by her wife, and right by these refugees. That would inevitably include trying to connect with the kids, get to know them, help them understand who to run to for help if danger ever came.
As it turned out? It wasn’t so bad. Maybe it was because Cargo had been thrust into a position of authority over them, or maybe it was just because she wasn’t obligated to take on any of the caretaking logistics. But she had gotten the children to trust her, even understand her. She’d found it surprising— and a shock to her sense of hindsight. She’d learned a lot about how most children saw the world around them and how they were supposed to engage with it. Her own childhood of ostracisation and bullying stopped being early proof she didn’t belong with other humans, and more of an unfortunate consequence of being the easiest target.
More importantly, though, engaging with the camp kids had changed her opinion on how competent she could be as a stepmother. She was under no delusion that doing the actual parenting would be easy, but if she was taking it on with Echidna, she wasn’t scared anymore.
“I… think,” Echidna began her answer slowly, as if she were still parsing out the words as she was saying them. “Is… option.”
“Is there anything that worries you about it?” Cargo asked.
Echidna’s face scrunched. Her hand tightened on her abdomen. “Adopted one, never replace one I birthed.”
“No, of course not. They’d be more like her little sibling.”
(Oh, Cargo had to imagine now what that would’ve been like. Would she have been a great big sister? Maybe she’d have an easier time than Cargo had. God— it had been so long since she’d seen her own. Cargo wondered if Polly was still alive. She hoped so. She hoped Polly had been able to live well, in spite of the ADVENT occupation, in spite of her big sister having her face on the government’s wanted posters. She hoped Polly didn’t know that. Polly deserved a happy, ignorant life.)
The suggestion eased Echidna’s mind. Her head tilted gently, her fist loosened. “Little sibling. Yes.”
Cargo smiled. Their camp kept on, the night’s low activity a soothing hum in the short distance.
“We should go back to bed,” Cargo suggested, rubbing a hand along Echidna’s thigh. “It’s late, love.”
Echidna purred. Rather than accepting verbally, she stood up, gathered Cargo into her arms and carried her off towards their bunker. Cargo looped her arms around Echi’s neck and rested her head against her collar. The heat of her big alien wife fought off the evening chill.
Unbeknownst to the both of them, that needful child would enter their lives in the near future.