Disclaimer: John, Jill, her clinic, Gideon, etc. do not belong to me.
A/N: Saw IV... why you have to do stupid retcon? Year of the Pig puts that flashback in either 1995 or 2007. My headcanon was that they had been together 5 years before Jill got pregnant, and also that they've been estranged for no more than 5 years. So, that means they met in 1990 or 2002, and the events of the Saw movies in that timeline take place either in 2000 or 2012. Anyone else in my generation feel uncomfortable writing pre-9/11 modern stories?
Strawberries - Don't Take This Personally - Lust
Jill didn't miss a day of work the whole year, and she fed on her own exhaustion because now she had another purpose too. Her steady voice gave roots to the precarious branches that were her patients, and she purged and cajoled and stayed on her feet until she fell asleep, and she never, could never, let her perfect mask of composure crack.
Then Jill came home and she laughed raucously and sobbed terribly and denied herself nothing. And her husband came home and spun her around his workshop and kissed and held and doted on her. And she let him, because she had made him happier than he ever thought he could be. John was a quiet man, whose smile was slow and thoughtful, and one day he would be the father whose son respects him without ever raising his voice. He could be shy and reclusive, and sparing with his touches. But now he made wooden clockworks and dolls and puppets for Gideon, and once a perfect little wooden train, with a blue-hatted conductor standing on top, and he laughed like a boy as he rolled it over Jill's rounded belly, and was rewarded with the tiniest flutter.
Before, his touches were incidental but there was almost a charge to them, an intensity, as though he willed her to understand. I'm sorry... this is who I am, and I love you. I need my quiet and my workshop and I need you. I want to be alone but I want to know every day that you are here. And he touched her face with his fingertips, and his eyes lit as he saw that she'd known all this the day they'd met.
***
"John."
He reached over his shoulder for her hand when he heard her voice. She put her hand on his face and turned it away from his work. In her palm was a tiny strawberry, still misshapen and green.
"It's time."
Spring. His eyes met hers. But I'm afraid, they said, but what if. But then they drifted to the cradle in the corner, half covered by a sheet, that was already built. Jill looked at it too, and she smiled.
"Life's too short, John."
He kissed her palm.
"Cherish it."
"Cherish me," she told him, and drew his hand onto her belly, "and cherish us."
He lifted her into his arms.