This story takes place just after the events of "Why Did It Have to be You", and is meant to explain how Olivia and Fidget's children (from Masked Mouse's "Miracles of a Fantasy") were conceived. Warning: Hot sex scene involved in a later chapter, hence the rating will go up then. If you don't like descriptive love-making scenes, you'll have to either skip that part or else not read this.

As a last note: Olivia, Fidget, Hiram, Bill and the thugs (who will appear later) all belong to Disney.

On the evening of June 20th, 1897, a young mouse woman was standing alone on the shore of the River Thames, in London, England. Her name was Olivia Flaversham, and the day before she had unwillingly been involved in - and later far more willingly helped to prevent - the assasination of Queen Mousetoria, on the night of her diamond jubilee. It had been a very strenuous event for her, from start to finish.

At first, she'd merely been having a pleasant, calm day at home with her father, on her birthday - June 18th. Then her father, Hiram, was kidnapped before her very eyes, and things downturned from there. She set off at once for the residence of the famous detective Basil of Baker Street, along the way meeting a kind old surgeon named Dr. Dawson, who had just returned from military duty in Afghanistan, and who insisted that he escort her there, for it may not be safe for a young lady to travel such a long distance by foot, alone. When they had met the detective, she at first had an awful time trying to get him to help her look for her father - he'd been so wrapped up in trying to capture a crime lord named Professor Padraic Ratigan. When he determined from the details she'd given that Ratigan was behind her father's kidnapping, however, he'd finally agreed to the case.

Although the detective was clever and charming, and although she'd always admired what she read of his case-solving abilities in the papers, he was very hard to get along with - for some reason he refused to call her by the right name, which what with her pride in her family heritage, was extremely irritating. He had wanted her to stay at his home until the case was solved, but she refused to stand by when her father could be in danger. Dawson, the dear soul, had been a great help through the whole thing, together with her he persuaded the detective that as long as she was with two grown gentlemen, Olivia ought to be alright, and his amiable, almost grandfatherly character made that period in the whole ordeal much more bearable.

It hadn't lasted long, however, for while they were in a human toyshop, trying to track down the man who had kidnapped her father for Ratigan - a young bat called Fidget - she'd been lured and captured by the bat, and taken to the sewer-based lair of the evil professor. There, she'd been only allowed to see her father for a short time, before she was imprisoned in a human wine bottle until Basil and Dawson had arrived. It was from her captor, Fidget, that she learned of Ratigan's plot to murder the queen, and that Hiram was being forced to construct a life-size clockwork which would pose as Mousetoria and tell the crowd attending her celebration, while the real queen was done away with, that Ratigan was her "royal consort" - though how he had expected to become king from there she had never learned - but what was most mind-boggling of all these events was that she found herself hopelessly in love with one of the men she had met during that time. Hopelessly in love not with the detective - handsome and smart as he was, not with the doctor, sweet as he was, thankfully not with the professor - evil, brilliant and ambitious as he was - but with his right-hand man, the bat who had kidnapped her father and herself. Fidget. Lesser race, wrong side of the law, scrawny, peg-legged and in many ways peculiar, as he was.

That alone had sent her emotions on a whirlwind ride, especially when he reciprocated her feelings (though it hadn't stopped him from doing his part in assisting Ratigan in his volatile carry-out).

Fortunately Basil and Dawson - though Ratigan nearly destroyed them in an extravagant death trap he'd set up in preparation for their arrival, had managed to escape with their lives, free Olivia, and make off to Buckingham Palace with the help of a friendly, adorable basset hound named Toby, whom Basil often enlisted the help of on his cases due to his exquisite sense of smell.

They had gotten there in the nick of time to save Mousetoria and thwart Ratigan's plan, thank goodness, but of course, the craziness couldn't stop there. Fidget, who was among the thugs that had been caught and bound, managed to free himself - her heart fluttered in awe at his strength - and he had run to her, unable to hide his delight in seeing her again, and pleading with her for forgiveness. Ratigan, meanwhile, managed to knock off the crowd trying to almost literally disarm him, and making to escape through the room behind the stage, had seen Fidget together with Olivia. Ratigan had guessed what brewed between the two after observing them hours before, but he didn't care for that; right now he grabbed Olivia and carried her unceremoniously back out to the stage, ignoring Fidget's efforts to rescue her, and had threatened her life to the crowd if they did not stay away from him. He then had turned to Fidget and told him to follow, before grabbing a rope, swinging up to a balcony above and disappearing behind a curtain. Fidget - who had to wait for the rope to return since his crippled wing kept him from flying - had followed, but before he could do or say anything, Ratigan had barked at him to drive the dirigible they'd used to get to the palace, away from there at once. Olivia was already in the ship-shaped aircraft with him, and not knowing what else he could do, Fidget submitted.

Basil, Dawson and Hiram had followed in a makeshift aircraft, Fidget, who was getting tired from pedalling the dirigible anyway, tried once again to save Olivia,* but an enraged Ratigan had grabbed him and thrown him over the edge. Horrified, Olivia had watched her forbidden love desperately struggling to keep himself in the air, before finally plunging into the depths of the Thames. Right there, she may have attacked the professor herself, but he had already taken Fidget's place at the pedals, and Basil had jumped aboard and was trying to subdue him now. Amidst the commotion, she did not notice till it was too late that they were headed straight for Big Ben. They had crashed, and ended up inside the clock, but all had survived; Basil and she managed only barely to get away from Ratigan and avoid getting crushed by the clock gears. They'd gotten outside, Hiram had just managed to pull her aboard their aircraft before Ratigan attacked Basil, and they'd watched as a frightening fight broke out between the two enemies, and in the end both of them ended up falling into the mist below. Furious with Ratigan and Fate for all that had happened, and grieving for the apparent deaths of both Fidget and Basil, Olivia had burst into tears, although enough relief to make her stop came when it turned out Basil had grabbed the part of the wrecked dirigible containing the pedals and the propeller as he fell, and was on his way back up to them.

Knowing that the detective was alive and alright lifted a good deal of the burden off of Olivia's mind, and of course she was overjoyed to have her father back, and to know that her queen was safe, but there was one important heart-wrenching issue that had not been brought to rest in the course of events - the reason that she stood here tonight.

Anyone who had been with her and who knew what she was doing on the shore would have said, "It may be painful now, but look at it this way. You're a mouse. He was a bat. There are rules against interracial romance and you know it. What's more, you are a good, lawful young lady, and he worked for the most wanted criminal mastermind in all of Mousedom. It is sad that he is gone, yes, but you could never have been with him anyway." Someone would have said that, and she - who knew it all well and was not the least bit consoled by it - would have turned and run away, crying into her handkerchief.

The bout of wet weather London had been having lately had made the night rather chilly, and she momentarily pulled herself out of her grief-stricken state to adjust her plaid silk scarf, before tucking it into her blue coat again.* Then, necessity fulfilled, she sank into sorrow all over again.

All of a sudden, she heard a deep, raspy voice saying behind her, "you think I died, don't you?"

Olivia went wide-eyed. The only way she would believe it was if she turned around, which she did, to see the owner of her affections standing behind her, wings crossed and grinning. Too overjoyed that he was alive to care that he acted as if it was all some big joke, she threw her arms around him, tears of grief switching over to relief. He returned her hug, and stayed there like that, glad to be holding her again.

"But, but how?" she asked softly after a while.

"You know, just coz I can't fly doesn't mean I can't swim!"

Olivia chuckled at his tone, then seriously asked, "but from that height, when you fell? How were you not knocked unconscious?"

He shrugged. "God's help, I guess?"

Realizing how much the Lord had helped everyone worthy of it through the past few days kept them both silent for a moment. Finally, just to break the silence, Olivia whispered into his shoulder, "Oh Fidget, I'm so glad you're alive. For what it's worth, I'm so glad you're alive!"

For what it's worth. That seemed to have become their shared line, for it applied to their love at every turn it took. They desired each other so much it was near impossible for either to contain it, but they had to remember that it must be a long-distance love, a love which stemmed out in two directions from where it started. Once more, Olivia hopelessly begged the Lord to grant them one more favour out of this mess he'd so far guided them through; that interspecies marriage - at least for bats and mice, be legal. She'd only known Fidget a few days, and though he'd kidnapped her father and herself and been considerably antagonistic towards her at first, she could not picture herself spending eternity with anyone else.

She noticed Fidget shiver ever so slightly. "Oh, you're cold, Fidget!" she said with concern.

"Nah, cold don't bother me!"

"Oh, don't try to pull that one off on me," she thought. "You must get inside, Fidget," she said, pulling away to look seriously at him. "Have you anywhere you can go?"

Fidget thought. "Home, I guess?"

"You mean back to that terrible sewer?"

"Where else?"

"But Fidget, how can you bear to go back to that wretched place?"

"Well, where'd you think I went after I got out of the water? Portugal?"

Olivia laughed quietly. "But, are you sure you'll be alright there?"

"Course. Bill and some of the others escaped and came back. If I got a friend with any of 'em, it's Bill. And he's good with medicine and that stuff."

Olivia smiled. "Still, Fidget, I don't want you to get sick-" she was broken off by Fidget suddenly coughing, "-or sicker. And I've got to get home right away too; if Father finds out I'm gone, after all we've been through… I'm not sure he'd make it."

Fidget stared at her sombrely, and she at him in like manner; the awful, bittersweet quality to every period of time they managed to spend with each other was that something must always come along to pull them away again, they could not just come together and stay like that.

Fidget finally nodded, and turned to go. Then he stopped, and looked back, unable to resist asking, "I-is, is there any way I can see you again, ever?"

Resolve returning to her mind, Olivia hesitated to respond. Of course she wanted it, of course she did. However, she just didn't see how it would work. In the first place, it certainly could not be over the summer, for she and Hiram were going to their native Scotland for a timeout, to recover from their recent ordeal. During that time, she may just be able to control her emotions enough to pull herself together again, but did she really want to risk losing all that when she returned, by seeing this male who, without trying, could send her mind and spirit into a hurricane or a torrent the moment she became aware of him, the second they were near each other or she observed something which reminded her of him? Once her resolve fell apart at the seams, could she ever hope to patch it up again? And just to put sour cream in the already bitter coffee, what should happen if her father were to find out?

And yet, with all these points for considering weighing down on her, her own inner desire was strong enough to make her eventual response come out as, "I - I don't know, Fidget. I don't know." She hung her head sadly and clasped her hands. Glancing down at them, she noticed a gray, webbed hand reach out and gently pull one away. She looked back to the face of the owner, but he was not looking up at hers, he was looking at the hand he'd selected. Stroking it, not so much sensually as with a childish wonder; it must have been the first time he'd really examined a woman's hand, he admired its soft, feminine beauty, and its four long, separated fingers, counting the thumb. Then, having seen his boss do this with ladies before, though he'd done it more out of a gentlemanly act and sometimes mockery, than anything else, he brought the hand up to his lips and kissed it, slowly and deliberately. He almost got lost in his enjoyment of this gesture, when he heard her breathy murmur of, "Oh, Fidget," and came to his senses. Forcing his lips away from her hand, he looked up into her eyes, and cleared his throat, before saying in the tone he usually used around women (which wasn't too much different, in style at least, from that he used for colleagues) "Seeya, toots," and turning away. He knew in his heart it had to happen at some point, it just had to.

Olivia watched him go, then made to return home, herself. But before she did, she looked down at the hand, on the back of which she still felt a warm, delicious vibe from Fidget's lips, and the trace of saliva he'd left behind out of inexperience. Instinctively she rubbed the moisture into her flesh, and made off, holding that hand tight the entire way back.

/

Olivia was glaze-eyed the entire way back to her house. Honestly, she was so wrapped up in thoughts of Fidget that she wondered how she ever made it back without getting lost. Or maybe she did, and somehow solved the problem all without realizing any of it was happening; she couldn't think clearly. About to open her door and step inside, she stopped and turned around, looking up and down the street half-heartedly, as if playing with the thought that Fidget would show up one way or the other. It struck her that he hadn't even offered to walk her back - perhaps he did not know of that custom. It was probably for the best anyway, for if he had, and if Hiram had been up and caught them…

With a sigh, she quietly opened the door and crept inside. Fortunately the stairs were carpeted, so she made virtually no sound as she climbed them. She snuck into her bedroom, closed the door, and sat down on her bed. Her mind was in a jam; she had so many thoughts on her mind that they had crammed into each other, all but one; one repeating phrase which seemed to be pushing on the others, trying to unblock them and create an easy flow. "I want to see him again, I wish I could see him again. I want to see him again, for heaven's sake, let me see him again!"

/

When morning arrived, Hiram awoke, and was puzzled to hear no sounds of his normally early-rising daughter up and about. Outside her door, he called, "Olivia?", then, concerned when he got no reply, he opened her door and peered in. He was surprised to see her lying ontop of her bed covers, still in her daywear, and went over to gently nudge her awake.

"Olivia, darling?"

"Mmmmm… oh, yes Father?" Olivia stirred and groggily asked.

"Olivia, are you alright? You went to sleep in your dress, dear."

In her half-awake state, she struggled to get the facts entirely straightened out. She could remember mourning for Fidget at the Thames the night before, then discovering he was alive, then he'd kissed her hand, then they'd parted again and she'd come back here, but she still was not sure if she'd dreamt it all or not. Then again, why exactly had she not changed for bed?

"Oh Father, I….feel so sleepy," she moaned, lying back down.

This was not like her, Hiram knew, but she showed no outward signs of sickness; perhaps it was just residual exhaustion from the stressful time they'd had recently; he was not quite settled, himself. Since they'd returned home the day before, he'd thought it best if they take a vacation, and when they discussed it together they both agreed on their native Scotland as the place to go, to come to terms with what had happened and to recover from the shock of it. In fact, he intended to go out and arrange for it this morning.

"Very well, Olivia dear, but I hope you will get undressed first. You'll sleep much more comfortably in bed." So saying, he kissed her forehead, like he always had when she was a little girl before bed, then quietly left the room.

Olivia lay still for a moment, before forcing herself to get up and change into her nightclothes. It struck her as she did this that if she'd been a bat, getting dressed for bed in the morning would be in the norm for her. Then, as she could have guessed it would, this thought turned into, "And if I were, I could also be getting changed for bed as he did." She played the whole scene out in her mind: She stepped out of her dress and hung it up, as he pulled off his sweater, and probably tossed it on a chair. They would stop to gaze lovingly at each other. Then, he would focus intently on removing his trousers, while she elegantly slipped out of her girdle and stockings. When she'd slipped into her nightgown - or morning-gown, as they were inclined to call them, she would move to her dresser, give her fur a brush, and spray on some perfume. He would slip into his - pajamas; she just didn't see him as the gown-wearing sort, and would dab on a little cologne at his dresser, and then, both of them ready for bed, they would slide in together - no, bats hung upside down - they would have two bars jutting from the wall, and would perch upon them, facing one another, then would take a large blanket to wrap around themselves. Inside the blanket, they would embrace each other in their wings, kissing gently and whispering good morning. Then the warmth of their bodies and the pleasure of their nearness would ignite a spark inside both, and they would waken again, gaze at each other with that ever-recognizable look, and would kiss again, with much more thermal energy behind it this time. This would go on for a few moments, which would morph into a few minutes, and so the urge brought on by raw desire would mount inside them both till it forced its way into the open, and the blanket would be thrust aside, each would yank the other's bedclothes off, and so they would tread on the path to the ultimate mutual prize…

Olivia wondered then if bat couples even had intercourse while hanging upside-down. It seemed dangerous to her, but then so did their tendency to sleep in that fashion. If they could do that without fear, then they most likely could do the other. "And now I think about it, I'm absolutely positive I could too… as long as it was with him."

She pulled back the covers to her bed and climbed in, but even as she lay there, suddenly she no longer felt so tired, nor did she feel energetic. She felt a sort of claustrophobic tension, the sort one felt when neither tired nor energetic, but felt an instinctive anticipation. Her body kept telling her mind that it wanted to do something, and her mind didn't even have to ask what it was. She closed her eyes, not to sleep, but to make her image more apparent, and continued that earlier fantasy, allowing herself to get completely lost within it. When it got to the part when their bond had… parted, but not broken, she sighed and rolled over, curling into a fetal position. She really didn't know if it could be exactly like that - she knew what she knew of sexual intercourse only from reading educational books, and she was not in the average of fantasizing over it (though when reading, it had helped her to process the information), and of course, envisioning how a species with such peculiar bedtime tendencies would do it made it more of a challenge. But if it was even remotely similar to her fantasy, then it only made her ache even more that she could not do it.

She could never be intimate. Never. To do so without scandal, she would have to be wed, and she stood firmly against the thought of giving any man-mouse what everything about her cried out ought to belong to Fidget. Of course, the downside to this was that also meant no children. Without Fidget in the picture, she could never be a mother. "But Father does so want to have grandchildren," she thought. "For several years, as I've approached the womanhood I've now reached, he's periodically talked excitedly of my one day marrying and starting my own family, and the joy it would bring him to build many wonderful toys for the children, and the even greater joy of playing together with them!"

Her thoughts managed to wean momentarily off of her hopeless love and latch onto a scene of Hiram, presenting a newly-finished train set, or dolls and stuffed animals, or music boxes, to his grandchildren. She watched as they gasped delightedly and cried, "Oh, thank you Grandpa! They're magnificent!", and then grandparent and grandchildren shared a group hug. Then Hiram knelt down and arranged the train set and all the other toys on the floor, and they played together, while she stood in the doorway smiling at the sweet picture they made, not daring to approach and spoil the moment...

She didn't want to take that away from her father, for he did miss the days when he had done that with her, when she'd been a little girl, but her mind selfishly refused any thought of perhaps caving in one day in the future and marrying. It was practical enough to accept that marriage to Fidget was off limits, much as her heart and body wailed in protest, but it too was upset enough about it to stubbornly say, "All or nothing, no buts about it!"

And so her inner turmoil raged on in an infinite game of tug-of-war, with one side arguing that even this great sacrifice was worth loyalty to Fidget, and the other arguing that it was unfair to her darling father, and also unfair to her lineage, to break the chain of life in that way. Each side was weighted by the claim that to do one deed would mean to make one of the men a victim of a harsh denial they did not deserve, while it would be the same for the other if the other deed were done. Olivia was diplomatic by nature, but she could not see a solution to this conflict. Unless, of course, she were to… NO! Absolutely not! How could she have even dared to think of such a thing? She would not leave unacknowledged the strong temptation of the compromise this third option offered as it stepped into the fight, but it had a dreadful twist, a fine print of its own. True, it meant grandchildren for Hiram, and children for herself. Granted, it meant that part of Fidget would always be with her, no matter what she did afterwards, but look at the price all of this came at! She would be forever degraded, not a whore, to be sure, but considered with the same regards as one. Her family name and reputation would be soiled, and her father would probably go out of business.

Flustered and fed up with tossing and turning over these thoughts, Olivia leaped out of bed and ran to her window, casting the curtains aside and throwing the sash up to get some fresh air, not caring if mice passing in the street saw her in her nightgown or not. They could all go to tarnation for all she cared; was it not their fault that her very being had ended up in this metaphorical room with four solid walls, no door and no window in sight?

"Stop it!" Olivia scolded herself out loud suddenly. "Pull yourself together Olivia! This is not like you at all! Unless you want a pass to Bethlem*, you must get control of yourself!"

It was true. It may very well not have been an overreaction to say she was already slipping away over this. She felt so confused and so stressed that it was already driving her mad. But whatever happened, she must not blame society for it. True, it was their fault that they could not accept interracial pairing, but it was her fault, and only hers, for falling in love with someone other than a mouse, and for falling in love with a criminal moreso. Then again, she considered, love was a mysterious thing, something no one seemed to have control over. Forbidden love had come in many forms, countless times since the beginning of history. It was almost like love came as it felt, completely ignorant of the side effects it had, and only knowing about the unbreakable bond it set between its selected two. Could it be that no one was really to blame at all, that this was a random uprise to be regarded as with a tempest or a thunderstorm?

This at least got her to stop seething, but it still did not make things right. Olivia sighed and rested her face in her arms, atop the window sill, wishing and dreaming.

AN: And now, we wait to see what makes Olivia change her mind about her reputation's importance, and when/where she will act on it! In the meantime, to explain the asterisks I dispersed throughout the text:

1. After all, if he's acknowledged that he loves her, I doubt he'll want her thrown overboard.

2. In my concept, Olivia's outfit in the film is modified to look more like a turn-of-the-20th-century outfit for a young British woman, but the colourings are basically the same.

3. That would be Bethlem Royal Hospital. It's name has been changed a few times over the centuries, according to Wikipedia, but I was unable to determine what precisely it would have been called in 1897. Ergo, Bethlem will have to do.