Two weeks passed and during that time, Abigail had quit throwing up but it didn't do anything to help the pains in her stomach she continued to feel day in and day out. Another upside was that she had calmed down and wasn't swearing at Kronos every day, now it was only every few days, and he took that as a sign that she was getting better.
"It's been about seven months now," she said one night, "Just two more to go."
"How do you feel?" he asked.
She shook her head, "I don't know, I still feel sick…Kronos, I have a question."
"What's that?"
"Well, we both know that there is no way in hell that this baby is going to be as big as my stomach's gotten, the baby will probably at the most be 9 or 10 pounds, so just where in the hell is this other 25 pounds coming in?"
He shook his head, "I don't know."
"I had a horrible nightmare last night," she said, "I dreamt that I went into labor, and my water broke but after a few seconds the water turned to blood, and all my blood was just pouring out of my body…that's not possible is it?"
Kronos didn't answer because he honestly didn't know, he had absolutely no way of knowing just what would happen when she went into labor. He knew of women who bled to death during childbirth but he didn't think any of them were similar to what she just said.
He tried to change the subject. "Where did you say this happened?"
"In Arizona."
"Where in Arizona?"
"Oh it's a little place, you'd never find it," she said.
"Maybe I could," he replied.
"I doubt it," she insisted.
"You don't ever have anything nice to say to me do you?" he asked.
"I have plenty of nice things to say to you," Abigail told him, "I just don't have anything nice to say about you."
He looked at her and laughed. She was the only person in the world who could talk to him as she did and he didn't take offense at it. He put his arms around her and pulled her to him.
"I love you," he said.
"That's your lot in life, I got my own," she replied as she patted her stomach, "I really hope it's a girl…" she poked Kronos in the stomach, "You tell me something, why is it everybody in the whole damn world wants a boy? Why don't they all move to China and then it'll make sense when the majority rules?"
"You've got me," Kronos said.
"Unfortunately I do," she said, "But I'll take you anyway."
Kronos awoke early the next morning and found the other side of the bed empty. He realized that he couldn't feel Abigail's quickening and he started to worry. He crossed the hall over to Abigail's bedroom and didn't find her there either. Not wanting to consider the worst case scenario just yet, he hurried down the stairs to see if she'd gone outside. He no sooner stepped out the front door when he heard her call to him.
"Morning, Kronos."
He stopped dead in his tracks and found her laying sprawled out on the porch swing.
"What're you doing out here?" he asked.
"I couldn't sleep," she replied, "Thought I'd come out and watch the sun come up."
"You know," he said as he knelt down beside her, "Sometimes you just scare the hell out of me."
"That's fine," she told him, "Sometimes I scare the hell out of myself."
Kronos laughed in an attempt to cover up how worried he'd been, of course she was able to see right through it.
"You know I don't want anything happening to you," he said.
"I know," she replied, "I don't want anything happening to me either. I've had this body for near 1,000 years now, I've grown rather attached to it."
"Do you mind if I sit down?" he asked.
"I don't mind, I just don't think I can get up," she replied.
He grabbed her arms and pulled her up so that she was sitting in the swing instead of laid out on it.
"Well that was fun," she said, "Now I can't wait to get off."
"How're you feeling?" he asked as he sat down beside her.
"Tired," she answered, "And you?"
"I'm fine."
"That's good. I'd hate to think you're wearing down like an old donkey," Abigail said, "Kronos, there's something I've been wondering, and I'm not complaining, but there's something I'd like to know."
"What is it?"
"Why did you marry me?" she asked.
"Because you asked me."
"I mean why me? Why were you interested in me?" she asked, "We kept meeting up over the course of 800 years before we married, why did you keep coming back?"
"I don't follow you, what is it you want to know?" Kronos asked.
"I don't know…I try not to think too much about the past but what I do recall of it…you've always struck me as the sort of guy who would seek a frail woman to dominate over…and you've never been able to do that with me."
"I had a thousand years of it, it gets pretty damn tired," Kronos said.
"Now I don't follow, exactly how does it get tired?" she asked.
"Well…" he wasn't quite sure how to answer, all the things he'd ever been asked in his life, this wasn't one of them. "After a while it lost its appeal…it was the same thing every time, any woman I found, they were either too scared to even try and fight me, or they were resilient at first and I broke them to the point that they wouldn't disobey me…of course, when it was the four of us, we never came across an Immortal woman…until…"
She turned to him, "Until what?"
He shook his head, "It doesn't matter."
"Well just what was so different about me?" she asked.
"Well," he thought, "For one thing you were the first woman I'd seen in over a thousand years."
"What else?" she asked.
He started to laugh, "You just don't give up do you?"
"Nope, I want to know, why were you interested in me?" Abigail asked, "I can understand in the beginning when you found me, but why did you keep coming back?"
"There was something about you," he said.
"What?"
"Well for one thing, you were the first woman I think I'd ever met who wasn't afraid of me."
"Well let's be fair, Kronos, the condition you were in at the time there wasn't much to be scared of," she said.
"I know, but even when you had no idea what you were, you had no idea that you couldn't die, you weren't afraid of what I might do to you, even though you had to have known that you wouldn't have stood a chance against me."
"I knew, I was just waiting," Abigail replied, "Waiting for the moment when you'd decide to kill me. I didn't figure we'd last together as long as we have…but I tell you, these last few months that I've been alone, it's given me a hell of a lot to think about."
"Oh, like what?" Kronos asked.
"I think I know the real reason you kept coming back," she said.
"Oh do you now? What is it?"
She looked him dead in the eyes as she answered, "I think you were afraid."
He laughed, "Me, afraid?"
"That's right," she smugly replied, "Afraid of being alone."
He didn't answer, and what more he turned away from her, which to her was a sign to push forward. "I remember when you first told me about Methos throwing you down in that pit…at the time you struck me as some frightened little kid…afraid of winding up alone again…I think that is why you kept coming back. Your brothers were gone, you tried to take up the old ways again and failed, I was the only person in the whole world you had to come back to because you knew I'd still be there and what more you knew that I'd take you back. That's what it was, isn't it? That's why you're having such a hard time answering, because you're still afraid of winding up alone."
Again he didn't answer, and he wouldn't look at her, but she knew she'd pushed him too far…this she knew from the simple fact that sometime during her explanation, he'd dug the nails of his right hand into his thigh, his fingers had curled and his knuckles were white, and even though he didn't move at all, she could hear his teeth grit together, and she knew she'd struck more than a few nerves.
"You were trying to replace Methos with me, because you knew I wouldn't turn on you," she concluded.
That had been the breaking point in Kronos, and she had known it was, the split second before he let out an animalistic wail that could bust eardrums. She grabbed him and pulled him to her, he buried his face in her shoulder and she listened as the dam burst and out came the grief that had been storing in him for nearly a thousand years. When he seemed to calm down, she looked at him and said, "You know what I think?"
He looked up at her, unable to figure out what she was going to say next.
"I think we're the same person," she told him, "We both hate needing somebody else to look after us, and we'll die before we admit when we need help."
For some reason, that comment made him laugh, but it was short lived as he started crying again, and Abigail thought this too would be funny if it weren't so tragic.
"Now what's wrong?" she asked.
He sighed as he answered, "I don't know."
"Sounds like we're more alike than I thought," she replied, "Don't worry, I'm sure we'll figure something out."
"Just tell me," he said, "How?"
"How what?"
"How did you know?" Kronos asked.
She put her arms around him and kissed him as she answered, "I'm your wife, I'm supposed to know you better than you know yourself, and evidently I do."
As she ran her hands through his short hair, a thought came to his mind and he poked her thigh to get her attention. "Why is it men don't know their wives better than the wives know themselves?"
"Because we already have poor population control in the prisons, you want to fill every mental ward in the world with married men?" she asked.
Kronos laughed for a moment, then he tried to get up but she pulled him back down beside her again.
"Not so fast, we've figured out why you kept coming back, but I still want to know why you married me," Abigail said.
"What?"
"Well I've wondered this for a while, I know I asked you but you didn't have to say yes, so why did you?" she asked, "We could have just kept on as we were and things would've been fine between us…so why did you marry me?"
"Hmmm," Kronos leaned against her shoulder as he tried to think of an answer.
"Do you remember the last time we slept together?" Abigail asked.
"Last night."
"No, the last time we slept together you moron."
"Oh……I'll think of it in a minute…it was April…April of 1912…when we got that hotel room right next to that minister and his wife."
Abigail laughed as she recalled the event, "Oooh their faces were red when they checked out the next day."
Even Kronos with whom subtleness had never been a strongpoint, felt the heat rising in his face as he too recalled that stay.
"That was over 80 years ago, one thing's for sure; no psychiatrist could tie our marriage in with that madonna/whore thing that they've been talking about for some 30 years now I think it is…you know they say every man wants a classy lady in public and a whore in the bedroom…" Abigail about fell over laughing from just thinking about it, "Through our whole marriage, I was never either of those things."
Kronos, who was about sick from laughing so hard, replied, "You never even came close!"
Abigail laughed a couple more times when it hit her what he said, and she hit him in the gut for it.
"I was a lady," she said.
"Sure, but none of the men ever knew it," Kronos replied, "Especially when you started robbing banks…hell, they never caught you because they thought they were chasing a man."
"Yes they did…damn that was fun," she thought, "I sure miss those days."
"Not me," Kronos told her, "I could take only so much rope burn around my neck, Immortal healing or not."
"True," she replied, "That did get a little tiresome after a while."
"Well…I guess I married you because in a sense it's the closest I could come to somebody since my brothers, and I do get quite tired of being alone."
"I can understand that," Abigail said.
She looked up and saw that the sun had risen without either of them realizing it. A new day had begun, and she sincerely hoped it would prove to be a better one than most they had faced thus far.
The day certainly hadn't gone as planned. Abigail was so tired that as soon as they returned to the second floor, she went straight back to bed. Kronos was beside himself because he didn't know what to do. He had her lay on her back as he leaned over her and set his ear against her stomach, wondering if he might hear something. What he got instead was a pounding in his head as the baby kicked him in the ear.
He doubled back and Abigail laughed and started to lift up her nightgown, "You want to try that again more directly?"
"No way, the way that kid kicks, I'll need the cushioning."
"Kronos," she told him, "I'm worried."
"What about?"
"Well I just wonder, after the baby's born…what happens if something comes up and I have to go to jail? If anybody found out about the baby they'd try to take it away."
"What're you talking about?"
"Well…some of the heists I pulled weren't too long ago, the statute of limitations isn't up on them yet…if anybody were to find out it was me…they'd put me in jail and they'd take the baby away from me…unless you were to disappear with her."
"Abigail."
"What?"
"You're not going to jail, and nobody is going to take the baby away."
"I hope you're right, Kronos, I sincerely hope you're right, but I just don't know," Abigail told him.
"Do you really think I'd let somebody get away with such a thing?" he asked as he lay down beside her.
"Maybe not," she replied, "But whoever did this they sure as hell knew what they were doing and if they could plot it out to this far they can sure enough figure a way to take it away from me after it's born, whether or not you're here."
"That's not going to happen, Abigail," he told her, "I swear."
"I don't want it to," she replied.
"I know," he grabbed her hand in his own, "Why don't you try going to sleep?"
She nodded tiredly, "I love you, Kronos."
"I love you too, dear."
Oh Lord, Kronos thought as he watched Abigail sleep, he hoped that this whole thing would be over with soon. Two more months to go, maybe, maybe it would only be one month, maybe it would be three. He hated it for her because he knew there was nothing he could do, nothing that could help her.
He leaned over her stomach again and listened, he would almost swear he could hear the kid sighing. Not even born yet and already taking after its mother, he had to laugh. He slipped off the bed and went over to the window. He sincerely hoped that nothing was wrong with the baby or would be wrong with it, but there remained in him a nagging feeling that something would happen, regardless of what they did. It wasn't often in his life that Kronos wanted to be wrong, but now of all times he hoped with everything in him that he was dead wrong.
Hearing a soft groan come from the bed he turned around to see if Abigail was allright. She didn't wake up but rolled back onto her side again, as she had become prone to doing since she became pregnant. Kronos stood at the window watching her, he remembered that night she went on about all the things she hated, and most of those things he hated as well, he hated for her for the simple fact that every day her life was becoming more and more of a living hell and there was nothing he could do about it. Something else he knew, if anything were to happen to that baby, Abigail would probably die alongside it. No Immortal had ever died of a broken heart, but no Immortal had never had to carry a child through pregnancy either.
Being as old as he was, Kronos wasn't exactly sure what he believed in or if he believed in anything at all anymore…but he knew that the laws of nature were not a force to be reckoned with. He knew that was the real reason he worried, no Immortal ever had brought a child into the world, and if it hadn't happened in 6000 years he knew it wasn't meant to happen at all. Of course, he didn't dare tell Abigail that because he also knew that having this baby meant more to her than anything. That was one thing he couldn't tell her no matter what happened, that was the hard part about loving somebody, sometimes the best thing to do wasn't always the honest thing, but in the long run it might prove to hurt less.
Now he knew if he wasn't the only thing she had left, he might be able to tell her what he really thought was the matter. Then if she wanted to hate him for the rest of her life and never speak to him again, he wouldn't care as much because there'd be somebody with her to pick up the pieces. But the truth of the matter was if something went wrong with the baby, he'd be the only person left in her life and somebody would have to catch her when, as the saying went, she got her wings burnt, if it happened. As much as the evidence seemed likely that the baby wouldn't survive, Kronos fought with himself to maintain the shred of hope that stayed in him, that he would be wrong and the baby would be allright.
Kronos woke up and it wasn't until that point that he realized he'd actually fallen asleep. He turned over and saw once again that Abigail's side of the bed was empty, only this time he saw also that her nightgown had been slung over the bedpost. He started to worry because once again he couldn't feel her quickening. Crossing over to the window, he was relieved to find that she was down in the front yard, and she appeared to be okay, but what the hell she was doing, he was going to find out.
He stormed down the stairs and out the front door and tripped over one of the garbage cans she'd hauled around to the front yard.
"Have a nice trip?" she asked.
"You know, Abigail," he said as he got to his feet, "I have a feeling you're trying to worry me to death."
She giggled, "Don't you just sound cute when you're paranoid?"
"Don't patronize me," he said to her, "What's the idea of sneaking off? You know sometimes you just scare the hell out of me."
"But I'm fine, Kronos…I couldn't sleep and I decided to let you rest while I came out and got some work done."
Kronos was trying to calm down, but if he had a heart, right now it felt to be half between his throat and his mouth.
"You know, Abigail sometimes you just scare the hell out of me."
"I don't mean to, it's your own fault for getting so worked up over everything," she told him.
"My fault?"
"Absolutely, I thought I was worrying too much but you come off as doing far more of it than I ever did," Abigail insisted.
Kronos could see neither one of them was getting anywhere, but he especially was losing this argument because that's exactly how Abigail did things, and he laughed.
"I just don't want to see anything happen to you that's not necessary," he said.
"Well I feel the same way but I'm going to be allright," she replied, "Now, if you want to help me, you can take that garbage can around back to the rest."
Kronos picked up the metal trashcan and immediately dropped it.
"What's in there?" he asked.
"Just some junk I picked up from around the yard," she said.
"You know something," he told her as he picked it up again, "Right about now this trashcan feels about as heavy as you do."
He turned around and Abigail kicked him in the rear to give him a send off on his way.
The afternoon became unusually warm and Abigail retreated to the bathroom for a cold bath. No sooner had she settled in the tub, there was a knock on the door.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"Can I come in?"
She rolled her eyes, "Do anything you've a mind to, of course being a man that's not much."
The door opened and Kronos slowly stuck his head in, anticipating something being thrown at him. Once he got his head in he opened the door the rest of the way and stepped in.
"How are you feeling?" he asked.
She thought about it for a moment before answering. "I feel allright I suppose…seven months it's been and finally my stomach's quit hurting."
"That's good."
"You know, Kronos, I keep thinking about this baby and what might happen and all…and it just leaves me to wonder about a lot of things."
"Like what?" he asked as he sat on the edge of the tub.
"Like…why is it Immortals can't have children? Is that supposed to be an advantage or a disadvantage for us?"
"I don't know."
"Something else I wonder, how is it decided who comes into this life as an Immortal? Why are there Immortals? For what purpose are we here? Why is it we have no children and also appear to have no family to begin with? Where do we come from if we're not born of mortals, or even Immortals? And why? If everything around us should die and yet we remain, what is the point?" she asked.
These were all questions that Kronos had also thought about and still had no answers for. The game of Immortality was a sick game, played at the expense of lives that never asked to be thrust into the destiny they were. He'd been hearing for a long time about some sort of prize for the last Immortal standing, but he'd lived too long to believe it anymore…there was no prize for taking the heads of others except for small, personal victories. The headhunters were the real fools because they honestly believed what was told to them about a prize at the end of the game.
"I mean it just bothers me, you know?" she asked.
He nodded, "I know, believe me I know, I've thought about it all myself more than once."
"It just gets unnerving after a while…normal people want to know why they're here and where they came from…we ask the same questions but odds are if there exist any answers, ours will be far different from theirs," Abigail said, "And to tell you the truth, the more I think about it all, the more it just scares the hell out of me…the more I have to wonder just what might all happen once my baby's born."
"I know."
"I just think about all the things I've seen and gone through in my life…I try to forget the older things…but this last century alone has been about enough to undo me, or maybe the last century and a half. I have been present to so many disasters that you can't even begin to imagine…thousands of people drowning in one night…people falling 200 feet out of the sky on fire, bomber planes flying into buildings, steamboats exploding with hundreds of people aboard, fires that wiped out whole towns, pandemics that dropped people like flies in the streets of civilization, not some God forsaken third world country but in this upper class nation, hundreds of people dead within an hour from plague…people with their ears and their fingers and their…privates cut off because they owed somebody in a bad pinstripe suit money over a horse race.
"Now…that's all rather tame compared to what went on in our own times but…oh God, Kronos, all that time we spent most of it living in the woods and what we did to people then, wasn't anything compared to what's been going on these last hundred years or so…were you in Germany during the War? I was…I saw those people, in the camps…starved, beaten, raped…and ditches, whole trenches full of rotting corpses that were nothing but a cover of skin on bones to begin with when they died…people can say what they like, we haven't come a long way from that. And even if we were, nature always finds a way to screw things up and sometimes that proves to do more damage to mankind than mankind itself. It about drove me crazy and I've had hundreds of years to get used to whatever fate can throw at me…just what is my child going to see in her lifetime? What if it's even worse than the things I've seen? Lord, my own sanity isn't that good, and this is going to be my child, I wouldn't give much for its chances of being much better off than I am."
Kronos didn't have an answer for the things she wanted to know, and they both knew it. He reached down and pulled the drain plug up and took one of the towels off the rack and helped her up.
"Come on," he said, "Let's get you to bed."
"Again?" she asked, "If this keeps up that's going to be about all I ever do."
"I don't want you overexerting yourself right now."
She laughed as they walked out of the bathroom, "Kronos, how long have you known me?"
Kronos went over to the bedroom window and saw something that he didn't like. Abigail lived alone and she also lived in an abandoned part of town, hers was the only house left standing that wasn't falling apart, and hers was the only yard where the grass wasn't three feet high. And yet he saw a black car parked out in the street, and suddenly a horrible feeling came over him.
He helped Abigail into her house robe which just barely fit her anymore, and settled her down into bed. He told her to go to sleep and that he would be downstairs and out of her hair for a while. She seemed to believe him and with that, Kronos headed downstairs to find out who had come around trespassing. Whoever it was, and he felt he had a good idea of that, when he got his hands on them, they wouldn't live long enough to regret coming out there.
