Brook couldn't believe this was happening. He was just outside the door, treading up and down, up and down so hastily, he swore he was branding a mark into the wood of the floor. A month he had barely been home. A month! And this was how he was to spend his precious time before being shipped back off to the battle convoy? Annette's spells had begun only a week ago. An occasional stagger or cold sweat here and there, but nothing too serious as to raise alarm or at least as far as she was concerned though Brook could beg to differ, for Annette always seemed to shrug it off with nothing but good humor, implying the heat must be frying her brain. It wasn't until Brook found her one sweltering afternoon in the drawing room collapsed on the floor, sweat-soaked and gasping for breath, that she was finally bedridden. So now here he was, pacing up and down the hall like a mad man, patiently awaiting (or at least as far as he could manage without poking his head into the room every other second only to be scolded to get out) the doctor's verdict of the young woman's condition. His ears perked at the sound of the door clicking open and then closed, to find none other than the doctor himself standing in the frame, luring him with a placid yet solemn finger.
Annette just lay there, her only company being the numerous dust bunnies scattered around her, the soothing cool of the wood against her feverish face, completely drawn a blank. She didn't know what to think, what to feel. Not until he came in, not until he expressed his own feelings. He would determine what they were to do about the matter she decided. She would leave this up to him. Brook was better at making decisions than she anyhow. He always had been.
Brook collectedly entered the room with a stoic expression, though the air around him was dense with panic and his mind a raging vortex of pure chaos. Suffice to say the doctor's words had hit him head on like a cannonball. He was so keen on maintaining this cool, serene outlook of his, that his brain had failed the first time to realize Annette wasn't even in bed, the covers messily pulled aside and sheets soaked where her back once lay.
The blustering storm within Brook's mind suddenly halted to a standstill, all previous distress and anxieties pegged, as his thoughts instead were overwhelmed by confusion. "Annette?" He took a couple steps farther into the room, ready to call her name again, though the small shuffle under the bed was alone enough of a response. He tilted his head in a coy gesture, gingerly inching his way over to the bed before getting on his hands and knees and peering underneath. There was Annette lying on her side, her back to him, though from the look of her night gown, seemed to be coursing with sweat. "Nettie, what ever are you doing?" A hint of a smile danced in his voice. The young woman simply shifted, seeming to curl into herself like that of a frightened roly-poly. "It's cooler down here," was her nonchalant response. "And dirtier," Brook chuckled ever so slightly. "Hurry up and get out from under there before you become even more ill than you already are." He gently grabbed her by the arm with full intention of pulling her out, but the sound of her voice stopped him. "Brook." The name came out quivering, like a small abandoned child left out in the snow.
All at once, the panic he had let settle in the very back of his mind, resurfaced and struck his heart with the worst kind of fear; the fear of losing love. "Annette listen to me. Everything is going to be alright. I'll quit my position as captain so I can stay home. I won't allow you to do this all on your own! I'll be with you every step of the way! Nettie, please! Please don't feel like you're all alone!" With those final words, she finally turned to face him though she was far from the frantic blubbering mess Brook had been expecting. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she was smiling, no, brimming with such life and joy, it was hard to tell if she had ever been somber about the news at all. "I'm so happy."
Immediately, Brook's baffled expression whittled away, his lips curving into a wide smile before splitting to reveal the white of his teeth. "Yhohoho~ You really had me going." He tugged her out from underneath the bed, drawing her close to his chest and taking ahold of her chin as to plant a soft and tender kiss upon her lips.
Annette giggled blissfully as their lips parted. "You don't need to quit anything. I'm just relieved you're so elated about this." Brook's eye's grew wide in surprise. "Of course I'm elated! This is a child we're talking about, Nettie. Our child! I'm just so, so…soooo…" The words trailed and the blood drained from his face as his mind finally caught up with the rush of events. "Shit! I'm going to be a father!"
AN: I have a lot of "what if" scenarios that go around in my head, especially when it comes to Brook since he seems to be the only crew member whose childhood was never revealed. Regardless, I like to think he had a childhood friend whom he grew up and eventually fell in love with. This story is only one of the many scenarios that go along with that theme. Anyway, alternate universe where Brook had a wife when he was alive. And none of you can convince me otherwise that he wouldn't have made a great and loving husband! Of course, this is all before Yorki and the Rumbars and more during the Battle Convoy Captain years. I don't know...maybe his family got caught in a fire and they all burned to death. (Morbid, ain't I?) Grief-stricken and filled with hatred, Brook runs away to a life on the ocean (because everything on land reminds him of his lost loved ones?) only to meet a seafaring cowboy and his crew of misfit musicians. The End!