(Untitled)

Oct 06, 2011 20:03

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 ( Read more... )

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prydeful October 7 2011, 00:13:56 UTC
"Draw a sketch, it'll last longer. Well, not with the way our items last. But no one's blown this place up yet, anyway. I even have a photo of you, still, from when you were twenty." Beat. "I may have found it last week, when I dragged you away from the impromptu art class."

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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steelartisan October 7 2011, 00:25:18 UTC
Piotr has moved into the room as she rambled, and there's a small line between his brows.

"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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prydeful October 7 2011, 00:36:03 UTC
"Um," she says, which is almost, if not quite, answer enough.

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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steelartisan October 7 2011, 00:53:53 UTC


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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prydeful October 7 2011, 00:59:21 UTC
"Meep," she does not say, because that's not actually a word. Or one that Big Girls use, even if it is.

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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steelartisan October 7 2011, 01:06:52 UTC
Even with an armful of girlfriend, Piotr can move very fast.

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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prydeful October 7 2011, 01:29:14 UTC
"You're not helping," comes a voice from floor-level, one that sounds rather unhappy.

"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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steelartisan October 7 2011, 03:07:36 UTC
Piotr has long been aware that he's dating someone who regards threats of bodily harm as all-purpose stress relief. (It's kind of endearing, once you get used to it.) So he strokes her hair back gently, free hand rubbing small circles on her stomach, without noticeable worry for his limbs.

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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prydeful October 7 2011, 03:17:13 UTC
"Oh. Joy." Her tone can become more dry, but only slightly so.

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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steelartisan October 7 2011, 03:32:27 UTC
Yeah.

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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prydeful October 14 2011, 00:48:13 UTC
"Mmph," she answers unhappily, and finishes eliminating the sour taste before she sighs and rests her head on the very comfortable boyfriend shoulder next to her.

"...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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steelartisan October 14 2011, 01:00:07 UTC
Piotr's hand curls gently around hers, thumb stroking once along the side of her hand.

"...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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prydeful October 14 2011, 01:04:03 UTC
She snorts, a bit, at that ( ... )

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steelartisan October 14 2011, 01:06:13 UTC
"None of the others are you, Katya," he says simply, with half a smile, and holds her close, and listens.

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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prydeful October 14 2011, 01:11:28 UTC
She's smiling, a little, and moves her head for a moment to whisper, "Your mama once told me she worried for my hips as Rasputins can have big heads. Your mama either knew very much how things were ending up, or assumed we were already sleeping together. Just to make your head hurt. It made mine. I'll spare you how old I was when she made that comment. But if my father had overheard," and there is wistfulness, there, because that death is not so old, yet, and Genosha seems to keep a grip on mutants and call them back every so often, "you'd have been running very, very fast. Not even Quicksilver could've kept up."

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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steelartisan October 14 2011, 01:15:40 UTC
...

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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