It's not just with Milliways -- and interdimensional portals, and time manipulators, and the astral plane, and alien technology, and so forth -- that time does strange things. Eight and a half months ago, they learned that Kate was pregnant
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It's absent, not sharp, but it's too absent, as it is when she continues, "You were hot at twenty. Not that i mind you now. Actually, i think physically, we have less of an age gap now. But man, you were hot at twenty. I'm trying to remember if we dated when you were actually twenty. Did we?"
It is also becoming a rather faster ramble as she finishes.
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"Katya," he says in Russian, "are you all right?"
Nine months.
And being an X-Man, like it or not, teaches you pretty quickly how every one of your loved ones deals with physical pain.
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She does not wince.
But one of her hands is gripping his arm, now, and it's gripping it with as much strength as she can muster.
"I'm not sure. I don't know. You didn't answer my question. Are you still mad that I kinda tricked you into coming to Muir for us to basically laser your head? Because I meant to apologize more for that, except you broke Pete's back, and that pissed me off a lot, and then you were in a cell, and we had to keep you there, and I was crying a lot when I wasn't yelling at you. But you weren't supposed to know that so I couldn't let you see that. The whole thing sucked. Why didn't you come back sooner?"
It is an answer that she is talking directly about things they, pretty much, like to Not Talk or Think About At all.
Even she is realizing that as she freezes and looks up at him.
"...Something's different." That is not, Actually, I am starting to panic very badly and don't feel well at all, and I'm going to kill Hank for leaving when he ( ... )
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Right.
Piotr scoops her up. (Carefully! Very carefully. But when one is six and a half feet of muscle, one can be decisive about this kind of thing.)
Firmly: "I think it is time to go to Milliways."
Because Hank isn't here. And, at Milliways, Simon Tam is.
And the odds are, on the whole, against the interdimensional timeline-warping scenario -- and on the off chance they're not, well, sometimes it just makes sense to skip out of your universe for a while to a more restful one.
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But a general noise that means, really, "Oh, hey, high up now, oooh, not good for stomach," may be made.
"...I think I know why I didn't get morning sickness. It was all waiting to hit at once," she manages, "and I don't want to go to Milliways. Do you realize the ridiculousness of going to Milliways? Ridiculous. Ridiculousness? Ridiculosity? Stupidity. It is a plan that involves going to the end of the universe to a giant bar to give birth. ...How can we know so many people with letters after their names and yet there's no one to deliver this stupid baby in our own timeline and planet?"
Her rant is interrupted by her face twisting.
And then, "...Honey? Bathroom. Now. Run."
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You're welcome, Katya!
"It will be a much more interesting story than most children have," he points out, a few minutes later.
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"At all. For the record. Why does Daddy have only one arm, she'll ask me, and I'll answer that it's because I had to rip the other off to beat him senseless with it. And yes, how very interesting a story that will--oh God."
Which may be why there is silence for a few minutes, except for the periodic wince-inducing sound.
And then Kate, after having sat for a moment with cool tile against the back of her neck, blinks.
"Don't contractions normally get closer? And not, well. Stop?"
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At her question, though, he frowns.
"Da. They are supposed to."
"Real ones. Perhaps these are the false contractions?"
This is not a subject Piotr knew in detail once. But no matter how little he's usually inclined to scientific details -- and how terrifying some of the information out there is, when it's not some fetuses and some women but my family -- this is the kind of thing one learns about carefully, under these circumstances.
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She sits for another moment, the fading panic being replaced by boredom.
"Good thing I didn't freak out when they started, then, or we'd have been at Milliways...a longer period of useless time. Don't look at me like that. I didn't deliberately not come get you. This doesn't come with an instruction manual. The whole thing feels weird, how am I to know one weird from another?" Given the fact that their doctor skipped townWell. There is another doctor who is totally capable of delivering the baby there. Technically ( ... )
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There's a reason Piotr hasn't suggested Dr. Kativa Rao, either. She is competent, to be sure, but --
But no. Not Katya. Not their child. Never. No matter how brilliant she is or how sorry she feels, not when there are any safe alternatives at all, Piotr will not see them helpless in her hands.
He brushes his palm over her hair one more time, and bends to press a light kiss to her forehead. "Of course, my Katya."
Toothbrush; toothpaste; glass of water, and then he settles down next to her again.
"Do you want to go to Milliways anyway?"
He's not insisting, of course. But the time difference works in their favor here, and it -- might be a good idea, he thinks.
"Then we will be closer. For when it is real."
Just in case.
(Piotr frets very quietly. Not always subtly, but quietly.
He's maybe been fretting some.)
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"...Not really. Except this kid is such a Rasputin, I'm sure she's going to decide she's ready to be born when we least expect it." She relaxes for the moment anyway, shifting slightly and closing her eyes. "Mm. You're going to hover, aren't you, no matter what I say?" It is, probably, a question she knows the answer to, as she asks, a little more softly, "Will it make you feel better?" in Russian, one hand reaching over to squeeze one of his.
(The problem she is not going to say: Simon's experience with mutants, anyway, is limited to...mostly the two of them, and with mutants birth to nil. And the baby's DNA is still, well, off, in some way. Not wrong. Never wrong, come what may.
But. Something is different. They know that.)
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"...I will hover," he admits, warm and a little amused. (But not repentent.) "You are doomed to that."
For the other -- well, the answer is yes.
It won't stop him fretting, not until the baby is born and safe and healthy, and so is Kate, whereupon there will be a whole new set of things to fret about, because they will have a newborn baby, and their daughter will be a mutant child in this world.
But he thinks for a moment before he admits, in the same language, "A little. Yes."
"But not if it'll make you less comfortable. If you'd rather stay here, Katya, I do not mind. We can go quickly enough whenever the time comes."
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Thinking of his mother is a nostalgic sort of wistfulness, these days. His parents are years dead, and his home hasn't really been one in longer, but the grief is old; old enough to have faded into remembrance of a happy childhood, and the gift that that was. "She would be happy," he says, and means it.
"She would scold me, yes, that I have not made you an honest wife." There's humor in his voice, and warmth for Alexandra Vasilyevna Rasputina long dead and for Kate now. "But she would be happy. She liked you. And you make me happy -- Mama would have loved you for that alone. She would have been delighted by grandchildren."
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She is so very kind.
She also had to deal with the embarrassment at the time, so it may come out some day yet.
And she is silent, for a moment more, before murmuring, "Get me my cedar box from under the bed, da?"
She may feel some better, but she doesn't want to get up yet.
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Piotr would be facepalming if he had a hand free to do so with; he is laughing a little. (And, not so very long ago, he would have been blushing too. He might be a tiny bit anyway. This is a curse of fair skin and no poker face.)
Even years later: MOOOOOOOOOM.
"She liked you," he says again, much more ruefully, and his general facepalming sentiment is probably audible.
"Da," he murmurs back, but he takes another moment or two of sitting with her before he gets up.
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