Sins of the Mother
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Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, and geez, what's with me and sticking Drake with cute blondes today?
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Summary: "It's just...I was so awful with Junior. Do you think God will take it out on our baby?" Drake, Wendy, a box of baby clothes, and a healthy dose of guilt.
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When Drake noticed his tiny blonde wife of a year and a half spreading a glob of marshmallow spread onto a slice of darkly toasted raisin bread, he didn't think much of it. It was a well-known fact that Wendy was strange, and there was no arguing with facts.
Wasn't this the same girl who had been up and chasing his friends around the yard during a football game despite a sprained ankle, but insisted on leaving a Christmas party early because she got a run in her nylons?
The same girl who liked playing with army action figures better than dolls as a kid, but still dressed them up in frilly doll clothes for a tea party?
The same girl who drank beer out of a wine goblet, because wine tasted like blech, but the glasses were so pretty?
And finally, the same girl who had spent her first two months in the country turning down wealthy, good-looking guys her own age in favour of a grumpy single dad who was out of the country at least once a month, because she liked men, not little boys?
Not to mention, a first date initiated when he tackled her to the ground in a supermarket and demanded to know where Joker was and what they were up to.
Okay, so maybe that one was him, but she'd been the one that grinned up at store security and told them that he was just being friendly.
Yup, normal pretty much went out the window when it came to his blushing bride.
But when he had found her setting off for a doctor's appointment almost glowing with excitement, when he normally had to trick her with a promised trip to the pet store and haul her in using a fireman's carry to get her anywhere near a doctor's office, he began to get the faint inkling that something was weird.
Even for her.
And finally, when he found her sifting through an enormous box of tiny clothes, the inkling grew strong enough to make him sneak up behind the couch and shout a greeting in her ear.
"Ack!" she squeaked, a little tee shirt flying one way and a fuzzy yellow sleeper flying the other.
"Hey," he greeted again, more quietly as she twisted about to glare at him. "What're you doing?"
"I'm just looking through a package my mother sent me," she replied innocently, scrambling to pack up the items.
He tugged a little blue gingham dress with embroidered red flowers gently from her hands.
"I think it's a bit small for you." His eyebrows lifted as she grew bright red and shrunk miserably into the couch cushions. "There something you want to tell me?"
"Well, I might as well now," she huffed, "since you've gone and spoiled the surprise anyway. I think I might be expecting."
He laughed, dragging her up from the couch and over the back into a tight hug, and she giggled nervously.
"I'm glad you're not angry."
"Are you kidding? This is great. I've been trying to bring up the idea for a while, but there's really no good way to ask a girl's permission to knock her up, you know?" He caught her hand absently as she tried to swat him. "So, what's all that?"
"Oh!" She disentangled herself and hopped back over the couch to poke through the box. "These are some things from when my brothers and I were babies."
"Now, that's a chilling thought."
She glared.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You make enough noise now. I bet you didn't stop yowling from the second you were born to high school."
"Drake! Mum says I was a very happy baby. I'd stop crying in a second whenever they brought our dog, Angus, over to play with me."
"I'm teasing, Kitten," he chuckled, taking a moment to enjoy the mental image of a tiny blonde toddler happily snuggling the bearded collie in the photo she still kept on her desk.
Yeah, he really had to get around to finding a dog for his two special girls.
"Look at this one," she said, shoving a fuzzy blue blanket at him. "I think this was Johnny's when he was little. He hardly used it, because he would always kick it off at nights. I think he was afraid of it after he saw a magic act. He was afraid he might disappear if he stayed under it too long."
"Bright kid."
"He's a doctor now."
"Guess he got over his fear of blankets."
"More or less," she shrugged. "But isn't it a pretty colour?"
Drake took a closer look.
"What, blue?"
"Not just blue!" she protested. "It's the perfect shade, too! It's not too dark if the baby is a girl, but it's still not pastel girly blue."
He chuckled.
"Figures you're planning our kid's wardrobe before you bother to tell your husband.
"I was going to tell you eventually," she huffed.
"I gotta say, I'm glad you spoiled the surprise a little in advance. You know, sometime before the contractions started."
"Ohh, where's your sense of adventure?"
"My sense of adventure got used up a long time ago. I think the last of it went a couple years ago when Joker—" He bit off the rest of the sentence when her pretty little face and big pretty eyes flooded with miserable guilt.
She could probably wipe out a whole city, then talk herself out of the death penalty with that look. At least, if he ever found himself presiding over her trial.
The honourable Judge Anderson. Nice ring, but no.
"Actually, that's what I'm a little worried about," she was meanwhile admitting, eyes glued to her hands, twisted up in her lap.
"What, that helping a crackpot makes you a bad mother in advance?"
She frowned, searching for the right words.
"W-well, sort of. It's just that…I was so awful with Junior. Do you think that God will take it out on our baby?"
He stared blankly.
"Uh…what?"
"I wouldn't mind if I died in labour, but I don't want you and our baby to suffer because I was bad."
He stared even more blankly, then pulled her close.
"Listen, kiddo, I think you're borrowing trouble. I don't think God really keeps score like that."
"He might. I'm not fit to be a mother. Maybe He'll just give me a really incompetent doctor or something, or make the nurse mix up my painkiller with something fatal after the baby is safely born—"
"Okay, cut it out," he ordered firmly, pressing one finger gently to her lips. " One: you're not twenty-one anymore. Tossing a genetically altered super-baby at a twenty-one year old girl was Joker's fault, not yours. Only an idiot would expect that to turn out well. Getting you to raise a kid at twenty-one was like the blind leading the blind. Two," he continued loudly over her outraged protests, "you won't be taking care of this kid alone. I've done this before, remember?"
She nodded, giving him a reluctant smile. He tugged her hair playfully and continued with a grin as she yelped.
And anyway, you're fine with kids. Matt loves you. Seriously; hardcore crush. It's cute. I might be jealous, if he wasn't turning five in October."
"But it still doesn't feel like it's fair, that I can ruin a child's life and still have my own babies."
"I don't know why it's so hard for you to get that Junior never blamed you in the first place."
"Maybe he doesn't, but he should."
He gave a long, drawn-out grumble, smacking his forehead into his palm at top speed.
"Well, he doesn't, so deal with it."
She moved closer, wriggling up under his arm and snuggling against his chest.
"Drake?"
"Yeah."
"If—if something happens to the baby, I want you to make sure I'm properly punished, okay?"
He shook his head despairingly.
"Please tell me this is just hormones."
"I'm serious, Drake."
"So am I. If this isn't hormones—"
"If we lose the baby because of me, it's only right if I die too."
He gave a long, long-suffering sigh.
"Listen. I think you're a little fuzzy on the concept of forgiveness. He forgave you. Yomiko forgave you. Anita…is getting there. Shit, I don't know how many times I've forgiven you. So what's the problem?"
"I don't think it's that easy," she murmured. "No matter who's forgiven, I still did all of it."
"Yeah, but other people have done bad things, too. Hell, I spent a good decade working for them," he shrugged.
"But you didn't know they were doing terrible things."
He gave a bitter little chuckle.
"Sure, I did. You really think I took off the first time they did something I thought was iffy?"
"W-well…"
"I'd have been gone, like, fourteen years and fifty one weeks sooner. But, you know, the money was good, and I had Maggie to think of. Why did you stick around?"
She sighed, forcing a tiny smile.
"Well, someone had to look after Joker. It seemed like every time I let him out of my sight, he either got beaten up or injured by flaming debris."
"Exactly." He smiled encouragingly, tamping down the urge to catch her in a bear hug and squeeze until that clown left her mind for good. Maybe they'd already talked it over, hashed over all the reasons that she wasn't going to go running back to him the second the care home let him out, but damned if he wasn't as fully capable of irrational jealousy as she was of irrational guilt complexes. "If you can tell me, with complete honesty, that about ninety percent of what you did wasn't to protect people you cared about, I might agree that you have a reason to fear for our kid."
She snuggled against his arm again.
"You really don't think I'm too terrible to trust with a child?"
He snorted.
"If I didn't want to trust you with a child, do you really think I'd be leaving Maggie with you when they call me out of town on our weekends?"
She gave a little giggle of pure relief, pulling his arms around her.
"Subtle," he noted.
"Thanks," she grinned.
He pulled back a little and peered down at her.
"Has this really been bugging you?"
She shrugged uncomfortably against his chest.
"W-well, yeah. I thought you, of all people, wouldn't want to trust an infant to someone like me."
He tangled one hand absently in her hair.
"Look, kiddo, you know I don't like what you were involved in, but that's not all you are. Almost everything else about you is going to make a great mother. Except the klutziness," he added with a grin. "Kid might get a little scared when Mom trips over her shoe and sends him flying."
She opened one eye and peered sleepily up at him.
"So, we're having a boy?"
"Yup," he replied casually.
"You've decided this, have you?"
"Sure have. We need to even the numbers around here."
She laughed, then looked critically at the blanket still in her hand.
"Should we get a blanket with little monster trucks and footballs and manly things, then? To declare our preferences, you know."
He pulled it gently away and fiddled absently with it.
"Nah, let's use that one. You were right; it's a nice colour."
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